Ayatollah Khomeini
John von Neumann
George Orwell
George Gamow
Julius Oppenheimer
Ayatollah Khomeini (1902 –1989)
Ayatollah Khomeini was an Iranian Shia Muslim religious leader, philosopher, revolutionary, and politician. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that saw the overthrow of the 2500 years of Persian monarchy and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.
Iran also known as Persia is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BC. It was first unified by the Iranian Medes in the seventh century BC, and reached its greatest extent during the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Indus Valley, becoming a larger empire than previously ever existed in the world. The Iranian realm fell to Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, but reemerged shortly after as the Parthian Empire, followed by the Sasanian Empire, which became a leading world power for the next 4 centuries.
Arab Muslims conquered the empire in the seventh century AD, ultimately leading to the displacement of the indigenous faiths of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism with Islam. Iran made major contributions to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential figures in art and science. After 2 centuries, a period of various native Muslim dynasties began, which were later conquered by the Turks and the Mongols. The rise of the Safayids in the 15th century led to the reestablishment of a unified Iranian state and national identity, which followed the country's conversion to Shia Islam, marking a turning point in Iranian and Muslim history. By the 18th century, Iran briefly possessed what was arguably the most powerful empire at the time.
The 19th-century conflicts with the Russian Empire led to significant territorial losses. Popular unrest culminated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a constitutional monarchy and the country's first legislature. Following a coup instigated by UK and US in 1953, Iran gradually became closely aligned with the West, and grew increasingly autocratic. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, which followed the establishment of an Islamic republic, a political system which includes elements of a parliamentary democracy vetted and supervised by a theocracy governed by an autocratic "Supreme Leader". During the 1980s, the country was engaged in a war with Iraq, which lasted 9 years and resulted in a high number of casualties and financial loss for both sides.
Khomeini is officially referred to as Imam in Iran. In the Shi'a context, an imam is not only presented as the man of God par excellence, but as participating fully in the names, attributes, and acts that theology usually reserves for God alone. Shi'a believes that Imams are chosen by God to be perfect examples for the faithful and to lead all humanity in all aspects of life. They also believe that Imams are infallible, just like the Catholics believe that their Popes represent God and thus they can never be wrong in their opinions. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's Supreme Leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation to be held until his death. Khomeini wrote more than 40 books and is known for his political activities. He spent more than 15 years in exile for his opposition to the last Shah.
Khomeini was known for his support of the hostage takers during the Iran hostage crisis, his fatwa calling for the murder of British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, and for referring to the United States as the "Great Satan" and Soviet Union as the "Lesser Satan." Khomeini has been criticized for these acts and for human rights violations of Iranians including his ordering of execution of thousands of political prisoners, war criminals and prisoners of the Iran-Iraq War. He has been lauded as a charismatic leader of immense popularity, a champion of Islamic revival by Shia scholars, who attempted to establish good relations between Sunnis and Shias, and a major innovator in political theory and religious-oriented populist political strategy.
Khomeini was born in Qom and raised by his mother and his aunt following the murder of his father 5 months after his birth. He began to study the Qur'an and elementary Persian at the age of 6. Beginning in his adolescent years, Khomeini composed mystic, political and social poetry. Apart from philosophy, Khomeini was interested in literature and poetry. He soon became a leading scholar of Shia Islam. He taught political philosophy, Islamic history and ethics. As a scholar and teacher, Khomeini produced numerous writings on Islamic philosophy, law, and ethics. He showed an exceptional interest in subjects like philosophy and mysticism that not only were usually absent from the curriculum of seminaries but were often an object of hostility and suspicion. His seminary teaching often focused on the importance of religion to practical social and political issues of the day, and he worked against secularism in the 1940s. In his first political book, he condemned the banning of hijab head covering by Reza Shah.
Most Iranians had a deep respect for the Shi'a clergy the Ulams, and tended to be religious, traditional, and alienated from the process of westernization pursued by the Shah. The clergy had shown themselves to be a powerful political force in Iran initiating the Tobacco Protest against a concession to a foreign (British) interest.
In 1929, at the age of 31, Khomeini married the 16-year-old daughter of a cleric in Tehran. Their marriage was harmonious and happy. They had 7 children, though only 5 survived infancy. His daughters all married into either merchant or clerical families, and both his sons entered into religious life. In 1959, at the age of 61, Khomeini found the arena of leadership open following the deaths of the leading Shi'ah religious leader and an activist cleric. The clerical class had been on the defensive ever since the 1920s when the secular, anti-clerical modernizer Reza Shah Pahlavi rose to power.
In 1963, Reza instituted a "White Revolution", which was a further challenge to the Ulama. The "White Revolution", was a 6-point programme of reform calling for land reform, nationalization of the forests, the sale of state-owned enterprises to private interests, electoral changes to enfranchise women and allow non-Muslims to hold office, profit-sharing in industry, and a literacy campaign in the nation's schools. Some of these initiatives were regarded as dangerous, especially by the powerful and privileged Shi'a Ulama religious scholars. The traditionalists considered it as a dangerous unwanted westernizing trend.
Khomeini viewed them as an attack on Islam and summoned a meeting of the other senior religious leaders and persuaded them to decree a boycott of the referendum on the White Revolution. He issued a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans. Two days later the Shah took an armored column to Qom, and delivered a speech harshly attacking the Ulama. Khomeini continued his denunciation of the Shah's programmes, issuing a manifesto that bore the signatures of 8 other senior Iranian Shia religious scholars. In it he listed the various ways in which the Shah had allegedly violated the constitution, condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of submission to the United States and Israel. Two days after this public denunciation of the Shah Reza Pahlavi, Khomeini was arrested. This sparked 3 days of major riots throughout Iran and led to the deaths of some 400. Khomeini was eventually released.
In 1963, Ayatollah Khomeini wrote a book in which he stated that there is no religious restriction on corrective surgery for transgender individuals. At the time Khomeini was an anti-Shah revolutionary and his fatwas did not carry any weight with the Imperial government, which did not have any specific policies regarding transsexual individuals. Iran permitted and partly finances 7 times as many gender reassignment operations as the entire European Union. On the other hand there was a penal code that allowed for the execution of homosexuals.
Khomeini was the first and only Iranian cleric to be addressed as "Imam", a title hitherto reserved in Iran for the 12 infallible leaders of the early Shi'a. His enemies were often attacked as corrupters of the earth, religious terms used for enemies of the Twelfth Imam. Many of the officials of the overthrown Shah's government executed by Revolutionary Courts were convicted of "fighting against the Twelfth Imam". As the revolution gained momentum, even some non-supporters exhibited awe, called him magnificently clear-minded, single-minded and unswerving. His image was as absolute, wise, and indispensable leader of the nation. The Imam, it was generally believed, had shown by his uncanny sweep to power, that he knew how to act in ways which others could not begin to understand. His timing was extraordinary, and his insight into the motivation of others, those around him as well as his enemies, could not be explained as ordinary knowledge. This emergent belief in Khomeini as a divinely guided figure was carefully fostered by the clerics who supported him and spoke up for him in front of the people.
Khomeini denounced both the Shah and the United States. This time it was in response to the diplomatic immunity granted by the Shah to American military personnel in Iran. Khomeini was arrested again and detained for 6 months. Upon his release, he was brought before Prime Minister who tried to convince Khomeini that he should apologize and drop his opposition to the government. When Khomeini refused, the Prime Minister slapped Khomeini's face in fit of rage. 2 months later, the Prime Minister was assassinated and Khomeini was exiled.
