“The discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in our power to safeguard against its abuse.”
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“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
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Einstein biographer Ronald Clark has observed that the atomic bomb would have been invented without Einstein’s letters, but that without the early U.S. work that resulted from the letters, the a-bombs might not have been ready in time to use during the war on Japan.
The atomic-bomb-related work that Einstein did was very limited and he completed it in two days during December 1941. Vannevar Bush, who was coordinating the scientific work on the a-bomb at that time, asked Einstein’s advice on a theoretical problem involved in separating fissionable material by gaseous diffusion. But Bush and other leaders in the atomic bomb project excluded Einstein from any other a-bomb-related work. Bush didn’t trust Einstein to keep the project a secret: “I am not at all sure… [Einstein] would not discuss it in a way that it should not be discussed.”
As the realization of nuclear weapons grew near, Einstein looked beyond the current war to future problems that such weapons could bring. He wrote to physicist Niels Bohr in December 1944, “when the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life.”
The atomic bombings of Japan occurred three months after the surrender of Germany, whose potential for creating a Nazi a-bomb had led Einstein to push for the development of an a-bomb for the Allies. Einstein withheld public comment on the atomic bombing of Japan until a year afterward. A short article on the front page of The New York Times contained his view: “Prof. Albert Einstein…said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate.” Einstein later wrote, “I have always condemned the use of the atomic bomb against Japan.”
In November, 1954, five months before his death, Einstein summarized his feelings about his role in the creation of the atomic bomb: “I made one great mistake in my life…when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.”
