What is the Oppenheimer effect in nuclear physics. He acquired the fame of the "creator of death": Robert Oppenheimer. Teaching and the atomic bomb
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born to Julius Oppenheimer, a wealthy textile importer, and artist Ella Friedman. His parents were Jews who immigrated in 1888 from Germany to America.
The boy receives his primary education at the Preparatory School. Alcuin, and in 1911 he entered the School of Society ethical culture. Here he in a short time receives a secondary education, showing special interest in mineralogy.
In 1922, Robert entered Harvard College for a course in chemistry, but later he would also study literature, history, mathematics, and theoretical and experimental physics. He graduated from the university in 1925.
Entering Christ's College at Cambridge University, he works at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he soon receives an offer to work for the famous British physicist J. J. Thomson - provided that Oppenheimer completes the basic training course laboratories.
Since 1926, Robert has been studying at the University of Göttingen, where Max Born becomes his supervisor. At that time, this university was one of the leading institutions of higher education in the field of theoretical physics, and it is here that Oppenheimer meets a number of prominent people whose names will soon become known to the whole world: Enrico Fermi and Wolfgang Pauli.
During his studies at the university, Robert publishes at least a dozen scientific notes on physics, and also writes a fundamental work on quantum mechanics.
His dissertation entitled "The Born-Oppenheimer Approximation" makes a significant contribution to the study of the nature of molecules. Finally, in 1927, he graduated from the university, having received degree Ph.D.
Scientific activity
In 1927, Oppenheimer was awarded membership in research groups at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology by the US National Research Council. In 1928, he lectured at the University of Leiden, after which he went to Zurich, where, together with his colleague from the institute, Wolfgang Pauli, he worked on questions of quantum mechanics and the continuous spectrum.
In 1929, Oppenheimer accepted an offer to become an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he would work for the next twenty years.
Since 1934, continuing his work in the field of physics, he also takes an active part in the political life of the country. Oppenheimer donates part of his salary to help German physicists seeking to escape Nazi Germany, and shows support for social reforms that would later be called "communist efforts."
In 1935, as a result of a collaboration with the physicist Melba Phillips, Oppenheimer introduced the Oppenheimer-Phillips process to the scientific world, which has been used to this day.
In 1936, Oppenheimer received the position of full professor at the National Laboratory. Lawrence at Berkeley. However, at the same time, the continuation of his full-fledged teaching at the California technological university becomes impossible. Ultimately, the parties come to an agreement that Oppenheimer will vacate his position at the university after six academic weeks, which corresponded to one semester.
In 1939, he presents to the public a paper entitled "On the infinite gravitational contraction", in which the existence of black holes was predicted. However, no clear explanation was provided in the article.
In 1942, Oppenheimer took part in the Manhattan Project, along with a research group engaged in the development of atomic bombs during World War II.
In 1947, Oppenheimer was unanimously elected head of the General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission. In this position, he actively petitions for strict adherence to international rules on the use of weapons and support for fundamental scientific projects.
At the same time, Oppenheimer heads the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In the same 1947, he, together with a number of physicists, was working on quantum electrodynamics elementary particles, and also develops the concept of renormalizations. Even before the outbreak of World War II, the FBI, and J. Edgar Hoover personally, put Oppenheimer under surveillance, suspecting him of close ties to the Communist group. In 1949, before the Commission of Inquiry into Un-American Activities, the scientist admits that in the 1930s. really took an active part in the Communist Party. As a result, in the next four years it will be declared unreliable.
Late in his life, Oppenheimer collaborated with Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Joseph Rotblat, jointly founding the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960.
Main works
At the University of Göttingen, Oppenheimer writes his dissertation "The Born-Oppenheimer Approximation" - a work that has made a significant contribution to the study of quantum chemistry, describing in detail the wave functions of molecules. This dissertation is considered one of the most important works of his early period.
An article on the Oppenheimer-Phillips process opened up a new dimension in nuclear fusion. This work still has weight in the world of science.
Oppenheimer did a lot for the development of nuclear physics, spectroscopy, astrophysics and quantum theory fields. He was the first physicist to point out the possibility of the existence of black holes.
Oppenheimer made a significant contribution to the study of cosmic ray showers, which ultimately led to the description of the quantum tunneling effect.
Awards and achievements
At the age of 12, Oppenheimer became an honorary member of the New York Mineralogical Club for the presentation of his work on mineralogy.
In 1946, while heading the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oppenheimer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit.
In 1963, as a sign of political rehabilitation, he received the Enrico Fermi Prize.
Personal life and legacy
In 1936, at Berkeley, Oppenheimer had an affair with a student at Stanford University, the daughter of a professor of literature at the University of Berkeley, Jeanne Tatlock.
Here he meets the biologist Katherine Punning Harrison, who by the time they met had been married three times. November 1, 1940 Robert and Catherine are getting married. The family had two children, Peter and Katherine.
Oppenheimer was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, and, despite a successful course of chemotherapy, the scientist falls into a coma, from which it was not possible to get him out.
The lunar crater of the same name and asteroid No. 67085 are named in his honor.
Theoretical physicist François Ferguson, a friend of Oppenheimer, recalled how, one day, he left an apple doused with harmful chemicals on the table of his supervisor Patrick Blackett.
The most famous theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer had serious mental problems, was a heavy smoker and often forgot to eat during his work.
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), where he takes British citizenship and changes his name to Ernest. Returning to South Africa, he September 25, 1917, supported by an American bank JP Morgan founds a corporation Anglo American, which remained for a long time the world's largest concern for the extraction of mineral raw materials. In E. Oppenheimer, he also becomes the head of a diamond mining company founded by Cecil Rhodes De Beers which was then experiencing financial difficulties. To date, the presidency DeDe Beers remains in the family ownership of the Oppenheimer family.
However, the most powerful creation in Oppenheimer's empire was Central Selling Organization (CSO), also called the press Syndicate, which eventually achieved control over 90% of the world's diamond sales. During the World Crisis, in 1930, Oppenheimer bought up the diamond markets and founded CSO. Usually De Beers by sea sent diamonds mined all over the world to London; there they were sorted and sent in smaller batches to large merchants and cutters.
Harry Frederick Oppenheimer(Harry Frederick Oppenheimer; born October 28, Kimberley, South Africa - died August 19, Johannesburg, South Africa) - former president of the international diamond processing corporation De Beers, in 2004 was elected to the 60th place in the list of "Great South Africans" .
Biography
Harry Oppenheimer remained president of the Anglo-American Corporation for a quarter of a century. Anglo American) until he left this post in 1982, at the same time he was also the president of the international diamond processing corporation De Beers for 27 years, leaving this position in 1984. His son Nick Oppenheimer became vice president of Anglo-American Corporation in 1983 and president of De Beers from 1988.
For a short time (from 1948 to 1957), he was a speaker from the opposition in such sectors as economics, constitution and finance. His negative attitudes to apartheid were widely known in those days, as well as his activities in the field of philanthropy, and his enterprise in entrepreneurship. He also supported philanthropy in Israel.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he funded the anti-apartheid Federal Progressive Party, which later merged with the Democratic Alliance.
