The aircraft carrier known as the U.S.S. Hornet has a storied history. The version you see in these photos began its journey in 1943, and was named in honor of a previous Hornet that was sunk in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II. This ship took the previous Hornet’s place in the Pacific theater, eventually launching the first carrier strikes on Japan. After Japan’s formal surrender, the Hornet ferried veterans of the Pacific War home to California.
In the late 1960s the warship landed a glamorous assignment when it used in the recovery operations for astronauts who had returned from the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions and needed to be pulled from the ocean. It was in 1969, during its astronaut-rescue period and in its final year of service, that LIFE photographer Lynn Pelham traveled on the Hornet and documented how the crew spent its leisure time.
The crew seemed to be having a ball, at least some of the time. Splash pools, volleyball games, drum kits, basking in the sun, general horseplay. With activities like these, who needs shore leave?
Well, probably they all did, and desperately. In those days, aircraft carriers didn’t even have their own Starbucks and gyms and other amenities found aboard their modern counterparts.
The Hornet was decommissioned in 1970 and now serves as a museum in Alameda, California.
The crew of the USS Hornet enjoying some down time, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Crew members of the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Crew members of the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Crewmen of the U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Crew members play volleyball aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Volleyball aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The crew of the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Crew members sunbathing on the U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which opened in 1923, has been home to a dizzying array of events in its 100 years of operation. The original main tenant was the USC college football team, but the stadium has also hosted Super Bowls, Olympics, UCLA football, Rams and Raiders football, political speeches and rock concerts.
Perhaps the oddest-fitting of all its tenants was the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, but the team’s stadium would not be ready for occupancy until 1962. So for four years the Dodgers did the best they could in the enormous Coliseum.
The photos show the problem; playing baseball in the Coliseum meant sticking a diamond into the middle of an oval. We see fans with binoculars, straining to follow the action on the far-away field. Remember that this was before spectators could watch replays on giant video boards at the stadium. It its coverage of the first Dodgers game in their new home in its April 28, 1958 issue, LIFE wryly noted: “In the cavernous coliseum many had trouble seeing the game at all. But many came only to be seen.”
Another oddity was that the left-field fence was a very short 250 feet down the line. (Since then baseball has established rules for new stadiums that require a minimum distance of 325 feet). A 40-foot screen was erected to keep down the number of home runs, but the complaints from the players were many. Dodgers star pitcher Don Drysdale commented, “It’s nothing but a sideshow. Who feels like playing baseball in this place?”
Most of the photos in this story are by Leonard McCombe and Allan Grant, and come from the Dodgers first home games in 1958, played against the San Francisco Giants, who had also just moved from New York to California. A couple other photos are by Ralph Crane amd come from 1959 World Series, when the Dodgers defeated the Chicago White Sox in six games—though again the pictures, by Ralph Crane, emphasized the odd setting more than the on-the-field action.
With a seating capacity of more than 90,000, the Coliseum remains the largest stadium ever to serve as the home field for a major league team. In 1967 it would host the first Super Bowl, between Green Bay and Kansas City. In 2028 the Coliseum will host its third Olympics.
A vendor outside the first game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, California, 1958
Television actress Juli Reding spoke with Dodgers outfielder Elmer Valo during the first home game at the Los Angeles Coliseum, 1958.
Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants during the Dodgers’ first home game at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California, 1958
Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants during the Dodgers’ first home game at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California, 1958
Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dodgers fans needed binoculars to follow the action in the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the team played for four seasons after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A Dodgers home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the team played for four seasons after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dodgers fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum cheer the team in in their first home game after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dodgers fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum cheer the team in in their first home game after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dodgers during the team’s first home game at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Allan Grant//Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A crowd watching the Dodgers’ first home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fans at the Dodgers’ first home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Dodgers’ first home game at Los Angeles Coliseum, 1958.
Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The crowd at Los Angeles Coliseum for the first game between the L.A. Dodgers and San Francisco Giants in Los Angeles, 1958.
Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
People watched the first Dodgers home game at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.
Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Game 3 of the 1959 World Series between the White Sox and the Dodgers at L.A. Memorial Coliseum, 1959.
Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shuttetstock
The 1959 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers, at L.A. Memorial Coliseum.
Thomas Hart Benton is a Missouri-born artist best known for his vibrant depictions of everyday life. Perhaps his most famous work is America Today, a sprawling mural which illustrated life across various regions of the country, a kind of visual “This Land is Your Land” in ten panels. He painted representative art and a time when many of his contemporaries, including his most famous disciple, Jackson Pollock, veered toward abstraction. and he is described as “a champion of mid-western rural America” on the official website for his work.
But Benton, like so many others, was not immune to the charms of Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the coast of Massachusetts, and he visited there regularly during the summer, starting in 1920 and going until his death in 1975. During those years Martha’s Vineyard began its transformation from an earthier and more bohemian retreat to a vacation spot for the rich and fashionable.
