Reblogged from kvetchlandia
Yousuf Karsh J. Robert Oppenheimer 1956
Oppenhiemer was the physicist in charge of the scientific portion of the Manhattan Project, the program to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. Oppenheimer, brilliant and eccentric, taught himself Sanskrit as a young man, and enjoyed studying the Hindu classics for their poetry. In 1945, the first artificial nuclear blast was performed at the Trinity site, near Alomogordo, New Mexico. Interestingly, Oppenheimer named the site not in reference to christian mythology, but, as a tribute to a deceased colleague, with a reference from one of John Donne’s Sonnets. After witnessing that first explosion, Openheimer later wrote:
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” (Oppenheimer-1951)
