Oppenheimer Once Gave Commencement Speech At George School

MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP, PA —Maybe many of you watched the movie "Oppenheimer" or at least saw its sweep of Academy Awards during the Oscars Sunday night.

But if you were attending the George School in 1956, you may have seen the real J. Robert Oppenheimer.

"Oppenheimer" capped its outstanding run through the long awards season by winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Sunday night.

It's an epic movie about the dawn of the Atomic Age. But the man whom the movie was made about actually had a connection to the George School, school officials said.

In 1956, J. Robert Oppenheimer was director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.

His son, Peter, was a freshman at George School —an all-gender boarding and day school for students in grades 9 through 12 —when then Head of School Robert McFeely invited Dr. Oppenheimer to deliver the Commencement Address to the Senior Class.

“I shall talk briefly on some of the contributions the development of science has made to our times, its hopes, and its difficulties,” Oppenheimer said to McFeely in response to the invitation, school officials said in a Facebook post. “If you need a title, perhaps ‘Science and our Times’ would do.”

(Photo Courtesy of the George School)