Knowing that, consider this New York Times review of “Oppenheimer.” It calls Oppenheimer the “father of the bomb” more than once; it calls the movie “a great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan’s filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates.” Throughout the entire review, it’s clear that the reviewer is operating under the misapprehension that “physicists built the bomb.” The “history it relates” is not real, but exists because it was more convenient for the government’s desire for secrecy; it is a reality manifested by power.

I haven’t seen “Oppenheimer,” so I don’t know how much of this is reflected in the film, but saying (as this article seems to) that Oppenheimer was the “father of the bomb” because he was a physicist is incorrect. Oppenheimer had plenty of physics chops, but he also had a wide breadth of knowledge and the personal inspirational nature to the scientists involved – basically, the vision and the will – to carry it out. So much so that they put him in charge of it even though he was a Communist, basically an enemy at the time to the United States government. So they put him in charge of the bomb, and then after the project he tragically returned to his original status as the enemy.

In September, Leslie Groves was appointed director of what became known as the Manhattan Project. He selected Oppenheimer to head the project’s secret weapons laboratory. This choice surprised many, because Oppenheimer had left-wing political views and no record as a leader of large projects. Groves was concerned by the fact that Oppenheimer did not have a Nobel Prize and might not have had the prestige to direct fellow scientists.

Groves was impressed by Oppenheimer’s singular grasp of the practical aspects of the project and by the breadth of his knowledge. As a military engineer, Groves knew that this would be vital in an interdisciplinary project that would involve not just physics but also chemistry, metallurgy, ordnance, and engineering. Groves also detected in Oppenheimer something that many others did not, an “overweening ambition” that Groves reckoned would supply the drive necessary to push the project to a successful conclusion. Isidor Rabi considered the appointment “a real stroke of genius on the part of General Groves, who was not generally considered to be a genius”.

And, in fact, that was exactly how it happened:

It soon turned out that Oppenheimer had hugely underestimated the magnitude of the project: Los Alamos grew from a few hundred people in 1943 to over 6,000 in 1945. Oppenheimer at first had difficulty with the organizational division of large groups but rapidly learned the art of large-scale administration after he took up permanent residence on the mesa. He was noted for his mastery of all scientific aspects of the project and for his efforts to control the inevitable cultural conflicts between scientists and the military. He was an iconic figure to his fellow scientists, as much a symbol of what they were working toward as a scientific director. Victor Weisskopf put it thus:

Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the real sense of the words. Here his uncanny speed in grasping the main points of any subject was a decisive factor; he could acquaint himself with the essential details of every part of the work.

He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.

All of this is from the the Wikipedia article, which is a wild ride from start to finish. I like Oppenheimer. He didn’t want the Nazis to win the war, but he also went in Harry Truman’s office after the office and made him furious by telling him he had blood on his hands. Like I say I haven’t seen the movie, but this article I feel like sells him short a little bit by putting him in the “physicist” category.