J. Robert Oppenheimer — Farewell Speech to Los Alamos (1945)

Three months after the war, Oppenheimer spoke to his fellow scientists about what they had made and what they owed the world.

On November 2, 1945, Oppenheimer addressed the Association of Los Alamos Scientists shortly before leaving the laboratory he had led. He argued that atomic weapons had changed the world so completely that nations would have to learn to cooperate in new ways.

It is one of the clearest statements of the moral questions that followed Oppenheimer for the rest of his life.

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