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The cool and colourful Indian spring is nearly over and the hot summer days will be here soon. Still, it is a relief that the long and cold winter nights have finally faded away. Spring-summer is the season for rejuvenation and rebirth – it calls for joyous celebrations and new beginnings. And we, too, are back with our new bouquet of books – diverse in approach, but intensely captivating in their appeal. Although some of these books are penned by best-selling authors, we don’t know yet how these will be received by readers in general. Yet, many of them are truth-tellers, conveying courage, comprehension and a deep sense of social justice that make them interesting reading. 
 <keyword id="2177237" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Spring-reading">Spring reading</keyword> should be all about shedding the old and donning the new, letting go of the past and welcoming the future. So what better to read right now than books that have a brand new way of looking at things – be it an established theory, an old dictum or a traditional social norm? Here is a collection of 6 fantastic books that will help you look beyond the obvious and tune up with the new. Just like the spring, they offer a whole lot of possibilities for you to explore and fall in love with. Bon voyage to a whole new <keyword id="2037894" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="World-of-books">world of books</keyword>! 
 
Image credit: Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images

March Mavericks: 6 Wonderful
Books That Will Tune Up Your Life

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Einstein's 1939 letter to Roosevelt, warning of atomic weapons, sold at auction for $3.9 million.</li><li>Einstein later regretted the letter for its ultimate role in helping to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oppenheimer-fact-vs-fiction-what-the-movie-got-right-wrong-2023-7">develop the atomic bomb</a>.</li></ul>In the summer of 1939, Albert Einstein made what he considered his "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russell-einstein-manifesto-nuclear-weapons-bombs-danger-2024-2">one great mistake</a>": signing a letter that would reach the desk of President Franklin Roosevelt and help usher in the nuclear age.Now, a copy of that letter, also signed by Einstein, has sold at a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.christies.com/en/auction/pushing-boundaries-ingenuity-from-the-paul-g-allen-collection-30730/browse-lots">Christie's auction</a> for $3.9 million. The original that was sent to Roosevelt is part of the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fdr-house-hyde-park-photos-2024-6">Franklin D. Roosevelt Library's</a> collection in New York."This has been described as one of the most influential letters in history," Peter Klarnet, senior specialist for Americana, books, and manuscripts at Christie's, said in a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.christies.com/en/stories/einstein-letter-fdr-atomic-age-74f8674456184af5a5acef6ab27cfe1b">statement</a>.The recent sale doesn't set a record price for Einstein memorabilia, though. Christie's previously auctioned one of the famed scientist's manuscripts for $13 million.<h2 id="6791908a-fc29-4474-8286-9fba85bd03f9">The letter that launched our nuclear age</h2>The letter warned that Germany could develop "<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-atomic-bombs-nuclear-weapons-work-2023-8">extremely powerful bombs</a>" using uranium and urged the president to "speed up" the US's own work on the element, eventually leading to the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-a-photo-of-the-worlds-first-atomic-bomb-2015-5">Manhattan Project</a> and the development of the world's first atomic bomb.Though Einstein didn't write the letter, his worldwide esteem meant his signature added significance and credibility to the letter.The copy that sold at auction on Tuesday was the only version in private hands, according to Christie's. It was part of a larger collection belonging to the late Microsoft co-founder <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-fabulous-life-of-paul-allen-2014-5">Paul Allen</a>.Allen bought the letter in 2002 for $2.1 million. Before that, it had belonged to publisher Malcolm Forbes, who acquired it from Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard's estate, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/25/albert-einstein-letter-fdr">The Guardian reported</a>. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-einstein-didnt-join-manhattan-project-oppenheimer-atomic-bomb-2023-7">Szilard wrote the letter</a>, which Einstein signed.Christie's didn't disclose the identity of the letter's new owner.<h2 id="d4745942-080f-4ee2-a402-96c6e3ea369d">Einstein's influence on the Manhattan Project</h2><div type="image" title="Einstein's 1939 letter to Roosevelt on a white background" height="2000" width="2000" msid="113273393" hostid="261" sizebytes="74694"></div>When Szilard wrote the letter, German scientists had recently <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lise-meitner-discovered-nuclear-fission-nominated-nobel-prize-never-won-2024-1">discovered nuclear fission</a>, the process of splitting atoms and releasing energy, which could be used to power an atomic bomb.For Szilard and Einstein, the possibility of the Germans creating a nuclear weapon was reason enough to write President Roosevelt.Both Szilard and Einstein were Jewish scientists who had fled Europe during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.Once Germany surrendered, however, Szilard and Einstein <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oppenheimer-los-alamos-manhattan-project-scientists-atomic-bomb-petition-2023-7">no longer felt</a> the use of nuclear weapons was justified."Woe is me," Einstein <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project">said</a> when he learned of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 that killed an estimated 200,000 people.Though Einstein was never a part of the Manhattan Project — the US Army Intelligence Office denied him the necessary security clearance — the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/manhattan-project-scientists-who-won-nobel-prizes-2023-7">Nobel Prize winner</a> regretted his role anyway.After the war, he spoke out against nuclear proliferation. Before his death in 1955, Einstein signed a manifesto written by philosopher Bertrand Russell.Now known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, the document warned the public about an even greater threat than the atomic bomb: newly developed hydrogen bombs, which are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hydrogen-bomb-vs-atomic-bomb-what-is-the-difference-2023-9">far more destructive</a>.The manifesto led to the creation of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an organization that — to this day — is dedicated to <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-world-is-facing-a-growing-threat-of-nuclear-war-2015-3">ridding the world</a> of weapons of mass destruction.

