An Atomic Love Story

by Shirley Streshinsky

  Our own Bay Area contains rich resources for any Oppenheimer study. The University of California's Bancroft Library holds the Frank Oppenheimer Papers as well as a copy of Joe Dallett's Letters from Spain to Kitty. At Stanford University's Hoover Institute, we read the Boris Pash Papers and the collection of interviews used by Robert S. Norris in his Racing for the Bomb. Then we turned to Southern California to Occidental College, and to the Archives and Special Collections at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena where Charlotte (Shelley) Erwin was our guide to the Richard C. Tolman Papers and photographs.

  We went to New Mexico and Los Alamos, walked Bathtub Row and spent time at the Los Alamos Historical Museum. Heather McClenahan, Executive Director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, has been extremely helpful. John Gustafson, a member of the J. Robert Oppenheimer Committee (formed for the centennial of Oppenheimer's birth), and Alan Carr, the Los Alamos National Laboratory historian, generously provided us with photographs of the Oppenheimer family. Patricia stayed at Los Pinos, where Robert Oppenheimer first fell in love with the Southwest, and rode the trails to Perro Caliente on Grass Mountain, in the Sangre de Cristo Range.

  We knew Jean's brother, Hugh Tatlock, had lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, and we tracked down his sons. John Tatlock, over brunch and several coffees, kindly shared his memories of his Aunt Jean and family photographs, adding a sweet and poignant dimension to Jean's story. His brother David searched out more letters for us. Charlotte Robertson, daughter of Jean's friend Priscilla Smith, met us for coffee near the Berkeley campus, told us about her mother and "Aunt Winnie" and allowed us to look through her family album with photos of Jean, her mother and brother, and of Winifred Smith, who raised Priscilla, and was such a stalwart friend to both Marjorie Tatlock and Jean.

  By tracing an address for Karl-Ludwig Vissering, Kitty's uncle, on Kaethe Puening's death certificate, we were able to locate his grandsons Martin and Ulrich Vissering who sent us letters and photographs and provided little-known information about the family. A clue on the Internet led us to Frank Ramseyer's delightful daughters, Lin Ramseyer Clayberg and Lanie Ramseyer Dickel. Both shared memories and ideas in long telephone interviews and sent marvelous photographs of the father they obviously adored.

  We interviewed Robert Serber in his New York Riverside Drive apartment in 1994, and his widow, Fiona St. Clair, there in 2012, to get a closer look at life on St. John in the Virgin Islands when the Oppenheimers were in residence.

  Shirley wants especially to thank Patricia O'Toole, who besides teaching at Columbia and writing her own remarkable biographies, found time to read a proposal for this book, and urged us on. With daughter Maria Streshinsky, she trekked to New Jersey to visit Patty while she was spending the summer on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton while she worked on her own next biography (on how Woodrow Wilson's presidency changed the U.S.'s relationship with the rest of the world). IAS Director Peter Goddard and his wife graciously offered us a tour of Olden Manor, where the Oppenheimer family had lived for eighteen years.

  Shirley is also, and always, grateful to newsman Ben Bagdikian, a former dean of the School of Journalism at Berkeley, and to his wife, Marlene Griffith Bagdikian, who followed the progress of this book from inception. It was at their home that she met their dear friend Charles Muscatine, who followed John S.P. Tatlock—Jean's father, who died in 1948—as the medievalist in the English department at Berkeley. The young Muscatine was also one of a band of thirty-one professors who joined Edward Tolman—Ruth's brother-in-law—in refusing to sign the 1949 Loyalty Oath required of everyone who taught or worked at the University of California.

  Patricia is particularly grateful that Barton Bernstein, professor of history at Stanford University and a well-recognized Oppenheimer scholar, kindly read the book in draft, often line by line. He helped us cover an extremely complicated period in American history with more accuracy. His views on the Tolman/Oppenheimer relationship provided thought-provoking debates.

  She would also like to thank Peter Stansky, emeritus professor of history at Stanford, who read an early draft of the book and has offered unceasing encouragement over many years: he is always confident that his students can produce books. With Joe Kanon, the author of the novel Los Alamos, she spent many hours over coffee, drinks and dinners talking about the relationships between Kitty and Robert and Jean and Robert, and found him a most effective and humorous sounding board.

