J. Robert Oppenheimer

Who is Oppenheimer.?

Robert Oppenheimer (Robert Oppenheimer) was a famous American theoretical physicist who prepared the research design of the famous Manhattan Project atomic bomb in America. He is also known as the father of the atomic bomb for that reason. Oppenheimer was known as an exceptional theoretical physicist even before the start of the Manhattan Project in early 1942. He was also a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. The atomic bomb designed by him was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After World War II, Robert Oppenheimer became the influential chairman of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission. US President John F. Kennedy later awarded him the 'Enrico Fermi' award. Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904 in New York City. His full name is J. Robert Oppenheimer. His father, Julius Seligman Oppenheimer, was a wealthy textile importer by profession, and his mother, Ella, was a painter. All of their families were German Jews. In 1912, his family moved to a house on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. His parents were fond of collecting art and had many paintings by famous painters like Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh etc.a few.

Oppenheimer had a brother named Frank who later became a physicist. In 1937, three years after the death of Oppenheimer's father, Oppenheimer married a biologist, Catherine Poening Harrison. Their two children are Peter and Catherine respectively. Robert Oppenheimer studied at Alquin Preparatory School during his early education. He was admitted to the Ethical Culture Society School in 1911. At the same time he was equally interested in English and French literature and mineralogy. He completed the third and fourth years in the same year but he did not complete half of the eighth year. Oppenheimer was attracted to chemistry in his final year. A year after graduation, he entered Harvard College. He graduated from Ethical Culture School. Later, Robert Oppenheimer was introduced to experimental physics during a thermodynamics course taught by Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard University, Percy Bridgman. He graduated summa cum laude in 1925 and then worked as an assistant to scientist JJ Thompson at the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University.

However, not liking regular laboratory work, he moved to the University of Göttingen in Germany to study quantum physics

To study about Oppenheimer also met Max Born and Niels Bohr at that time. In 1927, Robert Oppenheimer obtained his doctorate degree and in the same year he studied the structure of molecules with Born and the formula he arrived at is called the Born-Oppenheimer axiom. After that, he started attending physics research centers one after another. He has researched at Harvard, California Institute of Technology, Leyden and Zurich one after the other. Robert Oppenheimer was offered to teach at UC Berkeley and Caltech. In 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the development of the first atomic bomb. In 1942, Robert Oppenheimer was appointed to the Manhattan Project in America, which was actually a secret project to make an atomic bomb. There were many clandestine laboratories throughout the United States under this project, including the University of Chicago, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, and New Mexico.

Robert Oppenheimer himself oversaw the construction of the Los Alamos Laboratory, even though he was among the best physicists of the time.It was assembled here to make the atomic bomb. Many called him the 'Father of the Atomic Bomb' for his leadership in this project. At the end of World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission was formed with the permission of the United States of America for the Manhattan Project. This commission was created to oversee all nuclear research and development in the United States. Robert Oppenheimer, as the chairman of the general advisory committee of this commission, opposed the plan to build a hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb known as 'super bomb' was actually thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer also made important research in theoretical astronomy. Oppenheimer was also well versed in nuclear physics, quantum field theory, spectroscopic science, and relativistic quantum mechanics. He was probably the first to discover the existence of neutron and meson particles and neutron stars. The theory of continuous spectra was his foremost attraction. In 1926 he published a paper on molecular band spectrum theory. Robert Oppenheimer was the first to suggest that the Sun is actually composed of hydrogen by observing the absorption of X-rays by the Sun. In 1931 Robert Oppenheimer wrote a paper with his student Harvey Hall on the relativistic theory of the photo-electric effect in which Paul Dirac He challenged the concept of two energy levels of hydrogen. In 1935 Oppenheimer and Phillips discovered a new theory which is actually known as 'Oppenheimer-Phillips Process'. But even before 1930 he made a conclusion about the presence of positron which was later proved to be true. Oppenheimer later became interested in astrophysics. In 1938 he co-authored a paper with Robert Sarber entitled 'On the Stability of Stellar Neutron Courses'. He even did a lot of research on the properties of white dwarf stars.



After World War II, Robert Oppenheimer published five more scientific papers. In addition to scientific research, in 1933 he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur W. Rider at Berkeley, Robert Oppenheimer. He even read the Srimad Bhagavat Gita in the original Sanskrit language and cited this book as the most influential book on his philosophy of life. He participated in Project Charles in 1951, which was followed by Project East River in 1952. The main goal of this project was to issue forecasts at least one hour before atomic bomb attacks on American cities. Robert Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times in 1946, 1951 and 1967, but never received the prize. However, in 1963 he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award. He founded the 'World Academy of Art and Science' in 1960 with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and Joseph Rotblatt. In 1947, at the request of Louis Strauss, Robert Oppenheimer became the director of the 'Institute for Advanced Study' in Princeton, New Jersey. Robert Oppenheimer died of throat cancer on February 18, 1967 at the age of 62.