Christopher Nolan met with Dutch Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf for Oppenheimer film

Director Christopher Nolan met with Dutch physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf, currently the demissionary Minister of Education, several times while preparing for the film Oppenheimer. Dikjgraaf lived for years in Princeton in the United States, in the same house where Robert Oppenheimer once lived, the Dutch Minister said on Humberto on RTL 4.

Dijkgraaf and Oppenheimer, often referred to as the father of the atomic bomb, have a lot in common. Both were physicists, directors of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, worked in the same office, and lived in the same house near the university.

“Nolan is a historical fanatic, wants everything to be right,” Dijkgraaf said on the talk show. “He came by twice to get a sense of the place by walking through the house, feeling it,” Dijkgraaf said.

Furniture from the Princeton house also featured in the film, the caretaker Minister said. “We were sitting in the cinema, and I felt the children squeezing my hand like: that’s mom’s chair.”

Dijkgraaf said he often wondered about Oppenheimer, even before the film went into production. “It’s very strange because I lived very close to this man for ten years. I thought at least once a day: he lived here too; what happened here? You look at old photos and think: oh yes, that’s that corner of the house.”