The Manhattan Project, set up during the Second World War in 1942, was guided by fear that if the US and its allies didn’t make them first, Hitler’s Nazi scientists would.
A left-wing theoretical physicist not known for his leadership qualities or laboratory acumen, the American was an unconventional pick but proved a devastatingly effective one.
As blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer hits cinemas, Sky News looks at how the father of the atomic bomb still shapes the world decades after his creation was deployed.
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Oppenheimer film ‘puts audience in bunker’
An unusual recruitment
Oppenheimer was appointed by General Leslie Groves, the project’s military leader, to head up Site Y – a secret weapons research facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
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But there were, as Oppenheimer biographer Professor Ray Monk puts it, “all sorts of reasons” not to appoint him, notably perceived association with communist organisations that had made him a suspect of the FBI.
Born to a Jewish family in New York in 1906, his student years had seen him drawn to the left as Germany’s fascist regime saw friends and relatives oppressed and forced to flee.
During studies at Harvard, Cambridge, and Germany‘s Gottingen university in the 1920s, he was known for being a “disaster in the laboratory”. Of his time studying physics at Harvard, Oppenheimer himself said: “My feeling about myself was always one of extreme discontent.”
Image: Oppenheimer worked in education before and after the war
He may have been unconvincing in the lab, but found his calling as a university lecturer in California. His ability to explain complex science in a relatively straightforward and compelling way proved key to impressing Groves, who interviewed countless scientists before a chance meeting with Oppenheimer.
Crucially, he also recognised the need for urgency.
Prof Monk says: “Oppenheimer knew Heisenberg, one of the greatest scientists in the world, who he worked with at Gottingen, was leading the Nazi bomb project and was worried they would get one before the Allies.
“He was in no doubt at all – the duty of all scientists in the US, and the allied countries, was building a bomb first.”
Image: Oppenheimer enjoyed an unconventional relationship with Leslie Groves. Pic: Digital Photo Archive, Department of Energy
Building the bomb
Los Alamos was one of three sites critical to the development of the atomic bomb.
The others were a factory in Hanford, Washington, where plutonium was made; and a hidden base in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for enriching uranium.
The basis of atomic bomb is the process of nuclear fission – when the nucleus of an atom is split into two smaller nuclei, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.
This was discovered in 1938 by two German scientists, and Oppenheimer realised its destructive potential when word reached him in 1939.
The prospect of weaponising nuclear fission focused the minds of scientists across Europe, with plutonium and uranium identified as elements that could undergo the process.
With the process understood, the race was on to weaponise it.
Cynthia C Kelly is founder and president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of the Manhattan Project and crucial to having the three sites gain national park status in the US.
“It was a first-of-a-kind effort across the board,” she says of the Manhattan Project, named after the New York City district where it was founded.
With the city that never sleeps deemed too busy for such a secretive initiative, the three laboratories were set up in isolated places far away from urban centres and the coast. They brought together geniuses from across America and overseas – including Britain and some who fled Nazi Germany – into one single-minded pursuit.
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“It required creative minds from the machinists to the craftsmen – everything had to be perfect,” Kelly adds, with a “classic absent-minded professor” at the heart of it.
“They had to take this energy, which had been uncontrolled up to now, figure out how to control it, and package it tightly enough to fit in the bomb bay of an aeroplane that could transport it and drop it.
“They had little confidence in harnessing this technology in time for the end of the war.”
Image: Oppenheimer on the test ground for the atomic bomb near Almagordo, New Mexico
Becoming Death
But harness it they did – and the world would change forever.
The first atomic bomb test in New Mexico happened on 16 July 1945, after which Oppenheimer uttered a line that, along with his trademark fedora and pipe, has become quintessential to his public image.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he observed after the so-called Trinity Test, quoting a sacred Hindu text in a reminder of his acumen as a philosopher as well as a scientist.
A few weeks after, death followed on an unimaginable scale. On 6 August, a uranium-based bomb named Little Boy was detonated over Hiroshima; and another, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.
