Oppenheimer Film Characters

The 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman was sworn into office upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 12, 1945. Shortly after being sworn in, Truman was first notified of the existence of the Manhattan Project. A few months later, Truman authorized the use of atomic bombs on Japan, the only time an atomic weapon has been used in war.

Secretary of War during the Manhattan Project, Henry L. Stimson was General Leslie Groves’ immediate supervisor, authorized project sites, and made sure the project was given anything needed to be successful. President Harry Truman once said of Stimson, “I felt how fortunate the country was to have so able and so wise a man in its service.”

US Army General Leslie Groves was appointed to lead the Manhattan Project in September, 1942. His responsibilities included overseeing the thousands of workers at Hanford's plutonium-production facilities, the Los Alamos bomb-design laboratory, and the uranium-enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge.

General Kenneth Nichols served as Deputy District Engineer and later District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District. Serving directly under General Leslie Groves, Nichols was responsible for overseeing both Oak Ridge and Hanford. Follow the link to learn more about Nichols’ role during the Manhattan Project.

Although Vannevar Bush is not a well-known figure related to the Manhattan Project, Hans Bethe said of him that he was the leader of American scientific work in support of the Allied war effort. In 1940 he proposed and became chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, NDRC, to coordinate defense-related research. It was later subsumed into the Office of Scientific Research and Development, directed by Bush.

Lewis Strauss lived a varied life as a businessman, Navy officer, and Atomic Energy Commision member. In the 1950s, he came into conflict with Robert Oppenheimer over questions of nuclear security. The conflict resulted in Oppenheimer losing his security clearance and Strauss ultimately losing his bid to become the US Secretary of Commerce.

For decades, the name “Einstein” has been connected with genius and science. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is best known for his work with relativity and quantum mechanics. His physics theories played a large part in the work of the Manhattan Project, but he never worked for the project.

Often referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb", physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer directed atomic bomb development at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. The top-secret work at Los Alamos culminated in Trinity, the world's first successful nuclear test on July 16, 1945. Learn more about Oppenheimer's role in developing the atomic bomb at the link.

A botanist and onetime member of the Communist Party, Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer was married to J. Robert Oppenheimer from 1940 until his death in 1967. Robert considered Kitty a confidant, even related to situations in the secret laboratory, and the two strongly relied on each other throughout their 26-year marriage.

Jean Tatlock was an American psychiatrist, member of the Communist party, and connected romantically to Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley in the mid-1930s. Tatlock took her own life in January 1944. Oppenheimer’s relationship with her would come to haunt him during his security clearance hearings in the 1950s.