Who was Robert Oppenheimer and how did he shape the world?

Cillian Murphy may have given a memorable performance in Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer', but many people still don't know who Robert Oppenheimer was.

Robert Oppenheimer was the man who helped end World War II by creating the most devastating weapon ever invented: the atomic bomb.

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The rise of Hitler in the 1930s in Germany led many scientists, such as Albert Einstein, to warn the US government of the danger of the Nazis developing the nuclear bomb first.

The US government reunited a team of physicists, led by Robert Oppenheimer, in what became known as 'the Manhattan Project'.

Oppenheimer and his team moved their research to a remote town in New Mexico and, in July 1945, they managed to create the world's first nuclear bomb.

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few laughed, other people cried, most people remained silent,” Oppenheimer said later, as reported by CNN. And quoting the Bhagavad Gita, he added: “Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Less than a month later, on August 6 and 9, 1945, the US military dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people. In October of that same year, Oppenheimer resigned.

Neither the world nor Oppenheimer were the same again. The moral dilemma caused by the creation and use of the atomic bomb led him to oppose the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Oppenheimer was accused of disloyalty in 1953 due to his opposition to the hydrogen bomb and his past friendship with Communists, who opposed the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

The father of the atomic bomb was ruthlessly interrogated. Although the charges could not be proven, all security clearances were withdrawn from Oppenheimer.

The Federation of American Scientists came to his defense, making him a symbol of the witch hunt suffered by those who raised moral doubts about a scientific development.

Oppenheimer retired from the Institute for Advanced Study in 1966 and died the following year, at the age of 62.

In 2014, the US Department of Energy released the complete, declassified transcript of the Oppenheimer trials.

The published material confirmed that Robert Oppenheimer was the victim of an unfair trial.

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In the end, it turns out that Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist and loyal to his country, though probably misunderstood by the establishment at the time.