J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimerwas an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. As the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer is among those who are called the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth22 April 1904
CountryUnited States of America
Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search.
All history teaches us that these questions that we think the pressing ones will be transmuted before they are answered, that they will be replaced by others, and that the very process of discovery will shatter the concepts that we today use to describe our puzzlement.
Sometimes the answer to fear does not lie in trying to explain away the causes, sometimes the answer lies in courage.
We hunger for nobility: the rare words and acts that harmonize simplicity and truth.
Optimists think that this is the best of all possible worlds; pessimists fear they are right.
Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.
When we deny the EVIL within ourselves, we dehumanize ourselves, and we deprive ourselves not only of our own destiny but of any possibility of dealing with the EVIL of others.
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.
It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that it is good to learn... that it is of the highest value to share your knowledge... with anyone who is interested... that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity
The general notions about human understanding...which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.
The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.
Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.