Editor's Note: Today is the 100th birthday of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Laboratory's first director.

J. Robert Oppenheimer with General Leslie Groves at Trinity Site, July 1945.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man for the ages

"Any single one of the following contributions would have marked Oppenheimer as a pre-eminent scientist: his own research work in physics; his influence as a teacher; his leadership at Los Alamos; the growth of the Institute of Advanced Studies as a leading center of theoretical physics under his directorship; and his efforts to promote a more common understanding of science. When all is combined, we honor Oppenheimer as a great leader of science. When all is interwoven with the dramatic events that centered around him we remember Oppenheimer as one of the most remarkable personalities of this century." - Abraham Pais, Oppenheimer eulogy, 1967

Today marks the 100th birthday of the Laboratory's first director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Born in 1904 in New York City to successful textile importer Julius Oppenheimer and his wife Ella, J. Robert grew up in a world of wealth and privilege. From an early age, he demonstrated remarkable intellectual prowess and began collecting minerals at the age of five. By age 11, his collection and knowledge were so considerable that he was elected to membership in the New York Mineralogy Society. Oppenheimer attended high school at New York's Ethical Culture School, graduating at age 16. He then attended Harvard College, where he studied chemistry and graduated summa cum laude in only three years. He began his graduate studies at Cambridge but later transferred to the University of Gottingen in Germany to study under Max Born. He received his doctorate from Gottingen at the age of 23.

In 1929, he became a professor of physics at both the University of California at Berkeley and California Institute of Technology, commuting between the two universities over the next 13 years. In June 1942, General Leslie Groves selected Oppenheimer to serve as technical director of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort during World War II to design and build a nuclear weapon.

Oppenheimer proved to be not only a brilliant scientist but also an exceptional administrator. He brought some of the best scientists in the world together at the research facility at Los Alamos, and in just 28 months, Oppenheimer and his team produced two atomic bombs of very different design. Following the detonation of the bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on Aug. 10, 1945.

Oppenheimer's leadership efforts earned him the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946. Although he returned for a brief time to California after World War II ended with the goal of returning to academia, he quickly was drawn into the international debate on the role of atomic energy in world affairs.

In 1947, Oppenheimer was appointed chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission, serving from 1947 to 1952. It was in this role that he voiced strong opposition to developing a hydrogen bomb. Beginning in 1947, Oppenheimer also served as the director of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, a position he held until he retired in 1966.

In 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies, and his security clearance was taken away. By the early 1960's the political climate that cost Oppenheimer so dearly had changed. As a result, President Lyndon Johnson awarded Oppenheimer the Atomic Energy Commission's Enrico Fermi Prize in 1963 for his many contributions to physics.

Oppenheimer died of throat cancer Feb. 18, 1967.

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