Image: The atomic bomb dropped on Japan’s Nagasaki in 1945
Both cities were left unrecognisable, 200,000 people died, and Japan surrendered. Oppenheimer was shaken.
“Right up until the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, he had no moral qualms whatsoever,” says Prof Monk.
“Even when the Germans surrendered (on 7 May 1945), and it was obvious the Americans were still going to use the bomb against the Japanese, he had no qualms.
“But he thought one demonstration of the awesome power of this weapon was enough.”
Image: Hiroshima in March 1946, six months after America’s atomic bomb was dropped
A new world
Despite its undoubted role in ending the Second World War, which cost the lives of some 90 million people, Oppenheimer was changed by the atomic bomb, believing it made the prospect of future conflict “unendurable”.
“It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country,” he said in 1946, later signalling his opposition to his government’s plan to develop even bigger nuclear weapons.
Oppenheimer was ignored and held in deep suspicion, and his security clearance at the Atomic Energy Commission eventually rescinded. He died of lung cancer in 1967 with none of the power he once yielded.
Image: Oppenheimer testifies before the Senate military affairs committee in Washington in 1945
Nuclear weapons have not been used again, but the threat lingers. America and Russia’s arsenals are far smaller than their Cold War peak, but they hold 90% of an estimated global stockpile of 13,000 weapons.
Ever since Oppenheimer witnessed the Trinity Test in the New Mexico desert, Cynthia C Kelly says there’s been “no way to put the genie back in the bottle”.
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Two cities devastated beyond recognition have seemingly served as the ultimate deterrence.
“Oppenheimer was invited to say he regretted developing the atomic bomb many times, most prominently when he visited Japan, and his answer was always no,” says Prof Monk.
“It can be argued the fact the weapons have never been used again shows deterrence works.”
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2:39
Will Russia use nuclear weapons?
Beyond deterrence, the Manhattan Project also unleashed an era of science and innovation still being felt today, including nuclear energy vital to weaning ourselves off greenhouse gases.
A man who stalked Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas for six years has avoided jail.
Kyle Shaw, 37, got a 20-month suspended sentence and a lifetime restraining order on contacting Ballas, her mother, niece, and former partner.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that he thought Ballas was his aunt and “began a persistent campaign of contact”.
“He believed, and it’s evident from what he was told by his mother, that her late brother was his father,” said prosecutor Nicola Daley.
The court heard there was no evidence he was wrong, and “limited evidence” he was correct.
Ms Daley said Shaw’s messages had accused Ballas of being to blame for the death of her brother, who took his own life in 2003 aged 44.
He also set up social media accounts in his name.
Shaw had pleaded guilty to stalking the former dancer between August 2017 and November 2023 at a hearing in February.
Incidents included following Ballas’s 86-year-old mother, Audrey Rich, while she was shopping and telling her she was his grandmother.
The court heard in messages to Mrs Rich, Shaw had asked: “Where’s my dad?”
Ballas was so worried for her mother’s safety that she moved her from Merseyside to London.
Image: Kyle Shaw outside court on the day of his sentencing. Pic: PA
In October 2020, Ballas called police after Shaw messaged her and said: “Do you want me to kill myself, Shirley?”
Posts on X included one alongside an image of her home address that warned: “You ruined my life, I’ll ruin yours and everyone’s around you.”
Another referenced a book signing and said: “I can’t wait to meet you for the first time Aunty Shirley. Hopefully I can get an autograph.”
The court was told Ballas’s niece Mary Assall, former partner Daniel Taylor and colleagues from Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s Loose Women were also sent messages.
‘I know where you live’
On one occasion in late 2023, Shaw called Mr Taylor and told him he knew where the couple lived and described Ballas’s movements.
The court heard the 64-year-old TV star become wary of socialising and stopped using public transport.
Prosecutor Ms Daley said: “She described having sleepless nights worrying about herself and her family’s safety and being particularly distressed when suggestions were made to her that she and her mother were responsible for her brother taking his own life.”
