Jean Tatlock

Jean Tatlock had a brief romantic relationship with Manhattan Project scientific leader J. Robert Oppenheimer while she was a graduate student in psychology at Stanford University in 1936 and he was a professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley. [Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin. "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Random House, New York, 2005."] Tatlock is generally credited for introducing Oppenheimer to radical politics during the 1930s, ["American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Random House, New York, 2005: 114."] and his association with her, and many of the friends he met through her, were later used as evidence against him during his 1954 security hearing. Some historians believe that Oppenheimer had an extramarital affair with Tatlock while he was working on the Manhattan Project. Tatlock suffered from severe depression, and died in July 1944 of an apparent suicide. However, because of her communist associations and potential extramarital activities with Oppenheimer (and the assumed intimacy necessary for such an affair) Tatlock was suspected as a potential agent for transferring classified information between Oppenheimer and Soviet Russia. At the time of her death she was under surveillance by the FBI, and some evidence (albeit, not overwhelming) suggests that she may have been murdered by United States government operatives. ["American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Random House, New York, 2005: 249-254."]

In a letter to Kenneth D. Nichols from 1954, Oppenheimer stated his association with Tatlock as follows:

:In the spring of 1936, I had been introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock, the daughter of a noted professor of English at the university; and in the autumn, I began to court her, and we grew close to each other. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged. Between 1939 and her death in 1944 I saw her very rarely. She told me about her Communist Party memberships; they were on again, off again affairs, and never seemed to provide for her what she was seeking. I do not believe that her interests were really political. She loved this country and its people and its life. She was, as it turned out, a friend of many fellow travelers and Communists, with a number of whom I was later to become acquainted.

Tatlock also introduced Oppenheimer to the poetry of John Donne, and his naming of the first test of a nuclear weapon as "Trinity" is interpreted by historian Gregg Herken as a reference to Donne.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/opp01.htm The Avalon Project : United States Atomic Energy Commission. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer ] at www.yale.edu
* [http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/ww2Timeline/Pacific07.html The Atomic Bomb ] at history.sandiego.edu