American Experience

Narrator: Ella Oppenheimer was “very delicate,” a friend remembered, with an air of sadness about her. Robert was precociously brilliant, and both parents were protective of his uncommon gifts. Frail, frequently sick, he was attended to by servants, driven everywhere. He rarely played with other children.

Priscilla McMillan, writer: He wasn’t mischievous. He was too brilliant to be just one of the children. But his parents treasured him; treated him like a little jewel. And he just skipped being a boy.

Narrator: “My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things,” Oppenheimer said. “It gave me no normal, healthy way to be a bastard.” Sometime around the age of five, Robert’s grandfather gave him a small collection of minerals. “From then on,” he said, “I became, in a completely childish way, an ardent mineral collector. But it began to be also a bit of a scientist’s interest, a fascination with crystals.”

Martin Sherwin, historian: He wrote to the New York Mineralogical Society on a typewriter. They were so impressed with what he had to say that, of course, thinking he was an adult, they invited him to give a lecture, and little Robert, at age 10 or 11, shows up at the New York Mineralogical Society, and has to stand on a box in order to see over the lectern to give this lecture. That is not a normal, average childhood.

Narrator: Eight years separated Robert from his brother Frank, too many for companionship. Robert was a loner. And at New York’s Ethical Culture school, he inhabited his own rarefied world, more comfortable with his teachers than with the other students, who nicknamed him “Booby” Oppenheimer. To protect himself, he relied on his preternatural brilliance and grew aloof and arrogant.

Priscilla McMillan, writer: He didn’t grow up. He studied a great deal, which shielded him from the world. And the emotional side of him didn’t catch up until much later.