J. Robert Oppenheimer[1][2][3] (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his role as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear weapons at the secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. For this reason he is remembered as "The Father of the Atomic Bomb". In reference to the Trinity test in New Mexico, where his Los Alamos team first tested the bomb, Oppenheimer famously recalled the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one." and "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
After the war Oppenheimer was a chief advisor to the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission and used that position to lobby for international control of nuclear power and to avert the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. After provoking the ire of many politicians with his outspoken political opinions during the Red Scare, he had his security clearance revoked in a much-publicized and politicized hearing in 1954. Though stripped of his direct political influence Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work in physics. A decade later President John F. Kennedy awarded (and Lyndon B. Johnson presented) Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation.
Oppenheimer's notable achievements in physics include the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, work on electron-positron theory, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process, and a first prediction of quantum tunneling. With his students he also made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as work on the theory of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays.
As a teacher and promotor of American science, Oppenheimer is remembered most for being the chief founder of the American school of theoretical physics while at the University of California, Berkeley, contributing significantly to the rise of American physics to its first era of world prominence in the 1930s. After the second World War, he contributed to American scientific organization again, as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he held Einstein's old position of Senior Professor of Theoretical Physics.
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