Einstein's 1939 letter, warning of atomic weapons, just sold at auction for $3.9 million

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Albert Einstein sent a letter in 1939 that helped convinced FDR to launch the Manhattan Project.</li><li>But Einstein was not part of the secretive program run by J. Robert Oppenheimer to develop a nuclear weapon.</li></ul>Albert Einstein played a key role in convincing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to launch the Manhattan Project and develop the world's first atomic bomb. But the renowned theoretical physicist never took part in the secret project run by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer; US officials were worried his left-leaning political views posed a security threat.Einstein sent a letter to Roosevelt in August 1939 warning that the Nazis could develop an atomic bomb and recommended "quick action on the part of the Admininstration" — namely, launching its own nuclear program.The letter cited the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard's work, and Szilard helped draft the letter, which Einstein signed.However, the US Army Intelligence office had concerns about Einstein's political ideology and in July 1940 denied him the security clearance to work on the project, according to the <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Museum of Natural History</a>.Intelligence officials also barred the scientists who were part of the program, which was organized by Oppenheimer, from consulting with Einstein.The Manhattan Project was officially created in August 1942, months after the US entered the war. The years-long program developed the world's first nuclear weapons, which were dropped on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945."Woe is me," Einstein said after learning of the attack, according to AMNH.He later expressed remorse for recommending that the US start its own nuclear program, telling Newsweek, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing."Szilard and his fellow Hungarian-born physicist Eugene Wigner both expressed their agreement with Einstein's statements, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/02/archives/the-einstein-letter-that-started-it-all-a-message-to-president.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to The New York Times</a>.The Manhattan Project is the center of a new biopic from director Christopher Nolan. "Oppenheimer," which chronicles the physicist's work developing the nukes and stars Cillian Murphy, releases this week.

Why Einstein wasn't part of the Manhattan Project even though he convinced President Roosevelt to build an atomic bomb

