Portal:Nuclear technology/Biographies/13
J. Robert Oppenheimer (/ˈɒpənˌhaɪmər/; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. Oppenheimer served as the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, and is often credited as the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the research and development undertaking that created the world's first-ever nuclear weapons.
Oppenheimer attended Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1925, and went on to study physics at the University of Cambridge and University of Göttingen, where he received his PhD in 1927. After completing his education, he held academic positions at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and made significant contributions to theoretical physics, including in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. During World War II, he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and in 1943 was appointed as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, tasked with developing the weapons. Oppenheimer's leadership and scientific expertise were instrumental in the success of the project. He was among those who observed the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, in which the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated. He later remarked that the explosion brought to his mind words from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In August 1945, the atomic bombs were used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which to date remains the only use of nuclear weapons in war. (Full article...)