Einstein: His Life and Universe

by Walter Isaacson

  Over the next four months, his interest would indeed grow rapidly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE BOMB

  1939–1945

  With Leó Szilárd reenacting (in 1946) their 1939 meeting

  The Letter

  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 reactions, suggested that a new type of bomb could result, and urged the president to set up formal contact with physicists working on this topic. Szilárd then prepared and sent back to Einstein a 45-line version and a 25-line one, both dated August 2, 1939, “and left it up to Einstein to choose which he liked best.” Einstein signed them both in a small scrawl, rather than with the flourish he sometimes used.8

  The longer version, which is the one that eventually reached Roosevelt, read in part:

  Sir:

  Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilárd, which has been communicated to me in a 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 this 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:

  . . . 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 phenomena 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 . . .

  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.

  It ended with a warning that German scientists might be pursuing a bomb. Once the letter had been written and signed, they still had to figure out who could best get it into the hands of President Roosevelt. Einstein was unsure about Sachs. They considered, instead, financier Bernard Baruch and MIT President Karl Compton.

  More amazingly, when Szilárd sent back the typed version of the letter, he suggested that they use as their intermediary Charles Lindbergh, whose solo transatlantic flight twelve years earlier had made him a celebrity. All three of the refugee Jews were apparently unaware that the aviator had been spending time in Germany, was decorated the year before by the Nazi Hermann Göring with that nation’s medal of honor, and was becoming an isolationist and Roosevelt antagonist.

  Einstein had briefly met Lindbergh a few years earlier in New York, so he wrote a note of introduction, which he included when he returned the signed letters to Szilárd. “I would like to ask you to do me a favor of receiving my friend Dr. Szilárd and think very carefully about what he will tell you,” Einstein wrote to Lindbergh. “To one who is outside of science the matter he will bring up may seem fantastic. However, you will certainly become convinced that a possibility is presented here which has to be very carefully watched in the
public interest.”9

  Lindbergh did not respond, so Szilárd wrote him a reminder letter on September 13, again asking for a meeting. Two days later, they realized how clueless they had been when Lindbergh gave a nationwide radio address. It was a clarion call for isolationism. “The destiny of this country does not call for our involvement in European wars,” Lindbergh began. Interwoven were hints of Lindbergh’s pro-German sympathies and even some anti-Semitic implications about Jewish ownership of the media. “We must ask who owns and influences the newspaper, the news picture, and the radio station,” he said. “If our people know the truth, our country is not likely to enter the war.”10

  Szilárd’s next letter to Einstein stated the obvious: “Lindbergh is not our man.”11

  Their other hope was Alexander Sachs, who had been given the formal letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed. Even though it was obviously of enormous importance, Sachs was not able to find the opportunity to deliver it for almost two months.

  By then, events had turned what was an important letter into an urgent one. At the end of August 1939, the Nazis and Soviets stunned the world by signing their war alliance pact and proceeded to carve up Poland. That prompted Britain and France to declare war, starting the century’s second World War. For the time being, America stayed neutral, or at least did not declare war. The country did, however, begin to rearm and to develop whatever new weapons might be necessary for its future involvement.

  Szilárd went to see Sachs in late September and was horrified to discover that he still had not been able to schedule an appointment with Roosevelt. “There is a distinct possibility Sachs will be of no use to us,” Szilárd wrote Einstein. “Wigner and I have decided to accord him ten days grace.”12 Sachs barely made the deadline. On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 11, he was ushered into the Oval Office carrying Einstein’s letter, Szilárd’s memo, and an eight-hundred-word summary he had written on his own.

  The president greeted him jovially. “Alex, what are you up to?” Sachs could be loquacious, which may be why the president’s handlers made it hard for him to get an appointment, and he tended to tell the president parables. This time it was a tale about an inventor who told Napoleon that he would build him a new type of ship that could travel using steam rather than sails. Napoleon dismissed him as crazy. Sachs then revealed that the visitor was Robert Fulton and, so went the lesson, the emperor should have listened.13

  Roosevelt responded by scribbling a note to an aide, who hurried off and soon returned with a bottle of very old and rare Napoleon brandy that Roosevelt said had been in his family for a while. He poured two glasses.

  Sachs worried that if he left the memos and papers with Roosevelt, they might be glanced at and then pushed aside. The only reliable way to deliver them, he decided, was to read them aloud. Standing in front of the president’s desk, he read his summation of Einstein’s letter, parts of Szilárd’s memo, and some other paragraphs from assorted historical documents.

  “Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up,” the president said.

  “Precisely,” Sachs replied.

  Roosevelt called in his personal assistant. “This requires action,” he declared.14

  That evening, plans were drawn up for an ad hoc committee, coordinated by Dr. Lyman Briggs, director of the Bureau of Standards, the nation’s physics laboratory. It met informally for the first time in Washington on October 21. Einstein was not there, nor did he want to be. He was neither a nuclear physicist nor someone who enjoyed proximity to political or military leaders. But his Hungarian émigré trio—Szilárd, Wigner, and Teller—were there to launch the effort.

