PremiumA fan of Barbenheimer? We bet you didn't know this about Barbie and Oppenheimer
The films have sparked renewed interest in both Barbie and Julius Robert Oppenheimer, and here are some interesting facts on both…
Last Updated: 08.28 PM, Jul 28, 2023
As two highly anticipated movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer, released on the same date worldwide, it gave rise to a new moniker: Barbenheimer.
Directed by Greta Gerwig, the Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling-starrer Barbie is based on the Barbie fashion dolls by Mattel. It is the first live-action Barbie film.
Christopher Nolan's latest biographical thriller, Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, and Rami Malek in important roles, is based on the life of Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'.
The films have sparked renewed interest in both Barbie and Julius Robert Oppenheimer. So much so that global family history site MyHeritage searched through their archives of over 19 billion online digitised historical records to dig up some interesting facts on Barbie and Oppenheimer. Here's a summary:
Did you know this about Barbie's creators?
Ruth Handler and Isadore Elliot Handler, founders of the toy giant Mattel Inc., which makes the Barbie dolls, were high school sweethearts who had been together since age 16.
Ruth, who fondly referred to herself as 'Barbie's mom', named Barbie and Ken after her own kids: Barbara Joyce Handler and Kenneth Robert Handler.
Things were looking up for Ruth until 1978, when she, along with former Mattel officers, was indicted for conspiracy and fraud related to false reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission. This led to her resignation in 1974, followed by a fine of $57,000 and 2,500 hours of community service.
Oppenheimer's life and times
Julius Robert Oppenheimer's role in the Manhattan Project, a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons, is well known. A nuclear physicist, he was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs.
But did you know that he was a professor at two prestigious universities: Berkely and Princeton?
The website found that Oppenheimer was an established professor at Berkeley when he joined the Manhattan Project in 1942 to research and develop the first nuclear weapons. The 1940 U.S. Census finds him living in Berkeley and working as a university professor.
In 1947, after the Second World War, Oppenheimer moved back to the East Coast of the US, where he was director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
He’s listed in the 1950 U.S. Census as living in Princeton with his wife Katherine and their children, Peter and Katherine.