Editing J. Robert Oppenheimer (section)

== Private and political life ==
[[File:J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Guest Lodge, Oak Ridge, in 1946 4.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Oppenheimer in 1946 |alt=A man in a suit seated, smoking a cigarette.]]Oppenheimer's mother died in 1931, and he became closer to his father who, although still living in New York, became a frequent visitor in California.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|p=98}}</ref> When his father died in 1937, leaving $392,602 (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US|.392602|1937|r=1}}&nbsp;million in {{Inflation/year|US}}) to be divided between Oppenheimer and his brother Frank, Oppenheimer immediately wrote out a will that left his estate to the University of California to be used for graduate scholarships.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|p=128}}</ref>

=== Politics===
During the 1920s, Oppenheimer remained uninformed about world affairs. He claimed that he did not read newspapers or popular magazines and only learned of the [[Wall Street crash of 1929]] while he was on a walk with Ernest Lawrence six months after the crash occurred.<ref>{{harvnb|Herken|2002|p=12}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Childs|1968|p=145}}</ref> He once remarked that he never cast a vote until the [[1936 United States presidential election|1936 presidential election]]. From 1934 on, he became increasingly concerned about politics and international affairs. In 1934, he earmarked three percent of his annual salary—about $100 ({{Inflation|US|100|1934|fmt=eq|r=-2}})—for two years to support German physicists fleeing [[Nazi Germany]].<ref name=":0" /> During the [[1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike]], he and some of his students, including Melba Phillips and Serber, attended a [[longshoremen]]'s rally.<ref name="Bird 2005 104–107">{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=104–107}}</ref>

After the [[Spanish Civil War]] broke out in 1936, Oppenheimer hosted fundraisers for the [[Spanish Republican]] cause. In 1939, he joined the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom, which campaigned against the persecution of Jewish scientists in Nazi Germany. Like most [[liberalism|liberal]] groups of the era, the committee was later branded a [[communist]] front.<ref name=":0">{{harvnb|Cassidy|2005|pp=184–186}}</ref>

Many of Oppenheimer's closest associates were active in the Communist Party in the 1930s or 1940s, including his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie,<ref>{{cite magazine|access-date=May 22, 2008|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,800436,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071121210619/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,800436,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 21, 2007|title=The Brothers|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|date=June 27, 1949 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Kitty,<ref>{{cite web|access-date=December 16, 2013|url=http://vault.fbi.gov/Katherine%20Oppenheimer/Katherine%20Oppenheimer%20Part%201%20of%201|title=FBI file: Katherine Oppenheimer|date=May 23, 1944|publisher=[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]|format=PDF|page=2|archive-date=May 25, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130525101636/http://vault.fbi.gov/Katherine%20Oppenheimer/Katherine%20Oppenheimer%20Part%201%20of%201/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Jean Tatlock]], his landlady Mary Ellen Washburn,<ref>{{cite web|access-date=May 22, 2008|url=http://ohst.berkeley.edu/oppenheimer/exhibit/text/ch2page2.html|title=A Life|publisher=[[University of California, Berkeley]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071127210103/http://ohst.berkeley.edu/oppenheimer/exhibit/text/ch2page2.html |archive-date = November 27, 2007}}</ref> and several of his graduate students at Berkeley.<ref name="Haynes 2006 147">{{harvnb|Haynes|2006|p=147}}</ref> Whether Oppenheimer was a party member has been debated. Cassidy states that he never openly joined the [[Communist Party USA]] (CPUSA),<ref name=":0" /> but Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev state that he "was, in fact, a concealed member of the CPUSA in the late 1930s".{{sfn|Haynes|Klehr|Vassiliev|2009|p=58}} From 1937 to 1942, Oppenheimer was a member at Berkeley of what he called a "discussion group", which fellow members [[Haakon Chevalier]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Chevalier to Oppenheimer, July 23, 1964 |url=http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbsource/document1.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812215545/http://brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbsource/document1.html |archive-date=August 12, 2011 |access-date=February 24, 2011 |publisher=Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Excerpts from Barbara Chevalier's unpublished manuscript |url=http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbsource/new_evidence_2.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812220343/http://brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbsource/new_evidence_2.html |archive-date=August 12, 2011 |access-date=February 24, 2011 |publisher=Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller}}</ref> and Gordon Griffiths later said was a "closed" (secret) unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty.<ref>{{cite web |title=Excerpts from Gordon Griffith's unpublished memoir |url=http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbsource/new_evidence_3.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110821231219/http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbsource/new_evidence_3.html |archive-date=August 21, 2011 |access-date=February 24, 2011 |publisher=Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller}}</ref>

