J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist who directed the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II and is often called the father of the atomic bomb. Recruited by General Leslie Groves in 1942 to lead the scientific effort of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer assembled and directed the team of scientists at the secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico that designed and built the first nuclear weapons, including the device detonated at the Trinity test on July 16, 1945. After the war he chaired the influential General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission, where he opposed a crash program to build the hydrogen bomb, a position that contributed to the 1954 revocation of his security clearance during a politically charged hearing; the US Department of Energy formally vacated that 1954 decision in 2022.