J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist whose pre-war research ranged across quantum mechanics, nuclear physics and astrophysics. In 1942 General Leslie Groves selected him to lead the secret weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he assembled and coordinated the scientists charged with designing the first atomic bombs.

Oppenheimer directed Los Alamos through the Trinity test of 16 July 1945 and remained one of the most prominent scientific voices in the early nuclear age. After the war he served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study and advised the United States government on atomic policy, but in 1954 his security clearance was revoked after a highly controversial hearing shaped by Cold War politics.

In Joseph Kanon’s Los Alamos, Oppenheimer appears as the historical scientific director around whom the secret wartime community is organised. Kanon places the fictional murder investigation inside the real Manhattan Project and uses Oppenheimer’s leadership, security pressures and the approach of the Trinity test as part of the novel’s historical structure.