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Late But Indispensable. Until 1936, Oppenheimer had never even voted; he was "certainly one of the most unpolitical people in the world." But in the depression he watched young, finely trained physicists cracking up because they were unemployed; he also heard about relatives forced to leave Nazi Germany. Says Oppenheimer: "I woke up to a recognition that politics was a part of life. I became a real left-winger, joined the Teachers Union, had lots of Communist friends. It was what most people do in college or late high school. The Thomas Committee doesn't like this, but I'm not ashamed of it; I'm more ashamed of the lateness. Most of what I believed then now seems complete nonsense, but it was an essential part of becoming a whole man. If it hadn't been for this late but indispensable education, I couldn't have done the job at Los Alamos at all."
Comes the Revolution. It was at a Pasadena party in 1939 that Robert Oppenheimer, then 35, met Katherine Puening Harrison. A small, German-born brunette, Mrs. Harrison was the wife of a radiologist, and herself a graduate student in plant physiology at U.C.L.A. A year later, after the Harrisons were divorced, Kitty and Robert were married. Of the subsequent revolution in his habits, Oppenheimer says: "A certain stuffiness overcame me."
Mrs. Oppenheimer made him have his suits pressed occasionally, and persuaded him to wear tweeds and even sport jackets in a variety of colors besides his traditional blue-greys. She got Robert to cut his hair shorter & shorter (he wears a crew cut now). He started eating three meals a day and stopped staying up all night except on rare occasions.
At Princeton, Mrs. Oppenheimer has had a greenhouse installed at the Institute's 18-room Olden Manor. But she has abandoned her own studies to run the house, and look after the children (a boy, Peter, 7, and a girl, "Toni," going-on-4). Oppie, who has a theory about everything, has formulated one for raising children: "Just pour in the love and it will come out."
Porkpies & Primai Donnas. In March 1943, Major General Leslie R. Groves chose Oppenheimer to head the new Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It was probably the best decision that Groves ever made. Oppie, who had never even been chairman of a physics faculty, became top executive of a $60 million company with 4,500 workers, including such eminent physicists as Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.
Oppie was ready for the job: "In a way, Los Alamos was a kind of confluence of my highbrow past, my physics, my students, my horses, my ranch, and my slight knowledge of politics."
At Cal and Cal Tech, Oppie had been at home with the blackboard and the slipstick. At Los Alamos he proved that he could direct experimental physics. And he had the capacity to make prima donnas pull together, and ordinary people work like the devil. He worked like the devil himself—sometimes as much as 20 hours a day. A six-footer, he shrank to 115 Ibs.