Opportunity Lost: Oppenheimer’s Grandson Reveals a Key Scene He Would Exclude from the Movie

When asked by Time magazine if there were any “parts that struck you as historically or emotionally inaccurate,” Oppenheimer’s grandson Charles Oppenheimer named a brief sequence in the first 30 minutes of the film.

“I definitely would have removed the apple thing,” Charles Oppenheimer said. “But I can’t imagine myself giving advice about movie stuff to Nolan. He’s an expert, he’s the artist, and he’s a genius in this area.”

In the scene, Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer, then a young student at Cambridge, injects poisonous chemicals into an apple intended for his professor Patrick Blackett. At the last moment, Oppenheimer has panicked regret and races into the classroom to prevent the apple from being eaten.

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

The anecdote is relayed briefly in “American Prometheus.” According to the authors, in the fall of 1925, when Oppenheimer was 21, it was rumored he took chemicals from the lab and “poisoned” an apple intended for Blackett. The episode allegedly happened in the midst of a period of deep anxiety and depression for the young student, and the biography refers to the act as “so stupid that it seemed calculated to prove that his emotional distress was overwhelming him.”

University officials allegedly discovered the impulsive scheme, but “American Prometheus” argues that whatever Oppenheimer did or didn’t do with that apple, it was unlikely to have been filled with a lethal poison. If he indeed tried to kill a professor, it would have resulted in attempted murder charges at worst and expulsion from the school at best.

“More likely, Robert had laced the apple with something that merely would have made Blackett sick,” the book speculates.

Charles Oppenheimer, who lives in the Bay Area, is the son of Peter Oppenheimer, who grew up in Los Alamos during the war. You can read his full interview from Time magazine.