Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and University of California, Berkeley professor of physics. 1)
He is regarded as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” for his contributions to the Manhattan Project. When the first atomic bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer subsequently observed, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.2)
Oppenheimer was the oldest son of a rich Jewish textile importer and was born in New York City.3)
His father, Julius Oppenheimer, was a member of the Ethical Culture Society, and Robert received his education at the Ethical Cultural School in New York, where he studied Greek, Latin, French, and German and developed a talent for foreign languages.4)
He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude in 1925 with a degree in chemistry and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.5)
He spent one year at Cambridge University studying theoretical physics before moving on to the University of Gottingen in 1926.6)
While in Gottingen, Oppenheimer made connections with several famous scientists, including Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and Maria Goeppert.7)
He obtained his PhD in March 1927.8)
Max Born co-authored his most renowned article, which explained the separation of nuclear motion from electric motion in the mathematical study of molecules.9)
The Born-Oppenheimer approximation is the name given to this computation above.10)
He was given a National Research Council scholarship to the California Institute of Technology in September 1927.11)
He obtained a position as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1929.12)
Oppenheimer made significant contributions to a variety of domains of physics.13)
Carl David Anderson earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936 for discovering the positron, which Oppenheimer predicted existed in 1930.14)
He co-wrote a paper on the “Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect” in 1931, which disputed the concept that two of hydrogen's energy levels are the same.15)
He and his pupil Hartland Snyder anticipated the existence of black holes in 1939.16)
The Manhattan Project was launched in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Oppenheimer was named director in 1942.17)
He established a research site at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the first atomic bomb test happened on July 16, 1945, followed by the dropping of two bombs on Japan in August.18)
Following the war, he served as the top advisor to the United States Atomic Energy Commission.19)
He became a vocal opponent of nuclear proliferation and the Cold War arms competition.20)
Because of his resistance to the creation of the hydrogen bomb, he lost his security clearance in 1954, thus excluding him from future nuclear research.21)
Oppenheimer donated 3% of his income (about $100 per year) for two years to help German physicists fleeing Nazi Germany.22)
J. Robert Oppenheimer made history when he became the youngest individual ever accepted to the distinguished New York Mineralogical Society at the age of 15. His extraordinary intelligence and love for teaching and theoretical physics set him apart from his colleagues, and his acceptance to the Society was a testimonial to his skills. 23)
After witnessing the impact on his pupils during the Great Depression in the 1930s, Oppenheimer became interested in left-wing politics. He grew particularly interested in Communism. While he never formally joined the Communist Party, his lover was a member, and his wife, Katherine Puening, was a former member who had previously been married to a communist who died fighting for Spain's left-wing government during the Spanish Civil War.24)
Unfortunately for Oppenheimer, Communism was not something positive to be “previously associated” with in America after WWII. He began to distance himself from the party in the late 1930s, probably for two reasons. One was that communist Joseph Stalin had harmed the principles severely. Second, Oppenheimer was most likely attempting to improve his credentials in order to be authorized for a position working on the Atomic Bomb. 25)
Oppenheimer valued education and believed in reading literature in their original language, which he did frequently. While on a train from San Francisco to the East Coast, he read all four volumes of Karl Marx's Das Kapital in the original German. He read Proust in French on another similar train excursion, “which he later said was one of the great experiences of his life”.26)
He learnt Sanskrit at the age of 30 in order to read the Hindu text Bhagavad-Gita. It was from this scripture that he said the now-famous phrase after witnessing the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb: “Now, I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.27)
During a tour to the Netherlands, he spent six weeks learning enough Dutch to deliver a lecture there, and then studied Latin and Greek at Harvard University. 28)
Oppenheimer fled to the Institute of Advanced Study, where he was the active director, after being expelled from government duty. President John F. Kennedy invited Oppenheimer to a banquet for Nobel laureates in 1961, when he showed his respect for Oppenheimer's work. Lyndon B. Johnson presented Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1963 for his “many contributions to theoretical physics and the advancement of science in our nation.” Oppenheimer was later nominated for the honor by Kennedy, but he was slain before the medal was formally presented to him. 29)
Unfortunately, Oppenheimer's most famous work does not qualify for Nobel Prize consideration since the committee does not accept military technology. Most of Oppenheimer's accomplishments, particularly his prediction of black holes, could have earned him a Nobel Prize if he had lived long enough to see the discoveries he pioneered come to fruition. Others believe Oppenheimer should not have received the medal since he never specialized in a single field of physics. 30)