(b. 1908 - d. 2000)
South African mining tycoon and patriarch of the 20th century diamond business. President of the Anglo-American Corporation, specializing in the extraction of precious metals, as well as the diamond cartel De Beers Consolidated Mines. Creator of a single-channel system for marketing rough diamonds, which contributed to the price stabilization of the world market and increased profitability of the entire industry. Nominee head of the University of Cape Town, as well as the Urban Foundation. The owner of a fortune of about 3 billion dollars.
AT late XIX In., when the first diamonds were discovered in South Africa, prospectors flooded the country. Precious stones began to be found in one area or another, but the lands of the de Beers settlers turned out to be the richest in crystals. The farm, once bought for 50 pounds, was profitably sold by the brothers Johannes and Diederik to the miners' syndicate for 6,300 pounds. Very soon they regretted that they were so cheap, but since 1888, the largest transnational corporation De Beers Consolidated Mines began to bear their last name. The ambitious Englishman Cecil John Rode became its chairman. The nominal capital of the company, which initially amounted to 100 thousand pounds, in a couple of years reached 14.5 million pounds. On the one hand, the increase in diamond mining was in the hands of the manufacturer, but on the other hand, it brought down prices and harmed market participants.
For success, it was necessary to create a deficit, the volume of which was not difficult to calculate. The main buyers of diamonds at that time were grooms. According to statistics, about 8 million weddings a year took place in Europe and America. Consequently, diamonds had to be sold for about the same amount. After simple calculations, Rohde ordered a 40% cut in sales. Part of the mines had to be closed, and thousands of miners and cutters were left without work. But Cecil didn't care. De Beers kept the market on a starvation ration, which made it possible to raise prices methodically.
The system created by Rhodes collapsed at the beginning of the 20th century, when new deposits were discovered on the African continent, the owners of which were interested in quickly selling their goods. Perhaps Cecil would have found some balance of interests of all parties, but in 1902 he died suddenly without leaving a successor. More than one large company collapsed during this time, but De Beers survived.
Two years after Rhodes' death, the management of the once-powerful company had to cede control of diamond mining to the board of directors of the new Premier mine. 1907 was marked by a crash on the US stock exchanges, and diamond production had to be cut. To the great chagrin of the management of De Beers, in 1912, new rich diamond placers were found in the desert on the territory of the German colony - South-West Africa (now Namibia). Everything said that De Beers was finished. Ernst Oppenheimer, a longtime rival of Rhodes, was destined to act as the savior of the company.
The son of a small-time cigar dealer in the suburbs of Frankfurt am Main, Ernst began his career as an apprentice jeweler, sorting rough diamonds and becoming a good appraiser. At the age of 17, he moved to London, where he worked for 5 years in a trading company that sold precious stones. In 1902 he was sent to the diamond capital of the world - Kimberley. There was already a place to turn around, and Ernst began to trade in pebbles. He managed to become a partner in several artels of miners - primarily in those that operated in German South-West Africa. In the head of a young businessman, an ambitious plan was ripening - to revive the power of De Beers. Naturally, after a controlling stake in the company is in the hands.
With the end of the First World War, Ernst's finest hour came. First, he organized the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, which specialized in the extraction of gold, platinum and other precious metals. The initial share capital was £1 million, half of which was raised in the US and the other half in England and South Africa. In 1919, with the support of financial magnate John Morgan, Ernst founded the Consolidated Die-Monde Mines of South West Africa. This allowed him to buy up most of the diamond concessions previously owned by the German monopolies. In the manner of doing business, Ernst Oppenheimer was no different from Cecil Rhodes.
The new economic crisis played into the hands of an ambitious entrepreneur. The sharp decline in prices in 1921 led to the collapse of the entire diamond industry. New producers of raw materials - Angola, Belgian Congo, Gold Coast - just undermined the market. When the panic-stricken industrialists of these countries began to sell diamonds at bargain prices, cutters and traders rushed to buy them and soon began to go bankrupt, not finding a market for their goods. Customers were extremely suspicious of the record price drop and simply stopped buying jewelry.
While buyers were pondering whether to invest in something that was constantly falling in price, and jewelers were retrained as appraisers of stolen goods, Oppenheimer was slowly buying up De Beers shares, which were now cheaper than the securities of candle factories. In 1929, a controlling stake in the company was in his hands. And Ernst set about restoring the former glory of De Beers, following the postulates of the founding father.
Most of the mines were closed first. Special planes began to fly over the deposits of South-West Africa, which caught lone prospectors. Thanks to these measures, it was possible to stop the uncontrolled supply of diamonds to America and Europe. The London Diamond Syndicate created by Oppenheimer persuaded the major diamond producers to sell the rough through him. Now it was still possible to dictate prices. By the beginning of the 30s. 94% of the diamond market was again in the hands of De Beers.
The crisis of 1934, and then the war, prevented the idea from being brought to its logical end. The closed mines of De Beers and the Syndicate itself began to revive only 10 years later. But even during the war, Oppenheimer did not sit idle: he negotiated and concluded contracts with large diamond producers and small dealers. It was then that the structure of the family company was created, which has remained unchanged to this day. After the death of Ernst Oppenheimer, his son, Harry, took over as president.
The future "father of South African business" Harry Oppenheimer was born on October 28, 1908 in Kimberley, the city of diamonds, which gave its name to the bluish diamond-bearing rock - kimberlite. The house was dominated by an entrepreneurial atmosphere, where the measure of success, progress and behavior was making money. After graduating from the privileged private school Charterhouse in England, Oppenheimer Jr. studied politics, philosophy and economics at the prestigious Oxford College Christ Church.
In 1931, Harry returned home and began working for the Anglo American Corporation, a business founded by his father in 1917 that had since grown into a highly successful financial enterprise. It was a good but difficult school. The years of the "Great Depression" became a very difficult time for the company, as the precious metals market was almost paralyzed. Oppenheimer later said that the main sources of corporate income at that time were previously unused financial assets.
However, difficulties can teach you a lot. The crisis has clearly demonstrated the need to ensure the liquidity of the goods and to have available unobligated funds. At the same time, the decisive refusal of the father to admit defeat brought up the same stubbornness and perseverance in his son. In 1939, Harry volunteered for the front, where he distinguished himself during operations in the deserts of Libya: an intelligence officer was in the forefront of the 8th British Army.
At the end of World War II, Oppenheimer Jr. became the managing director of the Anglo-American Corporation. In 1945, he led a team that faced the extremely difficult task of simultaneously opening seven new mines in gold mines in the Orange Republic. In the 1950s, when the mines were already operating at full capacity, Harry was actively involved in expanding the scope of the corporation's activities in copper mining in Northern Rhodesia and in gold mining in western Rand. He was also one of the founders of the first commercial bank in the country and the first "discount house", which in turn gave impetus to the creation of the money market in southern Africa.
A whole series of successes of the young businessman brought the corporation to a leading position in South Africa and allowed it to become one of the largest mining and processing companies in the world.
All this time, Oppenheimer took an active part in the political life of the country, and in 1948 he won the parliamentary elections as the candidate of the Unionist Party from the Kimberley district. His speeches in the Legislative Assembly were distinguished by the clarity of presentation and the persuasiveness of the arguments. He established himself as a highly respected leader of the opposition, whose opinion on various economic, financial and constitutional issues was highly valued.
