Age, Biography and Wiki
Biography: J. Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904, in New York City. He was the son of Ella and Julius Oppenheimer, a successful textile importer. Oppenheimer's early life was marked by a comfortable upbringing, with his family owning a large mansion in Manhattan. His father's business acumen allowed the family to avoid financial losses during the Great Depression. Oppenheimer's academic inclinations led him to study at Harvard University, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in chemistry before pursuing further education in physics at the University of Cambridge and Göttingen University.
Wiki: More detailed information about Oppenheimer's life and achievements can be found on his Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer.
| Occupation | Presidents |
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| Date of Birth | 22 April 1904 |
| Age | 121 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Taurus |
| Country | Jersey |
| Date of death | 18 February, 1967 |
| Died Place | Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited information available about Oppenheimer's physical measurements such as height and weight. However, descriptions often highlight his slender build, which was typical for his era.
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Dating & Relationship status
Oppenheimer was married to Katherine "Kitty" Puening, a former member of the Communist Party, from 1940 until his death in 1967. The couple had two children, Toni and Peter. Oppenheimer's relationship with Kitty was complex, marked by periods of infidelity and personal struggles.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons.
Oppenheimer was initially educated at Alcuin Preparatory School. In 1911, he entered the Ethical Culture Society School, founded by Felix Adler to promote training based on the Ethical movement, whose motto was "Deed before Creed". Oppenheimer's father had been a member of the Society for many years, serving on its board of trustees. Oppenheimer was a versatile student, interested in English and French literature, and particularly mineralogy. He completed third and fourth grades in one year and skipped half of eighth grade. He took private music lessons by famous French flutist Georges Barrère. During his final year of school, Oppenheimer became interested in chemistry. He graduated in 1921, but his further education was delayed a year by an attack of colitis contracted while prospecting in Jáchymov during a family vacation in Czechoslovakia. He recovered in New Mexico, where he developed a love for horseback riding and the southwestern United States.
Oppenheimer was very unhappy at Cambridge and wrote to a friend: "I am having a pretty bad time. The lab work is a terrible bore, and I am so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that I am learning anything." He developed an antagonistic relationship with his tutor, Patrick Blackett, a future Nobel laureate. According to Oppenheimer's friend Francis Fergusson, Oppenheimer once confessed to leaving a poisoned apple on Blackett's desk, and Oppenheimer's parents convinced the university authorities not to expel him. There are no records of either a poisoning incident or probation, but Oppenheimer had regular sessions with a psychiatrist in Harley Street, London. Oppenheimer was a tall, thin chain smoker, who often neglected to eat during periods of intense concentration. Many friends said he could be self-destructive. Fergusson once tried to distract Oppenheimer from apparent depression by telling him about his girlfriend, Frances Keeley, and how he had proposed to her. Oppenheimer jumped on Fergusson and tried to strangle him. Oppenheimer was plagued by periods of depression throughout his life, and once told his brother, "I need physics more than friends."
Oppenheimer was awarded a United States National Research Council fellowship to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in September 1927. Bridgman also wanted him at Harvard, so a compromise was reached whereby he split his fellowship for the 1927–28 academic year between Harvard in 1927 and Caltech in 1928. At Caltech, he struck up a close friendship with Linus Pauling; they planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond, a field in which Pauling was a pioneer, with Oppenheimer supplying the mathematics and Pauling interpreting the results. The collaboration, and their friendship, ended after Oppenheimer invited Pauling's wife, Ava Helen Pauling, to join him on a tryst in Mexico. Oppenheimer later invited Pauling to be head of the Chemistry Division of the Manhattan Project, but Pauling refused, saying he was a pacifist.
Oppenheimer's mother died in 1931, and he became closer to his father who, although still living in New York, became a frequent visitor in California. When his father died in 1937, leaving $392,602 (equivalent to $ million in ) to be divided between Oppenheimer and his brother Frank, Oppenheimer immediately wrote out a will that left his estate to the University of California to be used for graduate scholarships.
Many of Oppenheimer's closest associates were active in the Communist Party in the 1930s or 1940s, including his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie, Kitty, Jean Tatlock, his landlady Mary Ellen Washburn, and several of his graduate students at Berkeley. Whether Oppenheimer was a party member has been debated. Cassidy states that he never openly joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), but Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev state that he "was, in fact, a concealed member of the CPUSA in the late 1930s". From 1937 to 1942, Oppenheimer was a member at Berkeley of what he called a "discussion group", which fellow members Haakon Chevalier and Gordon Griffiths later said was a "closed" (secret) unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty.
