einstein

shared them with her nephew Otto Frisch, and they concluded that the atom had been split, two lighter nuclei created, and a small amount of lost
mass turned into energy.
After they substantiated the results, which they dubbed fission, Frisch informed his colleague Bohr, who was about to leave for America. Upon
his arrival in late January 1939, Bohr described the new discovery to colleagues, and it was discussed at a weekly gathering of physicists in
Princeton known as the Monday Evening Club. Within days the results had been replicated, and researchers began churning out papers on the
process, including one that Bohr wrote with a young untenured physics professor, John Archibald Wheeler.
Einstein had long been skeptical about the possibility of harnessing atomic energy or unleashing the power implied by E=mc 2 . On a visit to
Pittsburgh in 1934, he had been asked the question and replied that “splitting the atom by bombardment is something akin to shooting birds in the
dark in a place where there are only a few birds.” That produced a banner headline across the front page of the Post-Gazette:“Atom Energy Hope
Is Spiked by Einstein / Efforts at Loosing Vast Force Is Called Fruitless / Savant Talked Here.” 72
With the news in early 1939 that it was, apparently, very possible to bombard and split an atomic nucleus, Einstein faced the question again. In
an interview for his sixtieth birthday that March, he was asked whether mankind would find some use for the process. “Our results so far concerning
the splitting of the atom do not justify the assumption of a practical utilization of the energies released,” he replied. This time he was cautious,
however, and went on to hedge his answer slightly. “There is no physicist with soul so poor who would allow this to affect his interest in this highly
important subject.” 73
Over the next four months, his interest would indeed grow rapidly.