Jeremy Bernstein

Jeremy Bernstein was a twenty-seven-year-old physicist when he arrived at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1957. During the two years he spent there, encounters with J. Robert Oppenheimer gave him an unusually intimate view of the director: not only the formidable public intellectual, but a man capable of sudden personal disclosure and unexpected ease. Bernstein later remembered those meetings as evidence of a character that resisted any single, settled impression.

Arrival at the Institute

Bernstein’s first meeting began with a brisk question. Oppenheimer greeted him with, “What is new and firm in physics?” Before Bernstein could answer, the telephone rang. Oppenheimer took the call and, when he hung up, told the young physicist that it was Kitty and that she had been drinking again. He then invited Bernstein to Olden Manor to look at some of his pictures. In a few moments, the encounter had moved from professional formality to a disclosure about Oppenheimer’s troubled private life.

A Director Both Intimidating and Disarming

Bernstein spent two years at the Institute and found Oppenheimer “endlessly fascinating.” His recollections emphasize the contrast in Oppenheimer’s manner: he could be sharply intimidating, then charm and disarm the person in front of him. Bernstein also described Oppenheimer’s periodic one-to-one meetings with younger colleagues as “confessionals.” The label suggests the personal candor of those conversations, while preserving the asymmetry between a powerful director and a junior physicist called into his office.

A Shared Reading Memory

During one such meeting, Bernstein mentioned that he was reading Proust. Oppenheimer responded by recalling that, at about Bernstein’s age, he had taken a walking trip on Corsica and read Proust at night by flashlight. Bernstein stressed that the recollection was not a boast: Oppenheimer was sharing an experience. The small, concrete memory offers a counterpoint to his authority at the Institute. Rather than turning the conversation back to status or expertise, he answered a younger physicist with a fragment of his own past, making the exchange feel like a point of recognition across generations.