Oppenheimer’s wives: the true destinies of the heroines played by Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt

On July 16, 1945, the United States conducted the world’s first nuclear bomb test, named Trinity. Rumor has it that Robert Oppenheimer named him as a sign of respect for the great love of his life – Jean Tetlock, with whom he shared a passion for the poetry of John Donne. “Break my heart, Triune God” – there are such lines in one of the works.

In the film, Tetlock is presented as sexually liberated, intelligent, cold-blooded, and at the same time quite problematic. The history of the couple’s acquaintance is reliably displayed in the picture. In fact, they met at a party in Berkeley in the spring of 1936. She was 22 then, he was 10 years older.

Tatlock was born in Michigan into a family of scientists. Her father, a Harvard graduate, was a noted English teacher and expert on Geoffrey Chaucer. Before going to college in 1931, Tatlock visited Europe, where she stayed with a friend in Switzerland. It was he who introduced him to the work of psychologist Carl Jung. Tatlock became interested in the subject and continued his studies in psychology. And after graduating from college in 1935, she went to study at Stanford School of Medicine to become a psychiatrist. It was during this period of her life that she met Oppenheimer.

Jean was a member of the Communist Party USA, so Oppenheimer’s relationship with her was later taken as evidence of his own political views and, of course, was used against him (although his wife also had Communist ties ). At a security hearing in 1954, he was stripped of security clearance.

Nolan’s film sheds light on Jean and Robert’s fiery sexual relationship, but scholars of the scientist’s biography doubt that the physical part of their relationship was dominant. They are inspired by a later memory of Oppenheimer’s wife, who said she had to “teach him everything about sex.” Oppenheimer proposed to Tetlock twice; she refused both times.

However, researchers believe that Jean really loved Oppenheimer and had a hard time breaking up. The psychological state of the woman was already bad, as she suffered from clinical depression (modern experts believe that she also suffered from bipolar disorder).

The last time they met was in June 1943, when Oppenheimer – then married – visited her on a clandestine trip to San Francisco, where Tatlock was working as a child psychiatrist at Mount Zion Hospital. It’s unclear exactly what happened during this last meeting between Oppenheimer and Tetlock, but the film suggests that this is where Oppenheimer ended their romance once and for all. Anyway, Tetlock killed himself seven months later.

Born Catherine Puening, Kitty was the daughter of an engineer from Recklinghausen, Germany. Her family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when she was three.

In the film, the character, played by Emily Blunt, is shown to be quite fierce and mostly drunk. Kitty was Oppenheimer’s only wife, he also became her third husband – and the woman’s personal life is drawn to a separate film adaptation.

At some point, Kitty left college and moved to Paris, where for a time she attended the Sorbonne and the University of Grenoble. It was there that she met her first husband, a musician named Frank Ramseyer. Their marriage was annulled a few months after the wedding. Also in 1933, after enrolling at the University of Wisconsin, she met Joseph Dallet, a Communist activist, with whom she moved to Ohio. It was thanks to Dallet that Kitty also found herself immersed in the communist struggle. When he left to fight in the civil war in Spain, she tried to follow him. However, on the eve of departure, it turned out that Dallet had died in battle.

A year later, Kitty began studying biology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1939, she married Richard Harrison, a British physician, and began studying botany at UCLA. Around this time, she met Oppenheimer at a house party. They soon began an affair. The first dates were at a scientists’ ranch in New Mexico, where they rode horses together.

In 1940 Kitty divorced Harrison and married Oppenheimer the next day. They had a son, Peter, and moved to Los Alamos, where Oppenheimer led the program to build the first atomic bomb. There, Kitty worked briefly as a lab assistant and also gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Katherine (better known as Tony). And Oppenheimer’s secret relationship with Tetlock was still ongoing at the time.

Oppenheimer’s entourage disliked Kitty – they considered her harsh and cruel, especially towards other women. The scientist’s wife herself at that time was struggling with alcoholism – life in Los Alamos, isolated from the outside world, and the “everyday life” of motherhood were not easy for her.

“The loneliness of life in Los Alamos must have been nothing short of extraordinary, and I deeply sympathized with this woman, even though she was not a good person and really annoyed people”– Emily Blunt talked about her heroine.

The couple remained together until Oppenheimer’s death in 1967, after which Kitty scattered his ashes outside their home in St. John, Virgin Islands. She then moved in with longtime family friend Robert Serber. The widow of the creator of the atomic bomb died in 1972 of a pulmonary embolism during a trip around the world.

Another woman who appears in the film is psychologist Ruth Tolman. She and her mathematician husband Richard have been friends of Oppenheimer since he arrived in California in 1928 at the age of 24.

“Maybe Robert loved Kitty, but on some level he didn’t respect her. He respected and admired Ruth. He looked to her for advice and comfort, which only a good friend can give.– researchers of Oppenheimer’s life say about this relationship.

One of Oppenheimer’s secretaries claimed that he always kept one of Ruth’s letters in his pocket. There were also rumors of a romance between them, which is also hinted at in the film. However, scholars have found no evidence that their connection surpasses Plato’s. There is speculation that this was most likely unpleasant gossip spread by Oppenheimer’s colleague, physicist Ernest Lawrence, who envied him.

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