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Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and nuclear physicist, widely known as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapons during World War II; for this reason, Oppenheimer, along with Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller, is often called the "father of the atomic bomb".

The atomic bomb was first tested in New Mexico in July 1945; Oppenheimer later recalled that at that moment the words from the Bhagavad Gita came to his mind: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds".

After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He also became a senior adviser to the newly formed U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and used his position to advocate for international control of nuclear energy to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons and a nuclear arms race. This anti-war stance and his contacts with communist organizations in the 1940s angered some politicians during the second wave of the Red Scare. Eventually, after a highly publicized politicized hearing in 1954, he was stripped of his security clearance. Without direct political influence thereafter, he continued to lecture, write, and work in physics. Nine years later, President John F. Kennedy awarded him the Enrico Fermi Award as a sign of his political rehabilitation; the award was presented posthumously by Lyndon Johnson. Oppenheimer's most significant achievements in physics include the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. Together with his students, he made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to the solution of individual problems in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and cosmic ray physics. Oppenheimer was a teacher and promoter of science, and a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics that achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s. Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (since 1941).