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Julius Robert Oppenheimer
Who Was He?
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and University of California, Berkeley professor of physics. 1)
Father Of Atomic Bomb
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)
Birth
Oppenheimer was the oldest son of a rich Jewish textile importer and was born in New York City.3)
Father
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)
Harvard Degree
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)
Studies
He spent one year at Cambridge University studying theoretical physics before moving on to the University of Gottingen in 1926.6)
Friends
While in Gottingen, Oppenheimer made connections with several famous scientists, including Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and Maria Goeppert.7)
PhD
He obtained his PhD in March 1927.8)
Most Famous Paper
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)
Born-Oppenheimer Approximation
The Born-Oppenheimer approximation is the name given to this computation above.10)
National Research Council Scholarship
He was given a National Research Council scholarship to the California Institute of Technology in September 1927.11)
Associate Professorship
He obtained a position as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1929.12)
Contributions
Oppenheimer made significant contributions to a variety of domains of physics.13)
Positron Discovery
Carl David Anderson earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936 for discovering the positron, which Oppenheimer predicted existed in 1930.14)
Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect
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)
Black Holes
He and his pupil Hartland Snyder anticipated the existence of black holes in 1939.16)
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was launched in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Oppenheimer was named director in 1942.17)
Trinity Test
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)
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
Following the war, he served as the top advisor to the United States Atomic Energy Commission.19)
Opponent Of Nuclear Arms
He became a vocal opponent of nuclear proliferation and the Cold War arms competition.20)
Headline
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)