After the death of his father in 1957, Harry decided to leave politics in order to devote himself entirely to the family business, but continued to speak publicly on various issues, always clearly, decisively and impartially expressing his point of view and adhering to his principled position. “I don’t think that the head of a large company should delve into all the details of the political struggle between different parties,” he said, “but I think that if you head a large company in a relatively small country, you will inevitably face the fact that you will have to work in an environment where politics and business are closely intertwined. This is indeed inevitable, and I believe that it is the duty of a businessman to speak his mind on the most important and politically sensitive issues, such as on the issue of equality in employment rights between the black and white population of the country.
In 1964, saving a country of hundreds of economic devastation, Oppenheimer introduced Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch settlers) into the mining business, until then almost exclusively owned by the British. Harry sold a majority stake in General Mining to African Africans. AT; 70s Oppenheimer became figurehead of the University of Cape Town and chairman of the Urban Foundation, an organization fighting to provide education and housing for the country's blacks.
In 1984, he created the Brenthurst Library, where you could get free access to his collection of rare books, manuscripts and paintings, which Oppenheimer himself called "history notes". In February 1998, when the country was swept by a wave of crime and emigration, Harry announced that "if the ship is sinking, then you need to save yourself." However, he himself did not intend to jump overboard before the ship really began to sink, "because he always considered himself a South African." This is where the heroic story of the fighter against apartheid, the savior of South Africa and the great public figure, unfortunately ends. As for the history of life! cruel and prudent entrepreneur, which Oppenheimer always remained, then it was more eventful.
As people who knew the businessman recalled, Harry at all times was primarily a businessman. Although, according to a number of responses, he struggled to provide his workers with better conditions and high wages, in the first place, in his own words, "the profitability of the business has always been." Black employees in his factories were always paid much less than whites and were forced to live away from their families. In general, the notorious apartheid government, according to Western news agencies, kept afloat until 1994 only thanks to money and Oppenheimer's advice.
In 1939, Oppenheimer went to New York to meet with representatives of the NV Eyes advertising agency. He rode with the firm intention of changing people's perceptions of diamonds: it was necessary to make sure that this stone ceased to be a trinket of the rich, but became an everyday commodity that ordinary people could not do without. The agency released promotional posters showing the spectacular actresses wearing rings and earrings donated by De Beers. The posters said that diamonds give attractiveness and define social status person. Advertising was designed for the fairer sex. But it turned out to be no less effective for men who felt like conquering kings who give diamonds to their princesses. In continuation of the advertising campaign, Oppenheimer solemnly presented a huge stone to Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI, who visited Africa in late 1940.
Harry himself came up with the advertising slogan “A diamond is forever”, launched the idea of a diamond as an “eternal gift of love” to the masses, and introduced into the subcortex of the population of developed countries the idea that it is customary to give an engagement ring worth no less than the groom’s salary for three months. He developed the principles of trade, according to which the cartel, which produced raw materials, that is, diamonds, spent big money to stimulate the sale of finished products - diamonds. Oppenheimer himself believed that a diamond is an absolutely useless thing, and there is only one way to save its price - by making you believe in its originality, uniqueness and mystical property to keep love. In other words, he came up with an illusion that still feeds millions of people around the world.
Oppenheimer also came up with another great idea that underpinned the diamond business: the idea of creating stockpiles—the so-called De Beers stocks—where stones were stored that could drive prices down on the market. Harry was sure that the diamond market should not be spontaneous and that it should be tightly regulated. Moreover, he took this mission upon himself.
Oppenheimer's skillful policy made diamonds relatively inexpensive. In 1960, Harry signed a contract to buy diamonds from the USSR. Russian diamonds are mostly small but of very high quality. Prior to this, De Beers urged people to buy rings with large stones, but after another advertisement, the demand for rings with small diamonds scattered on them skyrocketed. And it is no coincidence: the cartel began to convince that small stones look no less impressive.
Using such methods for many decades, De Beers not only received its own benefit, but also made it possible for intermediaries, small businessmen, and owners of jewelry stores to develop and prosper. She had such a huge assortment of rough diamonds that OPEC could only envy her: after all, creating a "diamond fund" is much cheaper than storing oil reserves.
In the 60-70s. under Oppenheimer's leadership, the diamond industry developed successfully and rapidly, and the Anglo-American Corporation became one of the largest international investment companies. The conglomerate continued to expand its activities in the field of diamond and gold mining, industrial production and Agriculture in South Africa. At the same time, the mining, production and financial structure Charter Consolidated, located in London, was created at the international level, as well as the Minerals and Resources Corporation, which was then in Bermuda, and now has its headquarters in Luxembourg. The creation of manufacturing ventures such as Highveld Steel and Vanadium and Mondi Paper showcase both Harry's entrepreneurial ability and his commitment to growing the company organically through the development of large mining projects.
Despite its size, the Anglo-American group retained much of the character of a family business, which once again confirmed Oppenheimer's personal qualities as a leader who managed the company well and aroused in employees the devotion and desire to work with him. His humane approach to people served as a guarantee that the company was constantly reviewing and improving wage and improved working conditions. Harry kept repeating the words of his father, who saw the purpose of the corporation as "providing profit for our shareholders and really contributing to the growth of the welfare of the countries in which we operate."
One of the manifestations of his progressive activity as a leader of the South African business community was the creation of the Anglo-American Corporation and De Beers Chairman's Fund. The Foundation has developed and funded various programs mainly in the field of education, which, according to Oppenheimer, is a driving force, and also makes a huge contribution to the development social sphere generally. Another example of such an initiative was the formation, after the Soweto riots in 1976, of the Urban Programs Fund, whose activities were aimed at improving the social and working conditions for the black urban population of South Africa.
One of the most prominent businessmen in the world, Oppenheimer was chairman of the Anglo-American group for a quarter of a century and president of De Beers for 27 years. He was a member of the board of directors of the diamond cartel from December 1934 to November 1994, when his resignation was officially announced in Kimberley. In a farewell address to the company's headquarters, Harry said: "We must believe and prove through our work that achieving business success and striving for a free and just society are not mutually exclusive goals, but rather two facets of the same thing, like two sides medals."
Oppenheimer and his wife Bridget lived at his home in Johannesburg, enjoying an excellent collection of rare books and manuscripts, as well as rare book reprints, many of which are published by the Brenthurst Press, which he created specifically for this purpose. He often spent time at a farm near the Kimberley, where he grew orchids and the finest racehorses in the country, and at a holiday home in La Lucia, near Durban.
But all this time, the "Old King of Diamonds", as he was often called in the business world, did not part with his favorite business, turning it into a hobby. He watched from afar for his son Nicky, who headed the corporation, and thought about a new strategy for doing business in today's economic conditions.
Oppenheimer once said of his father, Sir Ernst: “He successfully solved the problems of his time and left behind him in Anglo-American an organization that absorbed his spirit, his strength and flexibility in working, building and realizing his goals, even with circumstances he could not have foreseen. And by this, of course, he deserved that share of immortality, which any mortal on earth can only dream of. The same can be said about Harry himself.