It was on this island off the coast of Massachusetts that LIFE staff photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt visited for a big story on Benton in the Oct. 3, 1969 issue. Benton could be a colorful and outspoken character, and the story carried the headline “Tom Benton, at 80, Still at War With Boobs and Bores.”
But despite the cantankerous headline, LIFE’s story described an island routine for Benton and his wife Rita that sounded idyllic:
The Bentons rise, as they always have, with the sun which, in the early summer, is 4 a.m., swim and work until noon. Rita fastens herself to the ocean bed as if she had grown out of it, and clams. “I find the clams with my foot,” she says luxuriantly, “and then dig them up with my heel, and reach down and pick them up with my hand. Wonderful!” Tom paints or, when he can discover something before Rita has attended to it herself, putters. This summer it was regluing the bottoms of their lawn chairs. “He spent three weeks,” scoffs Rita. “If he had spent three weeks painting, I could have bought the whole house again.”
While most of the photos in this set were taken for that 1969 story, two others are from 25 years earlier, when Eisenstaedt also snapped a couple frames of Benton while in Martha’s Vineyard working on a story on writer W. Somerset Maugham.
Benton left his mark on the island. The collection of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum includes Benton’s portrait of schooner captain Zeb Tilton, which he painted in front of an audience during a fundraiser for the local hospital. That museum in 2019 also staged an exhibition devoted to Benton.
It’s clear this child of the heartland had a special fondness for the island. A 2014 piece about Benton in Smithsonian Magazine began with his daughter Jessie in Martha’s Vineyard at the family home, and as the story’s writer was admiring a walkway and an artfully designed retaining wall on the way to the local pond, she informed him that Benton had made both himself. The daughter explained, “This was our world.”
Thomas Hart Benton posing next to a self-portrait, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Artist Thomas Hart Benton with one of his paintings in his studio on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton displaying his work, Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton holding a sketch pad, Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton sketching in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Painter Thomas Hart Benton sketching near a shore in Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Artist Thomas Hart Benton walking along the beach on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Painter Thomas Hart Benton working outdoors on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Artist Thomas Hart Benton and wife at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Artist Thomas Hart Benton with his wife, daughter and granddaughter at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Artist Thomas Hart Benton overseeing construction of his new house on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Portrait of artist Thomas Hart Benton, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton was visited by writer W. Somerset Maugham at the artist’s studio, 1944.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton, Martha’s Vineyard, 1944.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton in Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In 1941 legendary LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt went to Atlantic City and chronicled the bustling activity and amusements of the beach town at its peak.
In these pictures you’ll see the 1940 Miss America, Frances Burke, who had been crowned the year before at Atlantic City’s Convention Hall, posing with her sash on the beach. You’ll see the crowds at night flocking to the legendary Steel Pier amusement park, while others enjoy fine dining in a grand hotel. You’ll see women wearing bathing caps into the ocean to protect their hairdos, as was common in those days. And you’ll see boardwalk attractions that were very much of their time: one booth charged people 15 cents (about $3 today) to have their blood pressure taken. The Sodamat” sold drinks for a nickel. People mobbed a Heinz 57 specialty store that was apparently trying to live up to its “57 varieties” slogan.
Also notable is the sheer prevalence of senior citizens, many of whom went out in the summertime sun wearing suits and dresses, as if they were going to a formal event rather than a day at the shore.
These photos were shot toward the end of the Atlantic City heyday that began in the early 20th century and waned as tourists moved on to other destinations. By 1977 the town’s fortunes had sagged enough that Atlantic City turned to legalized gambling, becoming the first U.S location outside Nevada to do so. The casinos that sprouted up along the boardwalk, some of them taking the place of the grand hotels of yesteryear, did provide a shot in the arm, but the benefits have proved fleeting, especially after competing casinos began popping up all around the country. In 2023 Atlantic City still claims 27 million visitors a year.
Its battle to recapture its glory days make Atlantic City something of an avatar for nostalgia itself. In 1980 Louis Malle directed a movie called Atlantic City in which a small-time mobster played by Burt Lancaster was so consumed by romantic visions of days gone by that he memorably declared to a younger character, “You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days.”
In these photos you can do just that.
Aerial view of people at the beach, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Frances Burke, winner of the 1940 Miss American pageant, joined Miss Atlantic City on the beach Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
People going onto the beach at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The beach at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Readers on a hotel terrace, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, N,J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Lifeguards in action, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sketch artists on the beach, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Posted regulations, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A wicker rolling chair passed by a Philip Morris tobacco shop, Atlantic City, N.J. , 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Crocheting on the boardwalk, Atlantic City, N.J, 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
People crowded a hot dog stand on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J,, 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
An exterior view of the Brighton Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J. in 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Frances Green (right) of Baltimore and Charles McIntosh of Brampton, Ontatio enjoying a ride in a wicker rolling chair through the pergola at the Brighton Hotel en route to the beach, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Nurses tending to afflicted children as they lie on a sun deck, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Knife & Fork restaurant, Atlantic City, N.J, 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Lucy the Elephant in Margate, N.J., not far from Atlantic City, N.J, 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Ice skating, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
People dining at the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Ice capades at the Convention Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
People gathering outside of Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the defining figures of the 20th century, will be introduced to a new generation with the release of Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer on July 21, 2023. A look at the film’s trailer and at LIFE’s pictures of the scientist known as “the father of the atomic bomb” will confirm at least this: the movie’s star, Cillian Murphy, bears a stunning resemblance to Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer first appeared in LIFE in 1945, the year the first atomic bombs were dropped. The pictures here show Oppenheimer with General Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in Nolan’s movie), who led the Manhattan Project that developed the bombs, and also addressing reporters who came to New Mexico to see the site of the first atomic bomb detonation.
