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Science and technological advancements during WWI
Science and technological advancements during WWI
Creator of atomic bomb oppenheimer essay
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Julius Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb
J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist and known as the ”Father of the Atomic Bomb”. A charismatic leader of rare good qualities and commonplace flaws, Oppenheimer brought an uncommon sensibility to research, teaching, and government science. After help creating the atomic bomb with the Manhattan Project he was banned from the U.S. Government during the McCarthy Trials. He opposed the idea of stockpiling nuclear weapons and was deemed a security risk. Oppenheimer’s life reveals the conflict between war, science and how politics collided in the 1940’s through the 1960’s. His case became a cause "celebre" in the world of science because of its implications concerning political and moral issues relating to the role of scientists in government.
Oppenheimer, the son of German immigrants, who had made their fortune in textiles, had the resources available in his family to further his education at a young age. At age ten Oppenheimer's grandfather brought him some rocks to identify and as a result Oppenheimer became very interested in geology. This led him to study other sciences at a young age. By age six he had the vocabulary of an adult. He could speak well and understood the meanings of the words and where they came from. He excelled in mathematics and was computing numbers at a high school rate while in the second grade. People referred to him as a boy genius. Oppenheimer was from a Jewish family who did not believe in the Orthodox ways.
They had no temple affiliation, but did attend the Felix Alder Ethical School during grade school until high school. This school shaped many of Oppenheimer’s ideas regarding morality and political views that would later affect his life.
He studied at Harvard and was good in the classics, such as Latin, Greek, chemistry and Physics. He had published works in poetry and studied Oriental philosophy. He graduated in 1925, it took him only three years, and went to England to do research at Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He didn’t like it there and left at the end of 1925. A man named Max Born asked him to attend Gottingen University where he met prominent European physicists. Oppenheimer studied quantum mechanics in Europe in the 1920s. He learned from Ernest Rutherford, one of the pioneers of atomic theory; and from Werner Heisenberg and Pau...
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... Education: An Introduction to Social and Political Aspects. 4th ed. New York & London: Longman, Inc., 1989.
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Wilde, Norman, "Ethics." Book review. The Journal of Philosophy. Psychology. and Scientific Methods, 5 (November 5, 1908), 636-639.
York, Herbert F. The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller and the Superbomb. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976.
Despite all of the security used by the officials in charge of the “Manhattan Project,” soviet spies managed to leak information to the Soviet Union that allowed them to create a nuclear bomb of their own. Klaus Fuchs, an important scientist to the “Manhattan Project,” managed to move throughout the project and provide crucial information to the Soviets. David Greenglass also provi...
To illustrate the ideas this essay proposes, it will first give a clear and factual overview of the Rosenberg Case. It all began even before the Rosenbergs came into the picture, namely with the arrest and confession of soviet spy Klaus Fuchs in 1950. This namely led to the investigation of his courier, Harry Gold, and then David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. Greenglass cooperated and named Julius Rosenberg as a fellow spy, claiming that he provided Julius with documents from the Los Alamos lab where atomic bombs were fab...
3. Dannen, Gene. "Atomic Bomb: Decision." http://www.dannen.com. N.p., 9 Aug. 2003. Web. 1 Jan. 2011
There was also many scientists that helped Oppenheimer obviously. Enrico Fermi played a big role in making the bomb as
In the spring of 1945 as the bomb neared completion, Leo Szilard, the main creator of the bomb, was becoming a worried man. Although America felt no pressure from Germany because we knew they were not far enough along in their research to build an atomic bomb before the war ended, “Szilard now began of think about the effect that the use of the bomb might have on international relations” (Isserman, 168). He tried to set up a meeting with Roosevelt to discuss his concern, but the President died before Szilard had a chance to go meet with him. Now, with a new President, Harry Truman, the pressure to use the bomb was too great to be denied.
Schwartz, Michael I., “The Russian-A(merican) Bomb: The Role of Espionage in the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project”, Journal of Undergraduate Sciences, no. 3, (Harvard University, 1996), pp. 103-108, http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jus/0302/schwartz.pdf.
... in American history’, there is much evidence to suggest otherwise. Nevertheless, Strickland’s study does offer a valuable guide to the development of ideas, organizations and associations the formed by atomic scientists immediately after the World War II. It, however, not does include an extensive analysis of the Manhattan Project scientists’ wartime messages, nor does it investigate the tenets behind them. Correspondingly, Robert Gilpin’s study extensively covers the scientists’ role in atomic energy policy-making in the post-war decades. Although his study in useful for evaluating how scientists can be more successfully integrated into matters of nuclear weapons policy, it fails to consider the varying forms of the atomic scientists’ wartime movement and its relevance for considering their successes and failures in influencing post-war nuclear weapons policy.
Working, Russell. "The Trial of Unit 731." The Japan Times Online. N.p., 1 June 2001. Web. 6 Dec. 2011. .
Maddox, Robert. “The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb.” Taking Sides: Clashing View in United States History. Ed. Larry Madaras & James SoRelle. 15th ed. New York, NY. 2012. 280-288.
6. L. Pearce Williams and Henry John Steffens, The Scientific Revolution, vol. 2 of The
Alperovitz, Gar. The Use of the Atomic Bomb. Chicago : D.C. Heath and Company, 1974.
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Woodward, Bob. Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987. Simon And Schuster. New York -- London -- Toronto -- Sydney -- Tokyo. 1987
The discovery of Klaus Fuchs’s espionage, more so than the news of Soviet nuclear test, marked the start of the Cold War and a worsening of Soviet-American relations. The case again raised the American public’s feelings against Communism. Similarly, it caused a cooling of Anglo-American relations, and dashed hopes of Britain to cooperate with America on nuclear projects in the future. In addition, Britain paid notice to the “incompetence which constitute the history of the British security” for the MI5 cleared Fuchs at least eight times. The British public asked in shock, “How did Dr. Fuchs, a confessed Communist, get away with it for seven years? Why did the tip that led to his arrest have to come from the United Stated Federal Bureau of Investigation rather than from the M. I. 5?” As result, “loud demands were being made today for a thorough overhaul of Britain’s security arrangements as a result of… the trial of Dr. Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs,” including a reorganization of “anti-espionage precautions at all the secret establishments,” an reexamination of “personal records of all the 3,000 persons employed at the atomic energy plants,” and doubts about “whether the policy of granting asylum to political refugees would be