Next date: Monday, August 17, 2026 | 07:00 PM
Jewish physicists were pivotal in creating the atomic bomb. This talk will survey their motivations, from a fear that Nazi Germany would build the bomb first, to the belief that, as Robert Oppenheimer put it, "it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values," to the hope to expedite Japanese surrender, to the utopian dream that the bomb would bring about world peace. Part of a series through the national nonprofit Sinai and Synapses, fiscally sponsored by Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
Part of a series through the national nonprofit Sinai and Synapses, fiscally sponsored by Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Upcoming talks: the Nazi nuclear program during WWII and the Allied mission to capture Nazi science; the "Doomsday Clock," the symbolic indicator of existential threats maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Los Alamos Jewish Center, 2400 Canyon Road, Los Alamos, NM, 87544, View Map
2400 Canyon Road , Los Alamos, NM 87544
Free