We just saw the movie Oppenheimer, which tells the story about the celebrated physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was recruited by the US government to build the first atomic bomb. Oppenheimer’s views about the bomb follow an arc, from a fervent feeling that his bomb would stop the Nazis from building one first, to the belief that the atom bomb’s existence would end war forever, and finally to his rancor with the government over plans to build a the far more destructive hydrogen bomb. The question is: should physicists make moral decisions about their scientific exploration, or should the rest of us bear the responsibility of acting morally with what they discover?
Should physicists be moral?