For about 50 years, De Beers has played the role of creator of the diamond market - omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. The corporation stockpiled surplus diamonds, forbade partners to increase production if the market was threatened with a glut, and regulated demand for certain types of polished diamonds with the help of finely crafted advertising campaigns. Entire countries were completely dependent on relations with Oppenheimer's empire. The buyers were afraid and angry, but kept quiet.
And in 1998, the cartel began to slowly sell off its stocks. This was the beginning of the implementation of the new De Beers strategies, which Harry officially announced a month before his death. The concept of doing business that he came up with provided for the rejection of the creation of so-called stocks, direct entry into the diamond market (previously, Oppenheimer's position was that, since the interests of the miner and cutter did not coincide, one should not be engaged in the manufacture of jewelry), as well as an increase in market share by introducing into the most significant deposits.
Now it is difficult to say what exactly was the contribution of the "Old King" to the emergence of a new concept, which, in fact, crossed out the previous strategy, which he himself created. Perhaps Harry actually gave his cartel a mission for the next half century and then descended into the realm of the shadows. It happened on August 19, 2000, when, unexpectedly for everyone, Oppenheimer died suddenly in the best private clinic in Johannesburg.
Today, De Beers controls, according to various estimates, from 60 to 75% of the world diamond market. It sells about $4.8 billion worth of rough diamonds a year. Twenty mining enterprises of the corporation are searching for and exploring deposits in 18 countries of the world. Currently, De Beers mines only diamonds for jewelry purposes, since it is cheaper to use artificial diamonds for industrial needs. Nevertheless, world prices for polished diamonds are more stable than for platinum, gold and oil. And at the same time, over the past 15 years, diamonds have risen in price by more than 60%.
In the 21st century The Anglo-American Corporation and De Beers consortium will be ruled by Harry Oppenheimer's grandson Jonathan.
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Julius Robert Oppenheimer Born April 22, 1904 - died February 18, 1967. American theoretical physicist, professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, member of the US National Academy of Sciences (since 1941). Widely known as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, within the framework of which the first nuclear weapons were developed during the Second World War, Oppenheimer is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" because of this.
The atomic bomb was first tested in New Mexico in July 1945. Oppenheimer later recalled that at that moment the words from the Bhagavad Gita came to his mind: "If the radiance of a thousand suns flashed in the sky, it would be like the brilliance of the Almighty ... I became Death, the destroyer of Worlds."
After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He also became a chief adviser to the newly formed US Atomic Energy Commission and used his position to advocate for international control of nuclear energy to prevent proliferation. atomic weapons and the nuclear race. This anti-war stance angered a number of politicians during the second wave of the Red Scare. Eventually, after a widely publicized politicized hearing in 1954, he was stripped of his security clearance. Since then, having no direct political influence, he continued to lecture, write papers and work in the field of physics. Ten years later, the President awarded the scientist the Enrico Fermi Prize as a sign of political rehabilitation. The award was presented after Kennedy's death.
Oppenheimer's most significant achievements in physics include: the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling.
Together with his students, he made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to the solution of certain problems in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and cosmic ray physics.
Oppenheimer was a teacher and promoter of science, the founding father of the American school of theoretical physics, which gained worldwide fame in the 30s of the XX century.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York on April 22, 1904 to a Jewish family. His father, Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer (1865-1948), a wealthy textile importer, immigrated to the United States from Hanau, Germany in 1888. The mother's family, the Paris-educated artist Ella Friedman (d. 1948), also immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1840s. Robert had a younger brother, Frank, who also became a physicist.
In 1912, the Oppenheimers moved to Manhattan, to an apartment on the eleventh floor of 155 Riverside Drive, off West 88th Street. This area is known for its luxurious mansions and townhouses. The family's collection of paintings included originals by Pablo Picasso and Jean Vuillard and at least three originals by Vincent van Gogh.
Oppenheimer briefly attended the Alcuin Preparatory School, then, in 1911, he entered the School of the Society for Ethical Culture. It was founded by Felix Adler to promote education promoted by the Ethical Culture Movement, whose slogan was "Deed before Creed". Robert's father was a member of this society for many years, serving on its board of trustees from 1907 to 1915.
Oppenheimer was a versatile student, interested in English and French literature and especially mineralogy. He completed the program of the third and fourth grades in one year and in half a year he completed the eighth grade and moved to the ninth, in the last grade he became interested in chemistry. Robert entered Harvard College a year later, at the age of 18, having survived a bout of ulcerative colitis while prospecting for minerals in Jáchymov during a family holiday in Europe. For treatment, he went to New Mexico, where he was fascinated by horseback riding and the nature of the southwestern United States.
In addition to majors, students were required to study history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. Oppenheimer made up for his "late start" by taking six courses a semester and was accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa student honor society. In his freshman year, Oppenheimer was allowed to take a master's program in physics based on independent study; this meant that he was exempt from the initial subjects and could be taken immediately to advanced courses. After listening to a thermodynamics course taught by Percy Bridgman, Robert became seriously interested in experimental physics. He graduated from the university with honors (lat. summa cum laude) in just three years.
In 1924, Oppenheimer learned that he had been accepted into Christ's College, Cambridge. He wrote a letter to Ernest Rutherford asking for permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory. Bridgman gave his student a recommendation, noting his learning abilities and analytical mind, but concluded that Oppenheimer was not inclined towards experimental physics. Rutherford was unimpressed, yet Oppenheimer went to Cambridge hoping to get another offer. As a result, J.J. Thomson took him in on the condition that the young man complete the basic laboratory course.
Oppenheimer left Cambridge in 1926 to study at the University of Göttingen under Max Born.
Robert Oppenheimer completed his Ph.D. thesis in March 1927, at the age of 23, under Born's scientific supervision. At the end of the oral examination on May 11, James Frank, the presiding professor, is reported to have said, “I'm glad it's over. He almost started asking me questions himself.”
In September 1927, Oppenheimer applied for and received a National Research Council scholarship to work at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech"). However, Bridgman also wanted Oppenheimer to work at Harvard, and as a compromise, Oppenheimer split his 1927-28 academic year so that he worked at Harvard in 1927 and Caltech in 1928.
In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited the Paul Ehrenfest Institute at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he impressed those present by lecturing in Dutch, although he had little experience in that language. There he was given the nickname "Opie" (Dutch. Opje), which later his students remade in the English manner in "Oppie" (Eng. Oppie). After Leiden, he went to ETH Zurich to work with Wolfgang Pauli on problems in quantum mechanics and, in particular, on the description of the continuous spectrum. Oppenheimer deeply respected and loved Pauli, who may have had a strong influence on the scientist's own style and critical approach to problems.
Upon his return to the United States, Oppenheimer accepted an invitation to become an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was invited by Raymond Thayer Birge, who wanted Oppenheimer to work for him so much that he allowed him to work in parallel at Caltech. But before Oppenheimer took office, he was diagnosed with a mild form of tuberculosis; because of this, he and his brother Frank spent several weeks on a ranch in New Mexico, which he rented and later bought. When he found out that this place was available for rent, he exclaimed: Hot dog! (English “Wow!”, Literally “Hot dog”) - and later the name of the ranch became Perro Caliente, which is a literal translation of hot dog into Spanish. Oppenheimer later liked to say that "physics and desert country" were his "two great passions." He was cured of tuberculosis and returned to Berkeley, where he succeeded as the scientific adviser to a generation of young physicists who admired him for his intellectual sophistication and broad interests.
