Oppenheimer, J. Robert (1904–1967)

Scientist, professor, and director of the Manhattan Project, which developed America's first atomic bomb. Born into a wealthy Jewish American family in New York City on April 22, 1904, Robert Oppenheimer was to become known as the father of the A-bomb.

From an early age, Oppenheimer distinguished himself as a brilliant thinker and intellectual. After graduating from Harvard College in 1925, Oppenheimer continued his studies at Cambridge University in England and at Gottigen University in Germany, where he earned his Ph.D. Following his academic pursuits, Oppenheimer returned to the United States in 1929 to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, and at California Institute of Technology.

Despite early successes as a professor and scholar in quantum theory, Oppenheimer is best known for his work on the U.S. atomic bomb project. Following the creation in 1941 of the Manhattan Project—the atomic-bomb program—Oppenheimer was initially brought in to calculate the amount of uranium needed to sustain a chain reaction for an atomic bomb. Soon after, however, Oppenheimer was named the director for the Manhattan Project. The project accelerated under his guidance as he assembled the top theoretical scientists in the country to discuss the atomic program.

Although Oppenheimer is considered the father of the atomic bomb, his reaction to its testing and subsequent [Page 558]use on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is well documented. As a result of these bombings, Oppenheimer became an activist for international controls on atomic energy and was opposed to the development of a potentially more powerful weapon, the hydrogen bomb.

At the end of his life and career, Oppenheimer was subjected to increased scrutiny as a former communist sympathizer. During the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, awareness of his attraction to leftist politics early in his life led to the loss of his security clearance and thus a limitation on the work he could do in the atomic-energy field. He continued to teach and write at Princeton University until his death from throat cancer in 1967.