22 April: Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer, the US physicist, known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb, was born on this date in 1904. Here are ten things you might not know about him.

1. Robert was his middle name. His first name was Julius, after his father. His father was a German immigrant, who'd arrived in the US in 1888 with no money, no qualifications and unable to speak English, He got a job with a textile company and within ten years was a company executive.
2. His mother Ella was a painter from Baltimore. His parents collected art and had in their collection three original Van Gogh paintings.
3. At school, Robert was interested in English and French literature as well as science, finally deciding to major in chemistry.
4. He went to Harvard, a year later than he was supposed to because he'd gone down with colitis during a family holiday in Europe and had been convalescing in New Mexico. During his time there he learned to ride a Horse and developed a lifelong love of riding. He would later buy a ranch in New Mexico, and called it Perro Caliente, which is Spanish for “Hot dog”, the exclamation he made when he first heard the ranch was available to lease.
5. After Harvard, he studied in Europe, in Cambridge and the University of Göttingen, where he took such an active part in class discussions that he annoyed the other students to the extent that one of them organised a petition saying they'd boycott the class unless he shut up.
6. He worked with some well known scientists including Max Born and Linus Pauling. However, his relationship with Pauling came to an abrupt end after he propositioned Pauling's wife. She turned him down and told her husband about it.
7. As a young man, he was so involved with his work that he had no idea at all about current affairs, because he never read newspapers or listened to the radio. He claimed he'd only heard about the Wall Street crash six months after it happened, from a friend. He also claimed that he didn't even vote until 1936. In the 1930s, though, he became concerned about what was going on in the world. For two years, he gave 3% of his salary to help scientists fleeing Nazi Germany.
8. In 1940 he married Kitty Peuning. He was her fourth husband. He was also carrying on with a woman called Jean Tatlock. Both women had Communist views. Hence he was under investigation by the FBI for potentially being a communist. While he agreed with the Communist Party on several issues, he denied he was ever a member of it.
9. His famous quote, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" is a verse from the Bhagavad Gita, originally spoken by Prince Arjuna as he takes on his multi-armed form.
10. A chain smoker, he died from throat cancer in 1965, aged 62.

See also: Robert Oppenheimer quotes.

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