By Anne Levin

Inspired by the film Oppenheimer, currently playing at the Princeton Garden Theatre and in cinemas across the world, interest in J. Robert Oppenheimer’s years heading the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) has inspired local recollections about the famed physicist, his family, and people affiliated with him.

Among the most recent is a remembrance of Verna Hobson, Oppenheimer’s secretary at the IAS from 1954 to 1966. Hobson and her husband, Wilder Hobson, were friends of the mother of Princeton resident Hank Fairman through much of the 1950s till 1964. The Hobsons lived on Valley Road at Jefferson Road, and the Fairmans lived nearby on Mt. Lucas Road.

“As a young boy, I remember them coming to my mother’s house for evenings of dinner and jazz,” noted Fairman, a novelist and poet who formerly wrote a column on environmental issues for the Princeton Packet. “Verna, a slim, attractive woman, played, surprisingly, the tuba. Wilder played the trombone, and several others, including professional trumpet player John Dengler, joined to perform popular and jazz pieces in the living room of my mother’s house, where she was hostess and gourmet cook.”

According to Hobson’s obituary, “She soloed in front of the Lester Lanin orchestra and jammed with jazz stars Wild Bill Davison and J.C. Higginbotham.”

Hobson’s years with Oppenheimer represent only one phase of her career. She worked at the Museum of Modern Art and Time Inc. in New York. In London, she was employed at the American Association of University Women and as executive secretary for an architectural firm. She edited one weekly newspaper in Maine, and was a freelance
photographer for another. She studied Greek at the Senior College of the University of Southern Maine. She died in 2004 at the age of 81.

Hobson went to work for Oppenheimer at the IAS in 1954. “She, as he must have seen, was a gifted woman in her own right, and she worked at his side, presumably until his death,” Fairman said.

She was closely involved as Oppenheimer, who led the development of the atomic bomb, prepared for a hearing by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that ultimately led to his security clearance being revoked. In the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (on which the film Oppenheimer is based), Hobson expresses her frustration with the pace of his defense.

“To his friends, Robert seemed distracted and inexplicably passive,” the book reads. “One day, while listening to the lawyers talk about legal strategy, Verna Hobson lost her patience and began to push Robert. ‘I thought Robert was not fighting hard enough,’ she recalled. ‘I thought Lloyd Garrison [his attorney] was being too gentlemanly. I was angry. I thought we should go out and fight.’”

Hobson was the daughter of U.S. Congressman Francis Burton Harrison, who also served as governor-general of the Philippines. “She lived in Europe for her first 16 years following her father’s retirement,” Fairman said. “She then attended Swarthmore College and learned to fly small planes, co-owning a Piper Cub.”

Hobson met her husband, Wilder — a first cousin of playwright Thornton Wilder — while working for Time Inc., and they married in 1945. They spent many summers on Squirrel Island in Maine, where his family had a cottage. “They had two children, Archie and Elisa, the latter of similar age and occasional acquaintance of my sister,” said Fairman. “Following Wilder’s death in 1964, and Oppenheimer’s death from throat cancer in 1967, Verna moved to London. Sadly, Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, had a drinking problem, and Wilder died from gastrointestinal problems worsened by drinking.”

Hobson returned to the U.S. in 1976, settling in New Gloucester, Maine. “She became a farmer, growing trees, vegetables, lambs, pigs, and chickens, and was active in a local environmental organization,” Fairman said. “At the same time, she reported for, edited, and managed a local weekly newspaper, the New Gloucester News, and was one of the revivers of a summer newspaper focused on Squirrel Island. She was also active with various writing and readers’ groups.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Hobson became the foster mother to a young refugee from Cambodia in 1983.

“That Verna engaged two unusually bright men, Wilder Hobson and Dr. Oppenheimer, speaks to her own abilities, interests, and achievements and marks her as one of Princeton’s truly notable residents,” said Fairman.