Editor’s spotlight — updated daily
J. Robert Oppenheimer
United States
J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos Laboratory from 1943 to 1945, overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. He witnessed the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, famously quoting the Bhagavad Gita: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. After the war, he received the Enrico Fermi Award and other honors, but his career was later affected by political controversies during the McCarthy era.
