He used that position to lobby for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. He later remarked that the explosion brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Īfter the war ended, Oppenheimer became chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission. Oppenheimer was among those who observed the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the 'father of the atomic bomb' for their role in the Manhattan Project – the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons.
Robert Oppenheimer ( / ˈ ɒ p ə n ˌ h aɪ m ər/ Ap– February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who was professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