Khomeini spent more than 14 years in exile, mostly in the holy Shia city of Najaf, Iraq. where he stayed until 1978 until he was expelled by then-Vice President Saddam Hussein and sent to Paris.
Khomeini claimed that the laws of society should be made up only of the laws of God which is Sharia Law and which cover all human affairs and provide instruction and establish norms for every topic in human life. He also claimed that those holding government posts should have knowledge of Sharia. He added that this system of clerical rule is necessary to prevent injustice, corruption, oppression by the powerful over the poor and weak, innovation and deviation of Islam and Sharia law; and also to destroy anti-Islamic influence and conspiracies by non-Muslim foreign powers. Aware of the importance of broadening his base, Khomeini reached out to Islamic reformist and secular enemies of the Shah, despite his long-term ideological incompatibility with them. Adding to his mystique was the circulation among Iranians in the 1970s of an old Shia saying attributed to the Imam Musa al-Kadhem. Prior to his death in 799, al-Kadhem was said to have prophesied that "A man will come out from Qom and he will summon people to the right path".
In 1978, a rumor swept the country that Khomeini's face could be seen in the full moon. Millions of people were said to have seen it and the event was celebrated in thousands of mosques. He was perceived by many Iranians as the spiritual as well as political leader of the revolt and increasingly regarded as a messianic figure in Iran. As protests grew against the Shah, Khomeini`s profile and importance increased.
Thousands of kilometers away from Iran in Paris, Khomeini set the course of the revolution, urging Iranians not to compromise. He ordered work stoppages against the regime. In 1979, the Shah left the country on vacation. 2 weeks later, Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran, welcomed by a joyous crowd estimated to be of up to 5 million people.
Before taking power, Khomeini expressed support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However once in power Khomeini took a firm line against dissent, warning opponents of theocracy saying: "I repeat for the last time: abstain from holding meetings, from blathering, from publishing protests. Otherwise I will break your teeth."
Many of Khomeini's political and religious ideas were considered to be progressive and reformist by leftist intellectuals and activists prior to the Revolution. However, once in power his ideas often clashed with those of modernist or secular Iranian intellectuals. This conflict came to a head during the writing of the Islamic constitution when many newspapers were closed by the government. Khomeini angrily told the intellectuals:
“Yes, we are reactionaries, and you are enlightened intellectuals: You intellectuals do not want us to go back 1400 years. You, who want freedom, freedom for everything, the freedom of parties, you who want all the freedoms, you intellectuals: freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom.”
In contrast to his alienation from Iranian intellectuals, and in an utter departure from all other Islamist movements, Khomeini embraced international revolution and Third World solidarity, giving it precedence over Muslim fraternity. From the time Khomeini's supporters gained control of the media until his death, the Iranian media devoted extensive coverage to non-Muslim revolutionary movements from the Sandinistas to the African National Congress and the Irish Republican Army and downplayed the role of the Islamic movements considered conservative, such as the Afghan mujahidin.
Khomeini adamantly opposed the provisional government promising "I shall kick their teeth in. I appoint the government." Khomeini appointed his own competing interim prime minister, demanding, "since I have appointed him, he must be obeyed." It was "God's government," he warned, and that disobedience against him or his appointed prime minister was considered a "revolt against God."
As Khomeini's movement gained momentum, soldiers began to defect to his side and Khomeini declared ill fortune on troops who did not surrender. As revolt spread and armories were taken over, the military declared neutrality and the regime collapsed. A referendum to replace the monarchy with an Islamic Republic passed with 98% voting in favor of the replacement.
Although revolutionaries were now in charge and Khomeini was their leader, some opposition groups claim that several secular and religious groups were unaware of Khomeini's plan for Islamic government which involved rule by Islamic cleric. They claim that this provisional constitution for the Islamic Republic did not include the post of supreme Islamic clerical ruler. However, the Islamic government was clearly defined by Khomeini in his book “Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist” which was published while Khomeini was in exile in 1970, smuggled into Iran, and distributed to Khomeini's supporters.
The United States admitted the exiled and ailing Shah into the country for cancer treatment. In Iran, there was an immediate outcry, with both Khomeini and leftist groups demanding the Shah's return to Iran for trial and execution. Revolutionaries were reminded of 26 years earlier, when the Shah fled abroad while American CIA and British intelligence organized a coup d'état to overthrow his nationalist opponent.
After the Shah left Iran in 1979, a Kurdish delegation traveled to Qom to present the Kurds' demands to Ayatollah Khomeini. Their demands included language rights and the provision for a degree of political autonomy. Khomeini responded that such demands were unacceptable since it involved the division of the Iranian nation. The following months saw numerous clashes between Kurdish militia groups and the Revolutionary Guards. The referendum on the Islamic Republic was massively boycotted in Kurdistan. Khomeini ordered additional attacks later on in the year, and within a year, most of Iranian Kurdistan was under direct martial law.
In 1979, Iranian students took control of the American Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 embassy staff hostage for 444 days, an event known as the Iran hostage crisis. The takeover was immensely popular and earned the support of Khomeini under the slogan "America can't do a damn thing against us." The seizure of the embassy of a country he called the "Great Satan" helped to advance the cause of theocratic government and outflank politicians and groups who emphasized stability and normalized relations with other countries. Khomeini is reported to have told his president:
"This action has many benefits ... this has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people's vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections."
Through popular support, Khomeini supporters gained an overwhelming majority of the seats in the Assembly which revised the proposed constitution to include an Islamic jurist as a Supreme Leader of the country, and a Council of Guardians to veto un-Islamic legislation and screen candidates for office, disqualifying those found un-Islamic.
The new constitution of the Islamic Republic was adopted by national referendum. Khomeini himself became the Supreme Leader and officially became known as the "Leader of the Revolution." The crisis had the effect of splitting of the opposition into 2 groups
- radicals supporting the hostage taking, and
- the moderates opposing it.
The new constitution was successfully passed by referendum a month after the hostage crisis began.
In 1980, Khomeini proclaimed Iran's religious judges would decide the fate of the American embassy hostages, and demanded that the United States hand over the Shah for trial in Iran for crimes against the nation. Although the Shah died a few months later, the crisis continued. In Iran, supporters of Khomeini named the embassy a "Den of Espionage", publicizing details regarding armaments, espionage equipment and many volumes of official and classified documents which they found there.
Khomeini believed in Muslim unity and solidarity and the export of his revolution throughout the world. He believed Shia and the significantly more numerous Sunni Muslims should be united and stand firmly against Western and arrogant powers. He believed that establishing the Islamic state world-wide belong to the great goals of the revolution.
Shortly after assuming power, Khomeini began calling for Islamic revolutions across the Muslim world, including Iran's Arab neighbor Iraq, the one large state besides Iran with a Shia majority population. At the same time Saddam Hussein, Iraq's secular Arab nationalist Ba'athist leader, was eager to take advantage of Iran's weakened military and what he assumed was revolutionary chaos, and in particular to occupy Iran's adjacent oil-rich province of Khuzestan, and to undermine Iranian Islamic revolutionary attempts to incite the Shi'a majority of his country.
