Christy could have graduated in 1940, but could not then be a teaching assistant, and this would have left him jobless and without income. In 1941, Oppenheimer found him a post at the physics department at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). In May 1941, he married Dagmar von Lieven. They had two sons: Thomas Edward (Ted), born in 1944, and Peter Robert, born in 1946. IIT paid Christy $200 per month to teach 27 hours per week for 11 months per annum. To keep abreast of developments in physics, he attended seminars at the University of Chicago. This brought him to the attention of Eugene Wigner, who hired him for the same money that IIT was paying him as a full-time research assistant, commencing in January 1942.