page_title: Frank Oppenheimer
section_title: Political scrutiny and blacklisting
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Oppenheimer / Political scrutiny and blacklisting
caption_attribution_description: English: The home that once belonged to Frank Oppenheimer, on his 1500 acre cattle ranch in the valley of the Rio Blanco in the mountains near Pagosa Springs, Colorado (see listing for 11401 County Road 326 Pagosa Springs, Colorado, 81147, which shows similar pictures and describes the house as Oppenheimer's)
context_page_description: Frank Friedman Oppenheimer was an American particle physicist, cattle rancher, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
  A younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer conducted research on aspects of nuclear physics during the time of the Manhattan Project, and made contributions to uranium enrichment. After the war, Oppenheimer's earlier involvement with the American Communist Party placed him under scrutiny, and he resigned from his physics position at the University of Minnesota. Oppenheimer was a target of McCarthyism and was blacklisted from finding any physics teaching position in the United States until 1957, when he was allowed to teach science at a high school in Colorado. This rehabilitation allowed him to gain a position at the University of Colorado teaching physics. In 1969, Oppenheimer founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and he served as its first director until his death in 1985.
context_section_description: On July 12, 1947, the Washington Times Herald reported that Oppenheimer had been a member of the Communist Party during the years 1937–1939.  At first, he denied these reports, but later admitted they were true.  In June 1949, as part of a larger investigation on the possible mishandling of "atomic secrets" during the war, he was called before the United States Congress House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Before the Committee, he testified that he and his wife had been members of the Communist Party for about three and a half years. In 1937 they had been involved in local attempts to desegregate the Pasadena public swimming pool, which was open to non-whites only on Wednesday, after which the pool was drained and the water replaced.
  Oppenheimer said he and his wife had joined at a time when they sought answers to the high unemployment experienced in the United States during the later part of the Great Depression.  He refused to name others he knew to be members. This caused a media sensation—that J. Robert Oppenheimer's brother was an admitted former member of the Communist Party—and led to Frank resigning from his post at the University of Minnesota.
  After being branded a Communist, Oppenheimer could no longer find work in physics in the US, and he was also denied a passport, preventing him from working abroad. Frank and Jackie eventually sold one of the Van Gogh paintings he had inherited from his father, and with the money bought 1500 acres of ranch land near Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and spent nearly a decade as cattle ranchers.
caption: The home that once belonged to Frank Oppenheimer, on his 1500 acre cattle ranch in the valley of the Rio Blanco in the mountains near Pagosa Springs, Colorado
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