J. Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer directed the laboratory that built the atomic bomb and was stripped of his security clearance nine years later. Born in New York in 1904 to a wealthy German Jewish family, he was a precocious and unhappy student, took a doctorate at Göttingen under Max Born, and became professor at Berkeley and Caltech, where he built the leading school of theoretical physics in America. His own research was substantial — work on quantum tunnelling, the positron, cosmic rays, and a 1939 paper predicting gravitational collapse into what are now called black holes. In 1942 General Leslie Groves appointed him scientific director of the Manhattan Project, a choice widely doubted since he had no administrative experience, no Nobel Prize and left-wing associations. He chose Los Alamos, a mesa in New Mexico he had known since childhood, and proved an exceptional leader of several thousand scientists. The Trinity test was conducted on 16 July 1945. He later said the line from the Bhagavad Gita about becoming death, the destroyer of worlds, came to him. He argued afterwards for international control of atomic energy and against developing the hydrogen bomb, which made him enemies, particularly Edward Teller and Lewis Strauss. In 1954 a closed Atomic Energy Commission hearing examined his prewar communist associations and his conduct over the Chevalier incident. His clearance was revoked, ending his government role. The transcript shows a proceeding designed to reach that outcome, and the decision was formally vacated in 2022. He directed the Institute for Advanced Study until 1966, and died of throat cancer in 1967.

• Lived: 1904 CE – 1967 CE
• Nationality: American
• Roles: scientist