Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” has more Nobel Prize-winning characters (all for Physics) than any other narrative feature in Hollywood history. Here is a list of the ten Nobel Prize-winning physicists and fourteen other notable scientists (eleven physicists including Robert Oppenheimer, his brother Frank, two chemists who were husband and wife and one engineer) who appeared in the movie (24 characters in total) and the fearless actors who played them.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
| NOBEL PRIZE: YEAR | NOBEL PRIZE: SCIENTIST | NATIONALITY | REASON HE WON THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS | ADDITIONAL CAREER AND PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS | ACTOR WHO PLAYED HIM |
| 1921 | 1. ALBERT EINSTEIN | Dual Swiss and American citizenship Gave up his German citizenship after he emigrated to the US in 1932, just before Hitler took power. | THE PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT. | – THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY. – E=MC2. -Radioactivity can CAUSE THE nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another. NOBEL 1921 | Tom Conti |
| 1922 | 2. NEILS BOHR | Danish. | Understanding of ATOMIC STRUCTURE and QUANTUM THEORY. | NOBEL 1922 | Kenneth Branagh |
| 1932 | 3. WERNER HEISENBERG | German. | The Creation of QUANTUM MECHANICS. | – THE HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPAL. – Remained in Germany under Hitler. – Letters reveal that Germany was close to developing an atomic bomb before the end of the war. NOBEL 1932 | Matthias Schweighofer |
| 1938 | 4. ENRICO FERMI | IItalian. Became a Naturalized US citizen in 1944. | – INDUCED RADIOACTIVITY. – TRANSURANIUM ELEMENTS. -THE CHICAGO PILE. | – Present at the Trinity test on July 16, 1945. – Used his “Fermi Method” to estimate the bomb’s yield. NOBEL 1938 | Danny Deferrari |
| 1939 | 5. Ernest Lawrence | American. | Inventor of the CYCLOTRON. | Good friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer. NOBEL 1939 | Josh Hartnett |
| 1944 | 6. ISIDOR ISAAC RABI | – American – Born in Galicia in the then Austria-Hungarian Empire, he came to the United States as an infant. | NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE. | Magnetic Resonance Imaging. NOBEL 1944 | David Krumholtz |
| 1948 | 7. PARTICK BLACKETT | British | .- CLOUD CHAMBERS. – COSMIC RAYS. – PALEOMAGNETISM. | NOBEL 1948 | James D’Arcy |
| 1965 | 8. RICHARD FEYNMAN | American. | The path integral formulation of Quantum Mechanics/The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics/THE PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES. | The superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium. NOBEL 1965 | Jack Quaid |
| 1967 | 9. HANS BETHE | Naturalized US Citizen (German-American). | The theory of STELLAR NUCLEOSYNTHESIS. | NOBEL 1967 | Gustaf Skarsgard |
| 1968 | 10. LUIS ALVAREZ | American | Resonance states in particle physics using the HYDROGEN BUBBLE CHAMBER. | THE DEMISE OF THE NONAVIAN DINOSAURS. With his son, WALTER ALVAREZ, he discovered the K-T boundary, which divides the Cretaceous Period from the Tertiary. The K-T boundary is characterized by its extremely high levels of the metal Iridium. It is found in high quantities on asteroids and only in minuscule amounts on Earth. This led the Alvarezs to propose in 1980 that a giant asteroid hit the Earth around 66 million years ago, causing the extinction of all of the nonavian dinosaurs together with some 76% of all species who lived on Earth. Over ten years later, the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico was discovered to be the site of the asteroid’s impact. NOBEL 1969 | Alex Wolff |
OTHER LEGENDARY SCIENTISTS
| NAME | NATIONALITY | FAMOUS FOR | ADDITIONAL CAREER AND PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS | ACTOR WHO PLAYED HIM |
| 11. J. Robert Oppenheimer | American | Director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. Father of the atomiC bomb. | Lewis Strauss (ROBERT DOWNEY Jr.) informed him in December of 1953 that his security clearance had been suspended. Following the hearing in April-May 1954 and Edward Teller’s testimony, the board revoked Oppenheimer’s clearance by a 2-1 vote. | Cillian Murphy |
