After high school, Oppenheimer went on to Harvard where he received his A.B. degree in 1925. While at Harvard, he excelled in Latin, Greek, physics, and chemistry. He even published poetry and studied Oriental Philosophy. Then he headed for England to do research at the Cavendish Laboratory, which was headed by Ernest Rutherford, at the University of Cambridge. It was renowned internationally for its study on atomic structures. He found laboratory work “a terrible bore” and didn’t feel he was learning anything from it.

A man named Max Born persuaded Oppenheimer to travel to Germany to attend the University of Gottingen. There, he met other physicists like Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg. Later, Born and Oppenheimer collaborated and published papers on collision theory. This resulted in a Ph.D. in 1927. As a fellow of the Institu

When German armies invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, it became apparent that Germany was rapidly becoming a threat to democratic countries, including America. The United States government began to speculate about weapons that would make use of the discovery of fission, the splitting of the atom.

In 1942, Oppenheimer commenced discussions with military security agents that concluded with the insinuation that some of his friends had ties to and were agents of the Soviet government. One of his personal friends was dismissed from the faculty at the University of California. In a 1954 security hearing, he explained his role in those discussions as “a tissue of lies.”

From 1947 to 1952, he became the head of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and served as chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1949, it opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb.

On July 16, 1945, the united effort of scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico after the surrender of Germany. On August 6 of that year, Hiroshima was decimated by the first atom bomb dropped, which was named Little Boy. More than 200,000 people died from the blast and radiation poisoning. Three days later, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 100,000 people. Japan surrendered not soon after. The effects of the bombs and civilian casualties began to trouble Oppenheimer. He said, “If atomic bombs are to be added to the arsenals of the world, or the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the name of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.” Oppenheimer resigned his post in October of the same year. He soon became a well-known and highly respected public figure.

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