An Atomic Love Story

by Shirley Streshinsky

  442. Gregg Herken, in Brotherhood of the Bomb, suggests that there was a personal element to Lawrence's animosity and cites an interview with Molly Lawrence, May 20, 1997, 404n81.

  443. Lewis Strauss to Edward Teller, December 9, 1957, Strauss to file, Box 1, Lewis Strauss Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, quoted in Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, 654n365.

  444. "He is normally lightening-quick and intuitive mind seemed partially blocked, and at moments, even paralyzed." Robert Coughlan, "The Tangled Drama and Private Hells of Two Famous Scientists," Life (12/13/63), 102:

  445. April 14, 1954, AEC, ITMJRO: Transcript, 153–54. The following quotations in italics from Day Two of the Hearing are from these pages.

  446. Ibid., 267.

  447. Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, April 13, 1954.

  448. AEC, ITMJRO: Transcript, 572–76. Quotations in italics are from Kitty's testimony on April 26, 1954.

  449. Ibid., 916–21. Quotations in italics are from Kitty's testimony on May 4, 1954.

  450. Ibid., 137. Quotations in italics are from April 14, 1954.

  451. Ibid., 140, May 4, 1954.

  452. Bernstein, "Oppenheimer Loyalty-Security Reconsidered," 1449.

  453. "Decisions and Opinions of AEC, June 29," in Polenberg, ITMJRO, 380.

  CHAPTER 29

  454. Edward Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, April 16, 1954, Edward Tolman Folder, Box 72, JRO Papers.

  455. KB/MS, Prometheus, 553. Robert's old friend Harold Cherniss helped organize the open letter of support that the Institute faculty signed.

  456. Ruth Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, January 15, 1952. Robert must have used these words to describe the Islands to Ruth in an earlier letter.

  457. Anne Marks to Kitty Oppenheimer, July 7, 1954, Box 49, JRO Papers.

  458. Jeremy Bernstein, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 194.

  459. Edsall, interview by CW.

  460. David Lilienthal, Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. 4: The Road to Change, 1955–1959 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 594.

  461. Ruth Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, May 30, 1952.

  462. Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Archibald MacLeish, also from the Institute days, would write to Robert how much he had been impressed with "you & Kitty, especially Kitty." July 23, 1948, General Case File, Box 49, JRO Papers.

  463. Freeman Dyson to his family, February 11, 1957, in personal communication to Patricia Klaus, February 2, 2012.

  464. Hobson, interview by MS. Various friends and colleagues would comment on the fact that Oppenheimer seemed to enable Kitty's drinking and rudeness.

  465. Ibid.; Francis Fergusson, interview by Martin Sherwin, June 23, 1979.

  466. Ruth Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, September 5, [early 1950s]; Anne Roe to Robert Oppenheimer, September 2, 1954, Ruth Tolman Folder, Box 72, JRO Papers.

  467. Barton Bernstein, "Oppenheimer Loyalty-Security Case," 1451.

  468. FBI Memorandum as printed in Mark Wolverton, A Life in Twilight: The Final Years of JRO (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008), 54.

  469. Ruth Valentine to Margaret Mead, January 27, 1955, Box C, Margaret Mead Papers, LOC.

  470. Lynn Margulis, "Sunday Morning with Robert Oppenheimer," in Luminous Fish: Tales of Science and Love (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2007), 149–80. All quotations are from this essay.

  471. Robert Oppenheimer to Ruth Tolman, Western Union Telegram, September 1, 1955.

  472. Information courtesy of Martin Vissering.

  473. Ruth Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, [1956].

  474. "Report of the Death of an American Citizen" Form 192, American Consulate in Genoa, Italy, April 26, 1956. The report can be found at www.Ancestry.com, Image 196, from the NARA, Washington, D.C. Later, the Master of the Concordia Fjord, Kathe's ship, decided that she had crawled out the porthole, had hit the gangway and was killed instantly before falling into the sea. Her body was never found. See also letters between Hilde Vissering and Captain Kolnes of the Concordia Line, May 31, 1956. Letter courtesy of Martin Vissering, Bremen, Germany.

  475. Hilde Vissering de Blonay, Stuttgart, Germany, to Borre Hartvig Sverdrup, Oslo, Norway, June 29, 1956. Letter courtesy of Martin Vissering.

  476. Borre Sverdrup to Hilde Vissering de Blonay, July 2, 1956. Letter courtesy of Martin Vissering.

  477. Foreign Service Operations Memorandum from the Consulate General, Genoa, Italy, U.S. Department of State, May 4, 1956. Memorandum can be found at www.Ancestry.com, Image 510, NARA.

  478. Kitty Oppenheimer to Hilde Vissering de Blonay, Telegram, July 2, 1956. Courtesy of Martin Vissering.

  479. Wolverton, A Life in Twilight, 84.

  480. Jeremy Bernstein, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma, 174.

  481. Robert Oppenheimer to Hedwig Stern, February 2, 1957, JRO Papers.

  482. Victor Cohn, "Can a Security Risk Survive? Oppenheimer Tells for First Time of Fight Against 'Final Judgment.'" Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, June 16, 1957, quoted in Wolverton, A Life in Twilight, 95–101. Wolverton says that the only other writer with whom Robert supposedly discussed the Hearing was John Mason Brown, who wrote in Through These Men (New York: Harper, 1956). Actually, Brown relied not on a personal interview with Robert, but on published articles and interviews.

