J. Robert Oppenheimer
Physicist, director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory
Born 1904 · Died 1967
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
«Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.»
J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos Laboratory that built the first atomic bomb, tested in July 1945, and became known as the father of the bomb. After the war he directed the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, lost his security clearance in 1954 for opposing the hydrogen bomb, and became the subject of Christopher Nolan's 2023 film, which won seven Oscars.
Key achievements
- Scientific director of the Manhattan Project, 1942–1945
- Built America's leading school of theoretical physics at Berkeley
Universities
Cambridge, Massachusetts
AB in chemistry, summa cum laude, 1925, completed in three years.
Cambridge, England
Christ's College and the Cavendish Laboratory, 1925–26; disliked experimental work and left for Göttingen without a degree.
Berkeley, California
Professor of physics, 1929–42; built the first major American school of theoretical physics.
- California Institute of TechnologyProfessor
Pasadena, California
Held a concurrent appointment, 1929–42, teaching one term a year.
Facts
- Illness delayed his entry to Harvard by a year; he made up for it by taking six courses a term instead of four and graduated summa cum laude in chemistry after three years.
- At Cambridge he was so clumsy in the laboratory that he turned to theory; according to friends he once left a poisoned apple on his tutor's desk and was put on probation.
- He completed his PhD at Göttingen under Max Born in 1927, aged 23, and by 1929 was building the first American school of theoretical physics at Berkeley.
- Watching the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, he later said, he recalled a line from the Bhagavad Gita: now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.