In 1980, Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, starting what would become the 8-year-long Iran–Iraq War. Iran used human wave attacks with people walking to certain death including child soldiers on Iraq, with the promise that they would automatically go to paradise if they died in battle. Despite Saddam's internationally condemned use of poison gas, military incompetence by Iraqi forces soon stalled the Iraqi advance and Iran regained almost all of the territory lost to the invasion.
The invasion rallied Iranians behind the new regime, enhancing Khomeini's stature and allowing him to consolidate and stabilize his leadership. After this reversal, Khomeini refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, instead demanding reparations and the toppling of Saddam Hussein from power. The Iran–Iraq war ended in 1988, with over 700,000 Iranian soldiers and militia killed.
Although Iran's population and economy were 3 times the size of Iraq's, the latter was aided by neighboring Persian Gulf Arab states, as well as the Soviet Bloc and Western countries. The Persian Gulf Arabs and the West wanted to be sure the Islamic revolution did not spread across the Persian Gulf, while the Soviet Union was concerned about the potential threat posed to its rule in central Asia to the north.
Iran had large amounts of ammunition provided by the United States of America during the Shah's era and the United States illegally smuggled arms to Iran during the 1980s despite Khomeini's anti-Western policy.
The Iran–Contra affair was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped, thereby, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time negotiating the release of several U.S. hostages. In addition to this, the CIA sold arms for drugs in Nicargua. Then they sold the drugs to Americans to fund the Contras fight against the socialist Sandinistas.
By 1984, Iran's 45 million population had dropped by well over 2 million. This included one and a half million that had fled Iran, victims of political executions, and the hundreds of thousands of "martyrs" from Khomeini's bloody "human wave" attacks on Iraq. The war continued for over 7 years with mounting costs. 1988 saw deadly month-long Iraqi missile attacks on Tehran, mounting economic problems, the demoralization of Iranian troops, and attacks by the American Navy on Iranian ships and oil rigs.
In a letter to Clergy about the war, he wrote:
"... we do not repent, nor are we sorry for even a single moment for our performance during the war. Have we forgotten that we fought to fulfill our religious duty and that the result is a marginal issue?"
In 1989, Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, an India-born British author. Rushdie's book, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, was alleged to commit blasphemy against Islam and Khomeini's juristic ruling prescribed Rushdie's assassination by any Muslim. The fatwa required not only Rushdie's execution, but also the execution of "all those involved in the publication" of the book. Khomeini's fatwa was condemned across the western world by governments on the grounds that it violated the universal human rights of free speech and freedom of religion. The fatwa has also been attacked for violating the rules of not allowing the accused an opportunity to defend himself. Though Rushdie publicly regretted "the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam", the fatwa was not revoked. Khomeini explained that even if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of all time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has got, his life and wealth, to send him to Hell. Rushdie himself was not killed but the Japanese translator of the book was murdered and 2 other translators of the book survived murder attempts.
Khomeini made a variety of promises to Iranians for his coming Islamic regime. He promised that no one will remain homeless, and that Iranians would have free telephone, heating, electricity, bus services and free oil at their doorstep.
Under Khomeini's rule, Sharia (Islamic law) was introduced, with the Islamic dress code enforced for both men and women by Islamic Revolutionary Guards and other Islamic groups. Women were required to cover their hair, and men were not allowed to wear shorts. Alcoholic drinks, most Western movies, and the practice of men and women swimming or sunbathing together were banned. The Iranian educational curriculum was Islamized at all levels with the Islamic Cultural Revolution. The Committee for Islamization of Universities carried this out thoroughly. The broadcasting of any music other than martial or religious on Iranian radio and television was banned.
Khomeini expressed exasperation with complaints about the sharp drop in Iran's standard of living, saying that: "I cannot believe that the purpose of all these sacrifices was to have less expensive melons." On another occasion emphasizing the importance of martyrdom over material prosperity, he said: "Could anyone wish his child to be martyred to obtain a good house? This is not the issue. The issue is another world.” Due to the Iran–Iraq war, poverty is said to have risen by nearly 45% during the first 6 years of Khomeini's rule. Emigration from Iran also developed for the first time in the country's history. Since the revolution and war with Iraq, an estimated 2-4 million entrepreneurs, professionals, technicians, and skilled craftspeople and their capital have emigrated to other countries.
Shah Reza Pahlavi and his family left Iran and escaped harm, but hundreds of former members of the overthrown monarchy and military met their end in firing squads. In later years these were followed in larger numbers by Marxists and socialists, mostly university students who opposed the theocratic regime. Khomeini declared anyone violently opposed to the government, "enemies of God" and pursued a mass campaign against them as well as their families, close friends, and even anyone who was accused of counter revolutionary behavior. Khomeini ordered the executions of Iranian political prisoners. He issued an order to judicial officials to judge every Iranian political prisoner and kill those judged to be apostates from Islam. 30,000 were interrogated and killed.
Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians were officially recognized and protected by the government. He issued a fatwa ordering that Jews and other minorities be treated well. Khomeini distinguished between Zionism as a secular political party that employs Jewish symbols and ideals and Judaism as the religion of Moses.
Senior government posts were reserved for Muslims. Schools set up by Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had to be run by Muslim principals. Conversion to Islam was encouraged by entitling converts to inherit the entire share of their parents or even uncle's estate if their siblings or cousins remain non-Muslim. Iran's non-Muslim population has decreased. The Jewish population dropped from 80,000 to 30,000.
One non-Muslim group treated differently were the 300,000 members of the Bahá'í Faith, a religion teaching the essential worth of all religions, and the unity and equality of all people. The new government systematically targeted the leadership of the Bahá'í community. Prominent members were often detained and even executed by forces outside of Khomeini's direct control. Some 200 have been executed and the rest forced to convert or subjected to the most horrendous disabilities. Like most conservative Muslims, Khomeini believed Bahá'í to be apostates. He claimed they were a political rather than a religious movement declaring that the Baha'is are not a sect but a party, which was previously supported by Britain and now the United States and are thus spies just like the Communist Party.
Khomeini's health declined and Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, a former student of Khomeini and a major figure of the Revolution, was chosen by Khomeini to be his successor as Supreme Leader. He was the only person that qualified to be a Supreme Leader, according to the Constitution. Montazeri began to call for liberalization, freedom for political parties. Following the execution of thousands of political prisoners by the Islamic government, Montazeri complained to Khomeini about the terrible prison conditions. A furious Khomeini ousted him from his position as official successor. Montazeri continued his criticism of the regime and in 1997 was put under house arrest for questioning the Supreme Leader. Khomeini called for an 'Assembly for Revising the Constitution' to be convened. An amendment was made to Iran's constitution removing the requirement that the Supreme Leader be a “Grand Ayatollah”. This allowed Khamenei, the new favored jurist who had suitable revolutionary credentials but lacked scholarly ones and who was not a Grand Ayatollah, to be designated as successor to Khomeini. After spending 11 days in hospital, Khomeini died after suffering 5 heart attacks in just 10 days. He was 86 years old. He was succeeded as Supreme Leader by Khamenei.
Iranians poured out into the cities and streets in enormous numbers to mourn Khomeini's death in a spontaneous outpouring of grief. In the scorching summer heat, fire trucks sprayed water on the crowds to cool them. At least 10 mourners were trampled to death, more than 400 were badly hurt and several thousand more were treated for injuries sustained in the ensuing pandemonium. 3 million lined the 32km route for his funeral.
