Kai Bird

Proud of both his Jewish and his Southern heritage, Strauss pointedly insisted on pronouncing his last name as ‘Straws.’ Self-righteous to a fault, he remembered every slight—and meticulously recorded them in an endless stream, each entitled “memorandum to the file.”

Soon after their arrival, Robert had an ample greenhouse built on the back of the house, near the kitchen wing. It was his birthday gift to Kitty, who filled it with dozens of varieties of orchids.

Nevertheless, Oppenheimer strongly believed it was essential that the Institute remain a home to both science and the humanities. In his speeches about the Institute, Oppenheimer continually emphasized that science needed the humanities to better understand its own character and consequences.