  Elena Danielson, Archivist Emerita at Hoover Institution, offered firsthand insights on such participants as Boris Pash, whom she came to know when he brought his papers to the Hoover. We interviewed Edward Tolman's octogenarian daughters, Mary Kent and Deborah Whitney, who gave us their impressions of their "Aunt Ruth," who seemed to them so formidable when they were teenagers. Shirley's neighbor Bill Wenzel is a notable Caltech-trained physicist from the World War II generation. He spent his career at U.C. Berkeley's Lawrence Laboratory and gave us numerous important insights and introductions including to Glenn Seaborg, as well as to Robert Serber, Ed Lofgren and Elsie McMillan, wife of Ed McMillan, who were at Los Alamos together. Elsie, the quintessential "party girl," told us it was the time of her life.

  We received firsthand information from several remarkable nonagenarians. The physicist Freeman Dyson, ninety-seven now, was at the Institute during most of Robert's directorship, and shared his recollections of Kitty. Saying he didn't trust his sixty-year-old memories, he referred instead to letters he had written to his parents in England. Ed Lofgren, ninety-nine this year, was at Los Alamos and knew a great many of the physicists mentioned in this book. Over a period of several years, he answered our questions patiently and carefully. Lofgren remembers his first interview with "Oppie," at their house in Los Alamos, with Kitty curled up in a corner of the sofa, her legs tucked under her.

  We were invited into the Oppenheimers' elegant home at One Eagle Hill. With the help of the Berkeley Historical Society, we toured the Tatlocks' house somewhat more than a mile away on San Antonio Road, with its views of the Golden Gate Bridge from all the west-facing windows.

  One important thank you: to Peter Oppenheimer, Robert and Kitty's son, who was witness to so much of their story, and is, as someone who knows him cautioned us, "a private person." He has been remarkably patient with us ever since we started our research. (Peter was computer savvy when we were still using snail mail.) He has answered our notes with unfailing courtesy. For this book, he made available to us sweet photos of his mother as a child. Peter left Princeton for New Mexico, and has made his life there, in the West that his father so loved.

  Shirley's friend from college, Diane Pierre Rowader, did research in Pittsburgh. Another Illinois friend who has emigrated to Berkeley, Donna Hruska Hunt, has a rare talent for listening, which she has patiently employed, along with help in computing, websites, encouragement. Her physicist husband Arlon Hunt, Senior Scientist (Ret) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, took time out from his cutting edge work on solar thermal energy to check the bomb science for us. Another Streshinsky friend, Andrée Abecassis, recounted a spring day in the mid-1960s when Kitty Oppenheimer walked into a foreign auto showroom off Fifth Avenue in New York City and bought a luxury Peugeot as a surprise birthday present for Robert. Filling in on the sales floor that day happened to be the estimable Lettie Lee Abecassis, Andrée's mother. Lettie, 100 this year, remembers that when Kitty first came in she asked for directions to the nearest bar, then returned to say, "You didn't think I would come back, did you?" The car was delivered to Princeton in time for his birthday, April 22.

  Patricia discussed the "poison apple" with Mary Jo Nye, professor emerita at the University of Oregon, author of the 2004 Patrick Blackett biography. John Keeler, Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, helped us track down Kitty's college records. Thanks also to Lizette Royer at the Archives of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. And we are grateful t
o Chloe Pitard for allowing us to read the military service memoir of her father, John Landsdale.

  We want to thank our families.

  The Streshinskys: Mark (who read and commented smartly on the manuscript); Marie, who has an uncanny ability to know what is needed at just the right time; and grandson Evan, always fascinated by a superhero.

  The Klauses: Robin and Ian, who encouraged writing about the "Oppenheimer women" from the beginning. Laurie Ricardson in New York, Elizabeth Mitchell in London and Ruth Freeman in Rochester patiently listened to innumerable stories about "our women." Robin shared with anyone his enthusiasm for the new discoveries in astrophysics—the white dwarfs and black holes that had so intrigued Richard Tolman and Robert Oppenheimer.

