J. Robert Oppenheimer: a physicist of the twentieth century and the director of the atomic project that took place during the second world war is also known as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb”. Much of it has been said about Oppenheimer, who was born in 1904 in New York City: he was a gifted physicist of immense versatility who made significant contributions to the fields of quantum mechanics, cosmic rays, and nuclear physics.

His greatest accomplishment was being the scientific chief of the Manhattan Project in the Second World War, in which he coordinated a few of the brightest scientific minds in order to create the first fission weapons. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the dropping of the bomb at the Trinity site near Alamogordo in New Mexico in July 1945 transformed patterns of modern warfare and international relations.

Following the war, Oppenheimer was an active member of various initiatives as a proponent of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and an advocate of disarmament.

However, during the Red Scare he was involved with left organizations, and through a very dramatic and closed-security hearing he was stripped of all his clearances in 1954. Nevertheless, Oppenheimer remains rooted as the enigmatic personality and the genius obsessed with scientific discovery and the sinister results which it brought along with the moral dilemmas it posed.