einstein

The Letter
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE BOMB
1939–1945
With Leó Szilárd reenacting (in 1946) their 1939 meeting
Leó Szilárd, a charming and slightly eccentric Hungarian physicist, was an old friend of Einstein’s. While living in Berlin in the 1920s, they had
collaborated on the development of a new type of refrigerator, which they patented but were unable to market successfully. 1 After Szilárd fled the
Nazis, he made his way to England and then New York, where he worked at Columbia University on ways to create a nuclear chain reaction, an
idea he had conceived while waiting at a stop-light in London a few years earlier. When he heard of the discovery of fission using uranium, Szilárd
realized that element might be used to produce this potentially explosive chain reaction.
Szilárd discussed this possibility with his close friend Eugene Wigner, another refugee physicist from Budapest, and they began to worry that the
Germans might try to buy up the uranium supplies of the Congo, which was then a colony of Belgium. But how, they asked themselves, could two
Hungarian refugees in America find a way to warn the Belgians? Then Szilárd recalled that Einstein happened to be friends with that country’s
queen mother.
Einstein was spending the summer of 1939 in a rented cottage on the north fork of eastern Long Island, across the Great Peconic Bay from the
villages of the Hamptons. There he sailed his small boat Tinef, bought sandals from the local department store, and played Bach with the store’s
owner. 2
“We knew that Einstein was somewhere on Long Island but we didn’t know precisely where,” Szilárd recalled. So he phoned Einstein’s Princeton
office and was told he was renting the house of a Dr. Moore in the village of Peconic. On Sunday, July 16, 1939, they embarked on their mission
with Wigner at the wheel (Szilárd, like Einstein, did not drive).
But when they arrived they couldn’t find the house, and nobody seemed to know who Dr. Moore was. Just as they were ready to give up, Szilárd
saw a young boy standing by the curb. “Do you, by any chance, know where Professor Einstein lives?” Like most people in town, even those who
had no idea who Dr. Moore was, the boy did, and he led them up to a cottage near the end of Old Grove Road, where they found Einstein lost in
thought. 3
Sitting at a bare wooden table on the screen porch of the sparsely furnished cottage, Szilárd explained the process of how an explosive chain
reaction could be produced in uranium layered with graphite by the neutrons released from nuclear fission. “I never thought of that!” Einstein
interjected. He asked a few questions, went over the process for fifteen minutes, and then quickly grasped the implications. Instead of writing to the
queen mother, Einstein suggested, perhaps they should write to a Belgian minister he knew.
Wigner, showing some sensible propriety, suggested that perhaps three refugees should not be writing to a foreign government about secret
security matters without consulting with the State Department. In which case, they decided, perhaps the proper channel was a letter from Einstein,
the only one of them famous enough to be heeded, to the Belgian ambassador, with a cover letter to the State Department. With that tentative plan
in mind, Einstein dictated a draft in German. Wigner translated it, gave it to his secretary to be typed, and then sent it to Szilárd. 4
A few days later, a friend arranged for Szilárd to talk to Alexander Sachs, an economist at Lehman Brothers and a friend of President Roosevelt.
Showing a bit more savvy than the three theoretical physicists, Sachs insisted that the letter should go right to the White House, and he offered to
hand-deliver it.
It was the first time Szilárd had met Sachs, but his bold plan was appealing. “It could not do any harm to try this way,” he wrote Einstein. Should
they talk by phone or meet in person to revise the letter? Einstein replied that he should come back out to Peconic.
By that point Wigner had gone to California for a visit. So Szilárd enlisted, as driver and scientific sidekick, another friend from the amazing
group of Hungarian refugees who were theoretical physicists, Edward Teller. 5 “I believe his advice is valuable, but also I think you might enjoy
getting to know him,” Szilárd told Einstein. “He is particularly nice.” 6 Another plus was that Teller had a big 1935 Plymouth. So once again, Szilárd
headed out to Peconic.
Szilárd brought with him the original draft from two weeks earlier, but Einstein realized that they were now planning a letter that was far more
momentous than one asking Belgian ministers to be careful about Congolese uranium exports. The world’s most famous scientist was about to tell
the president of the United States that he should begin contemplating a weapon of almost unimaginable impact that could unleash the power of the
atom.“Einstein dictated a letter in German,” Szilárd recalled, “which Teller took down, and I used this German text as a guide in preparing two drafts
of a letter to the President.” 7
According to Teller’s notes, Einstein’s dictated draft not only raised the question of Congo’s uranium, but also explained the possibility of chain