Origin Story

Although Oppenheimer was not personally a religious man, he was very aware of the cultural significance of religion, both in America and in the wider world.  He chose the name of the first nuclear test to be “Trinity” because of his identification of his work with the poetry of John Donne, which is loaded with religious and mythic figures.  The allusion to the Christian Trinity dovetails with the scientists’ work, which many believed to be unlocking the power of creation.  This also tied into the Hindu mythology that Oppenheimer drew heavily upon when describing the event.  However, he refused to reduce the concrete reality of the bomb to mythological symbolism.  Oppenheimer advocated for scientific responsibility and awareness, something he spoke out about often.  He is often reappropriated as a paragon of the anti-militant movement associated with the Cold War arms race, but he himself took issue with this view.  In response to one playwright’s depiction of him as a reluctant participant in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer responded:

“I had never said that I had regretted participating in a responsible way in the making of the bomb. I said that perhaps he had forgotten Guernica, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Dachau, Warsaw, and Tokyo; but I had not, and that if he found it so difficult to understand, he should write a play about something else.”