J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist who was director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II for which he became known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb.
Among many others, he was PhD advisor of David Bohm and Willis Lamb (also, for historical records, of Joseph Weinberg who was charged as a Soviet spy during the cold war).
He was brilliant in a broad range of subjects. However, many people agree that he lacked the ability to do very much really original. He was very good at grasping the essence of what other people were saying and at bringing their ideas together. For this reason, he made an excellent director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alámos, which built the atom bomb (fission device). He did an extraordinary job. I can see, from having been his graduate student and having seen him in operation in the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, that this was his strength-to be able to coordinate what other physicists were doing.