Oppenheimer premiered on July 21, 2023. While the movie predominantly focuses on the development of the atomic weapon, filmgoers also and learned more about J. Robert Oppenheimer's personal life.
Oppenheimer met and married Katherine "Kitty" Peuning Harrison in 1940. They had two kids together, Peter and Toni.
Peter Oppenheimer, the eldest child, was born in 1941. His dad was teaching at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. The family soon moved when Oppenheimer signed on to lead the atomic project at Los Alamos in New Mexico.
The family moved to Los Alamos in 1942, when Oppenheimer was appointed the director of the Manhattan Project. After the war, they moved to Princeton, New Jersey. There, Oppenheimer was the director of the Institute for Advanced Study.
More from LittleThings: Meg Ryan And Dennis Quaid's Son Jack Gives Rare Interview About The Truth Of His Childhood
Shortly after, Peter was sent to the George School, which is a boarding school in Newtown, Pennsylvania. However, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, he ended up graduating from Princeton High School. After that, he went and stayed with Oppenheimer's brother, Frank, for a while in Colorado.
After Oppenheimer died, Peter reportedly moved to northern New Mexico, living at a residence purchased by his father years ago. According to the AHF, he still lives there, working as a carpenter. He also has three kids: Dorothy, Charles, and Ella.
Katherine "Toni" Oppenheimer is the second child. She was born in 1944 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. This was during the time that Oppenheimer worked on developing the atomic bomb.
Katherine attended school in Princeton, New Jersey. As a child, she was diagnosed with polio. Her family took her on a trip to the US Virgin Islands to help with her recovery. Some time after Oppenheimer's death, she moved to the family's cottage in the islands. A month after her 32nd birthday, she died by suicide in 1977.
As for the grandchildren, two of Peter's kids live public lives, while the other one does not. Dr. Dorothy Oppenheimer Vanderford lives in southern Nevada. She works as a technical writer for the Nevada National Security Site. Charles Oppenheimer works in software and writes op-eds about nuclear power.
Dorothy noted that her family wasn't involved in the Oppenheimer movie. But she shared that she felt "positive about it" and that her grandfather was a "real patriot."