The [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI) opened a file on Oppenheimer in March 1941. It recorded that he attended a meeting in December 1940 at Chevalier's home that was also attended by the Communist Party's California state secretary, [[William Schneiderman]], and its treasurer, [[Isaac Folkoff]]. The FBI noted that Oppenheimer was on the executive committee of the [[American Civil Liberties Union]], which it considered a communist front organization. Shortly thereafter, the FBI added Oppenheimer to its [[Custodial Detention Index]], for arrest in case of national emergency.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=137–138}}</ref>

When he joined the Manhattan Project in 1942, Oppenheimer wrote on his personal security questionnaire that he had been "a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the [[West Coast of the United States|West Coast]]."<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Teukolsky |first1=Rachel |date=Spring 2001 |title=Regarding Scientist X |url=http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles/issue1/scientistx.pdf |magazine=Berkeley Science Review |issue=1 |page=17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901083938/http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles/issue1/scientistx.pdf |archive-date=September 1, 2006}}</ref> Years later, he claimed that he did not remember writing this, that it was not true, and that if he had written anything along those lines, it was "a half-jocular overstatement".<ref>{{harvnb|United States Atomic Energy Commission|1954|p=9}}</ref> He was a subscriber to the ''[[People's World]]'',<ref>{{cite web |author=Oppenheimer, J. R. |date=March 4, 1954 |title=Oppenheimer's Letter of Response on Letter Regarding the Oppenheimer Affair |url=http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/oppenheimer-robert/corr_oppenheimer_1954-03-04.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514020045/http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/oppenheimer-robert/corr_oppenheimer_1954-03-04.htm |archive-date=May 14, 2008 |access-date=May 22, 2008 |publisher=[[Nuclear Age Peace Foundation]]}}</ref> a Communist Party organ, and testified in 1954, "I was associated with the communist movement."<ref>{{harvnb|Strout|1963|p=4}}</ref>

In 1953, Oppenheimer was on the sponsoring committee for a conference on "Science and Freedom" organized by the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]], an anti-communist cultural organization.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Scott-Smith |first=Giles |date=2002 |title=The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology and the 1955 Milan Conference: 'Defining the Parameters of Discourse' |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180790 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=437–455 |doi=10.1177/00220094020370030601 |jstor=3180790 |s2cid=153804847 |issn=0022-0094 |access-date=December 30, 2023 |archive-date=December 30, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231230191750/https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180790 |url-status=live }}</ref>

At his 1954 security clearance hearings, Oppenheimer denied being a member of the Communist Party but identified himself as a [[fellow traveler]], which he defined as someone who agrees with many of communism's goals but is not willing to blindly follow orders from any Communist Party apparatus.<ref>{{harvnb|Cassidy|2005|pp=199–200}}</ref> According to biographer [[Ray Monk]]: "He was, in a very practical and real sense, a supporter of the Communist Party. Moreover, in terms of the time, effort and money spent on party activities, he was a very committed supporter."<ref name=":1">{{harvnb|Monk|2012|p=244}}.</ref>

=== Relationships and children ===
In 1936, Oppenheimer became involved with [[Jean Tatlock]], the daughter of a Berkeley literature professor and a student at [[Stanford University School of Medicine]]. The two had similar political views; she wrote for the ''Western Worker'', a Communist Party newspaper.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=111–113}}</ref> In 1939, after a tempestuous relationship, Tatlock broke up with Oppenheimer. In August of that year, he met [[Katherine Oppenheimer|Katherine ("Kitty") Puening]], a former Communist Party member. Kitty's first marriage had lasted only a few months. Her second, [[common-law marriage|common-law]], husband from 1934 to 1937 was [[Joe Dallet]], an active member of the Communist Party killed in 1937 in the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=153–161}}</ref>

