“Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht,” Einstein said slowly, pondering what he had just heard. “I haven’t thought of that at all.”
Until that summer day, Einstein had believed that atomic energy would not be released “in my time,” that it was only “theoretically possible.” Einstein had not followed recent discoveries in nuclear research for years and sought only the “time for quiet thought and reflection” needed to unravel his unified field theory of the universe.21 Einstein had published his famous equation E = mc2 in 1905, but only now was that simple statement’s ultimate significance clear. For even a small mass the potential energy released could be immense. Fission is the most efficient way to fulfill Einstein’s equation because it releases the energy that gives matter its form—the binding energy holding the atomic nucleus together.
Einstein’s next thought about the chain reaction was philosophical. If it works, he said, this would be the first source of energy that does not depend on the sun. Wind and solar energy are created by the sun’s heat. And fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, coal—were once created from the carbon made by the sun’s energy through photosynthesis. But releasing the binding energy of atoms was something new.
Einstein’s third reaction was political. Although he was an avowed pacifist, he agreed to sound the alarm about atomic bombs, even if it proved to be a false one, in order to beat Nazi Germany to this awesome weapon. It took a scientist of Einstein’s stature and personal conviction to take this risk, Szilard later noted. “The one thing most scientists are really afraid of is to make a fool of themselves,” Szilard reflected on the day in 1955 when Einstein died. “Einstein was free from such a fear and this above all is what made his position unique on this occasion”22
When the three agreed that they should warn the Belgians, they sat around the dining-room table as Einstein dictated to Wigner in German a letter to the Belgian ambassador in Washington. Einstein warned that it might be possible to make bombs of unimaginable power from the uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and that Germany, which at first offered uranium for sale after taking over mines in Czechoslovakia, had recently banned all exports.
Wigner wondered whether the US government should also be notified, and into the afternoon Einstein and Szilard drafted a similar letter, also in German, to the secretary of state. That afternoon, they agreed to send the State Department a copy of Einstein’s letter to the Belgian ambassador, giving the department two weeks to object if they opposed the letter.
After more iced tea and polite conversation, Szilard and Wigner took leave of their professor, and Einstein crossed the lawn and walked down some brick steps to a shaky wooden dock to go sailing again. The breeze that afternoon was fresh, the sky clear. Einstein steered the dinghy across the bay toward the sinking sun. That night, Wigner dropped Szilard at his hotel in Manhattan and returned to Princeton.23
Sitting in his room at the King’s Crown, Szilard thought about the letters to the Belgian monarchs and the US government, but something didn’t seem right. “We did not know our way around in America,” he later recalled. “We did not know how to do business, and we certainly did not know how to deal with the government.”24 When an “uneasy feeling about this approach” led Szilard to “talk to somebody who knew a little bit better how things were done,” he called on Dr. Gustav Stolper, a Viennese economist and publisher whom he first knew in Berlin. Stolper quickly understood Szilard’s situation and suggested approaching a friend, Dr. Alexander Sachs, who was a vice-president of the Lehman Corporation, a large Wall Street investment bank. Sachs had worked privately since 1933 as an adviser to Roosevelt’s New Deal and would surely know how to approach the government.
Szilard telephoned Sachs and soon called on him in his office at the corner of South William and Broad streets.25 A serious-looking man with wavy hair and thick glasses, Sachs listened intently to what Szilard said. Sachs needed little persuading; he was familiar with popular reports about uranium fission and fearful of German aggression. Einstein’s letter should not go to the Belgian royal family or a US government department, Sachs said; they wouldn’t know what to do with it. It should go, instead, directly to President Roosevelt. Sachs boasted about his easy access to the White House and joined with Szilard in planning strategy. If Einstein would sign a letter, Sachs promised he would deliver it, in person, to the president. Szilard must have loved the idea.
But when Szilard “tried to draft a letter” from Einstein to the president the next day, it ran to more than four and a half typed pages in a convoluted and tentative style that was needlessly detailed and riddled with spelling errors—perhaps the result of a hasty collaboration with the orotund Dr. Sachs.26 This draft told Roosevelt “it appears to be desirable” that “a man who has your confidence” ought to be in constant touch with the chain-reaction researchers. Either private or federal money might be needed for experiments “with several tons of material,” and “a large stock of pitchblend” [sic] should be brought from Belgium or the Congo to the United States. Pitchblende is the ore for both radium and uranium.
