J Robert Oppenheimer: Some ‘Explosive’ Facts About The Father Of Atomic Bomb
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J Robert Oppenheimer: Some ‘Explosive’ Facts About The Father Of Atomic Bomb
While the world can’t wait to see the life and times of J Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ unfold on the big screen on 21 July, here are a few interesting facts about the American theoretical physicist.
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The Man Who Invented Atomic Bomb
J Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904, to a pair of first-generation Jewish immigrants. His mother Ella was a painter, while his father Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer, a successful textile importer.
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A Child Prodigy
At the tender age of nine, Oppenheimer was well versed in philosophy, as well as Greek and Latin. At the age of 12, he was invited to deliver a lecture at the New York Mineralogy Club.
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He Was The First To Claim That Blackholes Existed
In 1939, in a paper titled, ‘On Continued Gravitational Contraction,’ Oppenheimer claimed that several “dying stars whose gravitational pull exceeded their energy production,” existed in outer space.
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He May Have Tried To Poison His Professor Once
As brilliant as he was, the genius was also often subjected to violent emotional impulses. While studying for his doctorate in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, Oppenheimer had a serious altercation with his advisor, an experimented physicist called Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, after the latter pushed him into laboratory work. As he continued to underperform in lab work, Oppenheimer reportedly decided to get even by placing an apple poisoned with chemicals on his advisor’s desk!
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A True Polyglot
Always ready to conquer an intellectual challenge or two, Oppenheimer was known to speak six languages - Greek, Latin, French, German, Dutch (which he learned in six weeks to deliver a lecture in the Netherlands) as well as Sanskrit!
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Support To German Scientists
Oppenheimer allegedly gave three per cent of his salary to German scientists fleeing from Nazi Germany.
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The Romantic Rationalist
Despite his shy demeanour and pre-occupation with science, Oppenheimer had quite a colourful love life. He met his wife, journalist Kitty Harrison while she was still married to physician Richard Harrison. The pair married after eloping. Throughout their marriage, Oppenheimer continued to have affairs with several women such as Communist Jean Tatlock, psychologist Ruth Sherman Tolman, a psychologist and a professor.
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He Never Won The Nobel Prize
Despite inventing the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer failed to bag the prestigious Nobel Prize as military technological breakthroughs are not recognised by the committee. Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics three times, in 1945, 1951 and 1967, but it eluded him, each time.