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| Husband | Katherine Puening (m. 1940) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of his death in 1967, Oppenheimer's net worth was approximately $1 million, which is equivalent to around $9 million today when adjusted for inflation. His inheritance from his father in 1937 provided him with a significant passive income, amounting to about $200,000 per year in today's dollars. His annual salary from the University of California, Berkeley, was around $3,300, equivalent to about $70,000 today.
Oppenheimer worked closely with Nobel Prize-winning experimental physicist Ernest Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers, helping them understand the data that their machines were producing at Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory, which eventually developed into today's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1936, Berkeley promoted him to full professor at an annual salary of $3,300. In return, he was asked to curtail his teaching at Caltech, so a compromise was reached whereby Berkeley released him for six weeks each year, enough to teach one term at Caltech.
During the 1920s, Oppenheimer remained uninformed about world affairs. He claimed that he did not read newspapers or popular magazines and only learned of the Wall Street crash of 1929 while he was on a walk with Ernest Lawrence six months after the crash occurred. He once remarked that he never cast a vote until the 1936 presidential election. From 1934 on, he became increasingly concerned about politics and international affairs. In 1934, he earmarked three percent of his annual salary—about $100 —for two years to support German physicists fleeing Nazi Germany. During the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, he and some of his students, including Melba Phillips and Serber, attended a longshoremen's rally.
Career, Business and Investments
Oppenheimer's career was primarily focused on theoretical physics. He is most famous for his leadership role in the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb during World War II. After the war, he became a vocal advocate for international cooperation on nuclear issues. His business ventures were minimal, as his focus remained on academic and scientific pursuits. His inheritance from his father was the primary source of his wealth, aside from his salary and occasional lectures.
Robert had a younger brother, Frank, who also became a physicist. He was hired by a textile company and within a decade was an executive there, eventually becoming wealthy. In 1912, the family moved to an apartment on Riverside Drive near West 88th Street, Hudson Heights, New York, an area known for luxurious mansions and townhouses. Their art collection included works by Pablo Picasso, Édouard Vuillard, and Vincent van Gogh.
Oppenheimer repeatedly attempted to get Robert Serber a position at Berkeley but was blocked by Birge, who felt that "one Jew in the department was enough".
Social Network
Given the era in which Oppenheimer lived, his social network was primarily composed of fellow scientists and intellectuals. Today, his legacy continues to inspire discussions and debates about nuclear policy and ethics.
On returning to the United States, Oppenheimer accepted an associate professorship from the University of California, Berkeley, where Raymond Thayer Birge wanted him so badly that he expressed a willingness to share him with Caltech.
"Probably the most important ingredient he brought to his teaching was his exquisite taste. He always knew what were the important problems, as shown by his choice of subjects. He truly lived with those problems, struggling for a solution, and he communicated his concern to the group. In its heyday, there were about eight or ten graduate students in his group and about six Post-doctoral Fellows. He met this group once a day in his office and discussed with one after another the status of the student's research problem. He was interested in everything, and in one afternoon they might discuss quantum electrodynamics, cosmic rays, electron pair production and nuclear physics."
After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Oppenheimer hosted fundraisers for the Spanish Republican cause. In 1939, he joined the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom, which campaigned against the persecution of Jewish scientists in Nazi Germany. Like most liberal groups of the era, the committee was later branded a communist front.
Education
- Harvard University: Oppenheimer earned his Bachelor's degree in chemistry from Harvard University.
- University of Cambridge: He studied at Cambridge but did not complete his Ph.D. due to health reasons.
- University of Göttingen: Oppenheimer earned his Ph.D. in physics from Göttingen University under Max Born.
Despite his significant contributions to science, Oppenheimer's personal wealth was largely derived from his inheritance and not from his scientific work or business ventures. His legacy is primarily remembered for its impact on the scientific community and global politics.
Born in New York City, Oppenheimer obtained a degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927, studying under Max Born. After research at other institutions, he joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was made a full professor in 1936. Oppenheimer made significant contributions to physics in the fields of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, including the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions; work on the theory of positrons, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum field theory; and the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion. With his students, he also made major contributions to astrophysics, including the theory of cosmic ray showers, and the theory of neutron stars and black holes.
In 1942, Oppenheimer was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and in 1943 was appointed director of the project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, tasked with developing the first nuclear weapons. His leadership and scientific expertise were instrumental in the project's success, and on July 16, 1945, he was present at the first test of the atomic bomb, Trinity. In August 1945, the weapons were used on Japan in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to date the only uses of nuclear weapons in conflict.
