User:Athena1611/Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr and his representation in the movie Oppenheimer
In the movie Oppenheimer (film), we only see Niels Bohr twice, and his representation is not really accurate compared to what happened in real life.

The first time is at the very beginning of the movie, when he is doing a lecture at Cambridge. In the movie, J. Robert Oppenheimer tried to poison his teacher with an apple, and Niels Bohr almost bite it. However, it was here just for a dramatic effect, because, even if he tried to poison Blackett in real life, Niels Bohr was not present at that moment. In this scene, J. Robert Oppenheimer is meeting Niels Bohr for the first time. This was a major event in his life, but he was actually introduced by Ernest Rutherford and not by Blackett some time later. Christopher Nolan probably regrouped these two events to avoid introducing another character, Rutherford, who would have been present in the movie just once.

However, Niels Bohr was doing some lectures at that time, such as he is portrayed in the movie. In fact, he admitted that he was not a good lecturer, because he needed a balance between clarity and truth, between “Klarheit und Wahrheit”, and that is why he sometimes was not clear.

His second appearance is when he arrives in Los Alamos after he fled Denmark. In this scene, he discusses with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who thinks that he will help them, but Bohr answers that he is not here to do the job, and that it is to Oppenheimer to complete the project. He stayed for a couple of months in Los Alamos and advised the scientists, especially Oppenheimer, on how they could build the bomb. In fact, Oppenheimer described Bohr as the “scientific father confessor to the younger men”. Also, Niels Bohr made a significant technical contribution to the Manhattan project, suggesting the use of polonium for the initiator that triggered the bomb.