Oppenheimer worked closely with Nobel laureate experimental physicist Ernest Lawrence and his fellow cyclotron developers, helping them interpret data from Lawrence Radiation Laboratory instruments.
In 1936, the University of Berkeley gave the scientist a professorship with a salary of $3,300 a year. In return, he was asked to stop teaching at Caltech. As a result, the parties agreed that Oppenheimer was off work for 6 weeks each year - this was enough to conduct classes for one trimester at Caltech.
Oppenheimer's scientific research relates to theoretical astrophysics, closely related to general theory relativity and the theory of the atomic nucleus, nuclear physics, theoretical spectroscopy, quantum field theory, including quantum electrodynamics. He was attracted by the formal rigor of relativistic quantum mechanics, although he doubted its correctness. Some later discoveries were predicted in his work, including the discovery of the neutron, meson, and neutron stars.
In 1931, together with Paul Ehrenfest, he proved a theorem according to which nuclei consisting of odd number particles-fermions, must obey the statistics of Fermi - Dirac, and from the even - statistics of Bose - Einstein. This statement is known as Ehrenfest-Oppenheimer theorem, made it possible to show the insufficiency of the proton-electron hypothesis of the structure of the atomic nucleus.
Oppenheimer made a significant contribution to the theory of showers of cosmic rays and other high-energy phenomena, using to describe them the then existing formalism of quantum electrodynamics, which was developed in the pioneering work of Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli. He showed that in the framework of this theory already in the second order of the perturbation theory quadratic divergences of the integrals corresponding to the self-energy of the electron are observed.
In 1930, Oppenheimer wrote a paper that essentially predicted the existence of the positron.
After the discovery of the positron, Oppenheimer, together with his students Milton Plesset and Leo Nedelsky, calculated the cross sections for the production of new particles during the scattering of energetic gamma rays in the field of an atomic nucleus. Later, he applied his results concerning the production of electron-positron pairs to the theory of cosmic ray showers, to which he paid much attention in subsequent years (in 1937, together with Franklin Carlson, he developed the cascade theory of showers).
In 1934, Oppenheimer, together with Wendell Ferry, generalized Dirac's theory of the electron., including positrons in it and obtaining as one of the consequences the effect of vacuum polarization (similar ideas were expressed simultaneously by other scientists). However, this theory was also not free from divergences, which gave rise to Oppenheimer's skeptical attitude towards the future of quantum electrodynamics. In 1937, after the discovery of mesons, Oppenheimer suggested that the new particle was identical to the one proposed a few years earlier by Hideki Yukawa, and together with his students calculated some of its properties.
With his first graduate student, Melba Phillips, Oppenheimer worked on calculating the artificial radioactivity of elements bombarded by deuterons. Ernest Lawrence and Edwin Macmillan had previously found that the results were well described by George Gamow's calculations when irradiating atomic nuclei with deuterons, but when more massive nuclei and particles with higher energies were involved in the experiment, the result began to diverge from theory.
Oppenheimer and Phillips developed a new theory to explain these results in 1935. She gained fame as Oppenheimer-Phillips process and is still in use today. The essence of this process is that the deuteron, upon collision with a heavy nucleus, decays into a proton and a neutron, and one of these particles is captured by the nucleus, while the other leaves it. Other results of Oppenheimer in the field of nuclear physics include calculations of the density energy levels nuclei, nuclear photoelectric effect, properties nuclear resonances, an explanation of the production of electron pairs when fluorine is irradiated with protons, the development of the meson theory of nuclear forces, and some others.
In the late 1930s, Oppenheimer, probably influenced by his friend Richard Tolman, became interested in astrophysics, which resulted in a series of articles.
Many believe that, despite his talents, the level of Oppenheimer's discoveries and research does not allow him to be ranked among those theorists who expanded the boundaries of fundamental knowledge. The variety of his interests sometimes did not allow him to fully concentrate on a single task. One of Oppenheimer's habits that surprised his colleagues and friends was his tendency to read the original foreign literature especially poetry.
In 1933 he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur Ryder at Berkeley. Oppenheimer read the original Bhagavad Gita. Later, he spoke of it as one of the books that had a strong influence on him and shaped his philosophy of life.
Experts such as the laureate Nobel Prize physicist Luis Alvarez, suggested that if Oppenheimer had lived long enough to see his predictions confirmed by experiments, he might have won a Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse, related to the theory of neutron stars and black holes. Retrospectively, some physicists and historians regard it as his most significant achievement, although not taken up by his contemporaries. When the physicist and historian of science Abraham Pais once asked Oppenheimer what he considered his most important contribution to science, Oppenheimer named a work on electrons and positrons, but did not say a word about work on gravitational contraction. Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times - in 1945, 1951 and 1967 - but was never awarded it..
October 9, 1941, shortly before the entry of the United States into the Second world war, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the accelerated program to build the atomic bomb. In May 1942, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, James B. Conant, one of Oppenheimer's Harvard teachers, asked him to lead a group at Berkeley that would work on fast neutron calculations. Robert, worried about the difficult situation in Europe, took up the job with enthusiasm.
The title of his position - "Coordinator of Rapid Rupture" ("Coordinator of the Rapid Rupture") - clearly alluded to the use of a fast neutron chain reaction in the atomic bomb. One of Oppenheimer's first acts in his new position was to organize a summer school on bomb theory at his Berkeley campus. His group, which included both European physicists and his own students, including Robert Serber, Emil Konopinsky, Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller, studied what and in what order to do to get a bomb.
To manage its part of the atomic project, the US Army in June 1942 founded the "Manhattan Engineer District" (Manhattan Engineer District), better known later as Manhattan Project, thus initiating the transfer of responsibility from the Office scientific research and development to the military. In September, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. was named project leader. Groves, in turn, appointed Oppenheimer as head of the secret weapons laboratory.
Oppenheimer and Groves decided that for the sake of security and cohesion, they needed a centralized secret research laboratory in a remote area. A search for a convenient location in late 1942 brought Oppenheimer to New Mexico, near his ranch.
On November 16, 1942, Oppenheimer, Groves and the others inspected the proposed site. Oppenheimer was afraid that the high cliffs surrounding the place would make his men feel confined, while the engineers saw the possibility of flooding. Then Oppenheimer suggested a place that he knew well - a flat mesa (mesa) near Santa Fe, where there was a private educational institution for boys - Los Alamos Farm School. The engineers were concerned about the lack of a good access road and water supply, but otherwise found the site to be ideal. Los Alamos National Laboratory was hastily built on the site of the school. The builders occupied several buildings of the latter for it and erected many others in the shortest possible time. There Oppenheimer assembled a group of eminent physicists of the time, which he called "lights" (luminaries).
Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the true sense of the word. Here his uncanny speed at grasping the main points on any subject was the deciding factor; he could get acquainted with all the important details of each part of the work.
