Oppenheimer as a Learner
Robert Oppenheimer was a deeply intellectual man. The most preeminent rocket scientist of his time, Oppenheimer was an amateur linguist, historian and boater. His natural curiosity led him to explore religion for the whole of his life, first seeking to understand his own Judaism and gradually expanding his inquest into Hinduism, later teaching himself to read Sanskrit so that he could produce his own translation of the Bhagavad Gita.
Oppenheimer was also the overseer of the Manhattan Project, the United States' effort to develop and build a nuclear bomb. Eventually, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were developed at the Manhattan lab site Trinity. It is no wonder that, once he saw the devastation wrought by the creation he had ushered into the world, Oppenheimer was quoted to have said "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," a translation of Shiva the Destroyer to Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita.
It is fitting that Oppenheimer explored religion at such an auspicious moment. All his life, he pursued learning, and in that moment at Trinity, that learning lived in both the realms of the divine and the realms of grim warfare and destruction. The paper linked below explores the learning of Robert Oppenheimer, and attempts to reconcile all the good that resulted in his genius with the destruction caused by his works.