One of the most important letters of the physicist Albert Einstein, in which he warned the then US president Franklin Roosevelt about the possible development of the atomic bomb, was sold at an auction for $3.9 million.
This is stated on the website of the Christieʼs auction house.
Einstein wrote this letter to Roosevelt on August 2, 1939—one month before the Third Reich began World War II. In it, a physicist warned the 32nd president of the United States that Adolf Hitler wanted to create a nuclear bomb.
The physicist urged the US government to do the same. And after the letter, Roosevelt formed a committee, the forerunner of Robert Oppenheimerʼs Manhattan Project, which created the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. This ended World War II and ushered in the nuclear age.
Christieʼs notes that Einstein dictated the letter in German to his student and assistant Leo Szilard, who then translated it into English.
The original letter is kept at the Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. But the second version of the letter — a little shorter — was kept by Szilard throughout his life, and it was this one that was sold at auction.
