Eisenstaedt captured political advocacy carried out face-to-face, and neighbor-to-neighbor, as people chatted up their favorite candidates, and did so in a manner that seems earnest but not angry. The only sign of extremism in these photos was of a man at a diner who refused to shave his beard until the country had a Republican president—and even he had a goofy grin on his face.

The notable absence in these photos is the crowds of media that are a staple of modern campaign coverage. Eisenstaedt took two portraits of men at typewriters—one was the founder of Yankee magazine and the other the publisher of a Concord newspaper—and that is the only press you see. There are no television cameras, no candidates mobbed by crowds of microphones, and obviously no one letting it rip on social media.

Of course politicians and their promises could still be exhausting. The image that leads this gallery features a man sitting in the front row, listening as a supporter makes a case for his candidate, Dwight. D. Eisenhower. The listener appears to be profoundly tired. It’s possible that he had simply come from a long day at work, but his expression seems to be that of a person who, as a resident of this small state that hosts a critical early primary every four years, had been hearing it from politicians all of his life.

Eisenhower was one of the two leading candidates on the Republican side in 1952. The other was Robert Taft, a powerful Senator from Ohio—perhaps the Taft-Hartley Act rings a bell from history class—and the son of former president William Taft. Going into the race Taft had been the favorite of the party’s conservatives.

Eisenhower beat Taft in New Hampshire, by a larger margin than expected. On the Democratic side, incumbent president Harry Truman took a surprising loss to Estes Kefauver, a Senator from Tennessee. LIFE, in its report in the magazine, noted that, “If the vote reflected the sentiment of the country, the American people are looking for new political faces.”

It turned out that the voters of 1952 did indeed want new faces. Soon after New Hampshire Truman withdrew from the race, which cleared a path for the eventual Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower, meanwhile, rolled over Taft to capture the nomination, and then the presidency.

It’s why, all these years later, candidates still flock to New Hampshire, looking to stake an early claim.

If you want more vintage New Hampshire coverage, here’s a colorful look at Richard Nixon vs. George Romney, 1968.

A rally for Dwight Eisenhower during New Hampshire primary season, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A gathering during presidential primary season in Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Taft supporter Grace Sterling chatted up paper mill worker Quiddihy during the New Hampshire primary, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Eisenhower supporter called on a neighbor during the presidential primary campaign in New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grace Sterling fixed her brother-in-law’s tie that announced his support for Robert Taft during the 1952 New Hampshire primary.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

David and Elizabeth Bradley visited their neighbor during the New Hampshire presidential primary campaign, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

New Hampshire primary season, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harold Young, acting as campaign manager for Eisenhower in New Hampshire primary, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Locals left a town meeting on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower during the primary election campaign in Canterbury, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robb Hansell Sagendorph, founder of Yankee Magazine, during New Hampshire primary season, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James McLellan Langley of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Francis Grover Cleveland (left), the son of President Grover Cleveland, in New Hampshire during primary season, 1952. Cleveland, an actor, ran a theater in New Hampshire and served on a town board in Tamworth.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Samuel Marden vowed not to shave until there was a Republican president, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers during the 1952 New Hampshire primary.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Election officials tallied returns in the New Hampshire primary, Concord, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women sat in the fire hall outside the polls during voting in the New Hampshire primary, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Robert Taft in New Hampshire, days before he lost the primary to Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Primary Focus: Eisenstaedt’s Images of New Hampshire appeared first on LIFE.

Sometimes LIFE photographers went to Miami because they were following the stars. It was a place to catch Frank Sinatra goofing around with this pals, or the Beatles on tour, or Muhammad Ali celebrating with Malcolm X after winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston.

In one case Miami was even a backdrop to history, when the U.S Army was using the famed beach as a training camp.

But more often LIFE photographers went to Miami to showcase Americans enjoying a certain kind of leisure—the kind with fancy hotels and swimsuits and glitzy shows.

Many of the images in this collection come from a 1940 shoot by legendary LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstadt that chronicled the beginning of boom times for Miami. Here’s what LIFE had to say in its March 4, 1940 issue about Miami becoming a magnet for the leisure class:

In 1912 Miami was a sleepy town of 7,500 people and Miami Beach, three and a half miles away across a tidal lagoon, was an untidy sand bar populated primarily by crabs and mosquitos. In that year an enterprising young Indiana automobile millionaire named Carl Fischer descended on the town and, with the assistance of two elephants, Nero and Rosie, began turning it into a winter resort. Miami and Miami Beach have been booming ever since. Currently Miami has a population of about 140,000 and Miami Beach of 20,000. The two are easily the No. 1 playground of the world’s most playful nation.