  The following week, Einstein received a polite and formal thank-you letter from the president. “I have convened a board,” Roosevelt wrote, “to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion regarding the element of uranium.”15

  Work on the atomic project proceeded slowly. Over the next few months, the Roosevelt administration approved only $6,000 for graphite and uranium experiments. Szilárd became impatient. He was becoming more convinced of the feasibility of chain reaction and more worried about reports he was getting from fellow refugees on the activity in Germany.

  So in March 1940, he went to Princeton to see Einstein again. They composed another letter for Einstein to sign, which was addressed to Alexander Sachs but intended for him to convey to the president. It warned of all the work on uranium they heard was being done in Berlin. Given the progress being made in producing chain reactions with huge explosive potential, the letter urged the president to consider whether the American work was proceeding quickly enough.16

  Roosevelt reacted by calling for a conference designed to spur greater urgency, and he told officials to make sure that Einstein could attend. But Einstein had no desire to be more involved. He replied by saying he had a cold—somewhat of a convenient excuse—and did not need to be at the meeting. But he did urge the group to get moving: “I am convinced of the wisdom and urgency of creating the conditions under which work can be carried out with greater speed and on a larger scale.”17

  Even if Einstein had wanted to take part in the meetings, which led to the Manhattan Project that developed the atom bomb, he may not have been welcome. Amazingly, the man who had helped get the project launched was considered, by some, to be too great a potential security risk to be permitted to know about the work.

  Brigadier General Sherman Miles, the acting Army chief of staff who was organizing the new committee, sent a letter in July 1940 to J. Edgar Hoover, who had already been the director of the FBI for sixteen years and would remain so for another thirty-two. By addressing him by his national guard rank as “Colonel Hoover,” the general was subtly pulling rank when it came to controlling intelligence decisions. But Hoover was assertive when Miles asked for a summary of information the Bureau had on Einstein.18

  Hoover began by providing General Miles with the letter from Mrs. Frothingham’s Woman Patriot Corporation, which had argued in 1932 that Einstein should be denied a visa and raised alarms about various pacifist and political groups he had supported.19 The Bureau made no attempt to verify or assess any of the charges.

  Hoover went on to say that Einstein had been involved in the World Antiwar Congress in Amsterdam in 1932, which had some European communists on its committee. This was the conference that Einstein, as noted earlier, had specifically and publicly declined to attend or even support; as he wrote the organizer, “Because of the glorification of Soviet Russia it includes, I cannot bring myself to sign it.” Einstein had gone on in that letter to denounce Russia, where “there seems to be complete suppression of the individual and of freedom of speech.” Nevertheless, Hoover implied that Einstein had supported the conference and was thus pro-Soviet.20

  Hoover’s letter had six more paragraphs making similar allegations about a variety of alleged Einstein associations, ranging from pacifist groups to those supporting Spain’s loyalists. Appended was a biographical sketch filled with trivial misinformation (“has one child”) and wild allegations. It called him “an extreme radical,” which he certainly was not, and said he “has contributed to communist magazines,” which he hadn’t. General Miles was so taken aback by the memo that he wrote a note in the margin, warning, “There is some possibility of flameback” if it ever leaked.21

  The conclusion of the unsigned biographical sketch was stark: “In view of this radical background, this office would not recommend the employment of Dr. Einstein on matters of a secret nature, without a very careful investigation, as it seems unlikely that a man of his background could, in such a short time, become a loyal American citizen.” In a memo the following year, it was reported that the Navy had assented to giving Einstein a security clearance, but “the Army could not clear.”22

  Citizen Einstein

  Just as the Army’s decision was being made, Einstein was in fact eagerly doing something the likes of which he had not done for forty years, ever since he had s
aved up his money so that he could become a Swiss citizen after leaving Germany. He was voluntarily and proudly becoming a citizen of the United States, a process that had begun five years earlier when he sailed to Bermuda so that he could return on an immigration visa. He still had his Swiss citizenship and passport, so he did not need to do this. But he wanted to.

  He took his citizenship test on June 22, 1940, in front of a federal judge in Trenton. To celebrate the process, he agreed to give a radio interview as part of the immigration service’s I Am an American series. The judge served lunch and had the radio folks set up in his chambers to make the process easier for Einstein.23

  It was an inspiring day, partly because Einstein showed just what type of free-speaking citizen he would be. In his radio talk, he argued that, to prevent wars in the future, nations would have to give up some of their sovereignty to an armed international federation of nations. “A worldwide organization cannot insure peace effectively unless it has control over the entire military power of its members,” he said.24

  Einstein passed his test and he was sworn in—along with his step-daughter Margot, his assistant Helen Dukas, and eighty-six other new citizens—on October 1. Afterward, he praised America to the reporters covering his naturalization. The nation, he said, would prove that democracy is not just a form of government but “a way of life tied to a great tradition, the tradition of moral strength.” Asked if he would renounce other loyalties, he joyously declared that he “would even renounce my cherished sailboat” if that were necessary.25 It was not, however, necessary for him to renounce his Swiss citizenship, and he did not.