Credit: U.S. National Archives & Records Administration
Scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer has more than one tie to Lower Bucks County.
As already reported, Oppenheimer’s name nearly adorned Bristol Township’s Harry S. Truman High School, which was formerly Woodrow Wilson High School. The name was nixed after some protest.
On Monday after the 2023 film “Oppenheimer” scored big at the Academy Awards the night prior, the George School in Middletown Township shared that it had a connection to Oppenheimer.
From the George School’s Facebook post:
In 1956, J. Robert Oppenheimer was director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. His son, Peter, was a freshman at George School when then Head of School Robert McFeely invited Dr. Oppenheimer to deliver the Commencement Address to the Senior Class.
“I shall talk briefly on some of the contributions the development of science has made to our times, its hopes and its difficulties,” Oppenheimer said to McFeely in response to the invitation. “If you need a title, perhaps ‘Science and our Times’ would do.”
Click here to read more from the George School’s archives.
Credit: NewtownPANow.com
Peter’s parents “sent him to George School, an elite Quaker boarding school … but his grades were subpar and he was unable to graduate, finishing instead at the public Princeton High School,” according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.
The foundation added: “After an ostensibly unhappy childhood in Princeton, Peter went west soon after high school. He spent some time with his uncle, Frank Oppenheimer, at his ranch in Colorado. He was in intermittent contact with his parents throughout the 1960s. Soon after Robert Oppenheimer died in 1967, he permanently moved to rural northern New Mexico, living at the Perro Caliente ranch in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that Robert purchased decades earlier. He works as a carpenter, and now has three adult children, Dorothy, Charlie, and Ella. He lives contently in seclusion.”
Writer and director Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” came out last year and had commercial success and also score high with critics.
BoxOfficeMojo.com reported that the three-hour film has earned nearly $1 billion at the international box office.
At Sunday’s award ceremony, “Oppenheimer” won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actors, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Score.
