• J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project.
• During the World War II-era project,  scientists created the world's first atomic bomb.
• Oppenheimer had a wife and two children. He also has grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Robert Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project, which created the world's first atomic bomb for the United States during World War II.

He famously quoted the Hindu text "The Bhagavad Gita" following the first nuclear weapons test, saying: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Shortly after the US dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, he resigned from the Manhattan Project. 

In 2023, Cillian Murphy portrayed the theoretical physicist in Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer." The film was met with huge critical acclaim, earning five awards at the 2024 Golden Globes, including best picture. It also won seven awards at the 2024 BAFTAS, with Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. taking home awards for best actor and best supporting actor, respectively.

In addition to Oppenheimer's nuclear work, the film looks at the scientist's complex personal life, including his marriage to Katherine Oppenheimer, née Puening.

Here's everything you need to know about the real Oppenheimer's family.

Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer was married three times before she married Oppenheimer.

Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, née Puening, married the scientist in 1940, only two years before he joined the Manhattan Project.

Kitty had been married three times before, as she wed musician Frank Ramseyer in 1932 before their marriage was annulled in 1933. 

Shortly afterward, in 1934, she was involved with the Communist Party of America, and became John Dullet Jr.'s. common-law wife when they lived together in Chicago, before separating in 1936.

Kitty then married Oxford doctor Richard Stewart Harrison in 1938, but had an affair with Oppenheimer while Harrison was working in California. She divorced Harrison in 1940, and married Oppenheimer a day later. 

They remained married until Oppenheimer's death from throat cancer in 1967, and Kitty scattered his ashes into the water by the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands, where they had spent plenty of time with their children, Peter and Toni.

Kitty spent the rest of her life with Robert Serber, another physicist from the Manhattan Project, whose wife had died by suicide. Kitty died in hospital in 1972, just as the pair had set out to go sailing to Japan, the Galapagos Islands, and Tahiti.

Peter Oppenheimer has spent most of his life on his father's ranch in New Mexico.

Oppenheimer had two children with his wife, Kitty. Their oldest child, Peter, was born in Pasadena, California, in May 1941, before the family moved to Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project.

When Peter was just two months old, the Oppenheimers left him with friends Haakon and Barbara Chevalier, according to "American Prometheus." Robert said his wife was exhausted. The couple then spent two months at the family's ranch, Perro Caliente, in New Mexico.

According to the Nuclear Museum, Peter struggled with anxiety as a child and didn't have a good relationship with his mother. 

"Robert thought that, in their highly charged, passionate, falling in love, that Peter had come too soon, and that Kitty resented him for that reason," Oppenheimer's secretary, Verna Hobson, said during a 1979 interview.

When his father died in 1967, Peter moved back to the family's Perro Caliente ranch in New Mexico. He's worked as a carpenter over the years and has three children.

Katherine "Toni" Oppenheimer died in 1977.

Toni Oppenheimer was born in 1944 and lived at Los Alamos until she was three. That's when her father became director of the Institute for Advanced Study and moved the family to Princeton, New Jersey.

As a baby, Toni lived with the Oppenheimers' friend Pat Sherr for several months. Robert visited regularly but asked if she wanted to adopt Toni, Sherr later recalled. When Sherr asked him why, he said, "Because I can't love her," adding that he wasn't "an attached kind of person." 

However, a childhood friend of Toni's described Robert as a "loving dad" in an April interview with The Winchester Star.

Toni had polio when she was young, which is largely why the family started visiting St. John in the Virgin Islands; the warmth seemed to help her condition.

Toni had a complicated relationship with her mother, largely because of Kitty's alcohol use. 

"She leaned on Toni an awful lot and it was difficult for her in that way, but she wanted only good and happiness for Toni," Hobson said of Kitty in 1979. 

Two years after Robert's death in 1967, the United Nations rejected Toni's application to become a translator. The FBI wouldn't grant her the appropriate security clearance for the job.

She struggled to cope with losing her father and her job opportunity, and after living on the island of St. John for a while, she died by suicide in January 1977, just a month after she turned 32.

Peter Oppenheimer had three children: Charles Oppenheimer, Dorothy Vanderford, and Ella Oppenheimer.

Although Toni didn't have any children before her death, Peter Oppenheimer has three: Charles, Ella, and Dorothy. 

Dorothy Vanderford, who was born in 1973, is Oppenheimer's oldest grandchild. She works in the nuclear industry and has a PhD in English. 

In 2023, she spoke to KSNV about the film and said that Christopher Nolan didn't consult the family about making his movie.

After seeing the movie, she said, "There were a few things that I didn't agree with and didn't like, but overall I felt like it was a good movie."

Charles Oppenheimer was born in 1975 and has worked in software development for many years. 

The youngest sibling, Ella, keeps her life private. 

