American Prometheus (144 page)

In the world of quantum physics, Weinberg said, “Niels Bohr (left) was God, and Oppie was his prophet.”

Jean Tatlock was Oppie’s fiancée for four years— and a Communist Party member, although with reservations. “I find it impossible to be an ardent Communist,” she wrote. Tatlock’s mentor at Stanford’s School of Medicine was Dr. Thomas Addis (above, right). Dr. Addis persuaded Oppenheimer to donate money for the Spanish cause through the Communist Party.

By 1941, Oppenheimer was on a FBI list of suspected radicals to be detained in the event of a national emergency.

In 1943 Haakon Chevalier (above, left), a Berkeley professor of French literature, told Oppie of a scheme George Eltenton (above, right) had to provide scientific information for the Soviet war effort. Oppie eventually reported the event to an Army counterintelligence officer, Col. Boris Pash (left).

Below, Martin Sherwin with Chevalier after interviewing him in Paris in 1982.

Kitty Puening grew up in Pittsburgh. Here she is (above) in jodhpurs at 21; in a 1936 passport photograph (top, right); and in the mycology lab at Berkeley (right). In 1939 she met and fell in love with Oppenheimer, who is pictured on his Radiation Laboratory security badge (opposite, top).

Kitty, here seated in their Los Alamos cottage, was a mercurial personality. “She was a very intense, very intelligent, very vital kind of person...very difficult to handle.”

Kitty felt stymied professionally at Los Alamos. She worked in the medical clinic, conducting blood counts, but after a year she quit. At social gatherings she could make small talk, but as one friend put it, “She wanted to make big talk.”

Peter Oppenheimer was born in May 1941. Above, being fed by Robert, and below laughing with Kitty.

“He (Robert) was great at a party and women simply loved him,” said Dorothy McKibbin.

Oppenheimer entertains McKibbin (on his right) and Victor Weisskopf (kneeling) in his Los Alamos cottage.

Above, a scientific colloquium at Los Alamos with (left to right) Norris Bradbury, John Manley, Enrico Fermi and J.M.B. Kellogg seated in the front row. Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman and Phillip Porter sit behind them.

Below, Hans Bethe, chief of the theoretical division.