<ul class="summary-list"><li>In August 1945, the US used atomic bombs on Japan, killing over 100,000 people.</li><li>Weeks before, dozens of Manhattan Project scientists signed a petition opposing its use.</li></ul>On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, killing at least 100,000 people instantly and thousands more from radiation illnesses and injuries, according to the <a href="https://museum.archives.gov/featured-document-display-atomic-bombing-hiroshima-and-nagasaki" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Archives Museum</a>. Three weeks earlier, Leo Szilard and dozens of other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project signed a petition to President Harry Truman, pleading with him to reconsider dropping the bombs they had helped create. <h2>'Opposition on moral grounds'</h2>While the bombs would likely end the war, they felt "that such attacks on Japan could not be justified" until Japan was told about the weapon and given a chance to surrender. Seventy scientists, mostly from the Chicago Met Lab and Tennessee Oak Ridge project sites, added their signatures. "I personally feel that it would be a matter of importance if a large number of scientists who have worked in this field went clearly and unmistakably on record as to their opposition on moral grounds to the use of these bombs in the present phase of the war," Szilard wrote in the <a href="https://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-04.html">petition's cover letter</a>. The petition didn't include names from the Los Alamos, New Mexico scientists because they weren't given the chance to sign, Edward Teller, one of the Manhattan Project's scientists, <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-histories/edward-tellers-interview/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">later said</a>.J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of Los Alamos Laboratory, persuaded Teller not to distribute the petition. "Oppenheimer talked me out of it, saying that we as scientists have no business to meddle in political pressure of that kind," Teller said. But Teller also <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Los_Alamos_Science/RNSyoG42FOYC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=%22the+things+we+are+working+on+are+so+terrible+that+no+amount+of+protesting+or+fiddling%22&amp;pg=PA193&amp;printsec=frontcover" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote to Szilard</a> at the time, "The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls." Truman didn't actually see the petition before he ordered the bombs to drop, according to the <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/szilard-petition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Atomic Heritage Foundation</a>. Szilard <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/matthew-j-connelly-james-byrnes-attached-leo-szilard-letter?documentid=NA&amp;pagenumber=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked for permission</a> to make the petition public in late August 1945, but it <a href="https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2020/08/06/75-years-after-atomic-bombs-how-manhattan-project-scientists-tried-stop-them/5574035002/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wasn't declassified</a> for over a decade. <h2>Doubts in Los Alamos</h2>Though <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/life-career-of-j-robert-oppenheimer-father-of-atomic-bomb-2023-6#the-atomic-bomb-and-its-repercussions-never-left-him-years-later-in-1961-when-he-was-asked-about-the-atomic-bombs-dropped-on-japan-he-said-it-wasnt-on-his-conscience-27">Oppenheimer said</a> years later in 1961 that he didn't carry the dropping of the bombs on his conscience, not everyone who worked at Los Alamos felt that way. Some were conflicted, especially after Adolf Hitler's death in April 1945. "For me, Hitler was the personification of evil and the primary justification for the atomic bomb work," Los Alamos physicist Emilio Segrè <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft700007rb&amp;chunk.id=d0e3151&amp;toc.depth=1&amp;toc.id=&amp;brand=ucpress" target="_blank" rel="noopener">later wrote</a>. "Now that the bomb could not be used against the Nazis, doubts arose. Those doubts, even if they do not appear in official reports, were discussed in many private conversations." Read the <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/szilard-petition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">full petition</a> from the Manhattan Project scientists and their names (provided by Szilard biographer<a href="http://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-17.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Gene Dannen</a>) below. <h2>The Manhattan Project petition asking President Truman not to bomb Japan</h2>A PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATESJuly 17, 1945Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future. The liberation of the atomic power which has been achieved places atomic bombs in the hands of the Army. It places in your hands, as Commander-in-Chief, the fateful decision whether or not to sanction the use of such bombs in the present phase of the war against Japan.We, the undersigned scientists, have been working in the field of atomic power. Until recently we have had to fear that the United States might be attacked by atomic bombs during this war and that her only defense might lie in a counterattack by the same means. Today, with the