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  PRAISE FOR AN ATOMIC LOVE STORY

  "Through diligent research, brilliant insights, and clear, incisive writing, Streshinsky and Klaus have deepened our understanding of Robert Oppenheimer's emotional life and loves. To comprehend his fascinating complexity, readers interested in the 20th century's most intriguing American scientist must now supplement the many biographical Oppenheimer tomes with this marvelous concise and precise book. Anyone with the slightest interest in Oppenheimer's biography will not be able to put it down."

  —Martin J. Sherwin, co-author of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize–winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

  "An Atomic Love Story is a story of many loves. A whole new range of Robert Oppenheimer's life emerges, a deeper and richer view of one of the pivotal figures of the 20th century."

  —Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

  "It is impossible to see Robert Oppenheimer whole without understanding the three great loves of his life. A closed book to most of the world, he opened himself to these three women, showing them the depth and intensity of his longing for the intimacies of the spirit as well as those of the flesh. An Atomic Love Story gives us the missing piece of the man."

  —Patricia O'Toole, author of The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends and When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House

  ALSO BY SHIRLEY STRESHINSKY

  Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness

  Gift of the Golden Mountain

  A Time Between

  The Shores of Paradise

  Hers the Kingdom

  Turner Publishing Company

  200 4th Avenue North • Suite 950 Nashville, Tennessee 37219

  445 Park Avenue • 9th Floor New York, NY 10022

  www.turnerpublishing.com

  An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer's Life

  Copyright © 2013 Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus. All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover design: Gina Binkley

  Book design: Kym Whitley

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Streshinsky, Shirley.

  An atomic love story: the extraordinary women in Robert Oppenheimer's life / Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-61858-019-1 (hardback)

  1. Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 1904–1967. 2. Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 1904–1967--Relations with women. 3. Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 1904–1967--Marriage. 4. Physicists--United States--Biography. 5. Women--United States--Biography. 6. Man-woman relationships--United States--History--20th century. 7. Sex role--United States--History--20th century.

  I. Klaus, Patricia. II. Title.

  QC16.O62S696 2013

  530.092--dc23

  [B]

  2013024440

  Printed in the United States of America

  13 14 15 16 17 18 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For daughter Maria Streshinsky, who grew up listening to Oppenheimer stories, became a journalist and an editor, and deserves a place in the sun for her help in making An Atomic Love Story come true.

  And for son Evan Klaus, who regularly called from 9,697 miles away in Africa to ask, "How's the book?" And for his inimitable PowerPoints, which have never failed to make me laugh at many times in my life.

  CONTENTS

  Cast of Characters

  What Is It About Robert?

  Prologue

  I. Bloodlines

  Chapters 1–2

  II. The Exuberant Years

  Chapters 3–8

  III. Forebodings

  Chapters 9–12

  IV. Love and War

  Chapters 13–16

  V. Los Alamos and Washington, D.C.

  Chapters 17–20

  VI. The Atomic Bomb

  Chapters 21–23

  VII. Repercussions

  Chapters 24–27

  VIII. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Aftermath

  Chapters 28–29

  IX. Martyrdom Rejected and A Final Voyage

  Chapters 30–31

  Outside the Timeline

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Photo Credits

  Index

  "HE WON EVERYONE QUICKLY WITH AN EXQUISITE CONSIDERATION AND A POLITENESS THAT MOVED SO FAST AND INTUITIVELY THAT IT COULD BE EXAMINED ONLY IN ITS EFFECT. THEN, WITHOUT CAUTION, LEST THE FIRST BLOOM OF THE RELATION WITHER, HE OPENED THE GATE TO HIS AMUSING WORLD."