  This book has been a long time coming; we are certain we are forgetting others who helped us and it makes us crazy. Just know that one day we will remember, and when we do will thank them out loud, wherever we are.

  But we could not possibly forget the people who saw us through all this: our crackerjack literary agent, Dana Newman, our patient editor, Christina Roth, and all the folks at Turner Publishing who helped us bring Jean Tatlock, Ruth Tolman and Kitty Oppenheimer out from the shadows to give them their proper place in atomic history.

  Shirley Streshinsky & Patricia Klaus

  Berkeley and Petaluma, California

  Fall 2013

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AEC Atomic Energy Commission

  AHAP Archives of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio

  AIP American Institute of Physics (Niels Bohr Library)

  AKS Alice Kimball Smith

  Caltech California Institute of Technology

  CW Charles Weiner

  CWF Charles Weiner Files

  FO Frank Oppenheimer

  HIA Hoover Institute Archives, Stanford University

  IAS Institute for Advanced Studies

  JRO J. Robert Oppenheimer

  JRO Papers J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers

  KB Kai Bird

  LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

  LOC/MIT Library of Congress

  MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  MS Martin Sherwin

  MS/LOC Martin Sherwin Collection Relating to J. Robert Oppenheimer

  MSF Martin Sherwin Files

  NARA National Archives & Records Administration

  NYPL New York Public Library

  NYT New York Times

  NYU New York University

  OSU Oregon State University

  PSR Priscilla Robertson Papers

  SU Stanford University

  UCB University of California, Berkeley (Bancroft Library)

  Vassar Vassar College

  MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

  Benedict, Ruth (Vassar)

  Dallet, Joseph (UCB)

  Dallet Jr., Joseph (NYU)

  Furman, Robert (LOC)

  Mead, Margaret (LOC)

  National Archives & Records Administration (NARA)

  Norris, Robert J. (HIA)

  Office of Strategic Services (OSS)

  Oppenheimer, Frank (UCB)

  Oppenheimer, J. Robert (LOC)

  Pash, Boris (HIA)

  Pauling, Ava and Linus (OSU)

  Robertson, Priscilla Smith (Vassar)

  Sarton, May (NYPL)

  Shakow, David (AHAP)

  Sherwin, Martin (LOC)

  Smith, Alice Kimball (MIT)

  Smith, Winifred (Vassar)

  Tolman, Richard C. (Caltech)

  NEWSPAPERS AND MISC.

  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

  Harvard Crimson

  Life (Magazine)

  London Review of Books

  Los Angeles Times

  New York Review of Books

  New York Times

  Oakland Tribune

  Pasadena Star-Gazette

  Philips Academy, Andover, Yearbook

  Pittsburgh Sun-Times

  Sandstone and Tile (Stanford University)

  San Francisco Call-Bulletin

  San Francisco Chronicle

  Time (Magazine)

  U.S. Censuses (Ancestry.com)

  Vassar Miscellany

  INTERVIEWS

  Allison, Helen Campbell, n.d. (AKS/MIT)

  Bacher, Jean, 3/29/83 (MS/MSF)

  Bernstein, Barton J., June 2013 (PK)

  Boyd, William, 12/21/75 (AKS/MIT)

  Bruner, Jerome, 3/15/13 (PK)

  Cherniss, Harold, 5/23/79 (MS/MSF)

  Clayberg, Lin Ramseyer, April–May 2102 (PK)

  Daniels, Elena, 2/8/11 (SS, PK)

  Dickel, Helene Ramseyer, May 2012 (PK)

  Duffield, Priscilla 1/2/76 (AKS/MIT)

  Dyson, Freeman, 2/2/13 (PK)

  Edsall, John, 6/16/75 (CW/MIT)

  Fergusson, Francis, 4/21/76 (AKS/MIT); 6/8/79, 6/23/79 (MS/MSF)

  Goldberger, Mildred, 3/3/83 (MS/MSF)

  Hempelmann, Louis, 8/10/79 (MS/MSF)

  Hobson, Verna, 7/31/79 (MS/MSF)

  Horgan, Paul, 3/3/76 (AKS/MIT)

