Cold War Biographies | J. Robert Oppenheimer Biography

Born August 22, 1904
New York, New York
Died February 18, 1967
Princeton, New Jersey

Physicist and developer of the
U.S. atomic bomb

At 5:30 A.M. on July 16, 1945, the United States successfully detonated the world's first atomic bomb. The scientist in charge of the U.S. project to develop the bomb was J. Robert Oppenheimer. A brilliant physicist, Oppenheimer watched in amazement as the New Mexico sky and landscape lit up brighter than a hundred sunrises. That moment marked the dawning of the nuclear age. Nuclear weapons developed and manufactured for decades thereafter influenced Cold War (1945–91) politics more than any other single issue after 1945. Oppenheimer's part in the Cold War would be a push for arms control and turning nuclear power into a benefit for mankind.

The Cold War was a prolonged conflict for world dominance between the two...