J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Grandson Says ‘Oppenheimer’ Poison Apple Scene Isn’t True: ‘Really Serious Accusation’

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson is speaking out about a scene in Oppenheimer that he says is not verified as a true event.

As the theoretical physicist’s grandson Charles Oppenheimer, 48, spoke with Time magazine recently about his grandfather’s life and Christopher Nolan’s new movie, the younger Oppenheimer said “the part I like the least is this poison apple reference.”

Early in the new film, a young Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is shown poisoning an apple on his university professor’s desk with potassium cyanide after a frustrated exchange with the professor, only to hurriedly correct his mistake as he first meets Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) the following day.

“[It] was a problem in American Prometheus. If you read American Prometheus carefully enough, the authors say, ‘We don’t really know if it happened,'” Charles told the outlet, referencing the 2006 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

“There’s no record of him trying to kill somebody,” Charles explained. “That’s a really serious accusation and it’s historical revision. There’s not a single enemy or friend of Robert Oppenheimer who heard that during his life and considered it to be true.”

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According to Charles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography’s version of the story noted that “all the original reporters of that story — there was only two maybe three — reported that they didn’t know what Robert Oppenheimer was talking about” when he told them a story about a poisoned apple.

“Unfortunately, American Prometheus summarizes that as Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his teacher and then they [acknowledge that] maybe there’s this doubt,” he added.

A free preview of American Prometheus available on Google Books notes that the incident in question appeared to occur in the fall of 1925 while Oppenheimer was a student at the University of Cambridge in London. The book’s recording of the incident comes from Oppenheimer’s friend Francis Fergusson, who said that Oppenheimer told him about it two months later.

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“He had kind of poisoned the head steward. It seemed incredible, but that was what he said,” the book quotes Fergusson as saying. “And he had actually used cyanide or something somewhere. And fortunately the tutor discovered it. Of course there was hell to pay with Cambridge.”

The book notes that differing accounts have made the truth of the anecdote rather unclear, though Fergusson said in a 1976 interview that he did indeed believe the story was true. “He told me about it at the time, or shortly thereafter, in Paris,” Fergusson said in the book. “I always assumed that it was probably true. But I don’t know. He was doing all sorts of crazy things then.”

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As Charles spoke with Time, the physicist’s grandson was careful to note that he enjoyed the new biopic overall and that the scene in question “honestly didn’t bother me.””Sometimes facts get dragged through a game of telephone. In the movie, it’s treated vaguely and you don’t really know what’s going on unless you know this incredibly deep backstory,” he told the outlet. “So it honestly didn’t bother me. It bothers me that it was in the biography with that emphasis, not a disclaimer of, this is an unsubstantiated rumor that we want to put in our book to make it interesting.”

“But I like some of the dramatization,” he added of Nolan’s new movie, adding that he found Oppenheimer’s conversation with Albert Einstein in the film’s final moment “really effective even though it wasn’t historical.”

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Charles even met with the director, 52, beforehand. “I was bracing myself for not feeling great about it, even though I talked to Chris Nolan and was very impressed by him. I saw him work on the set with an amazing intensity when I visited once or twice, and we had a great conversation,” he explained.

“When I talked to Chris Nolan, at one point he said something roughly like, ‘I know how to tell a story out of this subject. There are going to be parts that you have to dramatize a bit and parts that are changed. As family members, I think you’re going to like some parts and dislike some parts,'” he recalled. “That’s probably led into my acceptance of the movie, even though I saw it very late, just when it came out.”

Oppenheimer is in theaters now.

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Source: HIS Education