名人轶事24 Oppenheimer and Fermi

By Jerilyn Watson

Broadcast: November 14, 2004

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

I'm Sarah Long.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we

report about two scientists, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, who

helped lead the world into the nuclear age.

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

It is July Sixteenth, Nineteen-Forty-Five. All is quiet in an American desert

at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Suddenly there is a terrible explosion. A huge

cloud rises from the Earth. The sky turns purple and yellow.

The first atomic bomb has been exploded. It is a test of the most deadly

weapon ever known. American officials are considering using this weapon to

try to end World War Two.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer is the head of the Los Alamos laboratory. It is the

creative center of the secret Manhattan Project, which made the explosion

possible. As the cloud rises, Mister Oppenheimer remembers words from the

Hindu holy book, the Baghavad Gita. He says: "For I am become death, the

destroyer of worlds."

VOICE TWO:

Less than one month after the test at Alamogordo, the United States dropped

atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. President Harry Truman announced to the

world about the first bomb:

ACT ONE: TRUMAN READING ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DROPPING OF THE BOMB AT

HIROSHIMA. (15 secs)

The Japanese soon surrendered. World War Two ended.

VOICE ONE:

Enrico Fermi had been the first to use a neutron to produce the radioactive

change of one element to another. He was a refugee from Fascist Italy. He and

other refugee scientists were worried that Germany was working to develop an

atomic bomb. They urged the United States government to pay for a secret

scientific effort, called the Manhattan Project, to create the bomb. Mister

Fermi helped Mister Oppenheimer prepare the Alamogordo bomb test.

Yet later both Mister Oppenheimer and Mister Fermi spoke against further

development of nuclear weapons. Both men opposed the hydrogen bomb.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April Twenty-Second,

Nineteen-Oh-Four. Even as a boy, he showed he had unusual intelligence. As a

young man he attended Harvard University, in the eastern United States, and

Cambridge University in England.He earned his doctorate in physics at

Gottingen University, Germany, in Nineteen-Twenty-Seven. There he worked with

the famous scientist, Max Born. By Nineteen-Thirty, Mister Oppenheimer was

teaching at two top universities on the American West Coast. His fame as a

teacher spread. Soon he was teaching the best students of physics in the

United States.

VOICE ONE:

In Nineteen-Forty-Two, Mister Oppenheimer joined the American government's

project to develop the atomic bomb. He was appointed head of the Los Alamos

Laboratory. Many of his former students worked for him on the project.

One year after the bombs were dropped on Japan, he received the Presidential

Medal of Merit for his work . In Nineteen-Forty-Seven, he began to direct the

Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University on the East Coast.

VOICE TWO:

At the same time, Mister Oppenheimer became chairman of the advisory

committee to the United States Atomic Energy Commission. He used the position

to try to make the public recognize the dangers of nuclear power as well as

its possibilities for good.

He regretted that work was being done to develop the hydrogen bomb. He felt

it was bad for both scientific and humanitarian reasons. However, extreme

tension existed between the United States and the Soviet Union at the time.

So in Nineteen-Forty-Nine President Truman decided that work on nuclear

weapons should continue.

VOICE ONE:

J. Robert Oppenheimer's life and work were affected deeply by Americans

intense fear of Communism in the Nineteen-Fifties.

Mister Oppenheimer made an easy target for suspicious critics. His wife had

once been a Communist. Some of his friends were former Communists. Years

earlier he had suggested sharing nuclear secrets with the Soviets. He opposed

developing the hydrogen bomb.

In Nineteen-Fifty-Four, the Atomic Energy Commission and a special security

committee moved against Mister Oppenheimer. They did not question his loyalty

to the United States. However, they said his personal life made him a threat

to national security.

VOICE TWO:

Mister Oppenheimer had directed one of America's most important secret

scientific projects. Now this famous physicist was barred from secret work

for the government.

He published several books during this difficult period of his life. One of

the best known was "The Open Mind." The books contained his thoughts about

science. He continued teaching at Princeton University. Again he taught many

of the most important scientists of our century.