defeat of Germany, this danger is averted and we feel impelled to say what follows:The war has to be brought speedily to a successful conclusion and attacks by atomic bombs may very well be an effective method of warfare. We feel, however, that such attacks on Japan could not be justified, at least not until the terms which will be imposed after the war on Japan were made public in detail and Japan were given an opportunity to surrender.If such public announcement gave assurance to the Japanese that they could look forward to a life devoted to peaceful pursuit in their homeland and if Japan still refused to surrender, our nation might then, in certain circumstances, find itself forced to resort to the use of atomic bombs. Such a step, however, ought not to be made at any time without seriously considering the moral responsibilities which are involved.The development of atomic power will provide the nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.If after the war a situation is allowed to develop in the world which permits rival powers to be in uncontrolled possession of these new means of destruction, the cities of the United States as well as the cities of other nations will be in continuous danger of sudden annihilation. All the resources of the United States, moral and material, may have to be mobilized to prevent the advent of such a world situation. Its prevention is at present the solemn responsibility of the United States—singled out by virtue of her lead in the field of atomic power.The added material strength which this lead gives to the United States brings with it the obligation of restraint and if we were to violate this obligation our moral position would be weakened in the eyes of the world and in our own eyes. It would then be more difficult for us to live up to our responsibility of bringing the unloosened forces of destruction under control.In view of the foregoing, we, the undersigned, respectfully petition: first, that you exercise your power as Commander-in-Chief, to rule that the United States shall not resort to the use of atomic bombs in this war unless the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender; second, that in such an event the question whether or not to use atomic bombs be decided by you in the light of the consideration presented in this petition as well as all the other moral responsibilities which are involved. <h2>Here's everyone who signed</h2><ul><li>David S. Anthony, associate chemist</li><li>Larned B. Asprey, junior chemist</li><li>Walter Bartky, assistant director</li><li>Austin M. Brues, director, biology division</li><li>Mary Burke, research assistant</li><li>Albert Cahn, Jr., junior physicist</li><li>George R. Carlson, research assistant</li><li>Kenneth Stewart Cole, principal biophysicist</li><li>Ethaline Hartge Cortelyou, junior chemist</li><li>John Crawford, physicist</li><li>Mary M. Dailey, research assistant</li><li>Miriam Posner Finkel, associate biologist</li><li>Frank G. Foote, metallurgist</li><li>Horace Owen France, associate biologist</li><li>Mark S. Fred, research associate</li><li>Sherman Fried, chemist</li><li>Francis Lee Friedman, physicist</li><li>Melvin S. Friedman, associate chemist</li><li>Mildred C. Ginsberg, computer</li><li>Norman Goldstein, junior physicist</li><li>Sheffield Gordon, associate chemist</li><li>Walter J. Grundhauser, research assistant</li><li>Charles W. Hagen, research assistant</li><li>David B. Hall, position not identified</li><li>David L. Hill, associate physicist</li><li>John Perry Howe, Jr., associate director</li><li>Earl K. Hyde, research associate</li><li>Jasper B. Jeffries, junior physicist, junior chemist</li><li>William Karush, associate physicist</li><li>Truman P. Kohman, chemist</li><li>Herbert E. Kubitschek, junior physicist</li><li>Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., research associate</li><li>Ralph E. Lapp, physicist</li><li>Lawrence B. Magnusson, junior chemist</li><li>Robert Joseph Maurer, physicist</li><li>Norman Frederick Modine, research assistant</li><li>George S. Monk, physicist</li><li>Robert James Moon, physicist</li><li>Marietta Catherine Moore, technician</li><li>Robert Sanderson Mulliken, physical chemist, coordinator of information</li><li>James J. Nickson, physician</li><li>William Penrod Norris, associate biochemist</li><li>Paul Radell O'Connor, junior chemist</li><li>Leo Arthur Ohlinger, senior engineer</li><li>Alfred Pfanstiehl, junior physicist</li><li>Robert Leroy Platzman, chemist</li><li>C. Ladd Prosser, biologist</li><li>Robert Lamburn Purbrick, junior physicist</li><li>Wilfrid Rall, research assistant</li><li>Margaret H. Rand, research assistant</li><li>William Rubinson, chemist</li><li>B. Roswell Russell, position not identified</li><li>George Alan Sacher, associate biologist</li><li>Francis R. Shonka, physicist</li><li>Eric L. Simmons, associate biologist</li><li>John A. Simpson, Jr., physicist</li><li>Ellis P. Steinberg, junior chemist</li><li>D. C. Stewart, staff sergeant</li><li>George Svihla, position not identified</li><li>Marguerite N. Swift, associate physiologist</li><li>Leo Szilard, chief physicist</li><li>Ralph E. Telford, position not identified</li><li>Joseph D. Teresi, associate chemist</li><li>Albert Wattenberg, physicist</li><li>Katharine Way, research assistant</li><li>Edgar Francis Westrum, Jr., chemist</li><li>Eugene Paul Wigner, physicist</li><li>Ernest J. Wilkins, Jr., associate physicist</li><li>Hoylande Young, senior chemist</li><li>William Houlder Zachariasen, consultant</li></ul>

