An original perspective on the father of the atomic bomb, shedding new light on Oppenheimer's personality and psychology
Both to his contemporaries and to posterity J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) has gone down in history as the "father" of the atomic bomb. He was a brilliant theoretical physicist, who, as a teacher, was the central figure in the development of theoretical physics in the United States. During World War II Oppenheimer served as the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed and tested. Oppenheimer's meteoric rise continued after the war, when he became principal scientific advisor to the US Atomic Energy Commission, which in effect made him the US government's chief scientist. But his fall was equally meteoric, when he became the best known victim of the Red Scare of the early Cold War period and was stripped of his security clearances and excluded from any policymaking role.
The public's fascination with Oppenheimer, both as the indispensable figure in the creation of the atomic age and as the liberal martyr to the political excesses of that age, remains extremely strong, and is reflected both in the biographies of him that have appeared and in artistic renderings of his life including an opera and, most recently, the acclaimed 2023 biopic Oppenheimer. In this biography, David Rieff offers a fresh perspective, focusing on Oppenheimer's personality and psychology, above all his closed down nature as a person that so puzzled and fascinated his contemporaries. To do this, Rieff pays particular attention to the traumatic character of Oppenheimer's childhood, and to his extremely ambivalent relation to his Jewishness, an ambivalence that partly explains Oppenheimer's affinity for the universalist promise of science.
| ISBN: | 9780300180466 |
| Publication date: | 10th November 2026 |
| Author: | David Rieff |
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 312 pages |
| Series: | Jewish Lives |
| Genres: |
Biography: general Biography: science, technology and medicine |
An original perspective on the father of the atomic bomb, shedding new light on Oppenheimer's personality and psychology
Both to his contemporaries and to posterity J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) has gone down in history as the "father" of the atomic bomb. He was a brilliant theoretical physicist, who, as a teacher, was the central figure in the development of theoretical physics in the United States. During World War II Oppenheimer served as the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed and tested. Oppenheimer's meteoric rise continued after the war, when he became principal scientific advisor to the US Atomic Energy Commission, which in effect made him the US government's chief scientist. But his fall was equally meteoric, when he became the best known victim of the Red Scare of the early Cold War period and was stripped of his security clearances and excluded from any policymaking role.
The public's fascination with Oppenheimer, both as the indispensable figure in the creation of the atomic age and as the liberal martyr to the political excesses of that age, remains extremely strong, and is reflected both in the biographies of him that have appeared and in artistic renderings of his life including an opera and, most recently, the acclaimed 2023 biopic Oppenheimer. In this biography, David Rieff offers a fresh perspective, focusing on Oppenheimer's personality and psychology, above all his closed down nature as a person that so puzzled and fascinated his contemporaries. To do this, Rieff pays particular attention to the traumatic character of Oppenheimer's childhood, and to his extremely ambivalent relation to his Jewishness, an ambivalence that partly explains Oppenheimer's affinity for the universalist promise of science.
Robert Oppenheimer features in the following genres: Biography: general, Biography: science, technology and medicine
Robert Oppenheimer is available in Hardback
Robert Oppenheimer was written by David Rieff and published by Yale University Press
Robert Oppenheimer has 312 pages
Yes it is part of Jewish Lives series
£15.29