J. Robert Oppenheimer: 5 Facts, including His Fraught Relationship with Judaism
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Aish
Miller, Dr. Yvette Alt
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J. Robert Oppenheimer, was dubbed the "father of the atomic bomb." He directed the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the bomb was developed. Oppenheimer, who came from an affluent, assimilated Jewish family, had a complicated relationship with his Judaism. He was avowedly assimilated, despite the fact that antisemitism dogged him throughout his academic career, beginning at Harvard, which, beginning in 1922, the year he matriculated, began asking applicants to disclose their religion in an effort to curb the number of Jewish students. Always keenly concerned with issues of ethics and morality, it was the Holocaust awakened Oppenheimer's identification with the Jewish people. Indeed, that was a motivating force behind his commitment to develop the bomb before the Nazis did. The article discusses Oppenheimer's misgivings about the arms race that would ensue and became a vocal opponent of the nuclear arms race and may well have been behind his losing his security clearance. Click on the link to read the article.
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Oppenheimer, J. Robert, Science, United States, Theater, Movies and Television