Of course Miami and Miami Beach had even more growth ahead, as captured in the photos LIFE took in succeeding years. Today the populations for Miami and Miami Beach have ballooned to around 439,000 and 80,000. And that mirrors the growth of Florida as a whole. In 1940 Florida was only the 27th most populous state in America, coming in right behind West Virginia and South Carolina. Today Florida ranks 3rd in the country in population, trailing only Florida and Texas.

Many forces contributed to that population growth, including immigration, but the promise of the kind of life that Eisenstaedt captured in his photos was surely was a psychological magnet to the retirees who came to Miami and to the rest of the state to spend their retirement years among the palm trees.

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A doorman and a row of bellhops at the entrance of Surf Club in Miami, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami resort, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach fashions, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kayakers in a resort pool, Miami Beach, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People sightseeing in Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach fashions, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami juice stand, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach during a cold spell, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach during a cold spell, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jai alai, Miami, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Recruits trained for war in Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soliders in training took an ocean swim, Miami Beach, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Miami, 1944.

Eliot Elisofon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, on vacation in Miami Beach, 1955.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, on vacation in Miami Beach, 1955.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightclub, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightclub, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightlub dancer in her off time, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightclub dancer at home, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami, 1959.

Hank Walker/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A windjamming tour from Miami, 1961.

Michael Rougier/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali (right) posed at a soda fountain for Malcolm X (left, with camera) in Miami after winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, 1964.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

The Beatles running on the beach in Miami, February 1964.

©Bob Gomel

Tony Bennett was out with Frank Sinatra after a performance in Miami, 1965.

John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post The Glamour of Vintage Miami appeared first on LIFE.

The pages of LIFE chronicled the rise and rise of the legendary conductor. In its Jan. 7, 1957 issue LIFE ran a multi-page story on Bernstein headlined “Busy Time for a Young Maestro.” He was conducting thrice-weekly performances with the New York Philharmonic, while also dividing attention between one musical he had on Broadway, Candide, and another that was on its way and would elevate his star even higher—West Side Story. Bernstein also had ballets on his plate and five records in the pipeline in which he was either the conductor, composer or performer. “It’s perfectly possible to do all the things I have to,” he told LIFE, “but it’s a little hard doing them all at once.” The photos for that story, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt, also gave a window into Bernstein’s personal life, showing Bernstein and his wife Felicia (played in the film by Carrie Mulligan) at home with their children around the piano.

In 1958 LIFE photographer Gordon Parks captured more memorable images of Bernstein when following him around for that year’s opening for the Philharmonic, including a lovely photo of Bernstein and Felicia dancing at the end of the night.

His further appearances included a 1969 article about Bernstein as he prepared to leave the New York Philharmonic at age 50. This was the end of a major chapter in Bernstein’s career, and the tone of the story, by Thomas Thompson, was elegiac. Here’s how it ended:

John F. Kennedy said, after a gala at the Washington Armory, that there was only one person he would never want to run against. Laurence Olivier once said that if he had the choice to be anyone in the world besides himself, he would choose but one other man. In the last hours of a long night in London, this envy of Kennedy and Olivier sat at a gleaming Steinway in his hotel suite, pounding out private crashing chords, wondering if 50 is halfway, the beginning, the end. This captive of the modern age, this effect and cause, this musician who could perhaps bring back the era of symphonic genius if there were the time but who wonders if there were the time would there also be the genius, this man, Leonard Bernstein, dreams of catching his breath and maybe his life.

Bernstein would in fact keep a busy schedule in the decades after he left the Philharmonic, and up through the last years of his life. His last major event was a historic one: on Christmas Day 1989, in Berlin, he conducted a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, not far from the Brandenburg Gate, to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. He led his final concert at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Aug. 19, 1990. He died on Oct. 14 of that year, from a heart attack, at age 72.

Leonard Bernstein, 1955.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein, 1954.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein, 1955.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein and wife Felicia played pianos at home while their children Alexander (left) and Jamie (third from left) joined in, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein with his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre, and children Alexander and Jamie, at the piano in their home, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein conducting a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra during a rehearsal for the ‘Mathis der Maler’ performance on December 20-21, Carnegie Hall, New York, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein walked past Carnegie Hall, where he would be conducting the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Paul Hindemith’s symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’, December 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein talking on the phone at Carnegie Hall after a New York Philharmonic rehearsal, December 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Maestro Leonard Bernstein getting a cologne rubdown from his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre, during intermission for his concert conducting the New York Philharmonic orchestra at Carnegie Hall, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Stephen Sondheim (left) discussed rehearsal schedules for the Broadway opening of West Side Story with composer Leonard Bernstein (center) and choreographer Jerome Robbins (right), 1957.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein on opening night for the New York Philharmonic, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Conductor Leonard Bernstein (left) talking with composer Jules Styne on opening night for the New York Philharmonic, 1958.

.Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein and his wife on the opening night of the New York Philharmonic, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein with his wife Felicia, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Composer Leonard Bernstein dancing with his wife on opening night for the New York Philharmonic, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Conductor Leonard Bernstein, 1959.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein conducting vocal soloists and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Conductor Leonard Bernstein rehearsed Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at Carnegie Hall, 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Conductor Leonard Bernstein, First Lady Jackie Kennedy (center) and John D, Rockefeller III (left) at the opening of the Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall, 1962.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein at the podium for the first performance ever at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall in New York, 1962.

Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Leonard Bernstein, 1962

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein, 1967.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leonard Bernstein, 1968.

Alfrefd Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Leonard Bernstein: The Maestro in LIFE appeared first on LIFE.

But Benton, like so many others, was not immune to the charms of Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the coast of Massachusetts, and he visited there regularly during the summer, starting in 1920 and going until his death in 1975. During those years Martha’s Vineyard began its transformation from an earthier and more bohemian retreat to a vacation spot for the rich and fashionable.

It was on this island off the coast of Massachusetts that LIFE staff photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt visited for a big story on Benton in the Oct. 3, 1969 issue. Benton could be a colorful and outspoken character, and the story carried the headline “Tom Benton, at 80, Still at War With Boobs and Bores.”

But despite the cantankerous headline, LIFE’s story described an island routine for Benton and his wife Rita that sounded idyllic:

The Bentons rise, as they always have, with the sun which, in the early summer, is 4 a.m., swim and work until noon. Rita fastens herself to the ocean bed as if she had grown out of it, and clams. “I find the clams with my foot,” she says luxuriantly, “and then dig them up with my heel, and reach down and pick them up with my hand. Wonderful!” Tom paints or, when he can discover something before Rita has attended to it herself, putters. This summer it was regluing the bottoms of their lawn chairs. “He spent three weeks,” scoffs Rita. “If he had spent three weeks painting, I could have bought the whole house again.”

While most of the photos in this set were taken for that 1969 story, two others are from 25 years earlier, when Eisenstaedt also snapped a couple frames of Benton while in Martha’s Vineyard working on a story on writer W. Somerset Maugham.

Benton left his mark on the island. The collection of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum includes Benton’s portrait of schooner captain Zeb Tilton, which he painted in front of an audience during a fundraiser for the local hospital. That museum in 2019 also staged an exhibition devoted to Benton.

It’s clear this child of the heartland had a special fondness for the island. A 2014 piece about Benton in Smithsonian Magazine began with his daughter Jessie in Martha’s Vineyard at the family home, and as the story’s writer was admiring a walkway and an artfully designed retaining wall on the way to the local pond, she informed him that Benton had made both himself. The daughter explained, “This was our world.”

Thomas Hart Benton posing next to a self-portrait, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton with one of his paintings in his studio on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton displaying his work, Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton holding a sketch pad, Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton sketching in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Painter Thomas Hart Benton sketching near a shore in Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton walking along the beach on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Painter Thomas Hart Benton working outdoors on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton and wife at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton with his wife, daughter and granddaughter at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton overseeing construction of his new house on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of artist Thomas Hart Benton, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton was visited by writer W. Somerset Maugham at the artist’s studio, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton, Martha’s Vineyard, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton in Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Thomas Hart Benton: The Artist’s Days in Martha’s Vineyard appeared first on LIFE.

Oppenheimer first appeared in LIFE in 1945, the year the first atomic bombs were dropped. The pictures here show Oppenheimer with General Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in Nolan’s movie), who led the Manhattan Project that developed the bombs, and also addressing reporters who came to New Mexico to see the site of the first atomic bomb detonation.

Oppenheimer returned in LIFE’s Dec. 29, 1947 issue, as part of a larger story on Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Oppenheimer was its new director, and the photos by LIFE’s Alfred Eisenstaedt showed Oppenheimer in conversation with Albert Einstein, one of the institute’s founding professors, thus capturing two of the most influential figures of 20th-century physics in one frame.

LIFE’s biggest and most defining story on Oppenheimer came in the Oct. 10, 1949 issue, when the scientist appeared on the cover of the magazine. The story was written by Lincoln Barnett, a former LIFE editor who that year had produced a major book about Einstein. The photos, again by Alfred Eisenstaedt, depicted Oppenheimer’s softer side—in one his young son is giving him a noogie. But Barnett’s story delved into the heart of what makes Oppenheimer so fascinating: he possessed both the brilliance to create the atomic bomb and the awareness to grasp the horror of his creation.