Khamenei, like Khomeini, issued a fatwa saying that the production, stockpiling, and use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction is forbidden.
John Neumann was a Hungarian-American pure and applied mathematician, physicist, inventor, computer scientist, and polymath aka “an all rounder” or “Jack of all trades”. He made major contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, computing, and statistics. He was a pioneer of the digital computer. He published over 150 papers in his life: about 60 in pure mathematics, 20 in physics, and 60 in applied mathematics. His analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.
During WWII he worked on the Manhattan Project, developing the mathematical models behind the explosive lenses used in the implosion-type nuclear fission weapon. Explosive force was used to force 2 lumps of uranium to make a critical mass of uranium that would sustain a spontaneous chain reaction. The uranium had to be contained from being dispersed and made in effective. After the war he worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen fusion bomb.
Von Neumann was born in Budapest, Hungary to wealthy Jewish parents. His father was a banker, who held a doctorate in law. In 1913, his father was elevated to the nobility for his service to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by Emperor Franz Joseph. Von Neumann was a child prodigy. As a 6 year old, he could multiply and divide two 8-digit numbers in his head, and could converse in Ancient Greek. When he once caught his mother staring aimlessly in front of her, the 6 year old von Neumann asked her what she was calculating. By the age of 8, von Neumann was familiar with differential and integral calculus, but he was particularly interested in history. His reputed powers of memorization and recall allowed him to quickly memorize the pages of telephone directories, and recite the names, addresses and numbers therein.
In 1930, when he was 27, von Neumann married and he was baptized a Catholic along with all of his family. He divorced in 1937 to remarry a year later. Von Neumann became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1937, and immediately tried to become a lieutenant in the United States Army's Officers Reserve Corps. He passed the exams easily, but was ultimately rejected because he was deemed to be too old. Von Neumann held a lifelong passion for ancient history, being renowned for his prodigious historical knowledge. Von Neumann liked to eat and drink. He was a non-smoker. At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German march music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighboring offices, including Albert Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television playing loudly. Despite being a notoriously bad driver, he nonetheless enjoyed driving, frequently while reading a book, occasioning numerous arrests, as well as accidents. People who knew him believed that much of Von Neumann`s mathematical thought occurred intuitively. He would often go to sleep with a problem unsolved, and know the answer immediately upon waking up. Von Neumann's way of thinking was more aural than visual.
Von Neumann was the first to establish a rigorous mathematical framework for quantum mechanics. The physics of quantum mechanics was thereby reduced to mathematics and linear operators acting on them. For example, the uncertainty principle, according to which the determination of the position of a particle prevents the determination of its momentum and vice versa, is translated into the non-commutativity of the 2 corresponding operators. This new mathematical formulation included as special cases the formulations of both Heisenberg and Schrödinger. When Heisenberg was informed that von Neumann had clarified the difference between an unbounded operator that was a self-adjoint operator and one that was merely symmetric, Heisenberg replied "Eh? What is the difference?"
Von Neumann deeply analyzed the so-called measurement problem which claims that the measurement of a system disturbs the system and actually changes what is being measured. When we measure the speed of a moving body, we alter its momentum. When we measure its momentum, we alter its speed. Later Heisenberg formulated this into his “Heinsenberg`s uncertainty theorem” where speed and momentum of a moving body can never be both measured accurately at the same time.
Schrödinger used it in his “Schrödinger`s cat paradox” where a cat is both alive and dead until it is observed or measured to be either alive or dead. In this thought experiment, a mechanism is arranged to kill a cat if a quantum event, such as the decay of a radioactive atom, occurs. Thus the fate of a large scale object, the cat, is entangled with the fate of a quantum object, the atom. Prior to observation, according to the Schrödinger equation, the cat is apparently evolving into a linear combination of states that can be characterized as a "live cat" and states that can be characterized as a "dead cat". Each of these possibilities is associated with specific nonzero probability amplitude. The cat seems to be in some kind of "combination" state called a "quantum superposition". However, a single, particular observation of the cat does not measure the probabilities - it always finds either a living cat, or a dead cat. After the measurement the cat is definitively alive or dead.
In a famous paper of 1936, the first work ever to introduce quantum logics, von Neumann first proved that quantum mechanics requires logic substantially different from all classical logics and rigorously isolated a new algebraic structure for quantum logics. For example, photons cannot pass through 2 successive filters that are polarized perpendicularly - one horizontally and the other vertically, and therefore, it cannot pass if a third filter polarized diagonally is added to the other two, either before or after them in the succession. But if the third filter is added in between the other 2, the photons will, indeed, pass through.
It was also demonstrated that the laws of distribution of classical logic are not valid for quantum theory. The reason for this is that a quantum disjunction – for example “dead” or “alive” and “wave” or “particle” unlike the case for classical disjunction, can be true even when both of the disjuncts are false and this is, in turn, attributable to the fact that it is frequently the case, in quantum mechanics, that a pair of alternatives are semantically determinate, while each of its members are necessarily indeterminate.
Von Neumann founded the field of game theory as a mathematical discipline. Game theory is the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers. Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic, computer science, biology and poker. Originally, it addressed zero-sum games, in which one person's gains result in losses for the other participants. Game theory applied to a wide range of behavioral relations, and was an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, and computers.
Von Neumann proved his minimax theorem in 1928. This theorem established that in zero-sum games with perfect information in which players knew at each time all moves that have taken place, there existed a pair of strategies for both players that allowed each to minimize his maximum losses, hence the name minimax. When examining every possible strategy, a player had to consider all the possible responses of his adversary. The player then played out the strategy that resulted in the minimization of his maximum loss. Such strategies, which minimize the maximum loss for each player, are called optimal. Von Neumann showed that their minimaxes are equal in absolute value and contrary in sign. Von Neumann improved and extended the minimax theorem to include games involving imperfect information and games with more than 2 players, publishing this result in his 1944 “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” .
Beginning in the late 1930s, von Neumann developed an expertise in explosions - phenomena that are difficult to model mathematically. During this period von Neumann was the leading authority of the mathematics of shaped charges - the shape of an explosive charge to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. This knowledge was useful in the cutting and forming of metals, penetrating armor, and completing wells in the oil and gas industry and initiating nuclear weapons.
This led him to a large number of military consultancies, primarily for the Navy, which in turn led to his involvement in the Manhattan Project that was set up to build the atomic bomb. Von Neumann's principal contribution to the atomic bomb was in the concept and design of the explosive lenses needed to compress the plutonium core of the Fat Man weapon that was later dropped on Nagasaki. While von Neumann did not originate the "implosion" concept, he was one of its most persistent proponents, encouraging its continued development against the instincts of many of his colleagues, who felt such a design to be unworkable. He also eventually came up with the idea of using more powerful charges and less fissionable material to greatly increase the speed of "assembly".
When it turned out that there would not be enough uranium-235 to make more than one bomb, the implosive lens project was greatly expanded and von Neumann's idea was implemented. Implosion was the only method that could be used with the plutonium-239. He established the design of the explosive lenses required, but there remained concerns about "edge effects" and imperfections in the explosives. His calculations showed that implosion would work if it did not depart by more than 5% from spherical symmetry.