Both Dorothy and Charles took part in a lengthy interview in 2015 about their grandfather for the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

At the time, Charles said that many historians find his grandfather a mysterious figure.

"In particular, people are having a hard time pinning down who this guy was. I guess it's made it difficult to deal with for the family, for some people. Not for me," he said.

Charles has two daughters with his wife, Karen Pak Oppenheimer, which means that Oppenheimer has at least two great-grandchildren.

Both Charles and his wife are co-executive directors of the Oppenheimer Project, which honors Robert's legacy. 

In a recent essay for The New York Times, Charles wrote that nuclear war would end the world as we know it. "I'm not afraid to be the voice calling for increased unity in the world, even though my grandfather was eventually attacked for this," he wrote.  

This story was originally published in July 2023 and was updated on December 17, 2024.

• The first trailer for "28 Years Later" has dropped, and shows survivors in post-apocalyptic Britain.
• Director Danny Boyle reportedly shot the sequel to "28 Days Later" on an iPhone.
• Actor Ralph Fiennes said that the story follows a young boy trying to save his mother.

The first trailer for "28 Years Later" has dropped.

The film sees "Oppenheimer" actor Cillian Murphy reunite with director Danny Boyle for the long-awaited horror sequel two decades after his breakout role in "28 Days Later."

In the original film, Murphy played Jim, a bicycle courier who wakes up from a coma to find that the UK has been hit by the "Rage" virus, which turns people into fast zombie-like creatures.

The film performed fairly well at the time, earning $84 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.

Boyle's unique vision of a post-apocalyptic Britain led to a resurgence of zombie movies in the 2000s. Many took inspiration from Boyle's fast zombies, such as in the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, and "Zombieland."

While Boyle produced the 2007 sequel, "28 Weeks Later," the Juan Carlos Fresnadillo-directed film focused more on gory action, than the suspense-driven horror of the original.

But judging by the brutal first trailer, it looks like "28 Years Later" will be a mix of both. Here's what we know about the sequel.

The "28 Years Later" trailer depicts a brutal vision of post-apocalyptic Britain

On December 10, Sony released the first trailer for the highly anticipated sequel, showing what post-apocalyptic Britain looks like and who has survived the Rage virus.

It shows characters played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and 13-year-old Alfie Williams as two survivors living in a heavily defended island community that has become a safe haven.

When they venture out onto the mainland, they're chased by the infected. There are also glimpses of other cast members, including Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes.

The footage is narrated using a creepy recording of Rudyard Kipling's poem "Boots," which the military also uses to train elite soldiers.

One scene shows totem poles made out of bones and skulls, which could be where "28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple," the sequel which doesn't have a release date yet, gets its title.

Sony also shared the film's synopsis, which reads: "It's been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway.

"When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well."

Cillian Murphy is joined by Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Murphy has stated over the years that he would like to return to the franchise that kickstarted his career.

In February, he told Variety: "I've always said I would love to be involved because that movie changed everything for me and I have great affection for it and for those guys Alex, and Danny."

Murphy added: "So I'm really thrilled that we'll get the band back together to make this one."

In May, Sony Motion Pictures Group chairman Tom Rothman confirmed to Deadline that Murphy will reprise his role as Jim in "28 Years Later."

The Irish actor joins British stars Comer, Taylor-Johnson, Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, and Erin Kellyman, per Deadline. Details about their characters are being kept secret.

In October, Fiennes told IndieWire that the story revolves around a young boy trying to save his mother in the north of England.

He said: "Britain is 28 years into this terrible plague of infected people who are violent, rabid humans with a few pockets of uninfected communities. And it centers on a young boy who wants to find a doctor to help his dying mother. He leads his mother through this beautiful northern English terrain.

"But of course, around them hiding in forests and hills and woods are the infected. But he finds a doctor who is a man we might think is going to be weird and odd, but actually is a force for good."

Ralph Fiennes said filming on the "28 Years Later" sequel, "The Bone Temple," has also finished.

The long-awaited sequel will arrive in theaters on June 20, 2025, and is the start of a new trilogy. Per Deadline, "Candyman" director Nia DaCosta was in talks to direct the follow-up in early 2024.

The title for the second movie, "The Bone Temple," was revealed by the United States Copyright Office.

According to Fiennes, the follow-up has already been shot. He said: "It's three films, of which two have been shot."

Danny Boyle used farm animals and an iPhone to film "28 Years Later."

A report by Wired, published on September 19, reported, citing unnamed sources, that Boyle shot the new sequel using an iPhone 15 Pro Max modified with additional lenses.

Wired also reported that "some scenes in '28 Years Later' were shot with action cams strapped to farm animals," although the outlet didn't reveal why.

Sony didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

It seems likely that this unusual filming method will help capture a specific, energetic visual style during a chase scene involving the infected. But it's not clear whether the animals are specifically in the film, or if they're just an unorthodox filming tool.