It all comes to a head when Barnett describes Oppenheimer witnessing the first detonation of at atomic bomb at the test site in New Mexico. It is as heavy a paragraph as anyone will every write about anyone:

And when the great ball of fire rolled upward to the blinded stars, fragments of the Bhagavad-Gita flashed into his mind: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the MIghty One….I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.” And as the shock and the sound waves hurled themselves furiously against the distant mountains, Oppenheimer knew that he and his coworkers had acquired a promethian burden they could never shed. “In some crude sense,” he observed later, “which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.”

Weeks after that moment, Oppenheimer’s creation did indeed shatter worlds, as the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 129,000 and 226,000 thousand people, and bringing World War II to a close.

Oppenheimer would go on to oppose the creation of the next generation of nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, and LIFE again took a close examination of Oppenheimer’s life in its April 26, 1954 issue, when, owing in part to that stance and also to some associations, he became a target for anti-communists during the Red Scare and had his security clearance revoked. LIFE wrote, “Whatever the truth of the charges and whatever the outcome of the inquiry the situation which involved one of the nation’s most brilliant scientific minds was in itself a national tragedy.”

The government would eventually mend fences with Oppenheimer, who was back in LIFE in its Dec. 13, 1963 issue for a major piece on his receiving the Enrico Fermi Award. The prize for scientific achievement was awarded by John Kennedy but actually delivered by Lyndon B. Johnson—the main story of that issue of LIFE is about Johnson assuming the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination. That story brought yet another portrait of Oppenheimer by the estimable Alfred Eisenstaedt. This time he photographed the scientist in color, marking a more benign kind of technological progress.

Is it a tribute to the artistry of Eisenstaedt that his various portraits of Oppenheimer, shot across the years, reflect the story of his life through the subject’s eyes.

J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke to New York Times reporter William Laurence (left) during a press visit to the A-bomb blast site, 1945.

Fritz Goro/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

General Leslie Groves (left) and J. Robert Oppenheimer, key figures in the development of the first atomic bomb, 1945.

Marie Hansen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Manhattan Project officials, including Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer (white hat) and, next to him, General Leslie Groves, inspected the detonation site of the Trinity atomic bomb test, the first detonation of an atomic weapon, 1945.

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY/Life Picture Collection

American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer in his office at Princeton, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and chief technical advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer with Hideki Yukawa, recipient of a Nobel Prize in physics, in Oppenheimer’s office at Princeton, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer at Princeton, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Katherine Oppenheimer, wife of J. Robert Oppenheimer, held a degree in mycology, and here tended some rare plants in their home greenhouse as her husband and their children Peter and Toni looked on, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was welcomed home by son Peter and daughter Toni, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife reading a book to their son, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer at home with his son Peter, Princeton, New Jersey, 1949.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer his wife Katherine (second from left) met Pearl Buck (second from right), at the president’s party for Nobel Prize winners at the White House, 1962. Buck won for Literature in 1938; Oppenheimer, while nominated three times for Physics, never won.

Arthur Rickerby/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Robert Oppenheimer in LIFE appeared first on LIFE.

In 1970 she went on to marry Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine (this gallery includes an image of him as photographed by LIFE’s Alfred Eisenstaedt). Gilot and Salk were together until his death in 1995. When asked how she ended up in relationships with two of the most important figures of the 20th century, she explained, “Lions mate with lions.”

It was due to her proximity to Picasso that Gilot appeared before LIFE’s cameras. She was a presence in a 1968 double-issue of the magazine devoted entirely to Picasso. And she was also photographed by LIFE staff photographer Gjon Mili, who took perhaps the most famous photographs of Picasso, which featured the great artist drawing with light.

Gilot also drew with light—and to great effect—in one of Mili’s photos of her. Mili also took a beguiling portrait of Gilot using the multiple exposures he had deployed throughout his career. Other photos show Gilot holding Picasso’s drawings of her son Claude while the young boy sat in the foreground.

In 2021 her painting Paloma à la Guitare sold for $1.3 million at auction, a sign of the esteem in which her own work is held. If you wish to read more about Gilot, please visit this site devoted to her life and works.

A multiple-exposure portrait of Francoise Gilot, mistress of artist Pablo Picasso, Vallauris, France, 1949.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of Francoise Gilot holding red gladiola, 1949.

.Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Francoise Gilot drawing with light, Vallauris, France, 1949.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Francoise Gilot with her young son Claude, holding drawings of the boy by his father, Picasso, 1949.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Francoise Gilot with her young son Claude, holding drawings of the boy by his father, Picasso, 1949.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Francoise Gilot with her young son Claude, holding drawings of the boy by his father, Picasso, 1949.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pablo Picasso casually carved a figure in space, 1949.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Doctor Jonas Salk holding a syringe in the laboratory, Pittsburgh, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Remembering Francoise Gilot, Artist and Picasso’s Lover appeared first on LIFE.