On Thursday, July 20, it hit theaters Oppenheimernew film directed by Christopher Nolan. The feature film stars Cillian Murphy In the role of Robert Oppenheimerwho is considered the father of the atomic bomb.
Born on April 22, 1904 in New York, Oppenheimer studied at the Harvard University, where he became interested in quantum physics. He continued his training in Europe, where he met other famous scientists such as Max Born o Paul Dirac. In the late 1920s he returned to the United States and worked as a teacher, as well as being a member of the National Defense Investigative Committee.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, the United States set itself the goal of building nuclear weapons before its adversaries. This is how the Manhattan Projectan investigation led by General Leslie Groves. The US government counted on Oppenheimer to lead the Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico), where the atomic bomb was designed.
On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb test was successfully carried out, which they named Trinity. Three weeks later, the country manufactured Little Boy and the Fat Boythe artifacts that in August of that same year were launched in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima y Nagasaki.
After the war, Oppenheimer was president of the General Advisory Committee from Atomic Energy Commission. Despite his contribution, his reputation took a nosedive because of his alleged links to communism and in 1954 he was subjected to a security auditSo he withdrew from political life. In 1966 he left his position as director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and in 1967 he died of throat cancer.