Oppenheimer (l) and UC Berkeley friend Ernest O. Lawrence on a road trip in the early 1930a. Public Domain.
Oppenheimer was a Bad Date
For all his scientific brilliance, Oppenheimer’s love life was a bit of a mess. Not just complicated; at one point it became downright comical. When Oppenheimer was a young physics professor at University of California, Berkely, he was in his 20s. He was an eligible bachelor living at the Faculty Club, dating multiple women at a time, including some of his graduate students, a move unacceptable by Universities today. In one case, he and his date were driving near a train line. A train was running along nearby tracks, and he decided to try to race it. Whether he hadn’t calculated the car’s physics, or lost focus for a second, he crashed the car. His date was knocked out. Oppenheimer feared he had killed her. But he had the sense to feel bad about the incident; his family gave her an original Cezanne painting in an attempt to apologize.