Robert Oppenheimer became one of the most important people in human history, earning the title of 'father of the atomic bomb' by commanding the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the weapon deadliest of all time that ended definitively with World War II.
However, Oppenheimer could not have achieved this without the work and knowledge of thousands of people who accompanied him through years of research and testing. And the same thing happened in his private life, as two very important and intelligent women marked him forever: Jean Tatlock and Kitty Oppenheimer.
Jean Tatlock, the psychiatrist who marked Robert Oppenheimer
The first woman who impacted the life of Robert Oppenheimer was Jean Tatlock, who was born on February 21, 1914, in Michigan, United States. As the daughter of a respected English teacher, Jean grew up under the pressure of following in the footsteps of her father and her brother, who was a doctor. That's why in 1935, she entered Stanford Medical School, where she studied to become a psychiatrist.
During those years, Jean Tatlock became a reporter and writer for the Western Worker, a newspaper of the Communist Party of the United States on the West coast of the country, after witnessing the strike of 65,000 workers at the ports of San Francisco and Oakland. From that moment on, she was a faithful defender of socialism and the ideas of the great thinkers of this current.
Jean Tatlock's career
Jean Tatlock graduated from Stanford in 1941, although she spent a good deal of time interning at major mental hospitals around the United States. Throughout her career, she specialized in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, even rubbing shoulders with Siegfried Bernfeld, a Ph.D. who studied under Freud and who became her mentor.
However, Jean Tatlock met Robert Oppenheimer in 1936, while she was a graduate student and he was a physics professor at Berkeley. Thanks to Jean's ideas, Oppenheimer was introduced to radical thought and the Communist Party. Although in addition to infecting him with his political thought, they also shared his taste for poetry.
During their time together, Robert Oppenheimer proposed to Jean Tatlock twice, but she never accepted. Determined to turn the page and focus on her career, she moved to Washington, D.C. to do a residency at St. Elizabeths, the oldest public psychiatric hospital in the United States.
By 1942, Jean Tatlock returned to California to work at the Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco with Bernfeld, with whom she began to explore the theory of Marxist-Freudian orientation, where her two passions were mixed: psychiatry and medicine. socialism. From here, it seemed that her professional career would gain notoriety.
The strange death of Jean Tatlock and the "tribute" that Oppenheimer made to her
However, there was something that Jean Tatlock always struggled with depression, so much so that she was hospitalized in the same place where she worked. Unfortunately, she was never able to overcome everything she carried with her, and on January 4, 1944, her father found her dead at the age of 29 in the apartment where she lived. Although yes, her death happened under very strange circumstances.
Although the official cause of death of Jean Tatlock was attributed to suicide by taking sedatives and because she was found with her head in a tub, there are conspiracy theories that mention that the United States government had her killed for her left-wing political ideas. Also, instead of immediately calling the police or funeral services, her father burned letters and documents that she had in her apartment.
Although Robert Oppenheimer was already married, it is said that he saw himself on a couple more occasions with Jean Tatlock. It is said that the impact it had on his life was such that Oppenheimer named the first atomic bomb "Trinity" about the poem by John Donne that Jean had taught him, as a tribute to his partner and companion. of.
Her career in California and her relationship with Oppenheimer
Katherine herself finished her undergraduate degree in botany at the University of Pennsylvania and was offered a graduate research fellowship at the University of California. There she worked with the physicist Charles Lauritsen in the X-ray laboratory, which was used for physical research, but was also used for experimental research on cancer therapies.
It was at a party in August 1939 that Katherine Puening met Robert Oppenheimer. The two began dating for several months –although she was still married to Harrison– until Kitty separated from Richard to permanently marry the physicist who would later be known as the 'father of the atomic bomb'.
The couple had two children: Peter and Katherine 'Toni' Oppenheimer. When Robert was called to head the Manhattan Project, the family moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Kitty – in addition to being the wife of the leader of this huge plan – was an important part of the investigations into the consequences of a nuclear weapon.
Kitty's role in the Manhattan Project and life after the bomb
Katherine Oppenheimer took advantage of her training as a biologist working for the director of the Los Alamos Health Group, Louis Hempelmann, doing blood tests to assess the danger of radiation. However, during the years that Robert worked for the United States government, Kitty struggled with dissatisfaction with motherhood, loneliness, and her addictions—especially to alcohol.
When World War II ended, the Oppenheimer family left Los Alamos but Katherine was never the same again, since she became an alcoholic and could not recover her life before the Manhattan Project, since she dedicated herself to taking care of the children of her Despite Robert's attempts to get his wife to resume her passion for botany, nothing succeeded in getting her back into her professional career.
After Robert Oppenheimer's death on February 18, 1967, Katherine got together with Robert Serber, with whom she bought a boat and planned to take a trip through the Panama-Japan Canal. However, Kitty became ill and was taken to the hospital, where she died of a stroke on October 27, 1972, at age 62.
In Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer film, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt play Jean Tatlock and Kitty Puening respectively. And without a doubt, they are two women who, beyond accompanying Robert throughout his life and career, also taught him a lot of things through his professional career.
