II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Early life Childhood and education J. Robert Oppenheimer was born into a Jewish family in New York City on April 22, 1904, to Ella (née Friedman), a painter, and Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer, a wealthy textile importer. Julius was born in Hanau, then part of the Hesse-Nassau province of the Kingdom of Prussia, and came to the United States as a teenager in 1888 with few resources, no money, no baccalaureate studies, and no knowledge of the English language. He was hired by a textile company and within a decade was an executive there, eventually becoming wealthy. Oppenheimer's family were nonobservant Jews. In 1912, the family moved to an apartment on the 11th floor of 155 Riverside Drive, near West 88th Street, Manhattan, an area known for luxurious mansions and townhouses. Their art collection included works by Pablo Picasso and Édouard Vuillard, and at least three original paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Robert had a younger brother, Frank, who also became a physicist, and who later founded the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. Oppenheimer was initially educated at Alcuin Preparatory School; in 1911, he entered the Ethical Culture Society School. This had been founded by Felix Adler to promote a form of ethical training based on the Ethical Culture movement, whose motto was "Deed before Creed". His father had been a member of the Society for many years, serving on its board of trustees from 1907 to 1915. Oppenheimer was a versatile scholar, interested in English and French literature, and particularly in mineralogy. He completed the third and fourth grades in one year and skipped half of the eighth grade. During his final year, he became interested in chemistry. He entered Harvard College one year after graduation, at age 18, because he suffered an attack of colitis while prospecting in Joachimstal during a family summer vacation in Europe. To help him recover from the illness, his father enlisted the help of his English teacher Herbert Smith, who took him to New Mexico, where Oppenheimer fell in love with horseback riding and the southwestern United States. Oppenheimer majored in chemistry, but Harvard required science students to also study history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. He compensated for his late start by taking six courses each term and was admitted to the undergraduate honor society Phi Beta Kappa.