Alongside Albert Einstein, Robert Op-penheimer was the 20th century's most famous physicist. But while only scientists properly understand Einstein's elegant theories, Oppenheimer's achievement is far more accessible. As scientific director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, he gave America the atom bomb, and changed the world forever. Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, the latter a founding director of the Nuclear Age History and Humanities Centre at Tufts University, describe a complicated man who hovered for years on the edge of a mental breakdown. Warm and generous with his friends, he could be cruelly dismissive of his intellectual rivals. A devotee of dry martinis and fine art, Oppenheimer's literary tastes ran to Proust and ancient Hindi scriptures, which he read in the original Sanskrit. But he also had a strong ascetic streak, and yet, while his quick mind and artful command of language charmed many, to others he seemed pretentious.
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