Oppenheimer returned in LIFE’s Dec. 29, 1947 issue, as part of a larger story on Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Oppenheimer was its new director, and the photos by LIFE’s Alfred Eisenstaedt showed Oppenheimer in conversation with Albert Einstein, one of the institute’s founding professors, thus capturing two of the most influential figures of 20th-century physics in one frame.
LIFE’s biggest and most defining story on Oppenheimer came in the Oct. 10, 1949 issue, when the scientist appeared on the cover of the magazine. The story was written by Lincoln Barnett, a former LIFE editor who that year had produced a major book about Einstein. The photos, again by Alfred Eisenstaedt, depicted Oppenheimer’s softer side—in one his young son is giving him a noogie. But Barnett’s story delved into the heart of what makes Oppenheimer so fascinating: he possessed both the brilliance to create the atomic bomb and the awareness to grasp the horror of his creation.
It all comes to a head when Barnett describes Oppenheimer witnessing the first detonation of at atomic bomb at the test site in New Mexico. It is as heavy a paragraph as anyone will every write about anyone:
And when the great ball of fire rolled upward to the blinded stars, fragments of the Bhagavad-Gita flashed into his mind: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the MIghty One….I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.” And as the shock and the sound waves hurled themselves furiously against the distant mountains, Oppenheimer knew that he and his coworkers had acquired a promethian burden they could never shed. “In some crude sense,” he observed later, “which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.”
Weeks after that moment, Oppenheimer’s creation did indeed shatter worlds, as the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 129,000 and 226,000 thousand people, and bringing World War II to a close.
Oppenheimer would go on to oppose the creation of the next generation of nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, and LIFE again took a close examination of Oppenheimer’s life in its April 26, 1954 issue, when, owing in part to that stance and also to some associations, he became a target for anti-communists during the Red Scare and had his security clearance revoked. LIFE wrote, “Whatever the truth of the charges and whatever the outcome of the inquiry the situation which involved one of the nation’s most brilliant scientific minds was in itself a national tragedy.”
The government would eventually mend fences with Oppenheimer, who was back in LIFE in its Dec. 13, 1963 issue for a major piece on his receiving the Enrico Fermi Award. The prize for scientific achievement was awarded by John Kennedy but actually delivered by Lyndon B. Johnson—the main story of that issue of LIFE is about Johnson assuming the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination. That story brought yet another portrait of Oppenheimer by the estimable Alfred Eisenstaedt. This time he photographed the scientist in color, marking a more benign kind of technological progress.
Is it a tribute to the artistry of Eisenstaedt that his various portraits of Oppenheimer, shot across the years, reflect the story of his life through the subject’s eyes.
J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke to New York Times reporter William Laurence (left) during a press visit to the A-bomb blast site, 1945.
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General Leslie Groves (left) and J. Robert Oppenheimer, key figures in the development of the first atomic bomb, 1945.
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Manhattan Project officials, including Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer (white hat) and, next to him, General Leslie Groves, inspected the detonation site of the Trinity atomic bomb test, the first detonation of an atomic weapon, 1945.
LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY/Life Picture Collection
American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey, 1947.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, 1947.
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer in his office at Princeton, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and chief technical advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer with Hideki Yukawa, recipient of a Nobel Prize in physics, in Oppenheimer’s office at Princeton, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer at Princeton, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Katherine Oppenheimer, wife of J. Robert Oppenheimer, held a degree in mycology, and here tended some rare plants in their home greenhouse as her husband and their children Peter and Toni looked on, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was welcomed home by son Peter and daughter Toni, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife reading a book to their son, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer at home with his son Peter, Princeton, New Jersey, 1949.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer his wife Katherine (second from left) met Pearl Buck (second from right), at the president’s party for Nobel Prize winners at the White House, 1962. Buck won for Literature in 1938; Oppenheimer, while nominated three times for Physics, never won.
Arthur Rickerby/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1963.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In 1956 he traveled to Havana for a beachwear shoot, at a time when the island was a popular travel destination for Americans, before FIdel Castro came to power and Cuban-American relations turned hostile. Enjoy, as the pictures capture not just the fashions of the moment but the feelings of playfulness and relaxation that come with a day at the beach.
