Did Oppenheimer have an affair?

Back in the summer, Oppenheimer successfully set the cinematic world ablaze, even despite its perennial rival Barbie swiping the box office belt. But in no way does that diminish the impact of the raw power and divine storytelling that Christopher Nolan and company cooked up.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be wise to go into Oppenheimer expecting a run-of-the-mill biopic; the bold, unconventional stylization of its narrative is one that only Nolan would dare — and succeed — to build, and the profound conundrums it explores, such as the interplay between the human ego and nature, leaves a lot to think about once its three-hour runtime has passed.

But perhaps you’re not interested in Oppenheimer’s story, the emotionally-charged process of creating the atomic bomb, or the irreversible, still-palpable impact on our lives that this man made all those years ago. No, maybe you’re just interested in those scandalous tabloid scoop-equivalents of WWII era America; if so, we’ve got you covered.

How many affairs did Oppenheimer have?

As it turns out, fidelity was not the eponymous physicist’s greatest strength, having had two affairs during his marriage to Kitty Oppenheimer (portrayed by Emily Blunt in the film).

The more notable of the two was with Jean Tatlock (portrayed in the film by Florence Pugh), with whom Oppenheimer had been intimately involved, on and off, prior to his marriage. He began communicating with Tatlock again after Kitty had given birth to his second child, and the two continued their aforementioned relationship until Tatlock’s death in 1994. It was this affair and communication that led to issues with Oppenheimer’s security clearance, as Tatlock was a known, staunch Communist.

Oppenheimer began his second affair shortly after departing from Los Alamos, this time with Ruth Tolman (played by Louise Lombard in the film), the wife of his friend Richard Tolman, who passed away not long after Oppenheimer began the affair. Unlike his relationship with Tatlock, his connection with Tolman was reportedly a purely emotional connection, rather than a sexual one. The physicist left this relationship behind when he accepted a directorship position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (which, of course, would have been on the other side of the country from Tolman’s Los Angeles home).

He may be a man defined by his contributions to science, war, and the overall state of the world even today, but when it came to his involvement with women, Oppenheimer brought a whole new meaning to the term “perpetual motion,” so to speak.