J. Robert Oppenheimer Photo Album Commemorating his Return to the Los Alamos Laboratory.

Rare original photo album commemorating J. Robert Oppenheimer's return to the Los Alamos Laboratory on May 18th, 1964. Square octavo, blue boards with white plastic comb binding, with 30 black and white photographs. Nearly two decades after the Trinity test and only three years before his death, J. Robert Oppenheimer revisited the Los Alamos Laboratory. This album commemorates his visit, showing him accompanied by his wife, Kitty, and welcomed by Norris Bradbury (1909–1997), his successor as laboratory director. The photographs trace Oppenheimer’s tour of the site and its museum, including moments where he and Bradbury viewed films of his earlier work there. Among the most striking images are four in which Oppenheimer appears against the backdrop of a photograph of the Trinity explosion. The album opens with a dissolve featuring his iconic hat placed beside the laboratory’s visitor log, where he had signed his name. Other images capture him in conversation and laughter with colleagues, friends, and his wife. The collection concludes with four photographs from an evening lecture on the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr, held at the Civic Auditorium of Los Alamos High School. On this occasion, Oppenheimer reportedly, "received a standing ovation as he approached the lectern and again when he finished his speech." ( The Atom, June 1964). In near fine condition.