After being accepted at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1924, Oppenheimer wrote to Ernest Rutherford requesting permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory, though Bridgman's letter of recommendation said that Oppenheimer's clumsiness in the laboratory suggested that theoretical, rather than experimental, physics would be his forte. Rutherford was unimpressed, but Oppenheimer went to Cambridge nonetheless; J. J. Thomson ultimately accepted him on the condition that he complete a basic laboratory course.