Let us grapple with the complex morality of tech leaps
J Robert Oppenheimer’s life story is one for the movies. Oppenheimer was a brilliant, ambitious, driven, exacting, anxious and guilt-ridden chemist turned theoretical physicist. Dissatisfied with laboratory work in chemistry at Harvard University, Oppenheimer received his PhD in theoretical physics at Germany’s University of Gottingen.
His thesis advisor was the legendary Max Born. Gottingen is considered one of the fountain-heads of modern physics. At this university, Oppenheimer interacted with other giants of the field, including Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, Paul Dirac, John von Neumann and James Franck.
He made significant contributions to theoretical physics, including nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. He was one of the first proposers of quantum tunnelling, a phenomenon that is actively being explored today for advanced encryption. Oppenheimer was an early ambassador of the “new physics" he brought from Europe back to America, when he returned to a joint appointment in CalTech and the University of California, Berkeley, in 1929.
It was at Berkeley that Oppenheimer deepened his interest in the humanities, Sanskrit and communism. His interest in communist ideology, interwoven with two of his romantic relationships, would haunt him for the rest of his life. Born in Manhattan to German Jewish immigrants who had become wealthy, Oppenheimer was a precocious student who read Greek Philosophy and Latin and was obsessed with minerology.
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