Physicist — Julius Robert Oppenheimer (New York, 1904 – Princeton, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist, remembered above all as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. Trained at Harvard and in Europe (Cambridge and Göttingen), he contributed to quantum mechanics, astrophysics and particle physics, including the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecules and pioneering studies on gravitational collapse that anticipated the concept of the black hole. During the Second World War he directed the Los Alamos laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was built in 1945. After the war he became an advocate of international control of nuclear weapons, a position that cost him, at the height of the McCarthy era, the revocation of his security clearance. He is regarded as one of the emblematic figures in the relationship between science, power and moral responsibility.
Trivia
Watching the first ‘Trinity’ atomic test in 1945, Oppenheimer said he had thought of a line from the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.‘
Theories and contributions
- Born–Oppenheimer approximation — In molecular physics it allows the motion of nuclei to be separated from that of electrons, since the nuclei are much heavier.
- Gravitational collapse (Oppenheimer–Snyder / Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff) — Pioneering studies on the fate of massive stars and on the mass limit of neutron stars, forerunners of the concept of the black hole.
Appears in chapters
Linked atoms
1 linked atoms.