In 1947, Oppenheimer was appointed director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the new United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He lobbied for international control of nuclear power and weapons in order to avert an arms race with the Soviet Union, and later opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, partly on ethical grounds. During the Second Red Scare, his stances, together with his past associations with the Communist Party USA, led to an AEC security hearing in 1954 and the revocation of his security clearance. He continued to lecture, write, and work in physics, and in 1963 received the Enrico Fermi Award for contributions to theoretical physics. On December 16, 2022, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm vacated the 1954 decision, saying it had been the result of a "flawed process" and affirming that Oppenheimer had been loyal.
Oppenheimer entered Harvard College in 1922 at age 18. He majored in chemistry; Harvard also required studies in history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. To compensate for the delay caused by his illness, he took six courses each term instead of the usual four. He was admitted to the undergraduate honor society Phi Beta Kappa and was granted graduate standing in physics on the basis of independent study, allowing him to bypass basic courses in favor of advanced ones. He was attracted to experimental physics by a course on thermodynamics taught by Percy Bridgman. Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, after only three years of study.
After being accepted at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1924, Oppenheimer wrote to Ernest Rutherford requesting permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory, though Bridgman's letter of recommendation said that Oppenheimer's clumsiness in the laboratory suggested that theoretical, rather than experimental, physics would be his forte. Rutherford was unimpressed, but Oppenheimer went to Cambridge nonetheless; J. J. Thomson ultimately accepted him on the condition that he complete a basic laboratory course.
In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge for the University of Göttingen to study under Max Born; Göttingen was one of the world's leading centers for theoretical physics. Oppenheimer made friends who went on to great success, including Werner Heisenberg, Pascual Jordan, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller. He was enthusiastic in discussions to the point of sometimes taking them over. Maria Goeppert presented Born with a petition signed by herself and others threatening a boycott of the class unless he made Oppenheimer quiet down. Born left it out on his desk where Oppenheimer could read it, and it was effective without a word being said.
Oppenheimer obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in March 1927 at age 23, supervised by Born. After the oral exam, James Franck, the professor administering it, reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me." Oppenheimer published more than a dozen papers while in Europe, including many important contributions to the new field of quantum mechanics. He and Born published a famous paper on the Born–Oppenheimer approximation, which separates nuclear motion from electronic motion in the mathematical treatment of molecules, allowing nuclear motion to be neglected to simplify calculations. It remains his most cited work.
In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited Paul Ehrenfest's institute at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where he impressed by giving lectures in Dutch, despite having little experience with the language. There, he was given the nickname of Opje, later anglicized by his students as "Oppie". From Leiden, he continued on to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich to work with Wolfgang Pauli on quantum mechanics and the continuous spectrum. Oppenheimer respected and liked Pauli and may have emulated his personal style as well as his critical approach to problems.
Oppenheimer made important contributions to the theory of cosmic ray showers. He also worked on the problem of field electron emission. This work contributed to the development of the concept of quantum tunneling. In 1931, he co-wrote a paper, "Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect," with his student Harvey Hall, in which, based on empirical evidence, he correctly disputed Paul Dirac's assertion that two of the energy levels of the hydrogen atom have the same energy. Subsequently, one of his doctoral students, Willis Lamb, determined that this was a consequence of what became known as the Lamb shift, for which Lamb was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955.
With Melba Phillips, the first graduate student to begin her PhD under Oppenheimer's supervision, Oppenheimer worked on calculations of artificial radioactivity under bombardment by deuterons. When Ernest Lawrence and Edwin McMillan bombarded nuclei with deuterons they found the results agreed closely with the predictions of George Gamow, but when higher energies and heavier nuclei were involved, the results did not conform to the predictions. In 1935, Oppenheimer and Phillips worked out a theory—subsequently known as the Oppenheimer–Phillips process—to explain the results. This theory is still in use today.
Oppenheimer's papers were considered difficult to understand even by the standards of the abstract topics he was expert in. He was fond of using elegant, if extremely complex, mathematical techniques to demonstrate physical principles, though he was sometimes criticized for making mathematical mistakes, presumably out of haste. "His physics was good", said his student Snyder, "but his arithmetic awful."
After World War II, Oppenheimer published only five scientific papers, one of them in biophysics, and none after 1950. Murray Gell-Mann, a later Nobelist who, as a visiting scientist, worked with him at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1951, offered this opinion:
