J. Robert Oppenheimer | Biography

Oppenheimer was born into a wealthy family in New York City on April 22, 1904. He attended Harvard, Cambridge, and Göttingen universities. He worked under Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge and received his doctorate in physics in 1927 after working with Max Born at Göttingen. In 1929, he accepted concurrent appointments to teach physics at the University of California at Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technology.

Oppenheimer rapidly made a reputation as a brilliant theoretician as well as an effective and popular teacher. During the 1930s, he produced a series of important papers dealing with such topics as the particle theories of Werner Heisenberg and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, the mistaken concept of nuclear electrons, neutron capture by nuclei, the nature of cosmic radiation, and meson production.

It is for his role in the Manhattan Project, however, that Oppenheimer is perhaps best known. A 1939 letter signed by Albert Einstein had convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the possibility of and need for a new kind of weapon based on nuclear fission. Roosevelt authorized a mammoth research project--called the Manhattan Engineering District, or Manhattan Project --to build such a weapon.

In 1941, Oppenheimer became involved in the project. A year later, he was placed in charge of bomb production and, by 1943, he had selected a site for that work and become director of the Los Alamos laboratory. Some authorities have suggested that Oppenheimer may have been the only person who was capable of assembling and coordinating the work of the 4,500 scientists brought to work on the bomb project at Los Alamos.

In any case, the project was brought to a successful conclusion on June 16, 1945, when the first nuclear bomb was tested at Los Alamos. Oppenheimer's now-famous response to the test was a quotation from the Indian classic, Bhagavad Gita, "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." Nonetheless, he overruled suggestions by some scientists that a public demonstration of the bomb be given before using it on the enemy and recommended that it be dropped on Japan.

After the war, Oppenheimer was appointed director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey. He also remained active in government by serving as chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1953, a special government commission removed Oppenheimer's special security clearance. He had been under investigation since 1941 because of questions about his loyalty to the United States government. No proof of disloyalty was ever found in the long investigation, but accusations by his enemies were eventually sufficient to bring about the commission's action.

The Oppenheimer tragedy has been replayed over and over in articles, books, plays, and films, with as much doubt and confusion remaining now as had ever been the case. It is somewhat ironic that Oppenheimer's brilliant scientific and administrative accomplishments may forever be overshadowed by this bitter personal and political controversy.

Oppenheimer died in Princeton on February 18, 1967.