Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (124 page)

The infant Oppenheimer with his mother, Ella.

Oppenheimer in the arms of his father, Julius, whom he later described as ‘one of the most tolerant and human of men’.

Oppenheimer (right) at about ten, with a friend, pursuing one of his childhood passions: building with blocks.

155 Riverside Drive, Oppenheimer’s childhood home (the picture was taken in 1910, just a year before the Oppenheimer family moved there).

‘A little precious and perhaps a little arrogant, but very interesting, full of ideas.’ Oppenheimer at Harvard.

William Boyd, one of the few close friends Oppenheimer had at Harvard.

Frederick Bernheim, Oppenheimer’s friend and Harvard room-mate.

One of Oppenheimer’s best friends from New Mexico, the writer Paul Horgan.

The Upper Pecos Valley, Oppenheimer’s favourite landscape, where ‘for the first time in his life’, according to Herbert Smith, who accompanied him on his first visit there in 1922, Oppenheimer ‘found himself loved, admired, sought after’.

Inside the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, c. 1920.

The great Cambridge physicist, Paul Dirac.

Patrick Blackett, ‘a young Oedipus. Tall, slim, beautifully balanced and always looking better dressed than anyone.’

Niels Bohr, the man whom Oppenheimer admired over all others, in 1922.