  Tender Is the Night

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1923

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  The Oppenheimers

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Ella Oppenheimer: his mother

  Julius Oppenheimer: his father

  Frank Oppenheimer: his only brother, also a physicist

  Kitty Oppenheimer: Robert's wife (see also Puening/Vissering)

  Peter and Katherine (Toni) Oppenheimer: Robert and Kitty's children

  Jackie Oppenheimer: Frank's wife; with him joined Communist Party in 1937

  Robert's Friends*

  * * *

  * Title "Dr." intentionally removed because so many were either medical doctors or Ph.D.s.

  William Boyd: Harvard classmate

  Haakon Chevalier: professor of French literature at UC Berkeley, involved in Spanish refugee activity and Communist Party

  Jane Didisheim Kayser: classmate at Ethical Culture School

  John T. Edsall: Harvard classmate, received M.D. at Harvard, later a professor of biological chemistry there

  Francis Fergusson: Ethical Culture School classmate; was at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship when Robert was at Cambridge; became a drama and literature critic; a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in 1947–48 and again in 1967

  Paul Horgan: along with Francis Fergusson, was with Robert at Los Pinos in New Mexico; writer of fiction and nonfiction and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes

  Roger Lewis: Frank's friend who spent time at Perro Caliente

  Katherine Chaves Page (Katy): descended from an old hidalgo family; owner of Los Pinos Ranch in New Mexico where Robert spent summers as a young man

  Robert Serber: physicist and Robert's "right-hand man" before and after Los Alamos; after the deaths of his wife Charlotte and Robert, he became Kitty's companion

  George Uhlenbeck: physicist from the Netherlands; he and wife Else were friends at Berkeley and Perro Caliente

  Jeffries Wyman: Harvard classmate; professor of molecular biology at Harvard 1928–1951; scientific advisor to the U.S. Embassy in Paris in 1954; close friend to John Edsall and Robert

  The Tatlocks

  Jean Tatlock

  Marjorie Fenton Tatlock: her mother

  J. S. P. Tatlock: her father, a medieval scholar and professor at Harvard, Stanford, and UC Berkeley

  Hugh Tatlock: Jean's brother; a medical doctor

  Anne Fisher Tatlock: Hugh's wife; Jean's sister-in-law

  Jessie Tatlock: J.S.P. Tatlock's sister; Jean's aunt; professor of history at Mt. Holyoke College

  Winifred Smith: Marjorie Tatlock's lifelong friend; professor of English and drama at Vassar College; Jean's mentor

  Priscilla Smith (Robertson): reared by Winifred Smith; Jean's girlhood friend; became a historian

  Jean and Do
nald Macfarlane: Marjorie's friends; psychologists at UC Berkeley; followers of Jung

  Elizabeth Whitney: a close friend of Marjorie's; a medical doctor and Jungian analyst; briefly married to J. S. P. Tatlock after Marjorie's death

  Jean's Friends and Colleagues

  Thomas Addis: renowned hematologist and kidney specialist at Stanford University Hospital; sympathetic to Communism and deeply committed to social/political causes, especially the Spanish Civil War refugees

  Siegfried Bernfeld: Jewish Freud-trained psychoanalyst who emigrated from Europe in 1936; Jean's mentor and psychoanalyst at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco

  Leni Cahn: young German friend of Field family who watched over Margot Clark and Jean in Switzerland, 1930–1931

  Eleanor Clarke: Jean's best friend at Vassar; a well-known poet, married Robert Penn Warren

  Jean Clark: Cambridge girlhood friend; daughter of Harvard professor

  Margot Clark: Jean Clark's younger sister; spent year in Europe with Jean

  Letty Field: Cambridge girlhood friend; lived with brothers and her widowed mother; the Clark sisters, May Sarton, and Field attended Shady Hill School; Jean joined them at Cambridge High and Latin

  Edith Arnstein Jenkins: daughter of a friend of Marjorie Tatlock's; graduated from UC Berkeley; deeply involved in left-wing and labor politics in the San Francisco Bay Area

  Jackie Oppenheimer: see Oppenheimer Family

  Hannah Peters: medical doctor who fled Germany with her husband Bernard Peters; she would become Robert's personal physician and a close friend of Jean's; far left-wing in her politics, though she and her husband denied being members of the Communist Party

