“Oppenheimer” is best film at the 2024 Oscars: here are the other statuettes won by science

Oppenheimer Of Christopher Nolan triumphed at the ceremony Oscar 2024, the 96th Academy Awards. In addition to establishing itself as best film – perhaps the most prestigious award – also grabbed 6 other statuettes. A triumph of direction and special effects, but also of science, which reigns supreme in this film with its “destroying” charm. But Oppenheimer it’s not the only film about science to have won the Oscar for best film. Let’s find out scientific themed works That won the most important title of this festival, those who didn’t win but were candidates and some films that, even without having won, remain in the history of cinematographic science.

Scientific films awarded Best Film

Even before its release, Oppenheimer had already achieved great success among cinema enthusiasts. After all, the expectations on the director Christopher Nolan they have always been tall. In your films, in fact, you have always danced between science fiction and filmmakingwith films like Inception or Interstellar.

With this film Nolan tells us about the life of the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who during the Second World War directed the Manhattan Project, with which the United States created the first atomic bomb, which changed the fate of contemporary history.

Also in 2023 the statuette for best film went to a film that tells us a lot about science, even if it travels with the imagination. This is a science fiction film Everything everywhere all at oncewhich revolves around the imaginary possibility of being able to move between multiple parallel universes, who coexist and who – in the film – manage to come into contact with each other. It’s true, in this case it’s not real science, but the multiverse is a truly existing scientific theory with legitimate motivations.

But coming back to reality, another film based on true events to have won the most coveted Oscar award was A Beautiful Mind in 2002. It is the story of the mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr.which revolutionized the game theory, a branch of mathematics that studies the decision-making models of individuals who want to obtain the maximum possible profit when faced with a problem known to all. Nash’s theories led him to win the Nobel prize for the Economyand this film traces his incredible story.

Scientific films awarded Best Original Screenplay

In 2014 the film Her won the Oscar for best original screenplay. It is a dystopian film about the consequences ofartificial intelligence. In fact, in the film the protagonist falls in love with an AI named Samantha, who also seems to have feelings feelings for him. This is an extreme version of a current theme, that ofemotionality of intelligent machineswho, basing their behaviors on “human” data that we provide them, try to reproduce our behaviors, including emotions.

Other scientific films that have “touched” the statuette

However, there are quite a few films with a scientific plot that have achieved success at an international level, to the point of deserving the Oscar nomination as best film.
Let’s see some of them.

Poor Creatures (2024)

Again it is a film science fiction, but which is based on a widely debated topic: the brain transplant, or rather head transplant. There is no need to be afraid, the brain transplant it has never been done and the scientific community is quite unanimous in maintaining that it is not possible, even if there are some professionals who claim it is possible to obtain it.

Don’t look up (2022)

This film dystopian, brings to light a very important and debated topic: our society’s reticence to address environmental issues that could lead to end of our world. The film talks about two scientists who try to warn humanity that a meteorite is about to hit the earthcausing their destruction, but are ignored by society that does not want to give credit to science. Of course, it is a topic very distant from us, but if we think about the possible consequences of climate changethe film can speak to us more than we might think.

The right to count (2017)

The film is based on one true storythat of the African-American physical-mathematical scientist Katherine Johnsonwho collaborated with NASA and made a fundamental contribution to the calculation of orbit trajectories of important aerospace projects, such as the moon landingApollo 11. Johnson not only had to cope with discriminations as woman in science, but also in character racialas an African American woman in a still highly racialized world like that of the United States of the 1960s.

The Martian (2016)

Here too we are talking about space missions, but in this case the protagonist of the film is an astronaut abandoned on Mars because he was mistakenly believed to be dead. In the film a fundamental turning point comes thanks to the maneuver of gravitational slingshota mechanism that uses the gravity of planets to accelerate space probes.

The theory of everything (2015)

It is the true story of one of the most brilliant minds in the scientific world, Stephen Hawkingwho during his life – also complicated by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – made fundamental contributions to cosmology, studying the characteristics of black holes but above all looking for one “theory of everything”that is, a theory that could connect general relativity and quantum mechanics.

The imitation game (2015)

Another film based on a true and revolutionary story for the world of mathematics. This movie talks about Alan Turingmathematician, logician and cryptographer who, together with some colleagues, managed to invent “The Bomb”a machine capable of decrypt encrypted messages of the Nazis. The Turing machine was not only important during the war, but it threw the computational foundations for computers that we know today.

Some recommendations for science films

However, apart from the Oscars, there are many films about science. We propose some of them, which have been acclaimed by critics and the scientific community:

• The man who saw infinity (2015). It’s the true story of Srinivasa RamanujanIndian mathematician gifted with an innate genius, capable of dreaming of very complicated results of the world of mathematics. It is perhaps the mathematical figure closest to that of an artist, who based his results on creativity and intuitionssometimes leaving theory aside.
• Interstellar (2014). From the same ingenuity and direction as Oppenheimer, Interstellar is a complicated work of physics of relativitywhich seeks to give an outlet to the theory of space timeassuming that the fourth dimension (time) can be found inside black holes and that it can actually be traveled like the three spatial dimensionsso it becomes possible time travel, just as it is possible to travel in space. In short, the theory of relativity reigns supreme in this film, showing for example how the time passes at different speeds in the different gravitational systems of reference.

• Edison – The man who lit up the world (2017). Here too it is a true story, that of Thomas Edison and the invention of electric light bulb. The film is about the so-called war of currents between Edison and George Westinghouse, who clashed over direct and alternating current.