  Jenkins, Edith Arnstein, 5/9/02 (Gregg Herken/MSF)

  Kayser, Jane Didisheim, 6/4/75 (CW/MSF)

  Kent, Mary Tolman, 11/28/05 (SS)

  Kresh, Hilda, 11/28/05 (SS)

  Lofgren, Edward, 2008–2012 (SS)

  Marks, Anne Wilson, 3/14/05 (KB/MSF)

  McKibbin, Dorothy, 1/1/76 (AKS/MIT)

  Nelson, Steve, 6/17/81 (MS/MSF)

  Nye, Mary Jo, 3/5/13 (PK)

  Oppenheimer, Frank, 2/9/73, 5/21/73 (CW/AIP); 4/14/76 (AKS/CWF); 11/16/84 (Judith Goodstein/Caltech)

  Oppenheimer, Jackie 12/3/78 (MS/MSF)

  Oppenheimer, Peter, 5/20/13 (SS)

  Plesset, Milton, 3/28/83 (MS/MSF)

  Robertson, Charlotte, 2013 (SS, PK)

  St. Clair, Fiona, 2/17/82 (MS/MSF)

  St. Clair, Fiona (Serber), 3/12/13 (PK)

  Schorr, Ruth, 12/02/05 (SS)

  Serber, Robert, 12/15/79 (Jon Else/MSF); 3/11/82 (MS/MSF); 1994 (SS)

  Sherr, Pat, 2/20/79 (MS/MSF)

  Smith, Herbert, 8/1/74 (CW/CWF), 7/8/75 (AKS/MIT)

  Tatlock, Hugh, February 2001 (MS/MSF)

  Tatlock, John, 4/20/12, 2/20/13 (PK)

  Vissering, Martin, 3/1/12, April 2012 (PK)

  Vissering, Ulrich, 7/30/13 (PK)

  Whitney, Deborah Tolman, 11/28/02 (SS)

  Wyman, Jeffries, 5/28/75 (CW/CWF)

  PREFACE

  1. Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, March 12, 1932. As quoted in AKS and CW, eds., Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), 155.

  CHAPTER 1

  2. Anne Cabot Wyman, Kipling's Cat: A Memoir of My Father (Rockport, MA: Protean Press, 2010), 4.

  3. Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 105–09.

  4. See S.S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 54; Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner, Letters, 9; and Herbert Smith, interview by CW, August 8, 1974 (CWF).

  5. See William Tatlock, The Sin of Drunkenness and its Remedy: Sermons Preached in St. John's Church, Stamford, February 12 and March 19, 1882 (Stamford, CT: W. W. Gillespie, 1882). The Rev. Tatlock may also have been attracted to the reforming message of the famous Harvard President, Charles W. Eliot. Tatlock himself was a temperance advocate and used his pulpit to preach the importance of temperance as well as faith.

  6. Mrs. Marjorie Fenton DAR ID Number: 42790. The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, www.dar.org.

  7. Elizabeth C. Stevens, Elizabeth Buffum Chace and Lillie Chace Wyman: A Century of Abolitionist, Suffragist, and Workers' Rights Activism (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003); Benbow F. Ritchie, Edward Chace Tolman, 1886–1959: A Biographical Memoir, Washington, D.C.,: National Academy of
Sciences, 1964.

  8. Frank Dempster Sherman, The Ancestry of John Taylor Sherman and his Descendants (NYPL, privately printed, 1915), www.Archives.org. Roger Sherman was one of only two men to sign all four of the most important documents establishing the United States: the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Association and the Constitution.

  9. Daviess County Democrat (Washington, IN, March 3, 1883). Courtesy of the Indiana County Historical Society.

  10. See S.S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb and Ray Monk, Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (London: Jonathan Cape, 2013) on Robert as the outsider.

  11. Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005) provide the conventional interpretation of the impoverished Julius (p. 10), but Monk in his new biography, Inside The Centre, argues Julius was not so much a rag-to-riches story as one of the immigrants who joined an already prosperous family (p. 17).

  12. K.C. Kelley in Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) says that Ella's family immigrated in the 1880s (p. 27); KB and MS in Prometheus state that the family immigrated in the 1840s (p. 11).