13. Martin Vissering to Patricia Klaus, May 23, 2012, personal communication.
14. Robert Serber, interview by Jon Else, 12/15/79, in The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (documentary film, 1980), Serber File, Martin Sherwin Files Washington, D.C. (This interview and others, conducted by MS and KB, except where stated otherwise, are from the files in Sherwin's personal collection read in 2008. In 2009, these files were donated to the Manuscript Division, LOC, Washington, D.C., as the Martin J. Sherwin Collection Relating to JRO.
15. Robert Serber, interview by Martin Sherwin, 3/11/82. See also Serber interview by Else, 12/15/70, and KB and MS, Prometheus, 154–55.
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16. Ella Friedman to Julius Oppenheimer, January 1903, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, 1902–1985, Folder 10, Box 4, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
17. Donald Glassman, Barnard College Archivist, wrote that it is not likely that woman would have been teaching at a college at that time; more likely that Ella Friedman would have taught art at Barnard School for Girls. Communication with Patricia Klaus, January 2007.
18. Paul Horgan, interview by AKS, December 21, 1975, MC369, Box 2, Paul Horgan Folder, AKS Papers, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
19. Ella Friedman to Julius Oppenheimer, March 10, 1903, FO Papers, UCB.
20. Ella Oppenheimer to Julius Oppenheimer, August 27, 1903, FO Papers, UCB.
21. KB and MS note in Prometheus that Robert's birth certificate reads "Julius Robert Oppenheimer" (p. 11).
22. Julius began serving on the Board of the Ethical Culture Society in 1907.
23. As quoted in KB and MS, Prometheus, 15.
24. Jane Didisheim Kayser, interview by CW, June 4, 1975, CWF.
25. KB and MS, Prometheus, 21.
26. Horgan, interview by AKS.
27. Ibid.; Francis Fergusson, interview by Martin Sherwin, 6/8/79, MSF.
28. Peter Michelmore, The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969), 9.
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29. Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 261.
30. John D. D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 191-93.
31. Ibid. 224–25.
32. Blue and Gold, University of California Yearbook, 1917.
33. Dorothy T. Clemens, Standing Ground and Starting Point: 120 Years with the YWCA in Berkeley (Berkeley, CA: Big Hat Press, 1990), 36.
34. Mary Tolman Kent, interview by Shirley Streshinsky, November 28, 2005; Deborah Tolman Whitney, interview by Shirley Streshinsky, November 28, 2005.
35. W.B. Carnochan, "English at Stanford 1891–2000: A Brief History," Sandstone and Tile, Stanford Historical Society, 26, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 2002), 6.
36. Priscilla Smith Robertson to Jean Tatlock, "Promise," ca. January 1944, (written to Jean after her death), courtesy of Charlotte Robertson. There are copies of this letter in the AKS Papers, MIT and PSR Papers, Vassar.
37. Chronology (lecture, Vassar, October 5, 1931), www.Vassar.edu/records/1931.
38. Robertson, "Promise."
39. Vassar Encyclopedia. http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/faculty/prominent-faculty/winifred-smith.html.
40. AKS/CW, Letters, 10.
41. AKS/CW, Letters, 10.
42. See Walter Görlitz, ed., The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel., trans. David Irving (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), originally published in Germany as: Mein Leben: Pflichterfüllung bis zum Untergang: Hitlers Feldmarschall und Chef des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht in Selbstzeugnissen (Gottigen: Germany: Musterschmnidt-Verlag, 1961); Walter Gorlitz, "Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont," in Correlli Barnett, ed., Hitler's Generals (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 139–171.
43. Kitty to Hilda Dallet, August 11, 1937, Joseph Dallet, Jr. Papers, Series I, Correspondence. Box 1, Folder 12, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU. All letters from Kitty to Hilda Dallet are from this collection unless otherwise stated.
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44. Wyman, Kipling's Cat, 25.
45. AKS/CW, Letters, 70, 90.
46. In Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), Malcolm Gladwell describes Robert's "lofty perch," the advantages he had which facilitated his success and allowed him to escape the usual sanctions that Cambridge would normally imposed on him for the poison apple incident, whatever it actually was (pp. 98–100).
