April 22 | in Birthday Today
Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb and an American theoretical physicist, was born in New York City in 1904.
J. Robert Oppenheimer who lived from April 22, 1904 to February 18, 1967 was an American theoretical physicist and University of California, Berkeley professor of physics. Oppenheimer was the wartime director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is widely regarded as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was present at the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was detonated successfully on July 16, 1945. He later remarked that the explosion reminded him of a line from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds."