How do you go from being a normally curious kid to becoming one of the most famous scientists in the whole world? You ask questions. You ask why and then you ask how. Your questions become mind-bending and break the rules of reality. You discover invisible forces that built our world and by trying to solve the biggest puzzles in the universe you change the world forever. This is exactly what J. Robert Oppenheimer did with his life.

Oppenheimer grew up from that little boy and became fascinated by a strange new kind of physics called quantum mechanics, which explained the tiny world of atoms and particles. After graduating from Harvard University, he moved to Germany to help scientists understand the mysterious particles. By the 1930s, he was teaching physics and doing important research at the University of California. He was no longer just the curious boy who wanted to know how things worked. He was now asking questions about the basic building blocks of all matter. Those questions were about to lead him into a chapter of history that would change the world.

After learning that Germany was working on building a mega-weapon, The United States Government gave Oppenheimer a secret assignment. It was 1942 and in the middle of World War II. The U.S. government created a secret laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Intelligence collected by the government let them know of German scientists who were working on a very destructive weapon. They needed a team of brilliant scientists who understood the complicated science of atoms. They chose Robert to be the scientific director of Los Alamos National Laboratory because they understood that his brilliant mind could bring many different experts together. The job gave him top-secret security clearance and allowed him to see information that very few others were allowed to know. 

Robert recruited scientists from around the world to come to the New Mexico desert. His team secretly moved in behind fences and gates guarded by the military to work on developing a weapon that could end the war. This group of scientists worked endlessly to come up with a working atomic bomb in just three years. The German government and the Nazis were never able to build a bomb because many of their scientists left the country. Some of them had even moved to Los Alamos to work with Oppenheimer helping America win the atomic race. The mega-bomb created by the Manhattan Project was used against Japan and did help end the war.

J. Robert Oppenheimer felt proud of the scientific accomplishments that came out of Los Alamos and he knew that what his group had built was necessary to win the war. However, he began to feel responsible for the nuclear arms race with Russia after the war. During a visit to the White House the scientist told Harry S. Truman, “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.” That upset the president who later called Oppenheimer a cry baby. For the rest of his life J. Robert Oppenheimer argued that further experimentation and the development of the hydrogen bomb was wrong because of the devastation it could cause on a world-wide level