In 1943, development efforts were focused on a gun-type plutonium nuclear bomb called the Thin Man. The first studies of the properties of plutonium were carried out using cyclotron-produced plutonium-239, which was extremely pure but could only be produced in small quantities.
When Los Alamos received the first sample of plutonium from the X-10 graphite reactor in April 1944, a new problem emerged: reactor-grade plutonium had a higher concentration of the 240Pu isotope, making it unsuitable for gun-type bombs.
In July 1944, Oppenheimer left the development of cannon bombs, focusing his efforts on the creation of implosion-type weapons (English implosion-type). With the help of a chemical explosive lens, a subcritical sphere of fissile material could be compressed to a smaller size and thus to a higher density. The substance in this case would have to travel a very small distance, so the critical mass would be reached in a much shorter time.
In August 1944, Oppenheimer completely reorganized the Los Alamos Laboratory, focusing his efforts on the study of implosion (an explosion directed inwards). A separate group was given the task of developing a bomb of simple design, which was supposed to work only on uranium-235; the project of this bomb was ready in February 1945 - she was given the name "Kid" (Little Boy). After a titanic effort, the design of a more complex implosion charge, nicknamed "Christy's Thing" (Christy gadget), in honor of Robert Christie, was completed on February 28, 1945 at a meeting in Oppenheimer's office.
The result of the coordinated work of scientists at Los Alamos was the first artificial nuclear explosion near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, at a place that Oppenheimer in mid-1944 named "Trinity" (Trinity). He later said that the title was taken from John Donne's Sacred Sonnets. According to historian Gregg Herken, the title may be a reference to Jean Tatlock (who committed suicide a few months earlier) who introduced Donn's writing to Oppenheimer in the 1930s.
For his work as the head of Los Alamos in 1946, Oppenheimer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit.
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project became public, and Oppenheimer became a national representative of science, symbolic of a new type of technocratic power. His face appeared on the covers of Life and Time magazines. Nuclear physics has become a powerful force as governments around the world begin to understand the strategic and political power that comes with nuclear weapons and their dire consequences. Like many scientists of his time, Oppenheimer understood that nuclear weapons security could only be ensured international organization, such as the newly formed United Nations, which could introduce a program to curb the arms race.
In November 1945, Oppenheimer left Los Alamos to return to Caltech, but soon found that teaching did not appeal to him as much as before.
In 1947, he accepted an offer from Lewis Strauss to head the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey.
As a member of the Board of Advisers to the commission approved by President Harry Truman, Oppenheimer had a strong influence on the Acheson-Lilienthal report. In this report, the committee recommended the creation of an international "Agency for the Development of the Nuclear Industry", which would own all nuclear materials and their production facilities, including mines and laboratories, as well as nuclear power plants in which nuclear materials would be used to produce energy for peaceful purposes. . Bernard Baruch was put in charge of translating this report into the form of a proposal to the UN Council and completed it in 1946. Baruch's plan introduced a series additional provisions relating to law enforcement, in particular the need for inspection of uranium resources Soviet Union. The Baruch Plan was seen as an attempt by the US to gain a monopoly on nuclear technology and was rejected by the Soviets. After that, it became clear to Oppenheimer that because of the mutual suspicions of the United States and the Soviet Union, an arms race was inevitable.
After the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1947 as a civilian agency for nuclear research and nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer was appointed chairman of its General Advisory Committee (GAC).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (then under John Edgar Hoover) followed Oppenheimer before the war, when he, as a professor at Berkeley, showed sympathy for the Communists, and was also intimately acquainted with members of the Communist Party, among whom were his wife and brother. He has been under close surveillance since the early 1940s: bugs were placed in his house, telephone conversations were recorded, and mail was looked through. Oppenheimer's political enemies, among them Lewis Straus, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, who had long felt resentment towards Oppenheimer, both because of Robert's speech against the hydrogen bomb, which Straus advocated, and for humiliating Lewis before Congress a few years earlier; in reference to Strauss' opposition to the export of radioactive isotopes, Oppenheimer memorably classified them as "less important than electronic devices, but more important than, say, vitamins."
On June 7, 1949, Oppenheimer testified before the Un-American Activities Commission, where he admitted to having ties to the Communist Party in the 1930s. He testified that some of his students, including David Bohm, Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, Philip Morrison, Bernard Peters, and Joseph Weinberg, were communists during the period they worked with him at Berkeley. Frank Oppenheimer and his wife Jackie also testified before the Commission that they were members of the Communist Party. Frank was subsequently fired from his position at the University of Michigan. A physicist by training, he did not find work in his specialty for many years and became a farmer on a cattle ranch in Colorado. He later began teaching high school physics and founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
In 1950, Paul Crouch, a Communist Party recruiter in Alameda County from April 1941 until early 1942, became the first person to accuse Oppenheimer of having links with that party. He testified before a congressional committee that Oppenheimer had held a Party meeting at his home in Berkeley. At that time, the case received wide publicity. However, Oppenheimer was able to prove that he was in New Mexico when the meeting took place, and Crouch was eventually found to be an unreliable informant. In November 1953, J. Edgar Hoover received a letter regarding Oppenheimer written by William Liscum Borden, former executive director of the Congress' Joint Atomic Energy Committee. In the letter, Borden expressed his opinion, " based on several years of research, according to the available secret information, that J. Robert Oppenheimer - with a certain degree of probability - is an agent of the Soviet Union.
Oppenheimer's former colleague, physicist Edward Teller, testified against Oppenheimer at his 1954 security clearance hearing.
Straus, along with Senator Brian McMahon, author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, forced Eisenhower to reopen the Oppenheimer trial. On December 21, 1953, Lewis Straus informed Oppenheimer that the admission hearing was suspended pending a decision on a number of charges listed in a letter from Kenneth D. Nichols, general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, and suggested that the scientist resign. Oppenheimer did not do this and insisted on holding a hearing.
At the hearing, held in April - May 1954, which was initially closed and did not receive publicity, special attention was paid to Oppenheimer's former connections with the Communists and his cooperation during the Manhattan Project with unreliable or Communist Party scientists. One of the highlights of this hearing was Oppenheimer's early testimony about George Eltenton's conversations with several scientists at Los Alamos, a story that Oppenheimer himself admitted to have fabricated to protect his friend Haakon Chevalier. Oppenheimer was unaware that both versions had been recorded during his interrogations ten years earlier, and he was surprised when a witness provided these notes, which Oppenheimer was not allowed to see first. In fact, Oppenheimer never told Chevalier that he had given his name, and this testimony cost Chevalier his job. Both Chevalier and Eltenton confirmed that they talked about the possibility of passing information to the Soviets: Eltenton admitted that he told Chevalier about it, and Chevalier that he mentioned it to Oppenheimer; but both did not see anything seditious in idle talk, completely rejecting the possibility that the transfer of such information as intelligence could be carried out or even planned for the future. None of them were charged with any crime.
Edward Teller testified in the Oppenheimer trial on April 28, 1954. Teller stated that he does not question Oppenheimer's loyalty to the United States, but "knows him as a man of extremely active and sophisticated thinking." When asked if Oppenheimer posed a threat to national security, Teller responded: "On a large number of occasions, I found it extremely difficult to understand the actions of Dr. Oppenheimer. I completely disagreed with him on many issues, and his actions seemed to me confused and complicated. In this sense "I would like to see the vital interests of our country in the hands of a man whom I understand better and therefore trust more. In this very limited sense, I would like to express the feeling that I personally would feel more secure if the public interests were in other hands" .