Kitty returned from Europe to the U.S., where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in [[botany]] from the [[University of Pennsylvania]]. In 1938 she married Richard Harrison, a physician and medical researcher, and in June 1939 moved with him to [[Pasadena, California]], where he became chief of radiology at a local hospital and she enrolled as a graduate student at the [[University of California, Los Angeles]]. She and Oppenheimer created a minor scandal by sleeping together after one of Tolman's parties, and in the summer of 1940 she stayed with Oppenheimer at his ranch in New Mexico. When she became pregnant, Kitty asked Harrison for a divorce and he agreed to it. On November 1, 1940, she obtained a quick divorce in [[Reno, Nevada]], and married Oppenheimer.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=160–162}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Streshinsky|Klaus|2013|pp=111–119}}</ref>

Their first child, Peter, was born in May 1941, and their second, Katherine ("Toni"), was born in [[Los Alamos, New Mexico]], on December 7, 1944.<ref name="Cassidy, pp. 186-187">{{harvnb|Cassidy|2005|pp=186–187}}</ref> During his marriage, Oppenheimer rekindled his affair with Tatlock.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=231–233}}</ref> Later, their continued contact became an issue in his security clearance hearings because of Tatlock's communist associations.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=232–234, 511–513}}</ref>

Throughout the development of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was under investigation by both the FBI and the Manhattan Project's internal security arm for his past left-wing associations. He was followed by Army security agents during a trip to California in June 1943 to visit Tatlock, who was suffering from [[Major depressive disorder|depression]]. Oppenheimer spent the night in her apartment.<ref name="Herken, pp. 101-102">{{harvnb|Herken|2002|pp=101–102}}</ref> Tatlock killed herself on January 4, 1944, leaving Oppenheimer deeply grieved.<ref name="Bird 2005 249–254">{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=249–254}}</ref>

At [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]], Oppenheimer began an [[emotional affair]] with [[Ruth Sherman Tolman|Ruth Tolman]], a psychologist and the wife of his friend Richard Tolman. The affair ended after Oppenheimer returned east to become director of the [[Institute for Advanced Study]] but, after Richard's death in August 1948, they reconnected and saw each other occasionally until Ruth's death in 1957. Few of their letters survive, but those that do reflect a close and affectionate relationship, with Oppenheimer calling her "My Love".<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|pp=363–365}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Streshinsky|Klaus|2013|pp=290–292}}</ref>

=== Mysticism ===
{{Quote box
| quote = Oppenheimer worked very hard [in the spring of 1929] but had a gift of concealing his assiduous application with an air of easy nonchalance. Actually, he was engaged in a very difficult calculation of the opacity of surfaces of stars to their internal radiation, an important constant in the theoretical construction of stellar models. He spoke little of these problems and seemed to be much more interested in literature, especially the Hindu classics and the more esoteric Western writers. [[Wolfgang Pauli|Pauli]] once remarked to me that Oppenheimer seemed to treat physics as an avocation and psychoanalysis as a vocation.
| author = — [[Isidor Isaac Rabi]]{{sfn|Pais|2006|p=17–18}}
| width = 30%
| align = right
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}}
Oppenheimer's diverse interests sometimes interrupted his focus on science. He liked things that were difficult and since much of the scientific work appeared easy for him, he developed an interest in the mystical and the cryptic.{{sfn|Bird|Sherwin|2005|p=99,102}} After going to Harvard, he began to acquaint himself with the classical [[Hindu texts]] through their English translations.{{sfn|Schweber|2006|p=543}} He also had an interest in learning languages and learned [[Sanskrit]],{{refn|group=note|He also spoke Dutch, German, French and some Chinese.{{sfn|Hunner|2012|p=17}}}} under [[Arthur W. Ryder]] at Berkeley in 1933.<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=November 8, 1948 |title=The TIME Vault: November 8, 1948 |url=https://time.com/vault/issue/1948-11-08/spread/76/ |access-date=April 25, 2023 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |page=75 |archive-date=May 1, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230501171021/https://time.com/vault/issue/1948-11-08/spread/76/ |url-status=live }}</ref>{{sfn|Roy|2018|p=157}} He eventually read literary works such as the ''[[Bhagavad Gita]]'' and ''[[Meghaduta]]'' in the original Sanskrit, and deeply pondered them. He later cited the ''Gita'' as one of the books that most shaped his philosophy of life.<ref>{{harvnb|Bird|Sherwin|2005|p=99,102}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Hijiya|2000|p=133}}</ref> He wrote to his brother that the ''Gita'' was "very easy and quite marvelous". He later called it "the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue", and gave copies of it as presents to his friends and kept a personal, worn-out copy on the bookshelf by his desk. He kept referring to it while directing the Los Alamos Laboratory, and quoted a passage from the ''Gita'' at the memorial service of President [[Franklin Roosevelt]] in Los Alamos.{{sfn|Schweber|2006|p=544}}{{sfn|Roy|2018|p=157}} He nicknamed his car [[Garuda]], the mount bird of the Hindu god [[Vishnu]].{{sfn|Boyce|2015|p=595}} 

