Remembering Dr. Atomic

Today marks the 64^th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb test at Trinity, a desert site sixty miles west of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Conducted in the early morning of July 16, 1945, the “gadget” was a success: producing a “burst of light of a brilliance beyond any comparison” and laying the groundwork for the U.S.’s crippling attacks on Japan a month later.

Historians are still debating the moral implications and strategic significance of the A-Bomb (some say Russia’s declaration of war, for example, was more influential than Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Nobody, however, debates the rock-star status of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the chain-smoking, Bhagavad Gita-quoting Jew at the helm of the Manhattan Project.

From Jennet Conant’s 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos:

Oppie was from a wealthy New York family, wore good suits, and tooled around campus in a Packard roadster he nicknamed “Garuda,” in honor of the Sanskrit messenger to the gods. He spoke six languages, quoted poetry in the course of everyday conversation… [he] had the powerful charisma of those who know from birth that they are especially gifted.

A brilliant physicist with an intense gaze, ‘Oppie’ made women to swoon wherever he went. Edith Arnstein Jenkins, a friend of Jean Tatlock, whom Oppenheimer dated while teaching at UCal Berkeley, explains in American Prometheus:

“All of us were a bit envious… His precocity and brilliance already legend, he walked with his jerky walk, feet turned out, a Jewish Pan with his blue eyes and his wild Einstein hair…we knew how those eyes would hold one’s own, how he would listen as few others listen and punctuate his attentiveness with ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’”

His persuasive power was not solely sexual, however. When scientists at Los Alamos begin to question the moral implications of their work, Oppenheimer convinced them to keep at it. Again, from American Prometheus, physicist Robert Wilson remembers being persuaded to stay the course.

“My feeling about Oppenheimer was, at that time, that this was a man who is angelic, true and honest and he could do no wrong…I believed in him.”

For more on Oppenheimer and the development, detonation, and aftermath of The Bomb, check out The Manhattan Project. Of course, if you’re interested in how it really went down, just rent Dr. Strangelove.