This position outraged the American scientific community, and Teller, in fact, was subjected to a lifelong boycott.
Groves also testified against Oppenheimer, but his testimony is rife with speculation and contradiction.
During the proceedings, Oppenheimer willingly testified about the "leftist" behavior of many of his fellow scientists. According to Richard Polenberg, if Oppenheimer's clearance had not been revoked, he might have gone down in history as one of those who "named names" to save his reputation. But since it did, he was seen by most of the scientific community as a "martyr" of "McCarthyism," an eclectic liberal who was unfairly attacked by his militarist enemies, a symbol of scientific creativity moving from the universities to the military. Wernher von Braun expressed his opinion on the scientist's trial in a sarcastic remark to a congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."
P. A. Sudoplatov in his book notes that Oppenheimer, like other scientists, was not recruited, but was "a source associated with trusted agents, proxies and operatives." At a seminar at the Institute Woodrow Wilson Institute On May 20, 2009, John Earl Hines, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vasiliev, based on a comprehensive analysis of the latter's notes based on materials from the KGB archive, confirmed that Oppenheimer never spying for the Soviet Union. The secret services of the USSR periodically tried to recruit him, but were not successful - Oppenheimer did not betray the United States. Moreover, he fired several people who sympathized with the Soviet Union from the Manhattan Project.
Beginning in 1954, Oppenheimer spent several months of the year on Saint John, one of the Virgin Islands. In 1957, he bought a 2-acre (0.81 ha) plot of land on Gibney Beach, where he built a Spartan waterfront home. Oppenheimer spent much of his time sailing with his daughter Tony and wife Kitty.
Increasingly concerned about the potential danger of scientific discoveries to humanity, Oppenheimer joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Rotblat, and other eminent scientists and educators to found the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960. After his public humiliation, Oppenheimer did not sign major open protests against nuclear weapons in the 1950s, including the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto. He did not come to the first Pugwash Conference for Peace and Scientific Cooperation in 1957, although he was invited.
Oppenheimer has been a heavy smoker since his youth. At the end of 1965, he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx and, after an unsuccessful operation, at the end of 1966 he underwent radio and chemotherapy. The treatment had no effect. On February 15, 1967, Oppenheimer fell into a coma and died on February 18 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 62.
A memorial service was held at Alexander Hall at Princeton University a week later, attended by 600 of his closest colleagues and friends—scientists, politicians, and the military—including Bethe, Groves, Kennan, Lilienthal, Rabi, Smith, and Wigner. Also present were Frank and the rest of his family, historian Arthur Meyer Schlesinger, Jr., writer John O'Hara, and director of the New York City Ballet George Balanchine. Bethe, Kennan and Smith made short speeches in which they paid tribute to the achievements of the deceased.
Oppenheimer was cremated and his ashes placed in an urn. Kitty took her to St. John's Island and threw her off the side of the boat into the sea within sight of their cabin.
After the death of Kitty Oppenheimer, who died in October 1972 from an intestinal infection complicated by a pulmonary embolism, their son Peter inherited Oppenheimer's ranch in New Mexico, and their daughter Tony inherited the property on St. John's Island. Tony was denied a security clearance, which was required for her chosen profession as a UN translator, after the FBI raised old charges against her father.
In January 1977, three months after the annulment of her second marriage, she committed suicide by hanging herself in a house on the coast; she bequeathed her property "to the people of Saint John as a public park and recreation area". The house, originally built too close to the sea, was destroyed by the hurricane; the government of the Virgin Islands currently maintains a Community Center on the site.
(No, Linkin Park did introduce motherfucker fans to the name of this great physicist.)
Stunning, deadly monotonous, "hypnotic" the composition "Radiance", with which, in fact, my acquaintance with Oppenheimer Analysis began.
The text of the song consists entirely of the famous quote from the "father of the atomic bomb" Robert Oppenheimer, the words from the Bhagavad Gita, which he allegedly uttered following the results of "Trinity", the first ever test of a nuclear device (it was called Gadget, "Device"), held July 16, 1945 in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico. ( What is characteristic, the Oppenheimer Analysis album is titled "New Mexico".)
If the radiance of a thousand[s] suns
Were to burst into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.
I am become death
Destroyer of Worlds.
If a thousand suns
[At the same time] lit up in the sky,
It would be comparable to the radiance of a Mighty [Being].
I am Death
Destroyer of Worlds.
(Popular quote: In 2006, Iron Maiden recorded "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns," and Linkin Park, in their perennial attempt to sound intellectual, called their last year's album "A Thousand Suns.")
William Lawrence, a science journalist, interviewed Oppenheimer just hours after the explosion, in which he is believed to have said these words. For the first time they, in this form, appeared in Time magazine on November 8, 1948; only instead of "destroyer" it was: "shatterer".
In his 1965 interview, Oppenheimer recalls the Trinity test and repeats the last words of his quote. (The audio recording of this Linkin Park interview was overdubbed with sampled flatus sounds, see the second track from their latest album.)
If this can be called a "scene", then it is a very strong, emotional scene (I would like to say: "in the spirit of noir", but I will not say):
After the explosion, he did not utter the lines from the Bhagavad Gita, but only remembered them. "I guess we all remembered them one way or another.".
Robert Oppenheimer's younger brother Frank was also present at the testing of the Device; afterwards he said: "I wish I could remember what my brother said, but I can't. But I think we just said, 'It worked.' I think that's what we both said.".
And what part of the Bhagavad-gita did Oppenheimer quote?
These are two different verses (12 and 32) from the eleventh chapter ("conversations").
From the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita into Russian, 1788:
The splendor and amazing radiance of this mighty being can be likened to being the sun, suddenly ascending into heaven with a radiance a thousand times greater than ordinary (pp. 136-137).
<...>
I am time, the destroyer of the human race, which has arrived and has come here to steal away all of a sudden all those standing before us (p. 141).
From "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" (translation into Russian English translation from Sanskrit):
If hundreds of thousands of suns were to rise in the sky at once, their luminosity would be comparable to the effulgence of the Supreme Lord in His universal form. (11:12)
<...>
The Supreme Lord said: I am time, the great destroyer of the worlds. (11:32)
From an 1890 English translation:
The glory and amazing splendor of this mighty Being may be likened to the radiance shed by a thousand suns rising together into the heavens.
<...>
I am Time matured, come hither for the destruction of these creatures.
From the 1942 English translation:
If the splendour of a thousand suns were to blaze out at once (simultaneously) in the sky, that would be the splendour of that mighty Being (great soul). (11:12)
<...>
I am the mighty world-destroying Time, now engaged in destroying the worlds. Even without thee, none of the warriors arrayed in the hostile armies shall live. (11:32)
It is known that Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit under Arthur Ryder, and in 1933 he read the Bhagavad Gita and, in his own words, it "radically influenced" his worldview.
