[Bread-Baking Typewriter] Oppenheimer, the Father of the Atomic Bomb Who Opposed the Atomic Bomb

The Trinity nuclear bomb test, the world's first nuclear explosion conducted in 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA. [Image source=AP Yonhap News]

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." (Immediately after the world's first successful nuclear test)

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was the head of the Manhattan Project, which developed the world's first atomic bomb. Generally, this is as far as most people know about him. He never won a Nobel Prize, nor was he a scientist who made central contributions to quantum mechanics. His contemporaries Werner Karl Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, and Richard Feynman are more famous in Korea. Yet, the reason why the biography of Oppenheimer, American Prometheus, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is intriguing is because it is the original work for the upcoming film Oppenheimer directed by Christopher Nolan.

Before reading American Prometheus, the usual curiosity is "How was the atomic bomb made?" On August 6, 1945, a uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and on August 9, a plutonium bomb, called "Little Boy," was dropped on Nagasaki. The first nuclear test in human history, named "Trinity" by Oppenheimer, was actually a test of the "Little Boy" bomb's operation.

However, the book does not provide detailed descriptions of this process. While scientific knowledge is not absent, most of the book is filled with analysis of Oppenheimer's inner self and his relationships with those around him. In particular, more than half of the book is devoted to proving that Oppenheimer was not a communist.

Julius Robert Oppenheimer recalled a passage from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita after the successful nuclear bomb test. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
[Photo by AP Yonhap News]

After the success of the atomic bomb and the end of World War II, Oppenheimer became a star beyond the American scientific community, across all fields. However, this star, known as the father of the atomic bomb and who brought immense military power to the United States, led efforts to warn about the dangers of nuclear weapons after the war. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, which could increase the explosive power, and because of this, he became an obstacle to the U.S. military establishment.

He had long been a person of interest to U.S. intelligence agencies. Many around him, including his brother, were members of the Communist Party. His former lover was a communist, and his wife was suspected of being one as well. Among those who worked with him was an actual Soviet spy. It is also true that he made many donations to the Communist Party in his youth and participated in numerous related events. American Prometheus mentions these facts one by one, ultimately continuously proving that he was not a communist. Just as Prometheus was tormented by the pain of having his heart eaten after giving fire to humanity, Oppenheimer, who brought the atomic bomb to mankind, suffered political attacks in McCarthy-era America. Additionally, the guilt of having developed a weapon that killed hundreds of thousands also tormented him.

This book, which one might have opened simply out of curiosity about how the atomic bomb was developed, gave a three-dimensional form to the image of Oppenheimer that existed flatly in cognition. Interest in the upcoming film has shifted from the spectacle of making and detonating the atomic bomb to Oppenheimer's inner struggles.

Oppenheimer said, "The only way to secure a safe future is to cooperate with people all over the world based on trust and goodwill."

Unfortunately, his wish was not fulfilled. Four years after the end of World War II, in 1949, the Soviet Union also succeeded in developing nuclear weapons, and the world entered an imperfect state of peace created by fear called mutual assured destruction, rather than peace through cooperation.

American Prometheus (Special Edition) | Written by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin | Translated by Choi Hyungseop | Science Books | 1056 pages | 25,000 KRW