The premise of “Oppenheimer,” the Christopher Nolan biopic, is simple: tell the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” But as with the director’s other films, the execution is far from easy. The film jumps between time periods, showing a dizzying array of scientists, politicians and would-be communist agents in the midst of a series of government hearings.
Here’s a guide to help you keep track of the real characters and events in the movie.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
The American theoretical physicist (played by Cillian Murphy) spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project.
Born in New York City in 1904, Oppenheimer spent his undergraduate years at Harvard before moving to Cambridge, England for graduate work in physics. There he grew frustrated with his tutor’s insistence that he focus on lab work rather than theory, and reportedly gave the man, Patrick Blackett, a poisoned apple. The tutor never ate the apple, but university officials placed him on probation. That said, the episode is the subject of conflicting stories.
After earning his Ph.D. in physics from a German university, Oppenheimer accepted professorships at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology, where he helped pioneer an American school of theoretical physics.
With World War II raging, Oppenheimer was named director of Los Alamos, part of the mammoth effort to develop the bomb. After falling in love with New Mexico when sent there as a boy to recover from dysentery, he set up a secret laboratory in the desert of Los Alamos, NM, coordinating the efforts of top physicists and engineers that culminated in the first nuclear explosion, in Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, known as the Trinity test.
He later directed the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent center for theoretical research, in Princeton, NJ, and became chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Lewis Strauss
Oppenheimer’s main antagonist in the film, Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a leader of the campaign to have Oppenheimer’s security clearance revoked.
Born in West Virginia, he worked variously as a traveling shoe salesman, investment bank partner, and bureaucrat who helped future President Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration during World War I. After World War II, President Harry S. Truman appointed Strauss to the Atomic Energy Commission and became its chairman and pushed for the development of the hydrogen bomb. Strauss later served as acting secretary of commerce under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate, in part because of the scientific community’s outcry over his treatment of Oppenheimer.
Jean Tatlock
An active member of the Bay Area Communist Party, Tatlock (Florence Pugh) was a graduate student at Stanford Medical School when she began dating Oppenheimer in 1936. She helped introduce him to communist activists, fueling his leftist sympathies. She ended her relationship with Oppenheimer in 1939, even though he continued to visit her. Their last meeting, in June 1943, was monitored by FBI agents. In 1944, 29-year-old Tatlock was found dead in her bathroom. Most historians conclude that she died by suicide.
William Borden
Born in 1920 in Washington, DC, Borden (David Dastmalchian) had degrees from Yale and Yale Law. He eventually worked as legislative secretary for a Connecticut senator, Brien McMahon, and became staff director of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1949.
In 1953, probably encouraged by Strauss, he sent a letter to the FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, suggesting that “more likely than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union”. This was the catalyst for a closed-door hearing about Oppenheimer’s communist ties—depicted in the film—and the eventual revocation of his security clearance.
Ernest Lawrence
Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, was born in 1901 in South Dakota. He earned a PhD in physics from Yale and became a professor of physics at UC Berkeley, where he invented the cyclotron, a particle accelerator that was instrumental in developing the atomic bomb. It was Lawrence who helped introduce Oppenheimer to the Manhattan Project. After the war, he advocated the development of hydrogen nuclear weapons.
Edward Teller
Born in Budapest, Teller (Benny Safdie) received his Ph.D. in physics in Germany and was later offered a professorship at George Washington University, becoming a US citizen in 1941. Known for his research on nuclear energy, he joined Oppenheimer’s team at Los Alamos, where he led the theoretical physics department.
Teller’s obsession with hydrogen energy and the development of a hydrogen bomb led him to clash with other members of the Manhattan Project. After the Soviet Union tested an atomic weapon in 1949, Teller became a strong proponent of developing hydrogen bombs to influence the Cold War.
He later testified against Oppenheimer at the closed-door hearing, saying, “I feel that I would rather see the vital interests of this country in the hands of whom I understand better and therefore trust more.”
Did Oppenheimer really meet Einstein?
Yes, they were colleagues from the Institute for Advanced Study. “Although I had known Einstein for two or three decades, it was not until the last decade of his life that we became close colleagues and a little friends,” Oppenheimer wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1966.
However, Nolan has admitted to fabricating a key scene between the two: At one point, Oppenheimer goes to the taciturn Einstein for advice on calculations from the Los Alamos team, which showed that the Trinity test could be mastered and wouldn’t blow up the world.
“It wasn’t Einstein who went to consult Oppenheimer about it,” Nolan said in a recent interview. “It was Arthur Compton, who led a Manhattan Project outpost at the University of Chicago. But I shifted that to Einstein.”
What are the two hearings in the movie?
The film revolves around two committee hearings: one in 1954 in color and the other in 1959 in black and white.
The first was a secret four-week meeting in which the Atomic Energy Commission deliberated on whether to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Amid fears of the Soviet Union’s technological advancements, Oppenheimer’s possible ties to leftist causes had come under scrutiny, and Borden’s letter to Hoover marked the tipping point. When the committee’s chairman, Strauss, informed Oppenheimer that his security clearance had been suspended, Oppenheimer refused to resign and demanded a hearing from the committee’s Personnel Security Board.
That hearing was one-sided from the start, with Oppenheimer’s attorneys denied access to confidential material, while the commission’s prosecutor had access to hundreds of wiretaps. In the end, the three-member board decided that Oppenheimer was a loyal citizen, but that his security clearance should be revoked.
In 1959, the Senate held a hearing on the nomination of Strauss as Secretary of Commerce, a heated process that Time magazine called “the bitterest battle in American history for the confirmation of a presidential nomination.” The nomination was rejected by a vote of 49 to 46.
What ultimately happened to Oppenheimer?
After losing his security clearance, Oppenheimer continued to teach and conduct research with the support of many in the scientific community, who saw him as a martyr. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Enrico Fermi Award, an award for lifetime achievement in energy science.
In 1966 he retired from the Institute for Advanced Study and died of throat cancer the following year.
In December 2022, a few days after a trailer for “Oppenheimer” was released, Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm overturned the 1954 decision to withdraw Oppenheimer’s endorsement. She called a “flawed process” that violated the Atomic Energy Commission’s own regulations.
“More evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the trial to which Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected,” said Granholm, “while the evidence of his loyalty and love for the fatherland has only been further confirmed.”
