1904-1967

American Physicist

J. Robert Oppenheimer led the team that developed the first atomic bomb. Between 1943 and 1945, he directed the laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the bomb was designed and built.

Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904, the indulged first child of a prosperous family. At Harvard, he majored in chemistry, but an advanced course on thermodynamics attracted him to physics. He began his postgraduate work in atomic physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in England. Graduate students at Cavendish were assigned much of the work involved in setting up experiments. Although Oppenheimer excelled at theoretical analysis, he was almost entirely helpless when it came to handling mechanical equipment. Being a perfectionist, these difficulties bothered him a great deal. He was therefore delighted to accept a 1926 offer from Max Born (1882-1970) to join the Institute for Theoretical...