Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904 to Julius Oppenheimer, a wealthy Jewish textile importer who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1888, and Ella Friedman, a painter. Julius came to America with no money, no baccalaureate studies, and no knowledge of the English language. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in March 1927 at age 23, supervised by Born. After the oral exam, James Franck, the professor administering, reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me."[27] Oppenheimer published more than a dozen papers at Gottingen, 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. …show more content…
J. Robert Oppenheimer served as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the development of the atomic bomb. After the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Oppenheimer was selected to administer a laboratory to carry out the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II. After resigning from his post in 1945, he became the chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. Prior to his assassination in 1963, President John F. Kennedy announced Oppenheimer would receive the Enrico Fermi Award for his achievements in physics. He was presented with the award by President Lyndon B. Johnson in December of that year. The “Father of the Atomic Bomb” died from cancer at the age of 62 in Princeton, New Jersey in 1967.