47. Years later, Robert would say in an interview for Time magazine that he was "on the point of bumping myself off." Time, November 8, 1948:71.
48. Robert Oppenheimer to Francis Fergusson, March 7, 1976, in AKS/CW, Letters, 92.
49. Francis Fergusson, interview by AKS, April, 21, 1976, AKS Papers, MIT; Francis Fergusson, interview by MS, 6/18/79. Fergusson also wrote about this in his "Account of the Adventures of Robert Oppenheimer in Europe," Fergusson Folder, MSF.
50. Edsall, interview by CW, MC369, June 16, 1975, AKS Papers, MIT.
51. Michelmore, The Swift Years, 18.
52. Marcel Proust, In Remembrance of Things Past. Vol. 1, Swann's Way, Pleiade edition, trans. by C. K. Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1982) 32.
53. Ibid, 180.
54. William C. Carter, Proust in Love (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 193.
55. Edsall, interview by CW.
56. Jeffries Wyman, interview by CW, May 28, 1975. See also AKS/CW, Letters, 93.
57. Denise Royal, The Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: St. Martin's Press,1969) 36; Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, ca. late spring 1926, AKS/CW, Letters, 95.
58. Nuel Pharr Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Books, 1968), Biographer Peter Michelmore to Frank Oppenheimer, September 16, 1968, FO Papers, Box 4, Folder 23–24. ". . . the love your brother spoke about was surely not love for a woman but love for humanity—a love that came to him during the weeks he and his two buddies tramped the hills of Corsica, sleeping under the stars, listening to the cries of shepherds, dashing through rainstorms to the comfort of an inn. . . . Wyman and Edsall were good friends, sensitive and intelligent, and their companionship could have helped trigger what was perhaps a kind of spiritual renaissance in your brother." Both Frank Oppenheimer and Michelmore are highly critical of Davis' book. See Frank Oppenheimer, "In Defense of Titular Heroes," Physics Today (February 1969), 77–80.
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59. Ruth Tolman to Richard Tolman, April 20, 1930, Series X: Ruth Tolman, Box 11, Folder 3, Richard Chace Tolman Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Caltech, Pasadena, CA. All letters from Ruth Tolman to Richard Tolman are from this collection unless otherwise cited.
60. Ruth S. Tolman, "Qualifications Statement for Promotion and/or Reassignment," October 16, 1944, U.S. Civil Service Commission. General Case File 1788–1967, Box 72, Ruth Tolman 1943–1958, J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers, LOC, 1799–1980.
61. Ruth Tolman to Richard Tolman, April 21, 1930.
62. Ibid, April 20, 1930.
63. Frank Oppenheimer, "The Trip West," FO Papers, UCB. The story and the quotations following are from this manuscript.
64. Robert Oppenheimer, interview by Thomas S. Kuhn, November 20, 1963, as quoted in AKS/CW, Letters, 114; interview with Frank Oppenheimer by AKS, April 14, 1976, in AKS/CW, Letters and Recollections, 134.
65. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, August 21, 1928, Box 149, Folder 1, May Sarton Papers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, NYPL. All letters from Jean Tatlock to May Sarton are from this collection unless otherwise noted.
66. May's mother was English and her father was an eminent Belgian chemist and historian renowned as the founder of discipline history of science. He came to the United States in 1915, and was a full professor from 1918 until 1940. Of Quaker ancestry, Henry Haviland Field received
his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in zoology at Harvard and went on to direct an international scientific institute in Zurich. When he died in 1921, the family returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that his sons could attend Harvard. Noel would later achieve notoriety as a Soviet spy; Hermann would marry Jean Clark; he became an architect and one of the pioneers in environmental planning.
67. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, July 28, 1928.
68. At some point, possibly when John Tatlock was at Stanford, Marjorie became friends with Dr. Elizabeth Whitney, Dr. James Whitney, Jean Macfarlane and Flora (Fergie) Jacobi Arnstein (mother of Edith Arnstein, later to be Jean's good friend), all of whom would be instrumental in the development of the fields of psychiatry and child guidance in the Bay Area.
69. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, France, October 1, 1928.
70. Ibid., August 21, 1928.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Pat Sherr, who knew Kitty at Los Alamos and Princeton, would offer to an interviewer that Kitty had told her that she "was a wild as hell" in high school.
74. "Oppenheimer's Wife Bright Student." Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, April 13, 1954.
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75. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, August 21, 1928.
76. Ibid., August 1928.
77. Ibid., France, August 28, 1928.
78. Ibid., Summer 1928.
79. Ibid., France, September 21, 1928.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., France, September 28 and 31, 1928.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., France, Fall 1928.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., October 29, 1928.
86. Ibid., France, November 7, 1928.
87. Ibid., France, October 1, 1928.
88. "Jessie Tatlock Memoir" (unpublished, n.d.), courtesy of John Tatlock.
89. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, New York, end of December, 1928.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
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92. May would describe them "all furiously writing and dash[ing] over to each others homes laden like bees with our honey." May Sarton to Anne Thorpe, April 4, 1929, Susan Sherman, ed., May Sarton: Selected Letters, 1916–1954 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 42.
93. See D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 190–194.
94. Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928) was the lesbian novel published in England and the subject of an obscenity trial (the novel was ruled obscene and corrupting). Published at the same time in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, it was confiscated by police and was the object of another obscenity trial; however, this time the ruling was favorable to Hall and Knopf. In the 1960s, it was still selling over 100,000 copies a year.
95. May Sarton to Eleanor Mabel Sarton, June 25, 1929, in Sherman, Selected Letters, 44–45.
96. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, June 17, 1929.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. Frank Oppenheimer, "The Drive West."
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100. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, June 17, 1929.
101. Ibid., October 1929. Jean's experiences often appeared in her adolescent poetry:
Once
When I lay down
Naked
In a path of moonlight
Someone
Thought I was crazy
And another envied me
For my frankness,
The moon
Only wept. . . .
102. Ibid., June 27, 1929.
103. Ibid., Summer 1929.
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
107. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, November 13, 1929.
108. Thomas Hager, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 101.
109. Hager, Force of Nature, 152.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, Summer 1929.
113. Ibid., January 1930.
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114. Ruth Tolman to Richard Tolman, April 20, 1930.
115. Frank Oppenheimer, interview by AKS.
116. Frank Oppenheimer, interview by CW, February 9, 1974, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, AIP, College Park, MD, 44.
117. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, middle of January, 1930.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid., February 1930.
120. Daniel Benveniste, "The Early History of Psychoanalysis in San Francisco," Psychoanalysis and History 8, no. 2, 2006:195–233.
121. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, Summer 1929.
122. Frank Oppenheimer would describe Richard as someone who "commanded respect, very much. And he loved the subject [physics] and the beauty of it, and the logical coherence of it." Frank Oppenheimer, interview by Judith R. Goodstein, November 16, 1984, Archives, Caltech, 28.
123. In 1922, when Val applied for a passport, Ruth served as her witness.
124. Helen Campbell Allison, interview by AKS, December 7, 1976, Helen Campbell Folder, AKS Papers, MC369, Box 2, MIT.
125. Quoted in AKS/CW, Letters, 137.
126. Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, January 11, 1935, quoted in AKS/CW, Letters, 191.
127. Ruth Benedict to Margaret Mead, July 31, 1931, Special Correspondence, Box 1: Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead Papers and South Pacific Ethnography Archives, LOC, Washington, D.C. All letters from Ruth Benedict to Margaret Mead are from this collection unless otherwise cited.
128. Ibid., August 10, 1931.
129. Ibid.
130. Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, Berkeley, August 10, 1931, quoted in AKS/CW, Letters, 143.
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131. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, [Spring] 1930.
