J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City, United States, on April 22, 1904. His full name was Julius Robert Oppenheimer.
Early life
Oppenheimer was born to Julius Oppenheimer, a wealthy textile importer, and Ella Friedman Oppenheimer, a painter. He grew up in Manhattan, on New York’s Upper West Side, in a financially comfortable Jewish family.
He later became a leading American theoretical physicist and served as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project in World War II. Because of his central role in overseeing the development of the first atomic bomb, he’s often called the “father of the atomic bomb,” although the weapon was created by a large team of scientists, engineers and military personnel.