In a visit to Los Alamos in 1944, von Neumann showed that the pressure increase from explosion shock wave reflection from solid objects was greater than previously believed if the angle of incidence of the shock wave was between 90° and some limiting angle. As a result, it was determined that the effectiveness of an atomic bomb would be enhanced with detonation some kilometers above the target, rather than at ground level.
Along with 4 other scientists and various military personnel, von Neumann was included in the target selection committee responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. Von Neumann oversaw computations related to the expected size of the bomb blasts, estimated death tolls, and the distance above the ground at which the bombs should be detonated for optimum shock wave propagation and thus maximum effect.
In 1945, with numerous other Manhattan Project personnel, von Neumann was an eyewitness to the first atomic bomb blast, code named Trinity, conducted as a test of the implosion method device, 56 km southeast of Socorro, New Mexico. After the war, Oppenheimer remarked that the physicists involved in the Manhattan project had “known sin". Von Neumann continued unperturbed in his work and became one of those who sustained the hydrogen fusion bomb project. In 1946 he and Klaus Fuchs both filed a secret patent on "Improvement in Methods and Means for Utilizing Nuclear Energy", which outlined a scheme for using a fission bomb to compress fusion fuel to initiate nuclear fusion. Fusing atoms together in a controlled way releases 4 times as much energy as nuclear fission reactions.
The Fuchs-von Neumann work was passed on to the Soviet Union by Fuchs as part of his nuclear espionage, but it was not used in the Soviets' own, independent development.
In 1955, von Neumann was involved in the production of a compact hydrogen bomb suitable for ICBM Intercontinental ballistic missile delivery. He involved himself in correcting the severe shortage of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen and lithium-6. These were needed for these compact weapons, and he argued against settling for the intermediate range missiles that the Army wanted. He was adamant that H-bombs delivered into the heart of enemy territory by an ICBM would be the most effective weapon possible, and that the relative inaccuracy of the missile wouldn't be a problem with an H-bomb. He said the Russians would probably be building a similar weapon system, which turned out to be the case. Despite his disagreement with Oppenheimer over the need for a crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb, he testified on the latter's behalf at the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing, at which he asserted that Oppenheimer was loyal, and praised him for his helpfulness once the program went ahead.
Shortly before his death, when he was already quite ill, von Neumann headed the United States government's top secret ICBM committee, and it would sometimes meet in his home. Its purpose was to decide on the feasibility of building an ICBM large enough to carry a thermonuclear weapon. Von Neumann had long argued that while the technical obstacles were sizable, they could be overcome in time.
Von Neumann was credited with the equilibrium strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction providing the deliberately humorous acronym, MAD. Other humorous acronyms coined by von Neumann include his computer, the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer - or MANIAC. He moved heaven and earth to bring MAD about. His goal was to quickly develop ICBMs and the compact hydrogen bombs that they could deliver to the USSR, and he knew the Soviets were doing similar work because the CIA interviewed German rocket scientists who were allowed to return to Germany, and von Neumann had planted a dozen technical people in the CIA.
The Russians considered that bombers would soon be vulnerable, and they shared von Neumann's view that an H-bomb in an ICBM could not be beat as the best possible weapon. Everyone believed that whoever had superiority in these weapons would take over the world, without necessarily using them. He was afraid of a "missile gap" and took several more steps to achieve his goal of keeping up with the Soviets.
Von Neumann was a founding figure in computing. In 1945, he invented the merge sort algorithm, in which the first and second halves of an array are each sorted recursively and then merged. He modified the ENIAC – an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. It was one of the first electronic general purpose computer designed in a secret WWII military project. He made it programmable and then wrote programs for it to do the H-bomb calculations verifying that the design was feasible for further development. ENIAC was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 and was heralded as a "Giant Brain" by the press.
It had a speed on the order of one thousand times faster than that of electro-mechanical machines; this computational power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists alike. This combination of speed and programmability allowed for thousands more calculations for problems, as ENIAC calculated a trajectory that took a human 20 hours in 30 seconds - a 2400x increase in speed.
He promoted the development of a compact H-bomb that would fit in an ICBM and sped up the production of lithium-6 and tritium needed for the compact bombs. He caused several separate missile projects to be started, because he felt that competition combined with collaboration got the best results. Von Neumann's assessment that the Soviets had a lead in missile technology was soon proven correct when in 1957 the Soviets launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.
Von Neumann entered the Manhattan Project primarily because he felt that, if freedom and civilization were to survive, it would have to be because the United States would triumph over totalitarianism from Nazism, Fascism and Soviet Communism. During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm. When asked in 1950 “why not bomb the Soviets tomorrow?”, he replied “why not today!. If you say we will bomb them today at five o'clock, I would say why not at one o'clock?”
In 1956, von Neumann was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Eisenhower for his series of scientific study projects of major national significance that materially increased the scientific progress of USA in the armaments field. Through his work on various highly classified missions with critically important international programs, he has resolved some of the most difficult technical problems of national defense.
He contributed to the development of the Monte Carlo method, which allowed solutions to complicated problems to be approximated using random numbers. His algorithm for simulating a fair coin with a biased coin is used in the "software whitening" stage of some hardware random number generators. Because using lists of "truly" random numbers was extremely slow, von Neumann developed a form of making pseudo-random numbers, using the middle-square method. Though this method has been criticized as crude, von Neumann was aware of this: he justified it as being faster than any other method at his disposal, writing that anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. Von Neumann also noted that when this method went awry it did so obviously, unlike other methods which could be subtly incorrect.
He published a paper, whose premature distribution nullified the patent claims of EDVAC designers in 1944. EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program computer. The paper described a computer architecture in which the data and the program are both stored in the computer's memory in the same address space, an architecture that formed the basis of modern computer design, unlike the earliest computers that were "programmed" using a separate memory device such as a paper tape. In 1949, von Neumann's design for a self-reproducing computer program is considered the world's first computer virus, and he is considered to be the theoretical father of computer virology.
Von Neumann's team performed the world's first numerical weather forecasts on the ENIAC computer. His interest in weather systems and meteorological prediction led him to propose manipulating the environment by spreading colorants on the polar ice caps to enhance absorption of solar radiation thereby inducing global warming. Von Neumann was the first scientist to propose the theory of global warming, noting that the Earth was only 3.3°C colder during the last glacial period. He claimed that the burning of coal and oil would result in a general warming of the Earth.
In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with cancer. He invited a Roman Catholic priest, to visit him for consultation. He died at age 53 under military security lest he reveal military secrets while heavily medicated.
George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.
Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is best known for the allegorical novella "Animal Farm" and the dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". His non-fiction works, including documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England, and an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, are widely acclaimed, as are his essays on politics, literature, language, and culture.
Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian, descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices, has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, including Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, memory hole, newspeak, doublethink, proles, unperson, and thoughtcrime.
Orwell was born in British India. His great-grandfather was a wealthy country gentleman who had income as an absentee landlord of plantations in Jamaica. His grandfather was a clergyman. Although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not. Orwell described his family as "lower-upper-middle class". His father worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. His mother grew up in Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. In 1904, his mother settled with her children in England. They did not see their father until 1912.
At the age of 5, he was sent to a Roman Catholic convent run by French nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family could not afford the fees, and he needed to earn a scholarship, which he did. His parents could not afford to send him to a university without another scholarship.
