Julius R . Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer ( April 22 , 1904 – February 18 , 1967 ) was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California , Berkeley . Oppenheimer is among those who are called the " father of the atomic bomb " for their role in the Manhattan Project , the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Oppenheimer ' s achievements in physics include the Born – Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions , work on the theory of electrons and positrons , the Oppenheimer – Phillips process in nuclear fusion , and the first prediction of quantum tunneling . With his students he also made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes , as well as to quantum mechanics , quantum field theory , and the interactions of cosmic rays . Initially , his major interest was the theory of the continuous spectrum and his first published paper , in 1926 , concerned the quantum theory of molecular band spectra . He developed a method to carry out calculations of its transition probabilities . He calculated the photoelectric effect for hydrogen and X-rays , obtaining the absorption coefficient at the K-edge . His calculations accorded with observations of the X-ray absorption of the sun , but not helium . Years later it was realized that the sun was largely composed of hydrogen and that his calculations were indeed correct .
Image Source : https :// upload . wikimedia . org / wikipedia / commons / 0 / 03 / JROppenheimer-LosAlamos . jpg
13