This St. Patrick’s Day, take a look at “lucky” Lab artifacts from the Manhattan Project

Technical Report · Wed Mar 08 04:00:00 EST 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1961359· OSTI ID:1961359

Steeves, Brye Ann ^[1]; Mitchell, Renae L. ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

What luck! Tucked inside J. Robert Oppenheimer’s book Bhagavad-Gita is a four-leaf clover. The famed physicist and first Lab director regularly quoted the Hindu scripture, most notably upon witnessing the Trinity test, which was the successful detonation of the first-ever Los Alamos created atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was said to have recalled the line, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” (The quote, though, has been widely misinterpreted.) The clover is taped to what appears to be a calling card from his spouse Kitty and was found inside his copy of the Bhagavad Gita, which was donated to the Lab’s Bradbury Science Museum by private donors Ben and Sara Beck Svetitsky in early 2020. Kitty Oppenheimer was educated as a botanist and biologist, and accompanied her husband to Los Alamos, along with their two children. The family was here in 1943 through the end of World War II in 1945. The book, with the card found inside, makes up one of two of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s personal effects within the Lab’s collections.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001
• OSTI ID: 1961359
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-23-22464
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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