Image: Ballas has been head judge on Strictly Come Dancing since 2017. Pic: PA
Shaw cried and wiped away tears as he was sentenced on Tuesday.
The judge said the stalking stemmed from his mother telling him Ballas’s brother, David Rich, was his biological father.
“I’m satisfied that your motive for this offending was a desire to seek contact with people you genuinely believed were your family,” he said.
“Whether in fact there’s any truth in that belief is difficult, if not impossible, to determine.”
Image: Shaw pictured at court in February. Pic: PA
Defence lawyer John Weate said Shaw had been told the story by his mother “in his mid to late teens” and had suffered “complex mental health issues” since he was a child.
He added: “He now accepts that Miss Ballas and her family don’t wish to have any contact with him and, importantly, he volunteered the information that he has no intention of contacting them again.”
Shaw, of Whetstone Lane in Birkenhead, also admitted possessing cannabis and was ordered to undertake a rehab programme.
Gary Glitter has been made bankrupt after failing to pay more than £500,000 in damages to a woman he abused when she was 12 years old.
She sued the disgraced singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, after he was found guilty of attacking her and two other schoolgirls between 1975 and 1980.
Glitter, 80, was jailed for 16 years in 2015 and released in 2023 but was recalled to prison less than six weeks later after breaching his parole conditions.
A judge awarded the woman £508,800, including £381,000 in lost earnings and £7,800 for future therapy and treatment, saying she was subjected to abuse “of the most serious kind”.
The court heard she had not worked for decades due to the trauma of being repeatedly raped and “humiliated” by the singer.
Image: Glitter was jailed for 16 years in 2015. Pic: Met Police/PA
Glitter was made bankrupt last month at the County Court at Torquay and Newton Abbot, in Devon – the county where he is reportedly serving his sentence in Channings Wood prison, in Newton Abbot.
Richard Scorer, head of abuse law at Slater and Gordon, the law firm representing the woman, said: “We confirm that Gadd has been made bankrupt following our client’s application.
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“As he has done throughout, Gadd has refused to cooperate with the process and continues to treat his victims with contempt.
“We hope and trust that the parole board will take his behaviour into account in any future parole applications, as it clearly demonstrates that he has never changed, shows no remorse and remains a serious risk to the public.”
Glitter was first jailed for four months in 1999 after he admitted possessing around 4,000 indecent images of children.
He was expelled from Cambodia in 2002, and in March 2006 was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam where he spent two-and-a-half years in prison.
His sentence for the 2016 convictions expires in February 2031.
Glitter was automatically released from HMP The Verne, a low-security prison in Portland, Dorset, in February 2023 after serving half of his fixed-term determinate sentence.
But he was back behind bars weeks later after reportedly trying to access the dark web and images of children.
Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan will play Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in the upcoming Beatles films – with a Stranger Things star also portraying one of the Fab Four.
The two Irish actors will be joined by London-born performers Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
The cast for the Sam Mendes project was revealed at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, with all four appearing on stage and taking a bow together in Beatles style.
Image: (L-R) Mescal, Quinn, Keoghan and Dickinson appeared together at the announcement. Pic: Reuters
Mendes is making four interconnected films – one from the perspective of each of the band members – and they are all set to be released “in proximity” to each other in April 2028.
It marks the first time The Beatles and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film.
Playing McCartney is another big role for 29-year-old Mescal, who recently starred in the Gladiator sequel and was nominated for an Oscar in 2023 for Aftersun.
Barry Keoghan – who also got an Oscar nod for The Banshees of Inisherin – will portray the other surviving Beatles member, Ringo Starr.
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Image: Pic: PA
Meanwhile, Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn, who appeared with long hair as Eddie Munson in the fourth series, takes up the role of George Harrison.
Harris Dickinson has the challenge of stepping into the shoes of perhaps the most famous Beatle, John Lennon.
The 28-year-old recently starred in erotic thriller Babygirl with Nicole Kidman and also appeared in satire Triangle of Sadness.
Mendes told the industry audience at CinemaCon there is “still plenty to explore” despite the Beatles’ rise having being well chronicled.