Robert Oppenheimer accepted the position of director in 1947. Under Oppenheimer's leadership, the institute became a leading center for theoretical physics. Albert Einstein had been a scholar-in-residence at the institute since 1933, after fleeing Nazi Germany and renouncing his German citizenship.

Did Robert Oppenheimer know Einstein?

Though I knew Einstein for two or three decades, it was only in the last decade of his life that we were close colleagues and something of friends.

Who did Oppenheimer work with?

The Manhattan Project

Oppenheimer became politically active in the 1930s and agreed with Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard that the Nazis could develop a nuclear weapon.