He went to Burma and joined the Indian Imperial Police. Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England. He was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people. At the end of 1924, he was promoted to Assistant District Superintendent.
In England, Orwell started to explore the poorer parts of London, spending his first night in a common lodging house. For a while he went native in his own country, dressing like a tramp and recorded his experiences of the low life.
In 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in a working class district and began to write novels. He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in a political/literary journal about unemployment, a day in the life of a tramp, and the beggars of London. He fell seriously ill in and was taken to a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay "How the Poor Die".
Orwell married in 1936 when he was 33 years old. Shortly afterwards, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there closely. At the end of the year, concerned by Francisco Franco's military uprising, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. He was wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. Unable to speak, and with blood pouring from his mouth, he was brought to a hospital where he recovered but was medically unfit for service. Orwell returned to England in 1937. He acquired goats, a rooster he called "Henry Ford", and a poodle puppy he called "Marx" and settled down to animal husbandry and writing.
Orwell's health had continued to decline since the diagnosis of tuberculosis in 1947. In 1950, an artery burst in Orwell's lungs, killing him at age 46.
George Gamow was a Russian theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of the Big Bang theory. He discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay via quantum tunneling, and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis and Big Bang nucleosynthesis and molecular genetics. In his middle and late career, Gamow focused more on teaching and wrote popular books on science.
Gamow was born in Russia. His father taught Russian language and literature in high school, and his mother taught geography and history at a school for girls. In addition to Russian, Gamow learned to speak some French from his mother and German from a tutor. Gamow learned fluent English in his college years and later. Most of his early publications were in German or Russian, but he later switched to writing in English for both technical papers and for the lay audience.
He was educated at the University in Odessa and at the University of Leningrad. On graduation, he worked on quantum theory where his research into the atomic nucleus provided the basis for his doctorate. He continued to study the atomic nucleus proposing the "liquid drop" model where the nucleus is compared to a drop of in-compressible nuclear fluid of very high density. He also worked on stellar physics.
He took part in designing Europe's first cyclotron, a particle accelerator where charged particles are accelerated outwards from the center along a spiral path. In the early 20th century, radioactive materials were known to have characteristic exponential decay rates, or half-lives. At the same time, radiation emissions were known to have certain characteristic energies. By 1928, Gamow had solved the theory of the alpha decay of a nucleus via tunneling - the quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle tunnels through a barrier that it classically could not surmount. This plays an essential role in several physical phenomena, such as the nuclear fusion that occurs in main sequence stars like the Sun. It has important applications to modern devices such as the tunnel diode, quantum computing, and the scanning tunneling microscope. Tunneling is often explained using the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the wave–particle duality of matter. Pure quantum mechanical concepts are central to the phenomenon, so quantum tunneling is one of the novel implications of quantum mechanics.
Classically, the particle is confined to the nucleus because of the high energy requirement to escape the very strong nuclear potential well. Also classically, it takes an enormous amount of energy to pull apart the nucleus, an event that would not occur spontaneously. In quantum mechanics, however, there is a probability the particle can "tunnel through" the wall of the potential well and escape. Gamow solved a model potential for the nucleus and derived from first principles a relationship between the half-life of the alpha-decay event process and the energy of the emission, which had been previously discovered empirically.
Gamow worked at a number of Soviet establishments before deciding to flee the Soviet Union because of increased oppression. In 1931, he was officially denied permission to attend a scientific conference in Italy. In 1931, he and his new wife spent much of the next 2 years trying to leave the Soviet Union, with or without official permission. Gamow later claimed that his first 2 attempts to defect with his wife were in 1932 and involved trying to kayak: first a planned 250km paddle over the Black Sea to Turkey and another attempt from Murmansk to Norway. Poor weather foiled both attempts, but they had not been noticed by the authorities.
In 1933 Gamow was suddenly granted permission to attend a Conference on physics, in Brussels. He insisted on having his wife accompany him, even saying that he would not go alone. Eventually the Soviet authorities relented and issued passports for the couple. The 2 attended and arranged to extend their stay with the help of Marie Curie and other physicists. In 1934, Gamow and his wife moved to the United States. During WWII, Gamow did not work directly on the Manhattan Project producing the atomic bomb, in spite of his knowledge of radioactivity and nuclear fusion. He continued to teach physics and consulted for the US Navy.
Gamow was interested in the processes of stellar evolution and the early history of the Solar System. In 1945, he co-authored a paper supporting work by German theoretical physicist on planetary formation in the early Solar System. Gamow published another paper in 1948, in which he developed equations for the mass and radius of a primordial galaxy which typically contains about one hundred billion stars, each with a mass comparable with that of the Sun.
George Gamow led the development of the hot "big bang" theory of the expanding universe. Gamow's crucial advance provided a physical example of a unique primordial quantum. Gamow did this by assuming that the early universe was dominated by radiation rather than by matter. Most of the later work in cosmology is founded in Gamow's theory. He applied his model to the question of the creation of the chemical elements and to the subsequent condensation of matter into galaxies, whose mass and diameter he was able to calculate in terms of the fundamental physical parameters, such as the speed of light “c”, Newton's gravitational constant “G”, Sommerfeld's fine-structure constant “α”, and Planck's constant “h”.
Gamow's interest in cosmology arose from his earlier interest in energy generation and element production and transformation in stars. This work, in turn, evolved from his fundamental discovery of quantum tunneling as the mechanism of nuclear alpha decay, and his application of this theory to the inverse process to calculate rates of thermonuclear reaction. At first, Gamow believed that all the elements might be produced in the very high temperature and density early stage of the universe.
Later, he revised this opinion on the strength of compelling evidence advanced by Fred Hoyle et al. that elements heavier than lithium are largely produced in thermonuclear reactions in stars and in supernovae. Gamow formulated a set of coupled differential equations describing his proposed process and assigned his graduate student Ralph Alpher the task of solving the equations numerically. These results of Gamow and Alpher appeared in 1948 co-authored with Hans Bethe as the αβγ paper. Before his interest turned to the question of the genetic code, Gamow published about 20 papers on cosmology. The earliest was in 1939 on galaxy formation, followed in 1946 by the first description of cosmic nucleosynthesis. He also wrote many popular articles as well as academic textbooks.
In 1948 he published a paper dealing with an attenuated version of the coupled set of equations describing the production of the proton and the deuteron from thermal neutrons. By means of a simplification and using the observed ratio of hydrogen to heavier elements he was able to obtain the density of matter at the onset of nucleosynthesis and from this the mass and diameter of the early galaxies.
After the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 by Francis Crick, James D. Watson, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, Gamow attempted to solve the problem of how the order of the 4 different kinds of bases (adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine) in DNA chains could control the synthesis of proteins from amino acids. Crick has said that Gamow's suggestions helped him in his own thinking about the problem. Gamow suggested that the 20 combinations of 4 DNA bases taken 3 at a time corresponded to the 20 amino acids that form proteins. This led Crick and Watson to enumerate the 20 amino acids common to proteins.
Gamow continued his teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder and focused increasingly on writing textbooks and books on science for the general public. After several months of ill health, surgeries on his circulatory system, diabetes and liver problems, Gamow was dying from liver failure, which he had called the "weak link" that could not withstand the other stresses.
Gamow died at age 64 in Boulder, Colorado.
