Oppenheimer's Archives
76,500 items at the U.S. Library of Congress
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was an American theoretical physicist. During the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer was director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and responsible for the research and design of an atomic bomb. He is often known as the “father of the atomic bomb.”1
Today, the heart of the world’s fascination with Oppenheimer’s life lies in the Manuscript Division of the U.S. Library of Congress, where his papers are preserved in more than 300 boxes that occupy a line of files that would stretch, if stacked end to end, more than 120 feet.2
The collection is filled with more than 76,500 items, including handwritten letters, transcripts of illegal FBI wiretaps, brain-busting physics, Nobel Prizes, Red scares, New Deal politics, his own early struggles with his Jewish identity, stormy personal letters and granular detail of lives lived under immense pressure.
The 2023 Film, Oppenheimer, opened on July 21, 2023.3
Atomic Heritage Foundation. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos Lab Director, Manhattan Project Veteran, Scientist, Trinity Test Eyewitness.
Oppenheimer: The Library’s Collection Chronicles His Life | Timeless (loc.gov) That’s not including more than 70 boxes of research files compiled over 20 years by Martin J. Sherwin for his part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. (Kai Bird shared the Pulitzer as a co-writer.) Those stretch another 27 feet.
I’m always learning, thanks to you
Fascinating and timely. I once had the wholly unearned delight of working with Ed Teller for two weeks in the 80s. He was the only one of the leaders not to be nominated for a Nobel Prize; it is generally agreed that was for the unforgiveable sin of inventing the hydrogen bomb.