Everyone is talking about Oppenheimer but we want to talk about the extraordinary women in his life! Read on for more!

An Atomic Love Story

11 May 2023…Just weeks before the July 21 opening of Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated film, Oppenheimer, Turner Book Publishing has released a revised paperback edition of An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women In Robert Opppenheimer’s Life. While Emily Blunt (Kitty) and Florence Pugh (Jean) briefly appear in the movie trailer, the real women they portray are thoroughly fleshed out in the book by authors Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus.

Set against a dramatic backdrop of war, spies, and nuclear bombs, An Atomic Love Story unveils a vivid new view of a tumultuous era and one of its most important figures. In the early decades of the 20th century, three highly ambitious women found their way to the West Coast, where each was destined to collide with the young Oppenheimer, the enigmatic physicist whose work in creating the atomic bomb would forever impact modern history. His first and most intense love was for Jean Tatlock, though he married the tempestuous Kitty Harrison—both were members of the Communist Party—and was rumored to have had a scandalous affair with the brilliant Ruth Sherman Tolman, ten years his senior and the wife of another celebrated physicist. Each was connected through a relationship to Oppenheimer Their experiences reflect important changes in the lives of American women in the 20th century: the conflict between career and marriage; the need for a woman to define herself independently; experimentation with sexuality; and the growth of career opportunities.

Beautifully written and superbly researched through a rich collection of firsthand accounts, this intimate portrait shares the tragedies, betrayals, and romances of an alluring man and three bold women, revealing how they pushed to the very forefront of social and cultural changes in a fascinating, volatile era.

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Q & A with Shirley Streshinsky

What inspired you to write this?

On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. It made an impression on an 11-year-old in the American Midwest. Some 18 years later I found myself in an auditorium at the University of California in Berkeley, listening to Robert Oppenheimer speak and knew from that moment that I would write about him, and the birth of the atomic bomb.

If you could go back in time to meet each of the three women, would you? What’s one thing you would want to ask each? 

Yes, I would. Jean Tatlock was some ten years younger than Oppenheimer, yet in some important ways more mature. Even in adolescence, she suffered from depressions. (She called them “overwhelmings.”) Yet she managed to finish medical school and went on to become a psychiatrist. Twice Oppenheimer asked her to marry him; twice she turned him down. I would like to ask her if, knowing what we know now about his history, she feels she made the right choice, or if there was any other choice. As for Ruth Tolman, there is such a hullabaloo about how Oppenheimer is rumored to have had an affair with this woman some ten years his senior, who was married to a physicist every bit Oppenheimer’s equal and a good friend to him as well. It seems obvious to me that Ruth was that wonder: a “wise woman” friend, not just to Oppenheimer but to other men of the era, as well as women. She was a professional in her own right, the daughter of a Protestant minister. I would like to know how this woman, always presented as warm, thoughtful, and caring, might react to those rumors. And last and not at all least, I would love to have a chat with Kitty, who was closer in age to Oppenheimer. She was his only wife; he was her fourth and last husband. Preferably after imbibing maybe two of her fourth husband’s famous triple whammy martinis —four ounces of gin and a dash of vermouth served in a chilled glass, the rim dipped in honey and lime juice —and reported widely to send Kitty into confessional mode.  

What was the hardest part of working on this book, researching, writing or editing?

The hardest part of working on this book was deciding on the approach, the point of view. We wanted to come in close, to show the private Robert Oppenheimer as well as the public, and both of us had been deeply involved in women’s issues. We were not writing a romance, but rather using the women and their lives to portray the times and its many struggles. (The rise of fascism and of communism, the advent of psychology and psychiatry, women moving into professions.) We start with O’s great friend Ruth, wife of another physicist friend; his first love Jean; and Kitty, his only wife (he was her 4th husband). Their stories, entwined with his, offer a wide slice of life in those perilous times approaching WWII, during it and after.  

Do you have a favorite time of day to write? What about a favorite place? 

I am a morning person; I settle in at eight and the morning just whooshes away. Afternoons as well, especially when deadlines loom. My house is in the hills, and I have an upstairs office with big windows and a desk positioned to get a wide view of San Francisco Bay. Great light, and a sense of being in the world while locked into another time altogether. 

Do you prefer to handwrite, type or dictate your first draft. 

My first couple of books were on the typewriter, and each had a handwritten first draft. No more. The computer is pure magic; first drafts right off the bat.  Never looked back. 

If you could interview any person in history, who would you want to interview? Would you spend a day with them in their time if you could?

Abraham Lincoln. Hands down. You bet I’d spend a day with him, a week would be better. Especially if that week was in Springfield, Illinois, my home state, in 1837 when Lincoln was 28. Just beginning. 

What’s one random “useless” fact you know?

That it is useless to cry over “spilt milk” as my grandmother liked to say. Also that Nature refused to keep nuclear weapons firmly out of human hands, as at least a few of the scientists attached to the unleashing of the atomic bomb had hoped.  

About the Authors

Shirley Streshinsky is a critically acclaimed author of three works of nonfiction and four historical novels. As a journalist and travel essayist, she has written extensively for a wide range of national magazines such as Glamour, Preservation, American Heritage, The American Scholar, and Condé Nast Traveler. She is the recipient of the Society of Magazine Writers’ Award for Excellence and the National Council for the Advancement of Education Writing award, and was cited by The Educational Press Association of America for “superlative achievement in features.” Her travel essays have been a feature on National Public Radio. She was married to the late photojournalist Ted Streshinsky and lives in Kensington (Berkeley), California.

Patricia Klaus is an independent scholar who attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, and then Stanford University where she earned a Ph.D. in Modern British History. She taught twentieth-century British history at Yale University, was a visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia and Stanford, and has written a number of historical articles. Her particular interests are women in nineteenth and twentieth century England as well as the study of war and literature, which made working on a book about the remarkable women of the Atomic Age especially appealing.

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