Julius Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. As the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer is among those who are called the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the WWII project that developed the first nuclear weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, in New Mexico. Oppenheimer remarked later that it brought to mind words from the “Bhagavad Gita”, the sacred Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
After the war Oppenheimer lobbied for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. He provoked the ire of many politicians with his outspoken opinions during the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950-1956 when McCarthyism was practiced.
McCarthyism was the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also meant "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." It was characterized by heightened political repression against supposed communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term was also used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.
During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that were later declared unconstitutional, and dismissals for reasons later declared illegal.
The most notable examples of McCarthyism included the speeches, investigations, and hearings of Senator McCarthy himself; the Hollywood blacklist, associated with hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); and the various anti-communist activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Director J. Edgar Hoover. McCarthyism was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States. Oppenheimer suffered the revocation of his security clearance in a much-publicized hearing in 1954, and was effectively stripped of his direct political influence. He continued to lecture, write and work in physics.
Oppenheimer's achievements in physics included work on molecular wave functions which are descriptions of the quantum state of systems, quantum tunneling which is the phenomenon where a particle tunnels through a barrier that it classically could not surmount, quantum mechanics which are processes involving atoms and photons, quantum field theory which is a framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of subatomic particles. He also worked on neutron stars, black holes, cosmic rays, electrons, positrons, also known as anti-electrons, and nuclear fusion.
Oppenheimer was born in New York City. His father was a wealthy Jewish textile importer who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1888, arriving in America with no money, no baccalaureate studies, and no knowledge of the English language. He got a job in a textile company and within a decade was an executive with the company. The Oppenheimers were non-observant Jews.
In 1912 the family moved to Manhattan in an area known for luxurious mansions and town houses. The family collected art from Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. Oppenheimer was a versatile scholar, interested in English and French literature, and particularly in mineralogy. During his final year, he became interested in chemistry. He entered Harvard College a year late, at age 18, because he suffered an attack of colitis while prospecting during a family summer vacation in Europe.
In addition to majoring in chemistry, he was also required by Harvard's rules to study history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. A course on thermodynamics attracted him to experimental physics. A tall, thin chain smoker, who often neglected to eat during periods of intense thought and concentration, Oppenheimer was marked by many of his friends as having self-destructive tendencies. Plagued throughout his life by periods of depression, Oppenheimer once told his brother, "I need physics more than friends". He obtained his Doctorate at age 23.
At Caltech he struck up a close friendship with Linus Pauling, and they planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond, a field in which Pauling was a pioneer, with Oppenheimer supplying the mathematics and Pauling interpreting the results. Both the collaboration and their friendship were nipped in the bud when Pauling began to suspect Oppenheimer of becoming too close to his wife.
His work predicted many later finds, which include the neutron, a nuclear particle that decays into a proton and an electron, the meson, a very short lived particle that decays into a photon, and the neutron star, the smallest and densest star known to exist being just the collapsed core of a very large star. Initially, his major interest was the theory of the continuous spectrum and his first published paper, in 1926, concerned the quantum theory of molecular band spectra.
In 1928, Oppenheimer went to ETH in Zuerich to work with Pauli on quantum mechanics and the continuous spectrum. Oppenheimer respected and liked Pauli and may have emulated his personal style as well as his critical approach to problems. During the 1920s, Oppenheimer remained aloof from worldly matters. He claimed that he did not read newspapers or listen to the radio, and had only learned of the Wall Street crash of 1929 some 6 months after it occurred. In 1933 he learned Sanskrit and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original Sanskrit citing it as one of the books that most shaped his philosophy of life.
In the late 1930s Oppenheimer became interested in astrophysics. He explored the properties of white dwarfs, very dense stars with a mass comparable to that of the Sun and a volume comparable to that of Earth. A white dwarf's faint luminosity came from the emission of stored thermal energy. No fusion took place in a white dwarf with mass converted to energy. The universe had not existed long enough to experience a white dwarf releasing all of its energy as it will take many billions of years for that to happen. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star. This includes over 97% of the other stars in the Milky Way including our own Sun. After the hydrogen-fusing period of such stars end, they expand to a red giant during which it fuses helium to carbon and oxygen in its core.
If a red giant has insufficient mass to generate the core temperatures required to fuse carbon, around 1 billion K, an inert mass of carbon and oxygen will build up at its center. After a star sheds its outer layers, it becomes a planetary nebula that is just the core remnant of a white dwarf. Usually, therefore, white dwarfs are composed of carbon and oxygen - much like a glowing piece of charcoal left over a burned out fire.
Oppenheimer wrote a paper where he demonstrated that there was a point where the mass of stars are so high that they do not form stable white dwarfs, but rather become neutron stars that eventually undergo gravitational collapse and become black holes. Oppenheimer's papers were considered difficult to understand even by the standards of the abstract topics he was expert in. He was fond of using elegant, if extremely complex, mathematical techniques to demonstrate physical principles, though he was sometimes criticized for making mathematical mistakes, presumably out of haste. "His physics was good", said one of his students, "but his arithmetic awful".
From 1934 on, he became increasingly concerned about politics and international affairs. In 1934, he earmarked 3% of his salary for 2 years to support German physicists fleeing from Nazis. When attempting to get Jewish physicists to work with him at Berkeley, his requests were denied with the argument that "one Jew in the department was enough".
Oppenheimer's mother died in 1931, and he became closer to his father who, although still living in New York, became a frequent visitor in California. When his father died in 1937 leaving behind a large sum of money to be divided between Oppenheimer and his brother, Oppenheimer immediately wrote out a will leaving his estate to the University of California for graduate scholarships. Like many young intellectuals in the 1930s, he was a supporter of social reforms that were later alleged to be communist ideas. He donated to many progressive efforts which were later branded as "left-wing" during the McCarthy era. Many of Oppenheimer's closest associates were active in the Communist Party in the 1930s or 1940s.
In 1941, shortly before the United States entered WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic fission bomb that used the energy resulting when atoms are split apart. In 1942, Oppenheimer was invited to take over work on what was needed to cause a fast neutron chain reaction in an atomic bomb and to calculate what needed to be done, and in what order, to make the bomb. General Groves, the director of what became known as the Manhattan Project selected Oppenheimer to head the project's secret weapons laboratory, a choice which surprised many, as Oppenheimer had left-wing political views, and no record as a leader of large projects. When he joined the Manhattan Project in 1942, Oppenheimer wrote on his personal security questionnaire that he had been a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast. Groves was impressed by Oppenheimer's singular grasp of the practical aspects of designing and constructing an atomic bomb, and by the breadth of his knowledge. As a military engineer, Groves knew that this would be vital in an interdisciplinary project that would involve not just physics, but chemistry, metallurgy, military equipment and engineering. Groves also detected in Oppenheimer something that many others did not, - an "overweening ambition" that Groves reckoned would supply the drive necessary to push the project to a successful conclusion.
Oppenheimer and Groves decided that for security and cohesion they needed a centralized, secret research laboratory in a remote location. Scouting for a site, Oppenheimer was drawn to New Mexico, not far from his ranch. Oppenheimer, Groves and others toured a prospective site. Oppenheimer feared that the high cliffs surrounding the site would make his people feel claustrophobic, while the engineers were concerned with the possibility of flooding. He then suggested and championed a site that he knew well: a flat mesa near Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was the site of a private boys' school called the Los Alamos Ranch School. The engineers were concerned about the poor access road and the water supply, but otherwise felt that it was ideal. The Los Alamos Laboratory was built on the site of the school, taking over some of its buildings, while many others were erected in great haste. There Oppenheimer assembled a group of the top physicists of the time, which he referred to as the "luminaries".
