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This year's Reith Lecturer is American theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Professor of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, he has been described as the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project while Director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory between 1943–45. In his Reith lectures entitled 'Science and the Common Understanding', he examines the impact of quantum and atomic theory on society.

In his fourth lecture entitled 'Atom and Void in the Third Millennium', Professor Oppenheimer explores the friction between Newtonian physics and the quantum theory of atomic systems. He describes how Maxwell's wave theory, Rutherford alpha-particle and Schrödinger's wave equation extended our understanding of the particle properties of matter.