  May Sarton: Cambridge girlhood friend (one of the "Snabs"); daughter of a Harvard historian of science; after a brief acting career, Sarton became a well-known poet and novelist

  Katherine Warren: stage actress who befriended Jean

  Mary Ellen Washburn: a friend of both Jean and Robert who lived in the Berkeley hills; Robert's landlady for a time

  Tolman/Sherman Family

  Ruth Sherman Tolman

  Richard Tolman: her physicist husband; dean at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena

  Edward Tolman: Richard's younger brother; professor of psychology at UC Berkeley; one of founders of the field of behavioral psychology

  Kathleen Tolman: Edward Tolman's wife; mother of Deborah Tolman Whitney and Mary Tolman Kent

  Lillie Margaret Sherman: Ruth's older sister; worked with the YWCA her entire career

  Alma Sherman Chickering: Ruth's first cousin; married into a prominent San Francisco Bay Area family

  Bill Chickering: Alma Chickering's son; war correspondent for Time/Life

  Ruth's Friends and Colleagues

  Jean Bacher: wife of Bob Bacher, a physicist at Los Alamos, then Caltech

  Ruth Benedict: renowned anthropologist and author of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword; teacher and sometime partner of Margaret Mead

  Edward Boring: an experimental psychologist; taught at Clark University and Harvard; president of the American Psychological Association; concerned with the work of women in the field of psychology

  Jerome Bruner: worked in Washington with Ruth at Office of War Information; later professor of psychology at Harvard, Oxford, and NYU; a pioneer in the field of cognitive psychology

  Charles "Charlie" Lauritsen: emigrated from Denmark; a physicist at Caltech and with wife Sigrid were close friends of the Tolmans

  Margery Freeman: Ruth Benedict's sister; lived in Pasadena; wife of a Presbyterian minister

  Natalie Raymond: daughter of prominent Pasadena family; close friend of Robert Oppenheimer, Ruth Valentine and Ruth Tolman; also sometime partner of Ruth Benedict

  David Shakow: educated at Harvard; expert in the study of schizophrenia; worked with Ruth on research papers and in the American Psychological Association

  Ruth "Val" Valentine: Pasadena neighbor and best friend; from a prominent San Francisco Bay Area family; had Ph.D. in Psychology from UC Berkeley and worked in the Los Angeles school system as a psychologist; sometime partner of Ruth Benedict

  Vissering/Puening Family

  Katherine (Kitty) Vissering Puening

  Franz Puening: her father; a German-born chemical engineer

  Kaethe Vissering Puening: her mother; also born in Germany

  Gen. Wilhelm Keitel: Kitty's first cousin once removed; German field marshal and head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces during World War II

  Hilde Vissering de Blonay: Kitty's aunt; an assistant director in German films who worked for Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda during the Nazi era

  Kitty's Friends and Husbands

  Zelma Baker "Bake": high school friend; a successful research scientist; stayed in touch with Kitty through the 1930s

  Shirley Barnett: wife of Los Alamos physician Dr. Henry Barnett; sometime confidante of Kitty

  Barbara Chevalier: wife of Haakon; the couple cared for Peter Oppenheimer when he was a baby

  Hilda Dallet: Joe's mother who lived in New York City and Long Island

  Priscilla Duffield: Robert's first secretary at Los Alamos

  Verna Hobson: one of Robert's Princeton secretaries who became a confidant

  Anne Wilson Marks: Robert's last secretary at Los Alamos; married Herbert Marks and after his death worked for international arms control

  Steve Nelson: Communist Party member and organizer; best friend of Joe Dallet in Spain; met Robert through his friendship with Kitty

  Charlotte Serber: from a left-wing literary-political family in Philadelphia; scientific librarian at Los Alamos; wife of physicist Robert Serber

