scientists who advised the director of the Oscar-winning film

The team of the film “Oppenheimer”

KEVIN WINTER / GETTY IMAGES

The tape “Oppenheimer”, which talks about the creation of an atomic bomb in the United States, received awards in seven “Oscar” nominations, including the best film of the year.

The film was praised for its accurate depiction of the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and its analysis of the Manhattan Project, the research program that developed the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the 1940s. writes Nature.

For a more reliable reflection of those historical events, director Christopher Nolan turned to several scientific consultants.

He was one of them Robert Dijkgraaf – a theoretical physicist who from 2012 to 2022 was the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (New Jersey). J. Robert Oppenheimer worked in the same position at one time (from 1947 to 1966).

“In 2021, Nolan wanted to come and visit the place where Oppenheimer lived and worked for almost 20 years. I also lived in that house and worked for 10 years in the same office that Oppenheimer once used.

We had a long discussion about Oppenheimer and also about physics, which I loved. I was impressed that Nolan was really very interested in what it means to be a physicist.” – he said.

According to Dijkgraaf, Nolan visited Princeton twice to inspect the facility.

“I remember we were walking from home to the institute. It’s a beautiful walk, surrounded by beautiful trees. I told him that it was a perfect route and that Einstein and Kurt Gödel (Austrian physicist – ed.) always walked this way.

In the film, when Lewis Strauss meets Oppenheimer, he points to the house and says “this is the perfect route.” I thought, “This is a very familiar scene!” – says the scientist.

David Salzberg – a physicist from the University of California in Los Angeles, who worked as a scientific consultant for the productions of “Oppenheimer” and “The Big Bang Theory”.

“I was called in to help with the production of the scenes that were shot in Los Angeles. I worked mostly with the props. This included, in particular, the authenticity of the content written on the blackboard or the equations that Oppenheimer gave to Einstein to ask if the atmosphere would catch fire.” – recalls the physicist.

He emphasizes the authenticity with which Christopher Nolan tried to depict scientific processes in the film.

“There’s a scene where Oppenheimer is writing on the board explaining that nuclear fission is impossible, and at that point Lawrence walks in and says, ‘Well, Alvarez just did it next door.’

For this scene, I wrote on the board some equations that Oppenheimer may have actually used to prove that division is impossible. Most viewers wouldn’t have paid attention to it, but it made me feel good.” – notes the scientist.

Robert Dijkgraaf agrees that the scientific component of the film was conscientiously worked out: “It was very well done. The physics discussions were very good, the equations on the board were correct.”

Kip Thorne – a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is a close friend of Nolan and has also worked with him on a number of previous projects, including Interstellar.

“I spoke to Cillian Murphy about his role as Oppenheimer in the film. I knew Oppenheimer when I was a graduate student at Princeton (1962 to 1965) and a postdoctoral fellow (1965 to 1966), so we had a discussion about Oppenheimer as a person.” – says the scientist.

He is glad that this science-based film has received this level of attention and received recognition at the Oscars.

“This is a film that has an extremely important message for the era in which we live. Hopefully, it raises awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons and raises the issue of arms control.” says Kip Thorne.

“The biggest surprise for me was that this difficult film about a difficult subject and a difficult person, shot in a unique way, became a hit all over the world. It is very encouraging. The hidden life of physicists has become part of popular culture, and rightly so.” – summarizes Dijkgraaf.