evidence: As the movie Oppenheimer is released, Ben Platts-Mills explores the true story of the enigmatic Manhattan Project scientist, and the atomic bomb that made him a "destroyer of worlds". [...] Oppenheimer was a picture of nervous exhaustion. He was always slender, but after three years as director of "Project Y", the scientific arm of the "Manhattan Engineer District" that had designed and built the bomb, his weight had dropped to just over 52kg (115lbs). At 5ft 10in (178cm), this made him extremely thin. He'd slept only four hours that night, kept awake by anxiety and his smoker's cough. [...] The movie Oppenheimer, released 21 July in the US, is based on the Pulitzer prize-winning book American Prometheus. Oppenheimer is played by Cillian Murphy. Several other real people are portrayed, such as Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), the general who recruited Oppenheimer, as well as figures from his personal life, including Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a psychiatrist who he dated in the 1930s, and his wife Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt). Read BBC Culture's review of Oppenheimer and why it is a deserving masterpiece.