J. Robert Oppenheimer

Childhood and education Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904 Oppenheimer was initially schooled at Alcuin Preparatory School, and in 1911 entered the Ethical Culture Society School He entered Harvard College a year late, at age 18 In 1924 Oppenheimer was informed that he had been accepted into Christ's College, Cambridge. The University of California, Berkeley, where Oppenheimer taught from 1929 to 1943

Oppenheimer with Albert Einstein

Manhattan Project In 1939, in Germany the atomic nucleus were splited. Oppenheimer and other scientists have guessed that they could to get a controlled chain reaction, which is the key of creating a new very destructive weapon. On October 9, 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic bomb

Trinity The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first artificial nuclear explosion near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, on a site that Oppenheimer codenamed "Trinity"

Oppenheimer (left) and Groves (right) at the remains of the Trinity test in September 1945.

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." (the Hindu holy book)

5 June Award of honorary degrees at Harvard to Oppenheimer (left), George C. Marshall (third from left) and Omar N. Bradley (fifth from left). The President of Harvard University, James B. Conant, sits between Marshall and Bradley.

Oppenheimer Beach, in St John, US Virgin Islands Starting in 1954, Oppenheimer spent several months of the year living on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands. In 1957, he purchased a 2-acre (0.81 ha) tract of land on Gibney Beach, where he built a spartan home on the beach.

Oppenheime r felt banished from science, smoked a lot. In 1966, his health deteriorated and he died a year later at his home in Princeton from throat cancer.