#Oppenheimer
JAMES A. HIJIYA, "The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer", June 2000:
"...Oppenheimer acquired a deeper knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita in 1933 when, as a young professor of physics with interests ranging far beyond his academic specialty, he studied Sanskrit with Professor Arthur W. Ryder at Berkeley. The Gita, Oppenheimer excitedly wrote to his brother, was “very easy and quite marvelous.” This is the earliest direct evidence of the impression the book made on Oppenheimer, and a lasting impression it was. Later he called the Gita “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” He kept a well-worn copy of it conveniently on hand on the bookshelf closest to his desk and often gave the book (in translation) to friends as a present. He continued to browse in it while directing the bomb laboratory. After President Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Oppenheimer spoke at a memorial service at Los Alamos and quoted a passage from the Gita. Clearly this ancient book was on his mind as the atomic bomb neared completion, even before he saw the dazzling fireball from the Trinity test. In later years, too, he would look back on the Gita as one of the most important influences in his life. In 1963, Christian Century magazine asked him to list the ten books that “did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life.” Along with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Eliot’s Waste Land, Oppenheimer listed the Gita...."
What did he quote at FDR's funeral service on April 15, 1945:
सत्त्वानुरूपा सर्वस्य श्रद्धा भवति भारत |
श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो यो यच्छ्रद्ध: स एव स: || (अध्याय १७, श्लोक ३)
विनोबा भावे त्याचे रूपांतर गीताई मध्ये असे करतात:
"जसा स्वभाव तो ज्याचा श्रद्धा त्याची तशी असे
श्रद्धेचा घडिला जीव जशी श्रद्धा तसा चि तो "
"The faith of all humans conforms to the nature of their mind. All people possess faith, and whatever the nature of their faith, that is verily what they are."
