J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904. He entered Harvard in 1922 intending to become a chemist, but soon switched to physics. He graduated summa cum laude in 1925 and went to England to conduct research at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. Max Born invited him to Göttingen University, where he met other prominent physicists, such as Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac, and where, in 1927, he received his doctorate.

Upon his return to the United States in 1929, he became a professor of physics at both the University of California at Berkeley and California Institute of Technology. In the ensuing 13 years, he'commuted' between the two universities. Many of his associates and students commuted with him. Oppenheimer's early research was devoted in particular to energy processes of subatomic particles and quantum theory.

In June 1942, Oppenheimer was appointed the technical Director of the Manhattan Project. Under his guidance, the laboratories at Los Alamos were constructed. There he brought the best minds in physics to work on the problem of creating an atomic bomb. In the end he was managing more than three thousand people, as well as tackling theoretical and mechanical problems that arose. He is often referred to as the "father" of the atomic bomb.

He was appointed Chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), serving from 1947 to 1952. It was in this role that he voiced strong opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies, and his security clearance was taken away. The scientific community, with few exceptions, was deeply shocked by the decision of the AEC. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to redress these injustices by honoring Oppenheimer with the Atomic Energy Commission's prestigious Enrico Fermi Award.

From 1947 to 1966, he also served as the Director of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. There he stimulated discussion and research in quantum and relativistic physics. Oppenheimer retired from Princeton in 1966 and died of throat cancer on February 18, 1967.