Szilard mailed this rough draft to Einstein with a letter explaining Sachs’s offer to approach the president and reassuring his mentor it “could not do any harm to try this way.” Szilard asked if Einstein preferred to mark the draft with marginal notes or have him “come out to discuss the whole thing once more with you.” If so, Szilard added, “I would like, if it is all right with you, to ask [Edward] Teller to take me, not only because I believe his advice is valuable but also because I think you might enjoy getting to know him. He is particularly nice.”27
When Szilard telephoned Einstein about the draft letters, he learned that his mentor did prefer to meet again in Peconic. Wigner was then driving to California to teach a summer course at Cal Tech, so Szilard enlisted Teller as his chauffeur. Teller, who was teaching physics at Columbia for the summer, picked up Szilard in his 1935 Plymouth on Wednesday, August 2, and drove off to the cottage on Long Island—this time by a direct route. They found Einstein on the porch, wearing an old robe and slippers. There, over tea, Szilard urged him to send a revised letter to the president. Einstein quickly agreed. He had met Roosevelt personally, but for such an important matter Einstein thought his message should be communicated by letter.28
That settled, these brilliant physicists faced another tough decision: “We did not know just how many words one could put in a letter which a President is supposed to read,” Szilard later recalled. “How many pages does the fission of uranium rate?” Einstein dictated in German a brief preliminary draft, leaving Szilard to write both a long and a short letter to the president.29
Back in New York, Szilard met again with Sachs and from him gained three other names as possible messengers to Roosevelt: financier Bernard M. Baruch, MIT president Karl T. Compton, and aviator Charles Lindbergh. Why this was necessary is unclear, but apparently, at their second meeting, Szilard and Einstein left undecided the choice as to who should deliver the letter.
Szilard telephoned Janet Coatesworth, a young stenographer who worked part-time for several Columbia departments. She came to his paper-cluttered room at the King’s Crown and sat at his desk chair to take dictation while Szilard, excited and nervous about his task, alternately paced the floor or sat on the bed.
As Szilard began to dictate, in his crisp Hungarian-German accent, a letter to “F. D. Roosevelt, President of the United States,” Coatesworth glanced up in disbelief. And when Szilard mentioned “extremely powerful bombs,” she recalled, “that convinced me! I was sure I was working for a ‘nutcase.’” Amused by her reaction, Szilard dictated more and more dramatically, his face beaming with mischief and merriment. He took special glee in closing the letter “Yours very truly, Albert Einstein.” That convinced her that Szilard was deranged, a judgment he confirmed by dictating a second, even longer letter. To Roosevelt. From Einstein. Only years later did Coatesworth learn the truth about this historic session.30
Szilard mailed his long and short v
ersions to Einstein, along with a letter in German about choosing the “middleman” to Roosevelt. Of the men Sachs had proposed, Lindbergh was Szilard’s “favorite,” so he also asked Einstein for a letter of introduction to Lindbergh. “The first version has the advantage of brevity,” Szilard wrote about the two drafts, “but the second contains everything necessary to give the president a clear picture of what duties would have to be carried out by the person he would delegate.” Szilard closed on a more personal note, saying, “If you liked Teller, I would like to come out to your place sometime or other with him.”31
Szilard still meant to write a technical memorandum for the president’s letter, but finishing these drafts for Einstein seemed to give him a sense of relief, at least temporarily. “We have a nice summer here, and New York actually is a summer resort,” he wrote Trude on August 3. “There is such a breeze in my room that all papers flutter about.”32
But on Friday, August 4, Szilard suddenly turned pensive. With the Einstein-letter drafts in the mail, he at last had a chance to pause. To think about what he was doing. To face the awesome and chilling consequences of his actions. This new and gravid collaboration with Einstein brought back Szilard’s earlier reflections with his mentor: on the fate of humanity, on the question of a God. Now Szilard felt compelled to make sense of the dreadful future he was helping to bring about. In his contrary and rational way he turned on the experts in order to prove them wrong. What better “expert” could he pick on now than God himself?
Writing in German, Szilard’s 10 Gebote, or “Ten Commandments,” used the same form as the original but twisted and reversed the most familiar ideas. This is, in translation, what he wrote:
TEN COMMANDMENTS
1. Recognize the connections of things and the laws of conduct of men so that you may know what you are doing.
2. Let your acts be directed toward a worthy goal but do not ask if they will reach it; they are to be models and examples, not means to an end.
3. Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world, lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out of sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of the creation.
4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.
5. Touch no dish except that you are hungry.
6. Do not covet what you cannot have.
7. Do not lie without need.
8. Honor children. Listen reverently to their words and speak to them with infinite love.
9. Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.
10. Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to leave whenever you are called.
August 4, 193933
Szilard’s own spirit and moral certainty abound in this playful and profound exercise. In his view, as in Einstein’s, obeying God required an understanding of nature, especially human nature. In nature’s ways, Szilard seemed to hope, he could find that “sense of proportion” that guided his moral and ethical concerns. Moral example was a valuable end in itself. Blasphemy is not against God but against your own honesty, an echo of Szilard’s deep bond with his mother’s severe love of the truth. Szilard expanded the traditional “Thou shalt not kill” to all creation, not just life. For adultery, he substituted all appetites, linking them to need rather than desire. Stealing, in his view, was also prohibited except for need, as was lying.
“Honor children,” Szilard commanded, rather than the traditional “father and mother,” for in children he saw the bare truth that his own mind so fervently sought. This quest for truth was also a form of “love,” and it is only here that the word is used.
The biblical admonition to work six days and rest on the seventh Szilard extended to years, and the regeneration that he sought was not physical but psychological—evidence of his own search for solitude and his quest for intellectual discoveries. Szilard’s final thought, to lead life “with a gentle hand,” must have been a frustrated dream, for it was rare that his mind ever let his spirit rest.
As a personal statement, these commandments meant a lot to Szilard, and he once told Trude that they should only be read in German. He would later joke about the meaning of the traditional commandments, but with humor that revealed a deeper moral understanding. Coming as it did, with war in Europe about to begin and with the horror of atomic bombs now a constant fear, Szilard’s quest for moral guidance in these commandments was a likely comfort to a troubled soul.
At his cottage in Peconic that week, Einstein read the two letters sent by Szilard and agreed to his request for a letter to Lindbergh. But Einstein also cautioned his former student, nineteen years his junior, not to be too clever. “I signed the letters today right away,” Einstein said in a handwritten German note to Szilard, adding that he, “too, would give preference to the more detailed one.” Einstein said he hoped Szilard would finally “overcome your inner resistance” to being straightforward because “it always gives you pause for thought when a person wants to do something too smartly.” Einstein, a thinker in abstract symbols who sought scientific truth in ultimate simplicity, felt uneasy with Szilard’s many rational and complicated schemes. As he had done for more than a decade, Einstein again chided his younger colleague.34
The signed letters arrived at Szilard’s hotel on August 9, along with the introduction to Lindbergh. After reading Einstein’s note, Szilard penned a brief reply in German, thanking his mentor for the letters. “We will try to follow your advice and as far as possible overcome our inner resistances, which, admittedly, exist,” he assured him. “Incidentally, we are surely not trying to be too clever and will be quite satisfied if we don’t do things too foolishly”35
Compared with Szilard’s first rambling draft and with the one-page shorter version, the longer letter to Roosevelt now seems a successful mix of the physicists’ insights and concerns.
Albert Einstein
Old Grove Rd.
Nassau Point
Peconic, Long Island
August 2nd, 1939
F. D. Roosevelt,
President of the United States,
White House
Washington, D.C.
Sir.,
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable—through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America—that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.
The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.
In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidenc
e and who could perhaps serve in an inofficial, capacity. His task might comprise the following:
a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States;
b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment.
I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm- Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.
Yours very truly,
(Albert Einstein)
Although Einstein said later that he “really only acted as a mailbox” for Szilard, in popular history his famous equation E = mc2 and his letter to President Roosevelt are credited with starting the American effort to build atomic weapons.36
With Einstein’s letter in hand, Szilard then began work on a technical memorandum to accompany it: a review of research over the past five years that noted “one has to conclude that a nuclear chain reaction could be maintained under certain conditions in a large mass of uranium.” For medicine, Szilard wrote, today’s “quantities of grams” could be replaced by “quantities corresponding to tons of radium equivalents.” Uranium might also serve “as fuel for driving boats or airplanes.” He cautioned, however, that lead shielding to protect the pilot “might impede a development along this line,” which, we now know, is just the problem that confounded nuclear airplane developers in the 1960s. Szilard also predicted “large quantities of energy” from a “stationary power plant.”
Genius in the Shadows Page 29