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In 1942, Oppenheimer was appointed as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. Army initiative aimed at constructing the atomic bomb. He mobilized an extraordinary team of over 3,000 scientists and chose Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the project’s headquarters, enamored by the region's natural beauty and isolation.
With a staggering budget of $2 billion by 1945, the Manhattan Project culminated in the first successful detonation of a plutonium bomb on July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Following this groundbreaking achievement, Oppenheimer grappled with the catastrophic potential of what had been unleashed upon the world.