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title: "J. Robert Oppenheimer"
chunk: 17/17
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Oppenheimer is the subject of many biographies, including American Prometheus (2005) by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The 1980 BBC TV serial Oppenheimer, starring Sam Waterston, won three BAFTA Television Awards. The Day After Trinity, a 1980 documentary about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, was nominated for an Academy Award and received a Peabody Award. Oppenheimer's life is explored in Tom Morton-Smith's 2015 play Oppenheimer, and the 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy, where he was portrayed by Dwight Schultz. Also in 1989, David Strathairn played Oppenheimer in the TV film Day One. In the 2023 American film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan and based on American Prometheus, Oppenheimer is portrayed by Cillian Murphy. The film won the Academy Award for best picture, and Murphy won for best actor.
A centennial conference about Oppenheimer's legacy was held in 2004 at the University of California, Berkeley, alongside a digital exhibition on his life, with the conference proceedings published in 2005 as Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections. His papers are in the Library of Congress.
As a scientist, Oppenheimer was remembered by his students and colleagues as a brilliant researcher and engaging teacher who founded modern theoretical physics in the United States. "More than any other man", Bethe wrote, "he was responsible for raising American theoretical physics from a provincial adjunct of Europe to world leadership." Because his scientific attentions often changed rapidly, he never worked long enough on any one topic and carried it to fruition to merit the Nobel Prize, though his investigations contributing to the theory of black holes might have warranted the prize had he lived long enough to see them brought to fruition by later astrophysicists. An asteroid, 67085 Oppenheimer, was named in his honor on January 4, 2000, as was the lunar crater Oppenheimer in 1970.
As a military and public policy advisor, Oppenheimer was a leader in the shift toward technocracy in the interactions between science and the military, and in the emergence of "big science". During World War II, scientists became involved in military research to an unprecedented degree. Because of the threat fascism posed to Western civilization, they volunteered in great numbers for technological, and organizational, assistance to the Allied effort, resulting in powerful tools such as radar, the proximity fuze and operations research. As a cultured, intellectual, theoretical physicist who became a disciplined military organizer, Oppenheimer represented the shift away from the idea that scientists had their "heads in the clouds" and that knowledge of esoteric subjects like the composition of the atomic nucleus had no "real-world" applications.
Two days before the Trinity test, Oppenheimer expressed his hopes and fears in a quotation from Bhartṛhari's Śatakatraya:

== Publications ==
Oppenheimer, J. Robert (1954). Science and the Common Understanding. New York: Simon and Schuster. OCLC 34304713.
Oppenheimer, J. Robert (1955). The Open Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster. OCLC 297109.
Oppenheimer, J. Robert (1964). The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises for Physicists. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 592102.
Oppenheimer, J. Robert; Rabi, I.I (1969). Oppenheimer. New York: Scribner. OCLC 2729. (posthumous)
Oppenheimer, J. Robert; Smith, Alice Kimball; Weiner, Charles (1980). Robert Oppenheimer, Letters and Recollections. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-77605-0. OCLC 5946652. (posthumous)
Oppenheimer, J. Robert; Metropolis, N.; Rota, Gian-Carlo; Sharp, D. H. (1984). Uncommon Sense. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Birkhäuser Boston. ISBN 978-0-8176-3165-9. OCLC 10458715. (posthumous)
Oppenheimer, J. Robert (1989). Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-08547-0. OCLC 19981106. (posthumous)

== Notes ==

== References ==

== Sources ==

== Further reading ==

=== Articles ===
Bernstein, Barton J. (1988). "Four Physicists and the Bomb: The Early Years, 1945–1950". Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences. 18 (2): 231–263. doi:10.2307/27757603. ISSN 1939-1811. JSTOR 27757603.
Borgwardt, Elizabeth (2008). "Site-specific: The Fractured Humanity of J. Robert Oppenheimer". Modern Intellectual History. 5 (3): 547–571. doi:10.1017/S1479244308001790. ISSN 1479-2443. S2CID 154948158.
Galison, Peter; Bernstein, Barton J. (1989). "In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952–1954". Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences. 19 (2): 267–347. doi:10.2307/27757627. ISSN 1939-1811. JSTOR 27757627.
Walker, J. Samuel (2005). "Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground". Diplomatic History. 29 (2): 311–334. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00476.x. ISSN 0145-2096.

=== Books ===
Chevalier, Haakon (1965). Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship. New York: Braziller. OCLC 1233721.
Conant, Jennet (2006). 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-5007-8. OCLC 57475908.
Davis, Nuel Pharr (1986). Lawrence and Oppenheimer. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-306-80280-5. OCLC 13560672.
Goodchild, Peter (1980). J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-30530-0.
Kunetka, James (2015). The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer — the Unlikely Partnership That Built the Atom Bomb. Washington, D.C.: Regnery History. ISBN 978-1-62157-338-8. OCLC 891618851.
York, Herbert F. (1976). The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1714-4. OCLC 20721862.

== External links ==
Biography and online exhibit at the University of California, Berkeley
J. Robert Oppenheimer – Berkeley Historical Plaque Project
J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Atomic Heritage Foundation
J. Robert Oppenheimer: An Unparalleled Legacy at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
FBI files: J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Reith Lectures: Robert Oppenheimer – Science and the Common Understanding, on BBC Radio 4, 1953
Lecture by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer: Freedom and Necessity in the Sciences at Dartmouth College, 1959
Lecture by Dr. Oppenheimer at the University of Michigan, 1962
J. Robert Oppenheimer at IMDb