Oppenheimer, Physicist Who Created the Atomic Bomb: Biography on newsstands with Corriere

In the fall of 1942, General Leslie Richard Groves was given the task of devoting himself to top-secret work. Project Y to build the atomic bomb. He managed the birth of the Pentagon in Washington, but now his biggest problem was finding the scientific direction for a plan to get rid of the most powerful weapon ever conceived. There was a fear that Hitler would be able to implement it first, and so, thanks to a letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US military had the task of meeting the daunting challenge, first and foremost scientifically. From Consulting Groves Name Robert Oppenheimer Then at UC Berkeley, a 38-year-old Jewish theoretical physicist with valuable experience in Europe. In the 1930s he created “the most important school of theoretical physics the United States has ever known,” recalled Nobel laureate Hans Bethe. He has also contributed important scientific findings in various fields, from cosmic rays to atomic theory, and from black holes to quantum mechanics. The right man at the right time. Groves met him in October 1942 and gave him the job. Thus began the story of the character who governs the creation of the first atomic bomb, the story is set. And the most important book written about his life is a book Abraham Paese OppenheimerAnd On newsstands from July 18 with «Courieri». Pais was a friend and colleague of the great physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Common ideas and series that marked its existence, but also the responsibilities that scientists place before their discoveries.

Los Alamos, the hidden place in the heart of New Mexico chosen by Oppenheimer himself was where the greatest number of brilliant minds ever gathered from the United States were concentrated, some of whom had fled from Europe. Including the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi. In a regime of extreme secrecy they solve the problems posed by the project called the Manhattan Project, with Speed ​​and care to arrive first. On July 16, 1945 at 5:30 am in the sky over a desert outpost, which Oppenheimer himself called Trinity, black mushrooms rose from the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

Only Oppenheimer wore a jacket, “his face tense and dreamy, closed in on himself.” “He saw one of the most exciting events in the history of the world,” Pais wrote with the other scholars, adding the scientist’s own testimony: “Someone laughed, some wept, and most were silent.” Then a line from Bhagavad GitaAnd “I became death, destroyer of worlds”». “It was a horrific, vicious spectacle and terrifying physical violence,” added Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabih.

That moment would change Oppenheimer’s thoughts, his life and his blue outlook, always reserved and abstract. A Harvard graduate and lived in a wealthy family, his education extended far beyond science. He read Homer and Plato in the original, among other languages ​​he knew Sanskrit and paintings by Van Gogh and Renoir hung on the walls of his house. 1936 meeting with Jean Tatlock mark his future. A Communist Party activist introduced him to her left-wing friends. The tall, gray-eyed brunette was a combination of beauty and intelligence that the world found irresistible. But the relationship was troubled. Often the victim of bouts of depression, she would disappear for days and weeks torturing Robert, to tell who she was with. Despite this, they were close to getting married twice. until he committed suicide.

Meanwhile he met Oppenheimer Catherine (Kitty) Boeing at a reception. “When she saw him, she looked at him, then turned towards him and never yielded to him again” and became her fourth husband. The marriage produced two children, Peter and Tony. Kitty, unfortunately, loved alcohol, family life was hell, relationships with children were becoming more difficult and Tony committed suicide.

After the Trinity Test, On August 6, 1945, the first use of the atomic bomb Hiroshima was destroyed, and three days later Nagasaki. The double drama put Oppenheimer into a crisis. Project Edward Teller who was studying at Los Alamos opposed an even more terrifying device, the thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, reminding him that “physicists already knew the sin.”

He had now entered the world scene, and increasingly assumed a political role in which he had a particular interest, with his entry into the Nuclear Energy Monitoring Authority Created by President Harry Truman. Here he supported mutual verification of the nuclear weapons that the USSR had meanwhile developed, which everyone else rejected. This was sufficient to find grounds for an indictment being issued by the committee of which he became chairman. Tyler was his main enemy. In Congress, Senator Joseph McCarthy saw communists everywhere and accused the scientist of passing information to the Soviets. The spy trials of physicists Klaus Fuchs and Al Rosenberg were famous in those years.

After delivering a letter of accusations to FBI Director J.J. Edgar Hoover, established the Atomic Energy Commission’s Safety Committee The process of stripping Oppenheimer of his security clearance. This happened on May 17, 1954, despite the defense of such eminent witnesses as Enrico Fermi. The world was praised for defending America with the Manhattan Project and is now anti-American and suspicious. However, he retained the confidence of his colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which he had led for many years. Here he opened the doors to such figures as the poet T. S. Eliot and the logical mathematician Kurt Gödel. Only John F. Kennedy rehabilitated Oppenheimer in 1963, shortly before his murder in Dallas, and awarded him the Fermi Prize for Physics. Four years later, throat cancer killed him at the age of just 63. However, the personality myth remained second only to Albert Einstein.

the size

Abraham Pais’s book hits newsstands with Corriere della Sera on Tuesday 18 July. Oppenheimer. A World’s Tragedy: From the Atomic Bomb to the Cold WarFor sale at € 10.90 plus the cost of the newspaper. The volume was produced in collaboration with Oscar Mondadori by Robert. P. Wrinkle stays on newsstands for a month. Translation from the English language by Tullio Cannillo.

The author Abraham Paes (1918-2000) was himself a physicist, born in the Netherlands in Amsterdam and then immigrating to the United States in 1947 to work at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where he personally met Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) and many other scientists of stature awesome. Paes from the 1970s onwards devoted himself to the history of physics. publish a biography of albert einstein,
Sly is the lord… (translated by Tullio Cannillo, Bollati Boringhieri, 1986), one by Niels Bohr, Quiet Dane (translated by Daniel Cannaruto, Polati Boringeri, 1993) and books
Einstein lived here
(translated by Maurizio Bruno and David Mezzacappa, Polati Borengeri, 1995) e Pictures of brilliant scientists (translated by Stefano Raffaioli, Polati Borengeri, 2007). However, Oppenheimer’s biography was left incomplete due to Pais’ death. Robert edited the post and completed the text. P. Wrinkle The volume opens with a foreword by Ida Nikolaysen, Baes’ wife.

It should also be noted that the film will be shown in Italian cinemas on August 23 OppenheimerDirected by British filmmaker Christopher Nolan, with Irish actor Cillian Murphy in The Great World.