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J. Robert Oppenheimer ( April 22, 1904– February 18, 1967) was a Jewish-American physicist and the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to develop nuclear weapons, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Known colloquially as "the father of the atomic bomb", Oppenheimer lamented the weapon's killing power after it was used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he was an adviser to the newly-created Atomic Energy Commission and used that position to lobby for international control of atomic energy and to avert the nuclear arms raceAn arms race is a competition between two or more countries for military supremacy. Each party competes to produce superior numbers of weapons or superior military technology in a technological escalation. Most arms races have occurred in the modern era. with the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1. Following an FBI investigation during the Red ScareThe term Red Scare has been applied to two distinct periods of intense anti-Communism in United States history: firstly from 1917 to 1920 and secondly in the early 1950s. Both periods were characterized by widespread fears of Communist influence on U., he had his security clearance stripped for alleged past CommunistThis article is about communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, and as a popular movement. For issues regarding the organization of the communist movement, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding one-par sympathies. Though stripped of his political influence, Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work on physics. A decade later President Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon Baines Johnson ( August 27, 1908 January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ was an American politician. After serving a long career in U. legislatures, Johnson became the Vice President under John F. Kennedy ( 1961 1963) and later ascended to the awarded him the Enrico Fermi AwardThe Enrico Fermi Award is a U. government "Presidential" award honoring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. It is administered by the U. government's Department of Energy. as a gesture of rehabilitation.
Oppenheimer was born in New YorkNew York is a state in the northeastern United States whose U. postal abbreviation is NY . It is sometimes called New York State when there is need to distinguish it from New York City. History See: History of New York New York was one of the thirteen col in 1904 to Julius (a wealthy textile-importer who had immigrated to the USA from Germany in 1888) and Ella Friedman Oppenheimer (an artist). He studied at the Ethical Culture Society school where, in addition to mathematics and science, he was exposed to a variety of subjects ranging from Greek to French literature. He entered Harvard one year late due to an attack of colitis. During the interim period he went with a former English teacher to New Mexico to recuperate, where he fell in love with horseback riding and the mountains and plateaus of the American Southwest. He returned reinvigorated and made up for the delay by graduating in just three years with a major in chemistry. One of the most brilliant men of the twentieth century, he studied science and the humanities with equal ease and insight.
While at Harvard he was introduced to experimental physics during a course on thermodynamics taught by Percy Bridgman. However, while undertaking postgraduate work at Ernest Rutherford's famed Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, he came to realize that his forte was theoretical, not experimental physics, as he was quite clumsy in the laboratory working under J.J. Thomson. In 1926 he pursued this interest by studying under Max Born at the University of Goettingen, one of the top centers for theoretical physics in Europe, and obtained his PhD at the age of 22.
He had a true feel for languages and could study a new one in a period of just one or two months. He was deeply interested in Sanskrit and Indian philosophies. During the period spent at Goettingen, Oppenheimer published many important contributions to the then newly-developed quantum theory. In September 1927, he returned to Harvard as a National Research Council Fellow and in early 1928 he studied at the California Institute of Technology. Here he received numerous invitations for teaching positions, and eventually opted to accept an assistant professorship in physics at the University of California, Berkeley as, in his words, "it was a desert", and yet paradoxically also a fertile place of opportunity. He maintained a joint appointment with Caltech, where he spent every spring term, in order to avoid potential isolation. Before his Berkeley professorship began, however, he was diagnosed with a mild case of tuberculosis, and with his brother Frank, spent some weeks at a ranch, "Perro Caliente," in New Mexico, which he leased and eventually purchased outright. Recovered, he returned to Berkeley to inspire a whole generation of physicists who idolized him for his intellectual virtuosity and amazingly versatile interests. While at Berkeley he also worked closely with (and became good friends with) Ernest O. Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers. He is credited with creating the American school of theoretical physics.
Recognized in even his profession—theoretical physics—as a man of unusual brilliance, Oppenheimer was also troubled throughout his life. He professed to experiencing periods of depression so profound that only hard work was a "palliative." His biggest weakness (as described by his friends) was his tendency to self-destruct. He was a chain smoker for most of his life. He was irregular in habits, often neglecting to eat if he was deep in concentration. A tall man, he weighed scarely a hundred pounds for all his adult life. Some of his colleagues speculated that this self-destructive streak was the reason a man as genius as he did not "solve all the problems of scientific importance." He was also famous for his eccentricity. He kept himself far removed from the world; apparently, he did not learn of the infamous stock market crash of 1929 until several years after the fact. Strangely enough, he often seemed quite insecure about his own mental powers. He developed numerous affectations, seemingly in an attempt to convince those around him—or possibly himself—of his self-worth; for example, he adopted the mysterious letter at the beginning of his name. He was said to be mesmerizing, hypnotic in private interaction but often frigid in more public settings. Interestingly, many of his students and colleagues adopted "Oppie's" affectations—from his way of walking to talking and beyond—wherever they had prolonged contact with him.
Oppenheimer did important research in astrophysics, nuclear physics, and spectroscopy. Even in the immensely abstruse topics he was expert in, his papers were considered difficult to understand. He was very fond of using elegant, if extremely complex, mathematical techniques to demonstrate physical principles. In 1936 he became involved with Jean Tatlock, who sparked his interest in politics. Like many young intellectuals in the 1930s he became a supporter of Communist ideas, and having much more money than most professors (he inherited over $300,000 after his father's death in 1937, a massive sum at the time) was able to bankroll many left-wing efforts. In November 1940 he married Katherine Puening Harrison, a radical Berkeley student, and by May 1941 they had produced their first child, Peter.