Why was Oppenheimer called the ‘American Prometheus?’ The epic history, explained

Oppenheimer has officially crossed the $200 million mark at the box office after opening in theaters on Barbenheimer Friday. Since its early previews, Christopher Nolan’s epic thriller has earned comparisons to some of the greatest biographical films of all time, including The Social Network, Darkest Hour, and more. The film follows the life of, and the historic events that shaped physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer from the beginning of his career, through the Trinity Test, and beyond.

“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour cinematic masterpiece opens with these powerful lines summarizing the life of a Greek god. For the unversed, Oppenheimer‘s screenplay is based on the 2005 biography titled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

But why was a modern theoretical physicist compared to an ancient Greek mythological god?

The parallels between Oppenheimer and Prometheus

Greek mythology tells of Prometheus stealing fire from the Olympian gods in order to empower humanity to bring advancement to their civilization. But when Zeus learned of Prometheus’ theft, he ordered Hephaestus, the god of fire, to chain his body to a rock on Mount Caucasus, and sent an eagle to eat his liver, thought to be the seat of human emotions. Each night, Prometheus’ liver would then grow back, only to be eaten again the next day in an unending cycle.

Thus, the Olympian monarch condemned Prometheus to endless pain for a deed initially intended as benevolent. In the Western tradition, Prometheus has stood accordingly for the tragedy that frequently follows from humankind’s never-ending search for knowledge. Because Prometheus’ deed is no simple favor; fire symbolizes science, technology, society, the arts, and civilization itself, and with it, humanity can build communities and develop infrastructure — but we can also use fire to destroy one another. Prometheus, unable to foresee the destructive impact of his choices, was nonetheless permanently burdened by said actions.

Nolan evokes Prometheus’ tragic fate as a metaphor for J. Robert Oppenheimer’s lifelong struggle with his decision to lead the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer’s gift to humanity, like that of Prometheus, was simultaneously a miracle, and blazing destruction, a force unlike anything that civilization had before devised. And like Prometheus, sometimes referred to as the “father of humanity,” Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, didn’t initially grasp the full scope of how his invention would reshape the world going forward.

Not that he wasn’t warned. The Danish scientist Niels Bohr, who had been Oppenheimer’s mentor, traveled to the U.S. while the Manhattan Project was underway, and advised Oppenheimer that he was going to turn into the American Prometheus. The irony was that the people were going to love him for it because they didn’t realize what he had actually accomplished by creating that bomb.

Comparisons between Oppenheimer and Prometheus in Literature

Comparisons of the Manhattan Project physicists to Prometheus aren’t a recent phenomenon; the first came in the September 1945 issue of Scientific Monthly, as Oppenheimer tested atomic bombs in the New Mexico desert to help the U.S. defeat the Nazis: “Modern Prometheans have raided Mount Olympus again and have brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus,” the publication wrote.

Written 60 years after the issue, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 in the category of Biography. The book was written over a period of 25 years by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, who introduce Oppenheimer with the following lines:

“He is America’s Prometheus…an immensely human figure, as talented as he was complex, at once brilliant and naive, a passionate advocate for social justice and a tireless government adviser whose commitment to harnessing a runaway nuclear race earned him powerful bureaucratic enemies.”

According to an interview published in The New York Times, “Oppie” was the original working title for Bird and Sherwin’s book, but when their editor Ann Close objected, Bird’s wife, Susan Goldmark, suggested the iconic title, citing the stark similarity between Prometheus’ fire and Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb:

“Prometheus … fire … the bomb is this fire. And you could put ‘American’ there.’ ”

The book’s title forever unites Oppenheimer with mythic tragedy and unintended annihilation.

At the beginning of his public life, Oppenheimer was a symbol of hope for the future; it wasn’t until later that he grappled with the ethical dilemmas surrounding the development and use of the atomic bomb. The human cost of fire, as well as a large bird consuming his insides, tormented Prometheus — whereas Oppenheimer’s torment buried its talons more discreetly, in his psyche.

The Greek hero and the American scientist are both god-like figures who gave rise to new eras of knowledge and power — and new moral conundrums brought on by their contributions, which caused them to endure endless suffering. Oppenheimer and Prometheus are both considered heroes for having had a significant influence on human advancement, but the two also paved the way for the world to doom itself.