Oppenheimer family. Unknown facts and secrets of the life of close creators of the nuclear bomb
Robert Oppenheimer managed the Manhattan project, under which the United States created the world's first atomic bomb during World War II.
After the first test of nuclear weapons, he quoted the Hindu song “Bhagawadgita” and said: “Now I became death, the destroyer of the worlds.”
Shortly after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, he gave up participation in the Manhattan project.
In 2023, Cillian Murphy played the character of a physicist in the film by Christopher Nolan “Oppenheimer”. The film met with great recognition of critics and won five awards at the Golden Globes in 2024, including for the best film. He also won seven awards at Baftas 2024, and Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. They received awards for the best actor and the best supporting actor, respectively.
In addition to the nuclear work of Oppenheimer, the film looks at the complex personal life of the scientist, including his marriage with Katherine Oppenheimer, née Puening.
Here's everything you know about the real Oppenheimer's family.
Before Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer married Oppenheimer, she was married three times Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, née Puening.
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Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, née Puening, married a scientist in 1940, just two years before he joined the Manhattan project.
Kitty was already married three times. In 1932 she married the music of Frank Ramseyer, and in 1933 their marriage was annulled.
Shortly afterwards, in 1934, she became involved with the communist party of America and became the wife of John Dullet Jr., when they lived in Chicago, and then parted in 1936.
Then Kitty married a doctor from Oxford Richard Stewart Harrison in 1938, but she had an affair with Oppenheimer when Harrison worked in California. She divorced Harrison in 1940, and the day later she married Oppenheimer.
They were married until the death of Oppenheimer on throat cancer in 1967, and Kitty scattered his ashes in the water on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands, where they spent a lot of time with their children, Peter and Toni.
Kitty spent the rest of her life with Robert Serber, another physicist from the Manhattan project, whose wife died as a result of suicide. Kitty died in the hospital in 1972, when the couple set off to a cruise to Japan, to the islands of Galapagos and Tahiti.
Kitty Oppenheimer had a grudge against her husband Peter Oppenheimer as a child
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Oppenheimer had two children with his wife, Kitty. Their oldest child, Peter, was born in Pasadna in California in May 1941, before moving the family to Los Alamos for the needs of the Manhattan project.
According to the book “American Prometheus. Triumph and tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer,” when Peter was only two months old, the Oppenheimers left him with friends Haakon and Barbara Chevalier. Robert said his wife was exhausted. Then the couple spent two months at the Family Ranch Perro Caliente in Nowy Mexico.
According to Nuclear Museum, as a child Peter struggled with fears and did not have good relationships with his mother.
“Robert believed that in their very charged, passionate falling in love, Peter appeared too early and that Kitty blamed him because of it,” said Oppenheimer's secretary, Verna Hobson, during an interview in 1979.
When his father died in 1967, Peter moved back to the family Ranch Perro Caliente in New Mexico. For years he worked as a carpenter and has three children.
Robert Oppenheimer's daughter died at only 32 years old Katherine “Toni” Oppenheimer as a child.
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Toni Oppenheimer was born in 1944 and lived in Los Alamos up to three years of age. Then her father became the director of the Institute for Advanced Study and moved his family to Princeton, New Jersey.
As a child, Toni lived for several months with a friend of Oppenheimers, Pat Sherr. Sherr later mentioned that Robert regularly visited her, but asked if he wanted to adopt Toni. When Sherr asked him why, he replied, “Because I can't love her” and added that he was not “an attached person”.
However, a friend of Toni from his childhood in an April interview for “The Winchester Star” described Robert as “loving dad”.
When the toni was small, she suffered from polio, which was largely the reason why the family began to visit St. John on the Virgin Islands. Heat seemed to help her condition.
Toni had complicated relations with her mother, mainly because of the alcohol abuse by Kitty.
“She relied on the toni and it was difficult for her, but she only wanted good and happiness for Toni,” Hobson said about Kitty in 1979.
Two years after Robert's death in 1967, the United Nations rejected the translator's toni application. The FBI did not grant her a proper security certificate.
She could hardly deal with the loss of her father and work opportunities, and after some time of life on the island of St. John died of suicide in January 1977, just a month after the age of 32.
The granddaughter of Robert Oppenheimer works in the nuclear industry Charles Oppenheimer during a meeting at The Atomic Museum at The Beverly Theater, 27 July 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Although Toni did not have children, Peter Oppenheimer had their three: Charles, Ella and Dorothy.
Dorothy Vanderford, who was born in 1973, is the oldest granddaughter of Oppenheimer. He works in the nuclear industry and has an English doctorate.
In 2023 she talked to KSNV about the film and said that Christopher Nolan did not talk to his family about creating a film.
After watching the movie, she said: “There were a few things that I disagreed with and which I did not like, but in general I think it was a good film.”
Charles Oppenheimer was born in 1975 and For many years he worked on creating software.
The youngest of the siblings, Ella, does not reveal the details of her life.
In 2015, both Dorothy and Charles gave an extensive interview about their grandfather for Atomic Heritage Foundation.
Charles said then that many historians consider his grandfather a mysterious figure.
– People have difficulty determining who this guy was. I think that some people make it difficult for this to deal with their family. Not me – he said.
Charles has two daughters with his wife, Karen Pak Oppenheimer, which means that Oppenheimer has at least two great -grandchildren.
Both Charles and his wife are co -managed by the Oppenheimer Project, which commemorates Robert's heritage.
In a recent essay for “The New York Times Charles” he wrote that the nuclear war would end the world as we know. “I'm not afraid to be a voice calling for greater unity in the world, even though my grandfather was finally attacked,” he wrote.
The article is a translation from the American edition of Business Insider. Translation: Mateusz Albin
