Family matters at Project Y

As the Atomic Age was taking hold in the late 1940s and early ’50s, in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project, two Los Alamos scientists became larger than life in the popular imagination. The American public dubbed first Lab director J. Robert Oppenheimer and physicist Edward Teller the “fathers” of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, respectively, putting into simpler terms each man’s complicated role in nuclear history.

Of course, there was more to each of these men than the scientific contributions for which they are widely remembered. As Teller once said in an interview, “For heaven’s sakes, I am not [the father of the hydrogen bomb]! I am the father of two children. Will you please avoid this father thing?”

Well, the nicknames have certainly stuck. But to take Teller’s point is to pause and acknowledge that even as these brilliant physicists were busy making their names, Los Alamos’ two most famous dads also made room for family.

Like Teller, Oppenheimer was a father to two children. When he assumed his role as the Lab’s first director in 1943, his wife Kitty and their son Peter moved with him to Los Alamos, then codenamed Project Y. The Oppenheimers’ second child, Katherine (“Toni”), was one of many babies born in the secret city as life went on for hundreds of young families—much to the chagrin of Manhattan Project leader Gen. Leslie Groves, who was concerned that there was not enough room on the mesa or in the budget for the growing population.

Spouses and children were essential personnel, however, and services like schooling and day care were arranged for scientists’ families as a makeshift community formed around the laboratory.

Teller was likewise accompanied to Los Alamos by his wife, Mici. Their first child, Paul, arrived in the summer of 1943, one of about 80 babies born on-site during the Lab’s first year of operation. A daughter, Wendy, followed in 1946, not long after the Tellers had left Los Alamos for Chicago after the success of the Manhattan Project.

During his years at the laboratory, though Teller made important contributions to the development of the Fat Man bomb, he was famously preoccupied with a different type of nuclear weapon, called a hydrogen—or “H”— bomb, which he was instrumental in developing through the turn of the next decade.

As Teller explains in a poem written for his son and later printed in Life magazine:
A stands for atom; it is so small
No one has ever seen it at all.
B stands for bomb; the bombs are much bigger,
So, brother, do not be too fast on the trigger.
H has become a most ominous letter.
It means something bigger if not something better.

Like no place else, the secret laboratory and community of Los Alamos blended personal and professional worlds. Navigating partnerships and parenthood, Teller and Oppenheimer found a new kind of work-life balance while cementing their legacies in nuclear history.

The family legacy continues

Charles Oppenheimer, grandson of J. Robert Oppenheimer (above), and Eric “Astro” Teller (below), grandson of Edward Teller, visited the Lab on separate occasions in August 2023.

Through their work, both continue the legacy of their grandfathers. Charles Oppenheimer helps lead the Oppenheimer Project, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to international cooperation for a safer future in the face of today’s rapidly changing technology. His visit to the Lab included a tour of the home in Los Alamos where his grandparents and father lived.

Astro Teller leads Google-affiliated X Development, a moonshot laboratory that pursues radical technological solutions to global challenges. He visited Los Alamos on August 24 as an invited speaker for the Lab’s unclassified Director’s Colloquium series. The visit was co-hosted by Earth and Environmental Sciences Acting Deputy Division Leader Matthew Heavner, who called Teller’s presentation inspiring. “His visit and the continuing discussions it sparked across teams is testimony to his grandfather’s continuing legacy of how we foster innovation and risk.”