Initially Los Alamos was supposed to be a military laboratory, and Oppenheimer and other researchers were to be commissioned into the Army. He went so far as to order himself a lieutenant colonel's uniform and take the Army physical test, which he failed. Army doctors considered him underweight at 58 kg, diagnosed his chronic cough as tuberculosis and were concerned about his chronic joint pain. It soon turned out that Oppenheimer had hugely underestimated the magnitude of the project; Los Alamos grew from a few hundred people in 1943 to over 6,000 in 1945.
Oppenheimer at first had difficulty with the organizational division of large groups, but rapidly learned the art of large-scale administration after he took up permanent residence on the mesa. He was noted for his mastery of all scientific aspects of the project and for his efforts to control the inevitable cultural conflicts between scientists and the military. He was an iconic figure to his fellow scientists, as much a symbol of what they were working toward as a scientific director.
Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the real sense of the words. Here his uncanny speed in grasping the main points of any subject was a decisive factor; he could acquaint himself with the essential details of every part of the work. He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in everyone. It created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.
Two types of atomic fission bombs were developed during the war starting in 1943. A relatively simple gun-type fission weapon was made using uranium called “Little Boy” to be dropped on Hiroshima. The design assembled their fissile material into a supercritical mass by the use of the "gun" method: shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another. The radioactive isotope of uranium U235, comprising less than 1% of natural occurring uranium was used. It had a half life of 700 million years.
A more complex plutonium implosion-type weapon was designed concurrently called “Fat Man” to be dropped on Nagasaki. Using chemical explosive lenses, 2 sub-critical spheres of fissile material were squeezed together into a smaller and denser form that acquired critical mass that sustained a spontaneous chain reaction. The radioactive isotope of plutonium P239 with a half life of 24,110 years.
In fission weapons, a ctitical mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is forced into supercriticality, allowing an exponential growth of nuclear chain reactions, either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method) or by compression of a sub-critical sphere or cylinder of fissile material using chemically-fueled explosive lenses.
A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. All fission reactions generate fission products, the remains of the split atomic nuclei. Many fission products are either highly radioactive (but short-lived) or moderately radioactive (but long-lived), and as such, they are a serious form of radioactive contamination. Fission products are the principal radioactive component of nuclear fallout. Another source of radioactivity is the burst of free neutrons produced by the weapon. When they collide with other nuclei in surrounding material, the neutrons transmute those nuclei into other isotopes, altering their stability and making them radioactive.
Throughout the development of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was under investigation by both the FBI and the Manhattan Project's internal security arm for his past left-wing associations. He was followed by Army security agents during a trip to California to visit his former girlfriend who was suffering from depression. Oppenheimer spent the night in her apartment. She committed suicide in 1944, which left Oppenheimer deeply grieved.
The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first artificial nuclear explosion near Alamogordo in 1945. Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and then when the announcer shouted "Now!" and there came this tremendous burst of light followed shortly thereafter by the deep growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief. Oppenheimer simply exclaimed, "It worked."
At an assembly at Los Alamos on the evening of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Oppenheimer took to the stage and clasped his hands together like a prize-winning boxer while the crowd cheered. He noted his regret the weapon had not been available in time to use against Nazi Germany. However, he and many of the project staff were very upset about the bombing of Nagasaki, as they did not feel the second bomb was necessary from a military point of view. He traveled to Washington to hand-deliver a letter to Secretary of War expressing his revulsion and his wish to see nuclear weapons banned. Oppenheimer was granted an interview with President Harry S Truman. The meeting, however, went badly, after Oppenheimer remarked he felt he had "blood on his hands." The remark infuriated Truman and put an end to the meeting. Truman later said "I don't want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.”
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project became public knowledge; and Oppenheimer became a national spokesman for science, emblematic of a new type of technocratic power. He became a household name and his face appeared on the covers of “Life” and “Time”. Nuclear physics became a powerful force as all governments of the world began to realize the strategic and political power that came with nuclear weapons. Like many scientists of his generation, he felt that security from atomic bombs would come only from a transnational organization such as the newly formed United Nations, which could institute a program to stifle a nuclear arms race.
After WWII, Oppenheimer published only 5 scientific papers, one of which was in biophysics, and none after 1950. Murray Gell-Mann, who worked with him looked on Oppenheimer as a man who didn`t have patience for writing long papers with long calculations, but rather proposing brilliant ideas that inspired and influenced other people to do that. Oppenheimer's diverse interests sometimes interrupted his focus on projects.
When the government questioned whether to pursue a crash program to develop an atomic weapon based on nuclear fusion - the hydrogen bomb - Oppenheimer initially recommended against it, though he had been in favor of developing such a weapon during the Manhattan Project. He was motivated partly by ethical concerns, feeling that such a weapon could only be used strategically against civilian targets, resulting in millions of deaths. He was also motivated by practical concerns, however, as at the time there was no workable design for a hydrogen fusion bomb.
In 1951, a design for a hydrogen fusion bomb was developed that used the energy resulting when atoms are fused together. This new design seemed technically feasible and Oppenheimer changed his opinion about developing the weapon. As he later contemplated that splitting atoms apart to create energy did not make a great deal of technical sense and it could be argued that it was undesirable even if it was buildable. On the other hand fusing atoms together to create energy was technically so sweet that you could not argue about that. The issues became purely the military, the political and the humane problems of what you were going to do about it once you had it.
Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs, as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). All such weapons derive a significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, and fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.
The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had been following Oppenheimer since before the war, when he showed Communist sympathies as a professor at Berkeley and had been close to members of the Communist Party, including his wife and brother. He had been under close surveillance since the early 1940s, his home and office bugged, his phone tapped and his mail opened. Oppenheimer had found himself in the middle of more than one controversy and power struggle in the years from 1949-1953.
Oppenheimer was seen by most of the scientific community as a martyr to McCarthyism, an eclectic liberal who was unjustly attacked by warmongering enemies, symbolic of the shift of scientific creativity from academia into the military. Increasingly concerned about the potential danger to humanity arising from scientific discoveries, Oppenheimer joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and other eminent scientists and academics to establish what would eventually become the World Academy of Art and Science in 1960.
In his speeches and public writings, Oppenheimer continually stressed the difficulty of managing the power of knowledge in a world in which the freedom of science to exchange ideas was more and more restricted by political concerns. Deprived of political power, Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write and work on physics. He toured Europe and Japan, giving talks about the history of science, the role of science in society, and the nature of the universe.
At the urging of many of Oppenheimer's political friends who had ascended to power, President Kennedy awarded Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963 as a gesture of political rehabilitation. A little over a week after Kennedy's assassination, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, presented Oppenheimer with the award, for contributions to theoretical physics as a teacher and originator of ideas, and for leadership of the Los Alamos Laboratory and the atomic energy program during critical years.
Oppenheimer was diagnosed with throat cancer in late 1965 and, after inconclusive surgery, underwent unsuccessful radiation treatment and chemotherapy late in 1966. He fell into a coma in 1967, and died at his home when at an age of 62.
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