Doctor Atomic of July 16, 1945 (the day of the test). During the second act, time frequently slows down for the characters and then snaps back into reality. The opera ends in the final, prolonged moment before the bomb is detonated. Although the original commission for the opera suggested that U.S. physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," be fashioned as a 20th-century Doctor Faustus, Adams and Sellars deliberately attempted to avoid this characterization. Alice Goodman worked for two years with Adams on the project before leaving, objecting to the characterization of Edward Teller, as dictated by the original
Hans Kronberger (physicist) Hans Kronberger (physicist) Hans Kronberger CBE, FRS (28 July 1920 – 29 September 1970) was a British physicist. During his career with the UK Atomic Energy Authority he made important contributions to the development of the British thermonuclear bomb and nuclear power engineering, especially in the field of isotope separation. Hans Kronberger was born of Jewish parents in Linz, Austria, where his father was a leather merchant. Kronberger attended the Akademische Gymnasium in Linz, matriculating in Mathematics, Latin, Greek and German; he was a brilliant scholar. After the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, Kronberger fled