Oppenheimer was born in New York City in 1904 and was educated at Harvard University. He was involved in research in Europe before teaching physics in California between 1929 and 1942. He became famous for leading the Mahattan Project in New Mexico, which resulted in the first atomic bomb, successfully tested on 16 July 1945 and used a month later on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. He was later found to have communist sympathies and had his security clearance cancelled in 1954. From 1947 to 1966 he was a director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He also went on to speak out against the development of the hydrogen bomb.