Ryder published a translation of the Bhagavad Gita in 1929, and Vishnu calls himself not "time", as the vast majority of translators do, but death.
In Sanskrit the word kala means "time", "age", "darkness", in the feminine - "death".
For those interested, there is a wonderful extensive article about Oppenheimer's famous quote and the history of his study of Sanskrit and the Bhagavad Gita:
. James A. Hijia. The Gita of Robert J. Oppenheimer // Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. 144, no. June 2, 2000
Robert Oppenheimer was born in the United States to Jewish immigrants from Germany. The family of Julius Oppenheimer and Ella Friedman had two children - the elder Robert and the younger Frank, who later became the greatest physicists of their time.
The first place of study for Robert was preparatory school Alcuin, followed by the Society for Ethical Culture School. Oppenheimer demonstrated an interest in a wide variety of sciences, completing the 3rd and 4th grade programs in the same year. In the same way, he passed the exams in the eighth grade, having mastered the entire program in just six months. Going to the last class, Oppenheimer gets acquainted with chemistry - science becomes his passion.
At the age of 18, young Robert went to Harvard College, where he had to learn not only major subjects, but also choose an additional one: history, literature and philosophy or mathematics.
But that didn't bother him. Oppenheimer excelled in everything: he took a record six courses per semester, became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was eligible to attend a master's program in physics on an independent study basis (skipping the initial subjects) as a freshman. Passion for experimental physics came to Robert after listening to a course in thermodynamics, which was read by Percy Bridgman. Oppenheimer University graduated with honors in just three years.
But Robert did not finish his studies on this - they were waiting for him ahead educational establishments in different European cities. So in 1924 he was admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge. He simply dreamed of working at the Cavendish Laboratory - a laboratory where he could not only observe research, but also conduct them together with teachers. Going to Cambridge with Bridgman's less than rosy recommendation (noting Oppenheimer's lack of aptitude for experimental physics), he was accepted into a course of study by Joseph Thomson.
In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge and went to the University of Göttingen, which at that time was one of the most advanced in the study of physics in all its manifestations. In 1927, at the age of 23, Robert Oppenheimer defended his dissertation and received a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen.
Teaching and scientific activity
Upon returning to his homeland, Oppenheimer received a work permit in one of the most prestigious universities in California, while Bridgman wanted a promising physicist to work at Harvard. As a compromise, it was decided that Oppenheimer would teach part school year at Harvard (1927), and the second part at the University of California (1928). In the last institution, Robert met Linus Pauling, with whom they planned to “reverse” ideas about nature. chemical bond, but Oppenheimer's excessive interest in Pauling's wife prevented this - Linus completely broke off contacts with Oppenheimer, subsequently refusing even to participate in his famous Manhattan project.
As part of his teaching activities, Robert also visited a number of educational institutions. In 1928 he went to the University of Leiden (Netherlands), where he greatly surprised the students by giving a lecture in their native language. Then there was the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich), where he managed to work with his adored Wolfgang Pauli. Scientists spent days discussing the problems of quantum mechanics and ways to solve them.
Returning to the US, Robert took up the position of Senior Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. However, very soon he had to leave the walls of the university for a while - Oppenheimer was diagnosed with a mild stage of tuberculosis. Having recovered, he began to work with renewed vigor.
Theoretical astrophysics is the main direction of Oppenheimer's scientific research. The list of his works is in the hundreds and includes articles and studies on quantum mechanics, astrophysics, theoretical spectroscopy and other sciences, one way or another intersecting with his dignitary specialization.
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was something completely new for Oppenheimer. Building a nuclear bomb at the behest of President Franklin Roosevelt, surrounded by the best physicists of the time, he greatly expanded the range of skills available. Initially, Oppenheimer led the group at the University of Berkeley. Their task was to calculate fast neutrons. “Fast Break Coordinator,” as Oppenheimer’s position was called, worked hand in hand not only with eminent physicists, but also with talented students, including Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller and others.
Leslie Groves, Jr. was nominated as the project leader from the US Army (after the transfer of responsibility for the project from the scientific to the military side). He put Oppenheimer in charge of the secret weapons laboratory without hesitation. The decision came as a surprise to both scientists and the military. The choice for the role of a manager who does not have a Nobel Prize and, accordingly, authority, Gowars explained by the personal qualities of the candidate. Including vanity, which, in his opinion, should have "spurred" Oppenheimer to achieve results.
The bomb development base, moved at the initiative of Oppenheimer from New Mexico to Los Almoss, was established in the shortest possible time - some buildings were rented, some were just erected. The number of physicists involved in the project grew every year - Oppenheimer's initial calculations turned out to be rather short-sighted. If in 1943 a couple of hundred people worked on the project, then already in 1945 this figure increased to several thousand.
At first, the physics of managing and coordinating groups was rather difficult, but very soon Oppenheimer mastered this science as well. Later, the project participants noted his ability to smooth out the contradictions between the military and civilians, which arose for a variety of reasons - from cultural to religious. At the same time, he always took into account all aspects and subtleties of such a specific project.
In 1945, the first test of the created product took place - near Alamogordo, on July 16, an artificial explosion took place, and it was successful.
The fates of the two "Manhattan" bombs, developed under the direction of Oppenheimer, were determined long before their creation - shells with the sarcastic names "Kid" and "Fat Man" were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1956, respectively.
Personal life
Personal and political life Oppenheimer have always been closely intertwined. He was repeatedly suspected of involvement in the communists, and supported by him social reforms regarded as pro-communist. But he only added fuel to the fire. So, in 1936, Oppenheimer had an affair with a medical school student whose father was also a professor of literature at Berkeley. Jean Tatlock had similar views on life and politics with Oppenheimer, moreover, she even wrote notes for a newspaper published by the Communist Party. However, the couple broke up in 1929.
In the summer of that year, Oppenheimer meets Katherine Puning Harrison, a former member of the Communist Party, behind whom there are three marriages, one of which is still valid. After spending the summer of 1940 at Oppenheimer's ranch, becoming pregnant and having a difficult divorce from her then-current husband, Kitty married Robert. Married to the Oppenheimer couple, two children are born - Boy Peter and girl Catherine, but this does not stop Robert and he continues his relationship with Tetlock.
Katherine was next to Oppenheimer to the last - she went with him to the end of the fight against cancer, which was diagnosed by a scientist in 1965. Operations, radio and chemotherapy did not bring results - on February 18, after a three-day coma, Robert Oppenheimer died.
Bibliography of Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer, who laid down his life on the altar of science, wrote about a dozen books on physics, published many scientific articles and publications. Unfortunately, most of the works have not been translated into Russian. Among the books of his authorship are:
- Science and the Common Understanding (Science and General Understanding) (1954)
- The Open Mind (Open Mind) (1955)
- Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community (1989) and many others.
- Oppenheimer - a genius of his time - had serious mental problems (once he soaked an apple in a poisonous liquid and put it on the table of his leader), was a heavy smoker (which caused tuberculosis and throat cancer), and sometimes even forgot to eat - physics fascinated him with his head .
- “I am death, the destroyer of worlds,” is a phrase Oppenheimer owns about himself. It came to his mind during the test explosion of his bomb and was borrowed from the Hindu book of the Bhagavad Gita.
