Joseph Henry Book

I thought this was fascinating! J. Robert Oppenheimer had a unique upbringing I found very interesting. He grew up in a nonobservant Jewish family and completed grade school in a private institution called The Ethical Cultural Society. This was a Judaic reformist school where "students were taught 'Ethical Imagination,' to 'see things not as they are, but as they might be.'", pg. 19

Oppenheimer described his childhood "My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.", pg. 21. He was described as odd, neurotic, and depressed by his university classmates. He eventually had a breakdown where he attacked a classmate (pg. 47). His poor social interactions and self-alienating behaviors led him tell a friend "I need physics more than friends", pg. 91

He was brilliant, extremely intelligent, and internalized the knowledge he acquired. He eventually read the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads in the original Sanskrit (pgs. 99-102). His deep reflection and internalizing of the Gita would have a heavy impact during his work on the atomic bomb. "He liked things that were difficult. And since almost everything was easy for him, the things that would attract his attention were essentially the difficult. He had a taste for the mystical and the cryptic.", pg. 99

Oppenheimer's credentials and reputation proceeded himself and landed him the job at the Los Alamos Research Laboratory in New Mexico. "In May 1942 he was appointed director of the fast-neutron research with the curious title 'Coordinator of Rapid Rapture.' Almost immediately, he began to organize a highly secret summer seminar of top theoretical physicists whose job it was to outline a bare-bones design of an atomic bomb.", pg. 180

At the successful detonation of the atomic bomb at the Trinity Site he later told an interviewer "I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes his multi-armed form and says 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.'" pg. 309

Eventually his past actions and who he socialized with put him in the cross-hairs of the Department of Justice and the FBI. His loyalty was questioned after he had accusations of being a Communist sympathizer, being unpatriotic, and was deemed a risk to national security. Towards the end of his life, he gave lectures at universities and dwelt on broader themes of culture and science. He became a humanist, pondering man's survival in an age of weapons of mass destruction, pg. 574

I really enjoyed this one. It was highly detailed and contained a lot of thoroughly researched information. I would recommend it! Thanks!