Julius Robert Oppenheimer is known as the father of the Atomic Bomb. He was the director of the Manhattan Project that created the first nuclear weapons. Let’s start this story from his childhood. He was born in 1904 to a German Jewish family in New York City. And he was considered a child genius since childhood. He was studying high-level physics and chemistry at the age of only 10. And he was very knowledgeable about mineralogy. About property of minerals.
He was so knowledgeable that at the age of 12 he was invited to give a lecture at New York’s Mineralogical Club. Later in 1922, when he went to Harvard to study, he completed his 4-year degree in 3 years. He was at the top of his class. He majored in chemistry and he was knowledgeable about many subjects. Physics, philosophy, literature, and even Eastern religion. But in Harvard, he realized that among all these subjects, his real passion was physics.
Later in 1927, at the age of 23, he did his PhD. But there was a dark side hidden behind this genius. His friends said that Oppenheimer had self-destructive tendencies. He was a chain smoker and was suffering through depression. One day, he told his brother, “I need physics more than friends”. He was focused only on his studies and remained unaware of what was happening in the world around him.
