J. Robert Oppenheimer

Theoretical Physicist

• Born: April 22, 1904
• Place of Birth: New York, New York
• Died: February 18, 1967
• Place of Death: Princeton, New Jersey

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American physicist noted for his work during World War II as scientific director of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. After the war, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Before joining the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer worked as a physics professor, with a joint appointment to the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology.

PRIMARY FIELD: Physics

SPECIALTIES: Atomic and molecular physics; nuclear physics

Early Life

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904, into a wealthy German Jewish family. His father, Julius S. Oppenheimer, was a first-generation immigrant who had become a successful textile merchant. His mother, Ella Friedman, a noted artist, came from a wealthy Jewish family from Baltimore.

Oppenheimer’s parents were not religious but belonged to a secular humanist offshoot of Reform Judaism known as the Society for Ethical Culture. Oppenheimer and his younger brother, Frank, attended the Ethical Culture Society School. Robert was a solitary child, partly because of his own intellectual interests and partly because of his parents’ overprotective nature. His lack of social interaction made it difficult for him to relate to other children, except for his brother Frank, who shared Robert’s scientific interests.

Robert graduated from the society’s school in 1921. He waited a year before entering Harvard University to recover from an attack of dysentery and colitis contracted during a trip to Germany. To help him recover, his parents sent him to a ranch in New Mexico.

Oppenheimer entered Harvard in 1922, majoring in chemistry. His interest began to shift toward physics, however, partly through the influence of physics professor Percy Williams Bridgman. Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925 with a chemistry degree, but he decided to go to Europe to do doctoral work in theoretical physics.

In England, Oppenheimer studied at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. His work was supervised by Sir Joseph John Thomson, the physicist who discovered the electron. Oppenheimer found experimental work difficult, and was encouraged to focus on theoretical physics. Therefore, he traveled to Germany in 1926 to study under Max Born at the University of Göttingen.

Born, a founder of quantum mechanics, helped the young prodigy develop what became known as the “Born-Oppenheimer approximation” of molecular motion. The approximation contributed to quantum theory by considering nuclear motion and electronic motion separately.

Oppenheimer graduated with his doctorate in physics in 1927, leaving Göttingen to do postdoctoral research under Paul Ehrenfest at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. At Leiden, he acquired the nickname “Opje,” which his American students later changed to “Oppie.” Leaving Leiden, Oppenheimer also studied briefly under Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in Zurich, Switzerland.

Life’s Work

Returning to the United States, Oppenheimer took up studies at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 1928, he accepted a dual teaching position in physics, commuting between Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley. He held the joint appointment until joining the Manhattan Project in 1941. At Berkeley, he befriended the experimental physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, developer of the cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator.

Oppenheimer became one of the most popular professors at Berkeley, as well as a leading figure in theoretical physics. He wrote extensively, publishing papers on many branches of physics, including quantum theory. Writing on gravitational collapse, he was the first to publish papers on what became known as black holes. However, despite Oppenheimer’s accomplishments and great popularity, many of his colleagues did not consider him a first-rank physicist. Their feelings were based partly on his lack of focus and perhaps because of his interest in Eastern mysticism.

In 1937, upon his father’s death, Oppenheimer spent much of his inheritance on political causes, supporting the antifascist side in the Spanish Civil War. Unlike his brother, Frank, however, he never joined the Communist Party.

In August 1939, Oppenheimer met Katherine “Kitty” Puening Harrison, a Berkeley student and political activist. Her estranged first husband, Joe Dallet, had been a labor organizer who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. Robert and Kitty married in November 1940, and their first child, Peter, was born in May 1941. Their daughter, Katherine, was born in 1944.

Oppenheimer became involved in the race to develop an atomic bomb almost as soon as the United States entered World War II. The Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley was already involved in work on an atomic weapon. Brigadier General Leslie Richard Groves, the army officer responsible for overseeing construction of the Pentagon, became the military head of the government’s secret bomb development program, called the Manhattan Project. In June 1942, Groves appointed Oppenheimer the Manhattan Project’s scientific director.

