The cast of oppenheimer it is mostly male. It is not strange, because it is about a true story, carried out by scientists in the 40s of the 20th century. It was not a time when things were easy for women. women scientists. In fact, most of the women who appear in the film Christopher Nolan are the couples of scientists, including the one of the own robert oppenheimer. Now, even though it was a time when science was mostly masculine, there are three physicists whose names were recorded for various reasons when manhattan projecton which the film is based.
one of them was Lili Hornigwho does appear in oppenheimerplayed by actress Olivia Thirlby. the others are Lise Meitner and Elda Emma Anderson. Meitner was not actually part of the Manhattan Project, although his name will always be linked to it. As for Anderson, he sure did work closely with many of the physicists featured in Nolan’s new film.
Ultimately, they were all great physics whose names deserve to be remembered, especially now that oppenheimer has put the story of the Manhattan Project back on the table.
Lise Meitner and her refusal to work with oppenheimer
Yeah Lise Meitner does not appear among the protagonists of oppenheimer It’s for obvious reasons: because it wasn’t part of the Manhattan Project. However, had a lot to do with him.
In 1938, he was part of the team of physicists who discovered the Nuclear fisionnext to Otto Robert Frisch and Otto Hahn. All three did an indispensable job in this find, but only the last one was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Even so, the scientist was highly valued by some contemporary physicists, such as Albert Einstein, who came to name her as the German Marie Curie.
The initial objective of both Meitner and his colleagues was not that nuclear fission be used for war purposes. However, it did not take long to find the potential it would have to manufacture nuclear weapons. So when Oppenheimer began recruiting scientists for the Manhattan Project, his name was logically one of those considered. But she was the only one of the physicists contacted who declined the invitationclaiming that he wanted nothing to do with a bomb.
Unfortunately, despite her opposition to this application of nuclear fission, Lise Meitner is known to many today as “the mother of the atomic bomb”. It is very sad, because she always showed herself as a pacifist person, very critical of those who wanted to apply science to wage war.
Elda Emma Anderson and Little Boy Fuel
When Oppenheimer and his team met to decide what kind of bombs they would make, they opted for ballistic-type weapons. Thus the Thin Man bomb was born. However, given how little was still known about nuclear fission, initially mistakes were made with the fuel. Attempts were made with plutonium, but it could trigger dangerous spontaneous fission when used with ballistic type bombs. Therefore, it was decided to change to uranium. The problem was that a good amount of the uranium-235 isotope for use as pure fuel. It was very difficult to separate it from other isotopes that could complicate the fission reaction. And this is where physics comes into play Elda Anderson, who he became the first person in the world to obtain a pure sample of uranium-235.
With this fuel change, Thin Man no longer made sense, so a new ballistic-type bomb was designed: the little boy that shortly after would impact on hiroshima. Like Oppenheimer and the other scientists on the project, she did not know what would be the fate of weapons that were supposedly designed for defense.
Lili Hornig, the scientist who does appear in oppenheimer
In ‘Oppenheimer’ the story of several scientists who arrived at the Los Alamos Laboratory of the Manhattan Project together with their partners is told. But there was one such couple in which both members were scientists: Donald and Lili Hornig. He was an explosives chemist. She, a newly graduated chemist who had not yet been given a job opportunity because of her status as a woman.
In fact, his first job within the manhattan project it was as a typist. However, as soon as they saw her great capacity for chemistry, she began to work with the other scientists. She first inquired about the possibilities of the plutoniumbut she was separated from this department when she discovered that said element could harm the female reproductive system. Later, she went on to study detonation mechanisms.
When he saw the first test detonation of one of the bombs he worked on, he was horrified for his potential, like most of his fellow scientists. That’s why he joined a petition calling on the United States government to publicly demonstrate the potential of nuclear weapons before launching them against real targets. Thus, perhaps, the population could help deter the army from misusing the bombs. But the scientists were ignored. They had already done the hard work. Later, as Meitner predicted, the opinion of the experts did not matter when it came to starting the pumps.