Young Robert Oppenheimer visits New Mexico for the first time and falls in love with the valley around Los Alamos.

Oppenheimer suffers a severe mental health crisis while studying at Cambridge, reaching the point of wanting to harm himself.

Oppenheimer earns his doctorate at Göttingen and publishes seven papers in quantum physics, cementing his scientific reputation.

Oppenheimer joins the faculty at Berkeley and builds a reputation as a brilliant synthesizer of ideas in theoretical physics.

Oppenheimer meets Jean Tatlock and is drawn into left-wing political circles for the first time through her Communist connections.

Gen. Groves meets Oppenheimer at Berkeley and quickly concludes he is the right man to direct the central bomb laboratory.

Oppenheimer and Groves choose the isolated plateau of Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site for a secret national laboratory.

The Trinity test succeeds as the world's first atomic bomb is detonated at a remote desert test site.

An atomic bomb destroys Hiroshima, and Oppenheimer receives a congratulatory phone call from General Groves in Washington.

A second atomic bomb destroys Nagasaki, and the mood at Los Alamos turns somber as Oppenheimer grows despondent.

Oppenheimer meets President Truman in the Oval Office and tells him he feels he has blood on his hands.

Oppenheimer's General Advisory Committee unanimously recommends against developing a thermonuclear superbomb, warning it could become a weapon of genocide.

Lewis Strauss informs Oppenheimer that his security clearance has been suspended pending a formal review of his background.

Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing begins before a three-man panel that has already read his entire classified security file.

The full Atomic Energy Commission votes to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance, ending his influence on American nuclear policy.

Robert Oppenheimer grew up privileged but sheltered in New York City, and only found his footing after recovering from a severe mental breakdown while studying abroad. He built a celebrated career in theoretical physics at Berkeley, but his trajectory changed when General Groves selected him to direct the Manhattan Project at a secret laboratory in Los Alamos. Oppenheimer led the project to success with the Trinity test, but the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left him shaken and consumed with guilt. He spent the postwar years trying to shape nuclear policy, first arguing for international control of atomic energy and later opposing the development of a hydrogen superbomb. His principled opposition earned him powerful enemies who used his left-wing past against him in a rigged 1954 security hearing. The AEC's final vote to revoke his clearance ended his public influence, marking the triumph and tragedy of the man who built the bomb.

The rise and fall of Oppenheimer, America's most celebrated physicist

Oppenheimer graduates summa cum laude from Harvard after only three years, having excelled academically despite persistent social difficulties.

Julius Oppenheimer dies suddenly, and his sons Robert and Frank inherit the remaining family fortune.

Frank Oppenheimer and his wife Jackie formally join the Communist Party, surrounding Robert with committed Party members.

Oppenheimer meets Kitty Harrison at a party and begins an affair while she is still married to her third husband.

Haakon Chevalier tells Oppenheimer in his kitchen that an acquaintance wants to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet consulate.

Oppenheimer takes a wartime trip to Berkeley and spends the night with Jean Tatlock, drawing Army counterintelligence scrutiny.

Niels Bohr arrives secretly at Los Alamos and shares information suggesting German scientists are on the wrong track toward a bomb.

Jean Tatlock is found dead in her apartment, having left a note about a paralyzed soul unable to live or give.

President Roosevelt dies in office and Hitler commits suicide weeks later, ending the war in Europe.

Oppenheimer resigns as director of Los Alamos and delivers a farewell address on the international control of atomic energy.

Oppenheimer largely drafts the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, a visionary document calling for full international control of atomic energy.

The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb, shattering the American nuclear monopoly and alarming US policymakers.

Oppenheimer testifies in closed session before HUAC and describes former student Bernard Peters as an ardent Communist.

Oppenheimer's closed-session HUAC testimony about Bernard Peters is leaked to the press, horrifying his friends and former students.

Oppenheimer dies of cancer at age 62, and Kitty travels to St. John to scatter his ashes at sea.

This pool traces the personal and political threads running beneath the main arc of Oppenheimer's life, from family losses and romantic entanglements to wartime surveillance and postwar political defeats. It covers his father's sudden death, his brother Frank's formal commitment to the Communist Party, and his complicated courtship of the fierce and troubled Kitty Harrison. At Los Alamos, the story includes Army surveillance of his former girlfriend Jean Tatlock and the shattering news of her death, as well as Danish physicist Niels Bohr's secret arrival and the intelligence he brought from Europe. After the war, Oppenheimer's best effort to shape policy through the Acheson-Lilienthal Report was gutted by political operatives before it ever reached the United Nations, and his attempt to remain in the foreign policy establishment was fatally undermined by the Soviet bomb test. His final years were spent retreating from public life, and he died having never recovered the influence that was taken from him in 1954.

The people and events that shaped Oppenheimer's story behind the headlines

A vacation in Corsica lifts Oppenheimer out of his deepest depression and renews his commitment to pursuing theoretical physics.

Oppenheimer meets Niels Bohr in person at Cambridge and resolves to dedicate himself entirely to theoretical physics.

Ella Oppenheimer dies and Robert, struggling to cope with the loss, finds comfort in the Bhagavad Gita and Eastern philosophy.

News of nuclear fission reaches Berkeley, and a student soon spots a crude bomb design sketched on Oppenheimer's chalkboard.

Oppenheimer is named Coordinator of Rapid Rupture and organizes a secret summer seminar of the country's top physicists.

Gen. Groves overrules Army counterintelligence officers who want Oppenheimer fired and insists on keeping him as director.

Oppenheimer reports the Chevalier Affair to Army counterintelligence but invents false details that intensify suspicions against him.

Edward Teller is removed from a key bomb-design task after becoming obsessed with developing a thermonuclear superbomb instead.

An exhausted Oppenheimer shocks his friend Pat Sherr by asking if she would like to adopt his infant daughter Toni.

After witnessing the Trinity test, Oppenheimer grows pensive and begins expressing sympathy for the Japanese civilians in the bomb's path.

Bernard Baruch presents a weakened version of the atomic energy plan to the United Nations, and the Soviets reject it.

President Truman overrides the GAC recommendation and George Kennan's opposing memo to push forward with the superbomb program.

During the hearing, Oppenheimer confesses to fabricating key details in his 1943 Army counterintelligence interview about the Chevalier Affair.

Review board member Ward Evans shocks Chairman Gray by writing a dissenting opinion in favor of restoring Oppenheimer's clearance.

Toni Oppenheimer, denied a UN security clearance because of her father's file, dies by suicide on St. John.

This pool focuses on the moments when Oppenheimer's life changed direction, beginning with a transformative Corsica vacation that rescued him from suicidal despair and returned him to theoretical physics with renewed purpose. Several unexpected revelations reshaped his role in history, from the news of nuclear fission that produced a bomb sketch on his chalkboard to General Groves's crucial decision to protect him from counterintelligence officers who wanted him fired. His own choices also altered his fate, most fatally his decision to fabricate details when first reporting a suspected Soviet contact to the Army — a lie that returned to destroy him at his security hearing over a decade later. The postwar period brought a series of political defeats, from Bernard Baruch gutting the international atomic energy plan to Truman overriding every expert voice urging restraint on the superbomb. In the end, the consequences of Oppenheimer's public ruin extended past his own death, falling on his daughter Toni, who never escaped the shadow of her father's destroyed reputation.