J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) was an American theoretical physicist best known for his role as scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. wartime effort to develop nuclear weapons. Born in New York City to a wealthy family of German-Jewish descent, Oppenheimer was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and the University of Göttingen, where he studied under Max Born and contributed to early quantum theory.
During World War II, Oppenheimer was appointed to lead the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where he oversaw the design and construction of the first atomic bombs. His leadership culminated in the successful Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the subsequent bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though hailed as a scientific hero, Oppenheimer later expressed deep moral ambivalence about the weapon’s use, famously quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
After the war, he became a prominent voice in science policy and served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, his earlier associations with leftist intellectuals and opposition to the hydrogen bomb led to a 1954 security hearing, during which he lost his government clearance. The proceedings were widely viewed as politically motivated and marked a turning point in Cold War-era scientific governance. Oppenheimer’s legacy is complex—he is remembered both as the “father of the atomic bomb” and as a cautionary figure whose brilliance was shadowed by ethical and political controversy.