132. Ibid., [June] 1930.
133. Ibid., [Before June] 1931.
134. Ibid., [June 1930, after Letty's death].
135. Ibid., June 1930.
136. Ibid., [June 1930, after Letty's death].
137. Ibid., Spring 1931.
138. Ibid., February 1930.
139. Ibid., [June 1930].
140. Joe Dallet to Hilda Dallet, July [1934?], Series 1: Box 1, Folder 13, Joseph Dallet Jr. Papers, NYU.
141. Dates of enrollment courtesy of the Office of the Registrar, University of Pittsburgh.
142. Peter Goodchild, JRO: Shatterer of Worlds (London: BBC, 1980), 37.
143. Lin Ramseyer Clayberg and Helene (Lanie) Ramseyer Dickel, interviews by Patricia Klaus, April–May 2012.
144. "Ramseyer Family," U.S. Census 1910; U.S. Census 1930.www.Ancestry.com.
145. Michelmore, The Swift Years, 33.
146. The Perro Caliente stories are legend and nearly every one of Robert's friends who went there had a story to tell: George and Else Uhlenbecks, Serber, Ruth Valentine, Frank Oppenheimer.
147. May Sarton Diary, copy of letter to Katherine Taylor, July 29, 1931, quoted in Peters, May Sarton, 66.
148. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, Geneva, October 19, 1930.
149. Ibid. [Fall 1930, third letter].
150. Frank W. Ramseyer and Katherine Puening, Application for a Marriage License, December 24, 1932, Department of Court Records, Allegheny County, Pittsburgh PA. They were married on December 26, 1932. Information on the silver provided by Lanie Dickel; Kitty and Frank's address was 1000 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
151. Although Kitty stated in her testimony at the Security Clearance Hearing in 1954 that she was a student at Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin Registrar has no record of her completing any courses there.
152. There is no record on file at the Wisconsin Vital Records Office, Madison, Wisconsin for Kitty and Frank's annulment, although his daughters confirm that their father said the marriage had been annulled; Harvard Crimson, December 9, 1933.
153. Pat Sherr, interview by MS, February 20, 1979, MSF.
154. Lin Ramseyer Clayberg, personal communication with Patricia Klaus, April 29, 2012.
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155. Ruth Tolman to Richard Tolman, April 20 [1930], RCT Papers, Caltech.
156. Ruth Tolman, "Qualifications Statement for Promotion or Reassignment," OSS Personnel File, RG226, Box 781, NARA.
157. Ibid.
158. Martin Plessett, interview by MS, March 28, 1983, MSF.
159. Robert Serber, interview by Shirley Streshinsky, 1994.
160. Robertson, "Promise." Jean was also on the editorial board of the Vassar Miscellany for three years.
161. Jean Tatlock to May Sarton, Maine, September 9, 1931.
162. Ibid., September 9, 1931.
163. Katherine Taylor, the director of the school where May and the Clarks had been students in 1929, wrote to May asking whether Jean T. needed something, a cause, an urgency, so that she would give up her preoccupation with Letty's death, May Sarton Papers.
164. Vassar Encyclopedia. http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/faculty/prominent-faculty/winifred-smith.html; Another faculty member, Susan J. Turner, said of Winifred, "Miss Smith has been recognized as one of Vassar's great teachers; she was also one of its greatest rebels"; Robertson, "Promise."
165. See reference below.
166. Jean Tatlock, "Account of the General Strike." Vassar Miscellany, XIX: 5, October 17, 1934 (1); While at Vassar (regarded as a "hotbed of an extremely active Socialist and Communist movement," Jean also supported a hunger march of unemployed men and women. Vassar Miscellany, XIX: 11, November 7, 1934: 1,4.
167. Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, July 3 [1934], in AKS/CW, Letters, 185.
168. Ibid. 184.
169. Serber, interview by Else.
170. Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, January 7 [1934], in AKS/CW, Letters, 172.
171. Ibid., 169.
172. "Kitty Oppenheimer Testimony," in United States AEC, In the Matter of JRO: Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board and Texts of Principal Documents and Letters (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970), 571. Hereafter referred to as ITMJRO: Transcript.
173. Steve Nelson, interview by Martin Sherwin, July 17, 1981, MSF.
174. Steve Nelson, James Barrett and Rob Ruck, Steve Nelson, American Radical (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981), 81–85.
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