Oppenheimer never became a Hindu in the traditional sense; he did not join any temple nor pray to any god.{{sfn|Roy|2018|p=158}}{{sfn|Hijiya|2000|p=126}} He "was really taken by the charm and the general wisdom of the Bhagavad-Gita," his brother said.{{sfn|Roy|2018|p=158}} It is speculated that Oppenheimer's interest in [[Hindu philosophy|Hindu thought]] started during his earlier association with [[Niels Bohr]]. Both Bohr and Oppenheimer had been very analytical and critical about the ancient [[Hindu mythology|Hindu mythological]] stories and the [[metaphysics]] embedded in them. In one conversation with [[David Hawkins (philosopher)|David Hawkins]] before the war, while talking about the literature of [[ancient Greece]], Oppenheimer remarked, "I have read the Greeks; I find the Hindus deeper."{{sfn|Scott|Besmann|Goldberg|Hawkins|1994|p=60}} Oppenheimer sat on the Board of Editors of the book series ''[[World Perspectives]]'', which published a variety of books on philosophy.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Egerod |first1=Soren |title="Voices of Man. The Meaning and Function of Language", by Mario Pei (Book Review) |journal=Romance Philology |date=November 1963 |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=458–61}}</ref> During the 1930s, while teaching at Berkeley, Oppenheimer became part of a group in the Bay Area that psychologist [[Siegfried Bernfeld]] convened to discuss [[psychoanalysis]].{{sfn|Hart|2008|p=121}}

His close confidant and colleague [[Isidor Isaac Rabi]], who had seen Oppenheimer throughout his Berkeley, Los Alamos, and Princeton years, wondering "why men of Oppenheimer's gifts do not discover everything worth discovering",{{sfn|Pais|2006|p=143}} reflected that:

{{blockquote|Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling for the mystery of the universe that surrounded him almost like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was ... [he turned] away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.... In Oppenheimer the element of earthiness was feeble. Yet it was essentially this spiritual quality, this refinement as expressed in speech and manner, that was the basis of his charisma. He never expressed himself completely. He always left a feeling that there were depths of sensibility and insight not yet revealed. These may be the qualities of the born leader who seems to have reserves of uncommitted strength.<ref>Rabi, ''Oppenheimer'' (1969), p. 7, cited in {{harvnb|Rhodes|1977|p=149}}, {{harvnb|Hijiya|2000|p=166}} and {{harvnb|Pais|2006|p=143}}</ref>}}

In spite of this, observers such as physicists [[Luis Walter Alvarez|Luis Alvarez]] and [[Jeremy Bernstein]] have suggested that if Oppenheimer had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, he might have won a Nobel Prize for his work on [[gravitational collapse]], concerning neutron stars and black holes.<ref name="Gerjuoy">{{harvnb|Kelly|2006|p=128}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Feldman|2000|pp=196–198}}</ref>{{sfn|Hart|2008|p=119}} In retrospect, some physicists and historians consider this his most important contribution, though it was not taken up by other scientists in his lifetime.<ref>{{harvnb|Hufbauer|2005|pp=31–47}}</ref> The physicist and historian [[Abraham Pais]] once asked Oppenheimer what he considered his most important scientific contributions—Oppenheimer cited his work on electrons and positrons, not his work on gravitational contraction.<ref name="Pais 2006 33">{{harvnb|Pais|2006|p=33}}</ref> Oppenheimer was nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Physics]] four times, in 1946, 1951, 1955, and 1967, but never won.<ref>{{harvnb|Cassidy|2005|p=178}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=6873 |title=Nomination Archive – Robert J. Oppenheimer |date=April 2020 |publisher=Nobel Media AB |access-date=December 28, 2024 |archive-date=December 4, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241204194251/https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=6873 |url-status=live }}</ref>