J. Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904 in New York. From the earliest days of his schooling, it was obvious that Oppenheimer was very gifted and had a great deal of potential in the sciences. He was totally engrossed in academia and had no time or patience for extracurricular activities. However, he did develop a passion for sailing. Oppenheimer attended Harvard and graduated in 1925 'summa cum laude' after only three years. He was a very committed student but lacked any direction until he attended a complex physics course. After leaving Harvard, he attended the Cavendish Laboratory and studied under the prominent scientist Ernest Rutherford. Soon after he was able to work under J.J. Thompson and acquire more knowledge. At this time he suffered a terrible case of depression but he moved on and returned to his research. Then he made a career change by working at the University of Gottingen and changing his emphasis to the cutting-edge area of quantum mechanics. This was an excellent time to study in the area of theoretical physics because of all the new revelations being made and additions to the field. Oppenheimer did some work in quantum mechanics while he studied at Cambridge. Thus, he was immediately accepted as a colleague at this new university. One bad thing about Oppenheimer was the fact that he was very self-absorbed and this turned away several people. He traveled and did additional research at other universities until in 1929, he became a professor at Berkeley. Oppenheimer was not a very good teacher because he assumed that his students had a greater knowledge of the material than they actually had. However, his finest students learned a great deal from him and imitated his teaching style. He became very interested in politics and was very far on the left end of the political spectrum. He married in 1940. He was very upset with the policies and practices of Adolf Hitler. At the advent of the atomic bomb project he was not allowed to be a full team member, only a consultant. However, in 1942 he became a full member of the Manhattan Project. Eventually he became the head of the project and the fruit of their labors was tested in New Mexico. After the successful test, Oppenheimer was afraid of what he had helped to create. He was totally against its use in combat, but he was overruled. He remained on the team whose responsibilities included creating bigger and more powerful bombs until 1953, when his links to the Communist Party were uncovered by the FBI and his loyalty was called into question. His clearance was pulled and was never returned because one colleague, Edward Teller made some damaging comments about him to the judicial committee. Teller's personal vendetta against Oppenheimer ruined his professional career. Oppenheimer was unfairly treated during his trial, just like so many other blacklisted people during the "Red Scare" of the early 1950s. He continued to teach, but his major research for the government ceased because he was thought to be too big of a security risk. The government presented him with the Fermi Award for his lifetime of work to the sciences. In 1966, he was awarded an honorary degree from Princeton. J. Robert Oppenheimer died on February 18, 1967.

J. Robert Oppenheimer made many significant contributions to the area of physics. Of course, his most famous work was the creation of the atomic bomb as the head of the Manhattan Project. He also utilized the concepts of relativity in other areas including his computation of the implosion properties of stars while utilizing Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. He helped to show that as larger stars die they implode and create black holes. Oppenheimer was the first person in physics to develop the idea of a black hole in the late 1930s. Unfortunately, this research was set aside because of World War II. John Wheeler helped to rekindle the ideas of Oppenheimer in the 1960s. Oppenheimer also helped to create certain assumptions for dealing with the revolutionary idea of stellar implosion such as: the result being spherical, having no outward rotation, emitting no ejected matter, creating no shock waves, having no pressure, having no rotation, and having a uniform density.

Oppenheimer was a very important scientist in this century. It does not matter what political affiliation he had because he made some very valuable contributions to the scientific community.