  Pat Sherr: wife of a Los Alamos physicist; a sometime confidante of Kitty's; cared for baby Toni Oppenheimer for four months

  Fiona St. Clair: friend from St. John; later married Robert Serber

  Jane Wilson: wife of physicist Robert Wilson; at Los Alamos

  Frank Ramseyer: Kitty's first husband; a Harvard-trained musician and later professor of music at Wheaton College outside Boston

  Joe Dallet: Kitty's second husband; a doctrinaire Communist who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War

  Stewart Harrison: Kitty's third husband; a medical doctor who worked on the therapeutic use of X-rays at Caltech; friend of the Tolmans

  Military Intelligence at Los Alamos and Washington, D.C.

  General Leslie Groves: military director of the Manhattan Project

  Major Robert Furman: a civil engineer, appointed by Groves to be head of Military Intelligence for the Manhattan Project

  Lt. Col. John Lansdale: a lawyer by profession; head of security for the Manhattan Project; Groves' personal assistant

  Lt. Col. Boris Pash: Army counterintelligence officer assigned to San Francisco; later military leader of the ALSOS Mission; strongly anti-Communist

  Peer de Silva: head of security at Los Alamos; worked with Pash and Lansdale

  The Scientists

  Robert Bacher: Robert's "right-hand man" at Los Alamos; became chairman of division of physics at Caltech and dean of faculty; he and his wife, Jean, were close friends of the Tolmans

  Patrick Blackett: British physicist at University of Cambridge; the tutor on whose desk Robert left the "poison apple"

  Hans Bethe: influential theoretical physicist who left Europe in the 1930s for Cornell, where he spent his entire career except for the years at Los Alamos

  Neils Bohr: the "great man" of physics; fled Denmark in 1943; was at Washington and Los Alamos during the war; returned to Denmark

  Freeman Dyson: physicist who came to Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in 1953; in 2013 still a member of IAS

  Werner Heisenberg: outstanding physicist spearheading the German effort to built an atomic bomb; known to many at Los Alamos

  Charles Lauritsen: see Ruth's Friends and Colleagues

  Ernest Lawrence: professor of experimental physics at UC Berkeley; director of the Radiation Lab
at UC Berkeley; co-founder of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory; supported development of the hydrogen bomb

  Edward Lofgren: physicist friend of Frank Oppenheimer at UC Berkeley and at University of Minnesota

  Linus Pauling: a professor of theoretical chemistry at Caltech; with wife, Ava Helen, was close friend to Robert early in career

  Edward Teller: Hungarian theoretical physicist at Los Alamos; founder (with Ernest Lawrence) and director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory; strong proponent of the hydrogen bomb

  Robert Serber: at University of Illinois, Los Alamos, then professor of physics at Columbia; close friend and colleague of Robert's

  Richard Tolman: see Ruth Tolman

  Robert Wilson: experimental physicist; worked closely with Robert at Los Alamos; helped organize Association of Los Alamos Scientists after the war; urged international control of nuclear weapons

  The Statesmen

  Dean Acheson: served as Secretary of State under President Truman, 1949–1853; principal architect of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine

  Vannevar Bush: vice-president of MIT, dean of MIT School of Engineering, head of Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war; informal scientific advisor to President Roosevelt

  George Kennan: diplomat, advisor, and historian; played important role in development of Cold War policy in the 1950s; came to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1953 and became Robert's close friend

  David Lilienthal: head of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s; chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 1946–1950; friend and neighbor of the Oppenheimers in Princeton

  Bernard Baruch: investment banker, business partner, and close friend of Lewis Strauss; advised various presidents on economic policy

  James Conant: professor of chemistry and president of Harvard until appointed first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany; during the war, served as chairman of the National Defense Research Committee

  Robert's Opponents

  William L. Borden: former executive director of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy; worked with Strauss and Hoover to have Robert's security clearance revoked

  J. Edgar Hoover: director of the FBI; always suspicious of Robert's "Communist connections"