Sam Waterston’s nuanced performance portrays Oppenheimer as a brilliant but troubled figure. Opening credits show a secret tape playing Oppenheimer’s conversations (the FBI file on Oppenheimer, opened in 1941, eventually ran to 7,000 pages) and the series builds to the fateful security hearing. The BBC’s BAFTA-winning drama series is also interested in how Oppenheimer’s involvement in left-wing 1930s politics shaped his fall from grace after the second world war. The trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023). An agent’s report notes that “a kind of invisible light … radiates from his presence”, as if he takes on the troubling qualities of the radioactive materials with which he works. Chevalier presents Bloch as intoxicated by the force of his own personality and power over others. Seduced by Bloch’s charisma, Ampter is drawn toward the political causes Bloch advocates. The novel tells the story of a young security agent, Mark Ampter, sent to infiltrate the circle of Sebastian Bloch (a thinly disguised version of Oppenheimer). In the McCarthyite atmosphere of the early 1950s, he could no longer work at US universities.

Oppenheimer’s delay in reporting this conversation to US security services and inconsistencies in his testimony about it, were key – along with his opposition to the hydrogen bomb – to the 1954 hearing that saw his security clearance revoked. In winter 1942-43, Chevalier sounded out Oppenheimer’s stance on passing secrets to the Soviet Union. This novel is particularly fascinating in that it was written by a friend of Oppenheimer, who played a role in his downfall.

The Man Who Would Be God by Haakon Chevalier (1959) Director Christopher Nolan’s film is the latest of many portrayals of the so-called “father of the atomic bomb” on page, stage and screen. One of this summer’s biggest cinematic events, Oppenheimer, brings the story of US scientist J.

Atom father heart