Consists of correspondence, writings, along with professional and personal papers reflecting his career in scientific research and his role as a pioneer in science education. Also included are materials regarding his investigation by the U.S. Congress House Committee on Un-American Activities, and correspondence, writings and biographical materials about his brother J. Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government's program to develop the atomic bomb. The bulk of this collection relates to Frank Oppenheimer's professional and academic research in the fields of education and physics in the years prior to his founding of the Exploratorium, the highly innovative, hands-on science museum in San Francisco, Calif., in 1969.

Frank Friedman Oppenheimer was born on August 14, 1912 in New York City. After graduation from Johns Hopkins University in 1933, he spent a year and a half at Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge researching natural radioactivity. For a period in 1935, he worked on the development of nuclear particle counters at the Institute di Arcetri, Florence, Italy.

Number of containers: 4 cartons Linear feet: 5.0

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Collection is open for research, with the following exception: