A Nambi Narayanan is to India what J. Robert Oppenheimer is to the United States of America, except a 1000 times bigger. Oppenheimer, a top American government scientist led the making of the country's first atomic bomb during World War II, but fell under suspicion of being a Soviet spy, bringing his illustrious career to a humiliating end.

Still from Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Trailer

On December 16 2022, 68 years since the judgement was passed [The documents of those 19 days of secret hearings were made accessible to the public only in 2014], 55 years since Oppenheimer's death, and 7 months since Christopher Nolan completed filming Oppenheimer - the movie, the US declared him 'not a spy' and lifted the black mark off the famed physicist.

Still from Oppenheimer Trailer

The reason Oppenheimer came under the suspicion of being a Russian spy with communist sympathies was because of his resistance to early work on the hydrogen bomb, which could explode with 1,000 times the force of an atomic bomb. His eccentric personality of a troubled man whose flaws were ignored in favour of his brilliance, seemed to have added fuel to the fire. In 1954, he ended up loosing security clearance to nuclear codes, despite being the architect of the bomb, and hence couldn't further his work.

“As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed,” - Jennifer Granholm, US Energy Secretary on December 16, 2022

J Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb

A 2005 book titled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and the now late Martin J. Sherwin, explores the conflict and politics surrounding the creation of the nuclear bomb, and the complicated man at the center of it all. This book won a Pulitzer prize in 2006 and has been adapted into a film by Nolan, which releases on July 21, 2023. 

Cillian Murphy as the titular character from Oppenheimer Trailer

3 days after Robert J Oppenheimer's name was cleared by the US Secretary of Energy, the trailer of Nolan's Oppenheimer has released. It gives a glimpse of lead actor Cillian Murphy as the titular character and Josh Peck as one of the men in the 1940s at Los Alamos, New Mexico, who in great secrecy, carried the scientific effort that devised the atomic-nuclear bomb. 

Josh Peck in Oppenheimer Trailer

Interesting Trivia: In 1933, much before his Los Alamos stint that made him an American science hero, Oppenheimer, fascinated with the Hindu religion, learned Sanskrit and eventually read the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads in its original transcript. He later cited the Hindu religious book as one of the many, that most shaped his philosophy of life.