  483. Ruth Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, 1956.

  484. Hedwig Stern to Robert Oppenheimer, September 30, 1957, General Case File, Box 69, JRO Papers.

  485. Edward Tolman to Robert Oppenheimer, October 1957, General Case File, Box 72, JRO Papers.

  486. Theodore Newcomb to Robert Oppenheimer, October 25, 1957, Ruth Tolman Folder, Box 72, JRO Papers.

  487. Bruner, In Search of Mind, 237–38.

  488. Lilienthal, Journals, Vol. 4, 232.

  CHAPTER 30

  489. Edsall, interview by CW.

  490. Ibid., quoted in Thorpe, Oppenheimer, The Tragic Intellect, 39. See also Mary Jo Nye, Blackett: Physics, War and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004). In correspondence with Patricia Klaus, Nye supported this interpretation: "Nor is it surprising, given Oppenheimer's temperament at the time, that he was envious at Cambridge of the very skilled and the very handsome Blackett, then in his late 20s," 3/5/13.

  491. Edsall, interview by CW.

  492. Edward Bullard, "Patrick Blackett . . . an Appreciation" Nature 250 (1974): 370; Sir Edward Crisp "Teddy" Bullard,' geophysicist and close friend to Patrick Blackett. Stephan Budiansky, Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 45. The comment was made by Ivor Richards, a noted literary critic and Cambridge don.

  493. KB/MS, Prometheus, 50.

  494. Monk also suggests this interpretation in Inside The Centre, 111–12.

  495. The idea of Robert creating a persona or re-inventing himself has been commented on by others; I.I. Rabi wrote in The New Yorker, October 1975, that "You carried on a charade with him. He lived a charade and you went along with him." Hans Bethe commented that Robert had undergone a fundamental adaptation when he became the administrator at Los Alamos and then another after the bomb when he became the public Oppenheimer.

  496. Edsall, interview by CW.

  497. Unlike Robert, who may have spent a a good portion of his lifetime trying to belong, Blackett was by birth and heritage solidly a member of the English establishment: one grandfather was a Church of England vicar, the other a ranking naval officer; his uncle served in India. His political views remained consistently left wing and, in the 1950s, became very controversial with his support of the Soviet Union. See Patrick Blackett, Fear, War, and the Bomb: Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy (New York: Whittlesey House, 1949).

  498. Bernstein, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma, 173.

  499. Ruth's close friends, including Jean Bacher, Sigrid Lauritsen and her daughter, denied that there had been an affair. We began
the book assuming on the basis of most biographers' interpretations (Jeremy Bernstein an exception) that Ruth and Robert had an affair; after years of reading their letters word by word, we noticed a shift in intensity that occurs immediately after Richard's death, but that it only lasted a year or so. And Ruth would write to others, such as David Shakow, about wanting to find a little time to spend with him. Her friendships with her friends and her words were both warm and affectionate.

  500. Bruner, interview by Klaus.

  501. Lilienthal, Journals, Vol. 4, 260.

  502. Peter Oppenheimer to Shirley Streshinsky, May 2013.

  503. Hobson, interview by Sherwin.

  504. Ruth Valentine to Margaret Mead, June 19, 1959. General correspondence, Margaret Mead Papers.

  505. Richard Pfau, No Sacrifice Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss (Charlottesville, VA: U of V Press, 1984), 241.

  506. David Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. 5: The Harvest Years, 1959–1963 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 440.

  507. As quoted in KB/MS, Prometheus, 563.

  508. Lilienthal, Journals, Vol. 5, 439.

  509. Ibid., 529–30.

  510. David Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. 6: Creativity and Conflict, 1964–1967 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 22.

  511. Lyndon B. Johnson, "Remarks Upon Presenting the Fermi Award to Dr. JRO," The American Presidency Project. www.Presidency.ucsb.edu.

  512. Lilienthal, Journals, Vol. 6, 439.

  513. Lettie Abacassis, interview by Shirley Streshinsky, 2002.

  514. Lilienthal, Journals, Vol. 6, 255.

  515. As quoted in Wolverton, A Life in Twilight, 255.

  516. As quoted in KB/MS, Prometheus, 503.

  517. Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 81–82.

  CHAPTER 31

  518. Fiona St. Clair (Serber), interview by Patricia Klaus, March 12, 2012.

  519. Fiona St. Clair, interview by MS, February 17, 1982.

  520. Serber, Peace and War, 205.

  521. Ibid., 197, 208; Serber, interview by Streshinsky.

  522. Serber, Peace and War, 208.

  523. Serber, interview by MS.

  524. Serber, interview by Streshinsky.

  525. Serber, interview by MS. KB and MS recount many of Kitty's island "adventures" in Prometheus, Chapter 31.

  526. Hobson, interview by MS.

  527. Robert Serber to Hilde Vissering [Fall, 1979, shortly after Kitty's death]. Courtesy of Martin Vissering. The description of the rest of the voyage and Kitty's illness are taken from this letter.

  OUTSIDE THE TIMELINE

  528. Katherine Page Chaves to Robert Oppenheimer, [ca. 1949], General Case File, Box 55, JRO Papers.

  529. Fiona St. Clair, interview by Klaus.

  530. Lanie Ramseyer Dickel, personal communication to Klaus, April 2013.

  531. Lin Ramseyer Clayberg, personal communication to Klaus, April 2013.

  532. John Tatlock, personal communication with Patricia Klaus, 2012.

  533. Private investigator, "What we should have done so far," July 15–16, 1991, Thompson Investigations, San Francisco. Box 62, Tatlock File, MS/LOC.

  534. Ibid. "What We Should Do Next," and "Surmises and Speculations," July 16, 1991.

  535. Patterson letter, "Conversations with Pathologist," July 16, 1991.

  536. Bruner, interview by Klaus.

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