Oppenheimer, a New York City native, graduated from Harvard University with a

bachelor of arts in chemistry in 1925 and from the University of Göttingen in

Germany with a doctorate in physics in 1927, where he studied under Max Born. After
conducting research at different universities, he joined the University of
California, Berkeley's physics department. In 1936, he was promoted to full
professor. He made important contributions to theoretical physics, such as the
Born-Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of
electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and
early work on quantum tunneling. He also made contributions to nuclear physics and
quantum mechanics. He has contributed to the theories of neutron stars and black
holes, quantum field theory, and