1282 VEDANTA

J. Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project, also was a professed Vedantist. In reference to the Trinity test in New Mexico, where his Los Alamos team tested the first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer famously recalled the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”