Robert Oppenheimer Timeline and Summary

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• Oppenheimer is a sickly young boy, and is kept indoors for much of his childhood, leading to a life-long affinity for studying.
• He graduates from Harvard with a degree in chemistry, and goes on to study in several of Europe's top universities.
• While working for Berkeley, building the country's best theoretical physics program, he is chosen to be the Coordinator of Rapid Rupture study for the Uranium Committee.
• Leslie Groves selects Oppie to be the Director of the Los Alamos operation despite his questionable political tendencies and reputation for being a bit scatter-brained.
• Oppie is propositioned by his communist friend Haakon Chevalier, but he's insulted by the idea of becoming a spy for the Soviets.
• Enrico Fermi conducts his Chicago Pile experiment, proving that the fission of uranium atoms can indeed be used to create an incredible bomb.
• Oppenheimer and his right-hand man Serber recruit top scientists from across the country to work at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
• His affair with Jean Tatlock—a known communist—gets him in trouble yet again for having questionable ties with the Soviets. Groves defends Oppenheimer again as indispensable to the Manhattan Project.
• In a rush to get more talent at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer recruits Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall.
• The problem of how to construct a plutonium bomb (as opposed to one that uses uranium) begins to take its physical toll on the chain-smoking Oppie.
• Oppenheimer and Groves set the date for a test of their plutonium bomb at Trinity near Alamogordo.
• In the early hours of July 16, he oversees a successful (and wildly impressive) detonation of the first plutonium bomb.
• The Enola Gay drops the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
• Nagasaki is bombed on August 9.
• Oppenheimer starts to realize that atomic weapons have worse ramifications that they had ever imagined.
• On August 15 Japan surrenders, ending World War II.
• Now known as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb," Oppenheimer is horrified at the thought of nuclear proliferation so he begins his mission to de-escalate the arms race.
• His opinions prove to be unpopular with government officials.
• Oppie resigns as director of Los Alamos in October of 1945.
• Oppenheimer becomes the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and continues working as a scientific advisor to the government on atomic energy policy.
• He lobbies against building what they called a "super bomb"—what we now know as the hydrogen bomb.
• Upon the discovery that the Soviets detonated their own atomic test bomb way earlier than expected, American counter-intelligence agents begin a desperate search to discover spies that gave the Soviets information during the war.
• Because of his unpopular de-escalation entreaties, the witch-hunt for communists eventually goes after Oppenheimer.
• Lewis Strauss, chairman of the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), deviously works to get Oppenheimer's security clearance stripped because of his past associations with Chevalier.
• Oppie is devastated by the accusations.
• He continues working in Princeton until he retires in 1966.
• The next year, at the age of sixty-two, Robert Oppenheimer dies of cancer of the throat.