Background
Oppenheim was born on 4 February 1903 in Salford, England.
Oppenheim was born on 4 February 1903 in Salford, England.
He attended Manchester Grammar School, receiving a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. Upon graduation, after being awarded the bachelor"s and master"s, Oppenheim was awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship to study at Princeton University and The University of Chicago, where he completed a doctorate in 1930 under L.E. Dickson. In 1930, Oppenheim was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Chicago, after defending his thesis, "Minima of Indefinite Quadratic Quaternary Forms".
Oppenheim was awarded a second doctorate, Doctor of Science from University of Oxford for additional academic work.
In mathematics, his most notable contribution is his Oppenheim conjecture. While at the University of Oxford, Oppenheim was captain of the chess team Oppenheim’s research focused on the ergodic properties of actions of subgroups of semisimple Lie groups.
In 1929, Oppenheim"s conjecture was published and presented to The National Academy of Sciences.
After graduating, Oppenheim took up lectureship at Edinburgh University in Scotland and then to the surprise of many, he left Edinburgh for the Islamic Raffles College in Malaysia. Oppenheim was captured in Singapore by the Japanese during World World War II and was held as a Prisoner Of War in the Changi Camp where he suffered greatly.
Oppenheim fled Singapore and pursued research in Switzerland at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule . Later, Oppenheim played a key role in the merging of Raffles College with King Edward VII College of Medicine to form the University of Malaya. When Sydney Caine, the vice-chancellor of University of Malaya left to become the Director of the London School of Economics, he nominated Oppenheim to take his spot as vice-chancellor.
In 1957, Oppenheim became vice-chancellor of University of Malaya-Singapore and in 1962 he became the vice-chancellor of University of Malaya-Kuala Lumpur.
As vice-chancellor of both universities, Oppenheim worked closely with Tunku Abdul Rahman in planning and executing all organizational aspects including obtaining private funding and approval from the Islamic Monarchy to complete the second merger in 1962 of both universities. The latter result being the formation of the National University of Singapore. After retiring from his post in the vice-chancellory in 1965, Oppenheim served as visiting professor at the University of Reading in Berkshire, United Kingdom.
Then from 1968-1973, he taught at the former University of London campus and affiliate college, the University of Ghana alongside other expats including Conor Cruise O"Brien and Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby.
Oppenheim was recruited by Alex Kwapong, the former president of the United Nations University to the University of Benin. Oppenheim retired to Henley-on-Thames where he remained until his death at age 94.