Robert Oppenheimer: Oral histories
Robert Oppenheimer at an American Physical Society press conference in 1966.
Mitchell Valentine, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.
Background
The AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives hosts three interviews with Robert Oppenheimer. The first was conducted in 1960 by journalist Robert Cahn as background for an article he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post on the Trinity atomic bomb test. The second was conducted in 1963 by the philosopher Thomas Kuhn as part of the landmark Sources for History of Quantum Physics project of the early 1960s. The third was conducted on film in 1966 by AIP historian Charles Weiner to provide footage for a documentary on Enrico Fermi.
At the time of the interviews, Oppenheimer was director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and an exceedingly famous figure in American science for his earlier leadership role in the development of the first atomic bombs. However, it was also later in his life, after he had lost much of his earlier influence and entered a period of declining health. He died of throat cancer on February 18, 1967 at the age of 62, just months after the third interview.
The interviews are a valuable part of the historical record on Oppenheimer, as they are an unusual instance of him discussing the events of his life at length. His remarks were reasonably candid and even self-deprecating, while also showcasing the intellectual affect and deliberate phraseology for which he was well known. As with any oral history, the interviews should not be relied on for factual information, which may be obtained from carefully vetted sources such as Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird’s authoritative biography American Prometheus.
These interviews have been frequently used as sources in scholarly works, but for many years permission was needed from the Oppenheimer family to access and quote from them. Thanks to a new agreement with the family, AIP opened these interviews to the public in 2026, and they may be freely used for scholarly and other non-commercial purposes. This resource also includes a recording of a panel event that AIP held to mark the interviews’ public research, featuring Bird and Oppenheimer’s grandchildren Charles Oppenheimer and Dorothy Oppenheimer Vanderford.