Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer became known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” Known to his friends as Oppie, he was a professor and one of the United States' top physicists during the early years of World War II, when the atomic bomb was still just a concept. He was selected by a military commander named Leslie Groves to head up the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the government's efforts to build the bomb. At a casual glance, he seemed somewhat scattered but always knew what was going on in each department of the lab.

Oppenheimer was worried when the first atomic bomb was tested, fearing that any one of many things might have gone wrong. He tried to delay the test by a few days, giving his team more time to go back over calculations, and was relieved when the bomb detonated as planned. He...