Oppenheimer was in charge of establishing a facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to consolidate the various US atomic-bomb projects. He was closely involved in the day-to-day operations of the project, as well as the project’s overall strategy. He also demonstrated great diplomatic skill in handling relations between the military and civilian personnel; many of the latter were his former students.

On July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project conducted its first successful test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Oppenheimer named the test “Trinity,” which some scholars have considered a reference to a poem by the English author John Donne. Later, Oppenheimer recalled that as he watched the explosion, he was reminded of verses from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scriptures, in which the god Vishnu says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

US President Harry Truman decided to use the atomic bomb to end World War II quickly and avoid a proposed invasion of Japan. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and on August 9 on Nagasaki. The ultimate death toll from these atomic bombings has been estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000 people, mostly civilians. Many more suffered severe injuries from the direct explosion and from radiation.

After the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer continued his work with nuclear energy. From 1947 to 1952, he served as chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In 1947, Oppenheimer also gave up his professorship at Berkeley and became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Oppenheimer served as an advisor to both the United States and the United Nations on nuclear energy. He strongly supported nuclear arms control and opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb, a type of nuclear weapon more powerful than his original bomb design.

Oppenheimer used his position to support international control of atomic energy and weapons, a stance that upset many military and political figures, particularly AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss and Manhattan Project colleague Edward Teller, who wanted the United States to develop a hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer eventually came to support the H-bomb, after Teller and Stanislaw Ulam produced a feasible design in 1951. The first H-bomb was successfully tested by the United States in 1952.

During the Red Scare of the early 1950s, Oppenheimer’s critics pointed out his record of support for left-wing causes, as well as inconsistencies in his wartime comments to governmental investigators. In 1954, Oppenheimer’s security clearance was suspended, a move that many people around the world saw as an attack on liberalism and freedom of thought.

Oppenheimer largely withdrew from public view following the loss of his clearance, though he continued as head of the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson showed official favor to Oppenheimer by presenting him with the Enrico Fermi Award. Oppenheimer died of throat cancer on February 18, 1967. His funeral was attended by political, military, and scientific dignitaries.

Impact

In the decades after his death, Oppenheimer remained a symbol of the tension between science and the state and between scientists’ ethical and political responsibilities. His story has been dramatized numerous times, including in the stage play In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1969), the film Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), and the opera Doctor Atomic (2005).

Perhaps most notably, July 2023 saw the premiere of acclaimed director Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, a biopic starring Cillian Murphy and focused on Oppenheimer's role in the Manhattan Project. The film became both a critical and commercial success, earning over $650 million worldwide at the box office within a month of its release and drawing praise for its writing, performances, and use of conventional practical effects instead of computer-generated special effects. During awards season, the film earned numerous nominations and wins from a variety of industry competitions. In addition to six others, the biopic took home the Academy Award for Best Picture, and it secured a victory in this category, among others, at the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globe Awards as well. Months after its release, its total worldwide box-office earnings had reached more than $965 million.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Jeremy. Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma. Dee, 2005.

Dargis, Manohla. “‘Oppenheimer’ Review: A Man for Our Time.” The New York Times, 27 July 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/movies/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan.html. Accessed 14 Aug. 2023.

Bernstein, Jeremy. Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma. Dee, 2005.

Buckley, Thomas. "'Oppenheimer' Dominates Academy Awards with 7 Oscars as Hollywood's Old Guard Laps Streaming Companies." Fortune, 11 Mar. 2024, fortune.com/2024/03/11/oppenheimer-dominates-academy-awards-7-oscars-hollywood-old-guard-laps-streaming-companies/. Accessed 2 Apr. 2024.

Kifer, Andy. “The Real History behind Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer.’” Smithsonian, 18 July 2023, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-christopher-nolans-oppenheimer-180982529/. Accessed 14 Aug. 2023.

Pais, Abraham, and Robert Crease. J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life. Oxford University Press, 2007.