Katherine “Toni” Oppenheimer, born on December 7, 1944, was an American translator, and the daughter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Katherine Puening.
Katherine Oppenheimer’s cause of death: What happened to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s daughter?
Katherine Oppenheimer was one of the many children born at Los Alamos. When J. Robert Oppenheimer, her father became the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Oppenheimer family moved with him to New Jersey. Toni was 3 years old at the time.
As a child, she was diagnosed with polio. The family brought her on a trip to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands to help her recover. Toni and her brother Peter were both certainly impacted by their parents’ unique eccentricities. Toni and her mother were at each other’s throats all the time. She also had a complicated relationship with her father.
Robert Oppenheimer died of cancer in 1967. Soon after, in 1969, Toni Oppenheimer was denied a position as a translator for the United Nations because the FBI refused to grant her a security clearance.
Soon after losing out on the U.N. position, and after two unsuccessful marriages, Toni permanently relocated to St. John. She became a recluse in her family’s old cottage, with few friends on the remote island. She committed suicide in January 1977, a month after her 33rd birthday.