| 12. EDWARD TELLER | Hungarian. He became a naturalized US citizen | Created the code names for all three of the Manhattan Project’s designs: – Little Boy (uranium gun). – Thin Man (plutonium gun). – Fat Man (plutonium implosion). | Father of the Hydrogen bomb. Testified against Oppenheimer at the 1954 hearings, he concluded his remarks by saying (about Oppenheimer): I would like to express a feeling that I would feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands. | Benny Safdie |
| 13. FRANK OPPENHEIMER | American | – Uranium Enrichment. – Discovery of Heavy Cosmic Ray Nuclei. | – The Younger Brother of Robert Oppenheimer – He and his wife were members of the Communist Party from 1937-1940. – Victim of McCarthyism. – Unable to work or teach physics in the US from 1947 to 1956. – During these years, he was denied a visa and prohibited from working abroad. – Founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1969. | Dylan Arnold |
| 14. ROBERT SERBER | American | – Physicist and Mathematician. – “The Los Alamos Primer”. | He had a relationship with Kitty Oppenheimer after Robert’s death. | Michael Angarano |
| 15. VANNEVAR BUSH | American | – Physical Engineer. | – Headed the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during WWII. – Created the National Science Foundation (NSF) | Matthew Modine |
| 16. KENNETH BAINBRIDGE | American | – Cyclotron Research. – Confirmed Albert Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence concept (E=MC2). | After the Trinity explosion, he dedicated himself to ending the testing of nuclear weapons and maintaining civilian control of future developments in the field. | Josh Peck |
| 17. DONALD HORNING (married to Lilli Horning) | American | Explosives Expert. | President of Brown University from 1970 to 1976. | David Rhysdahl |
| 18. LILLI HORNING (married to Donald Horning) | – Czech-American. – Born in Czechoslovakia. – Naturalized US Citizen. | – Plutonium Chemistry – High explosive lenses | FEMINIST ACTIVIST Published: Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities in 2012 | Olivia Thirby |
| 19. SETH NEDDERMEYER | American | Champion of the implosion-type nuclear weapon. | Discovered the atomic particle called the muon. | Devon Bostick |
| 20. GIOVANNI ROSSI LOMANITZ | American | A protégé of Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley | His career suffered greatly because of his socialist sympathies. | Josh Zuckerman |
| 21. PHILIP MORRISON | American | – Quantum Physics – Nuclear Physics – Astrophysics – SETI | After the war became a champion of nuclear nonproliferation. | Harrison Gilbertson |
| 22. KURT GODEL | – Born in what was then the Austria-Hungarian Empire. – Naturalized American Citizen in 1947. | – Mathematician – Logician – Philosopher | – Good frind of Albert Einstein. – Considered to be one of the most significant logicians in history. | James Urbaniak |
| 23. DAVID HILL | American | Nuclear Physicist. Worked at the Met Lab and on the Manhattan Project. Helped create the Chicago Pile, the world’s first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, which was initiated by an experiment lead by Enrico Fermi. | Head of the Federation of Scientists Testified against Lewis Strauss as the United States Secretary Of Commerce in 1959. | Rami Malik |
THE SPY: KLAUS FUCHS
| NAME | NATIONALITY | GREATEST SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT | PERSONAL LIFE | ACTOR |
| 24. KLAUS FUCHS | – German-born British physicist. – Became a British citizen in 1942 – Stripped of his British citizenship after being convicted of espionage in 1951. – Became an East German Citizen after moving there in 1959. | An expert on IMPLOSION-TYPE NUCLEAR WEAPONS | – A spy for the Soviet Union beginning in 1942 in England. – A spy for the Soviet Union while he was working on the Manhattan Project. – He did immense damage and was almost solely responsible for the Soviets being able to explode their own atomic bomb in 1949. – Convicted of espionage in Britain, he served nine years in prison before immigrating to East Germany. – His testimony led to the arrest of David Greenglas and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. – He resumed his career in physics in East Germany. – He died in 1988, just a year before the Berlin Wall fell. | Christopher Denham |
