J. Robert Oppenheimer - Postwar Activities

Postwar Activities

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project became public knowledge; and Oppenheimer became a national spokesman for science, emblematic of a new type of technocratic power. He became a household name and his face appeared on the covers of Life and Time. Nuclear physics became a powerful force as all governments of the world began to realize the strategic and political power that came with nuclear weapons. Like many scientists of his generation, he felt that security from atomic bombs would come only from a transnational organization such as the newly formed United Nations, which could institute a program to stifle a nuclear arms race.

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