J. Robert Oppenheimer stifled a petition by 70 scientists beseeching President Truman not to use the atomic bomb. Read it here.

31 Nobel Prize winners had ties to the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer isn't on the list.

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Albert Einstein was famously a pacifist, but he wrote to US President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1939 to urge him to try and develop the atomic bomb.</li><li>Einstein and other leading scientists were concerned that Nazi Germany could use nuclear energy to build an "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" that could destroy entire ports.</li><li>His letter helped pave the way for the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing an estimated 200,000 people and effectively ending WWII.</li><li>Einstein later said he had felt no choice but to encourage the US to develop the technology, but he called the letter his "one great mistake in my life" having learned Germany was never close to developing atomic bombs. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul>On August 2 1939, one month before the outbreak of World War II, Albert Einstein, the famous German-born physicist, signed a two-page letter to US President Franklin D Roosevelt that would bring the US into the nuclear arms race and change the course of history.Einstein, possibly the most famous scientist in history, was already in the US having fled Germany when the Nazis came to power, and learned that German scientists had discovered nuclear fission - splitting a large atomic nucleus to release energy.He signed a letter to Roosevelt, warning that "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" could be created in light of this discovery - and that these bombs would be capable of destroying entire ports and their surrounding areas.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/watch-the-first-ever-nuclear-explosion-2019-7">'The most intimidating minute I have ever spent': The first nuclear weapon test was 74 years ago - here's what it was like to watch the 'shocking' explosion</a>He urged Roosevelt to speed up uranium research in the US in what would become known as "The God Letter" and that Einstein would later call his "one great mistake."You can read it here, with a full transcript at the bottom of this article:<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Einstein's warnings were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/02/archives/the-einstein-letter-that-started-it-all-a-message-to-president.html">read to Roosevel</a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/02/archives/the-einstein-letter-that-started-it-all-a-message-to-president.html">t</a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/02/archives/the-einstein-letter-that-started-it-all-a-message-to-president.html"></a> by a man called Alexander Sachs, who also read out other warnings about such a bomb to the president.Roosevelt responded by saying: "What you are after is to see that the Nazis don't blow us up?" Sachs responded with a single word: "Precisely."Roosevelt then called in his secretary and told him: "This requires action."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Einstein, who was Jewish, had been encouraged to write to Roosevelt by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, who was convinced that Germany could use this newly discovered technology to create weapons.Szilard and two other Hungarian physicists, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, who were both refugees, <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/einstein-szilard-letter-1939">told Einstein of their grave concerns.</a> Szilard wrote the letter, but Einstein signed it as they believed he had the most authority with the president.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Einstein's own famous discovery that energy and mass and different forms of the same thing had set the stage for this kind of creation, though Cynthia Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, told National Geographic in 2017 that "he certainly was not thinking about this theory as a weapon."Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-albert-einstein-quotes-2017-4?r=US&amp;IR=T">15 Albert Einstein quotes that reveal the mind of a true genius</a>And Einstein himself never gave any details about how that energy could be harnessed, and once <a href="https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/802/albert-einstein-nuclear-weapons">saying</a>: "I do not consider myself the father of the release of atomic energy. My part in it was quite indirect."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Einstein's letter had an effect, with Roosevelt creating the Advisory Committee on Uranium in October 1939, the same month he received Einstein's letter. By that point, World War II had already broken out, although the US was not yet involved.The committee later morphed into the Manhattan Project - the secret US committee that developed the atomic bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing an estimated 200,000 people.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/atomic-bomb-dropped-on-hiroshima-2017-8">Hiroshima: The moment the US deployed the most powerful weapon known to man</a>Japan informally surrendered to the Allied forces eight days later, effectively ending World War II.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Nazi Germany never succeeded in making nuclear weapons - and it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/13/magazine/hitler-and-the-bomb.html">seemed </a>they never <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/german-atomic-bomb-project">really tried</a>.Einstein was not involved in the bomb's creation. He was not allowed to work on the Manhattan Project - he was <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project">deemed to big a security risk</a> as he was both German and had a history as a left-leaning political activist. But when hearing that the bomb had been used in Japan, he said: "Woe is me."Einstein later <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1986/12/20/einstein-letter-sold-to-forbes/1f5d23ff-47e3-43ba-a7c0-0199643f1933/?utm_term=.4bf46b899370https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/02/archives/the-einstein-letter-that-started-it-all-a-message-to-president.html">told American chemist</a> and activist Linus Pauling: "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing for the bomb."After the bombings in Japan, he warned that "we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Letters <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jul/05/japan.internationaleducationnews">uncovered in 2005</a> showed he wrote to a Japanese friend: "I have always condemned the use of the atomic bomb against Japan but I could not do anything at all to prevent that fateful decision."And he wrote <a href="http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/EinsteinResponse.shtml">in a Japanese magazine</a> in 1952: "I was well aware of the dreadful danger for all mankind, if these experiments would succeed.""I did not see any other way out."Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/first-atomic-bomb-manhattan-project-gadget-hiroshima-nagasaki-japan-2016-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">Rare footage shows the successful testing of the most powerful weapon known to man</a>So crucial was Einstein's letter that investing legend Warren Buffett <a href="http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/warren-buffett-tells-students-to-welcome-immigrants-on-the-same-day-trump-bans-t.html">told</a> students at Columbia University in 2017: "If you think about it, we are sitting here, in part, because of two Jewish immigrants who in 1939 in August signed the most important letter perhaps in the history of the United States."Here's a full transcript of what Einstein sent to Roosevelt: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 [illegible] 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 confidence and who could perhaps serve in an unofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following:a) To approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and out forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem 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 a contribution 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 Weishlicker [sic], is attached to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.Yours very truly,Albert Einstein

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