Albert Einstein's Letter Of Atomic Bombing To Franklin D. Roosevelt Reaches IDR 65.4 Billion In Auction

Famous physicist Albert Einstein (photo: x @AlbertEinstein)

JAKARTA - Letter from famous physicist Albert Einstein urging President Franklin D. Roosevelt to develop the world's first atomic bomb could reach $4 million in an auction.

The two-page letter, written in 1939, called for a "fast move" for the US to establish a nuclear program, with a warning that Nazi Germany may already have the capability.

"It is possible - although far more uncertain - that very powerful bombs of a new type could be built," the letter read.

Although Einstein's name is the only one listed, the letter was written by inventor Leo Szilard who believed the letter would attract the president's attention if signed by the theoretical physicist.

The letter will be sold at Christie's in New York on September 10 along with a collection of artifacts belonging to Microsoft's late founder, Paul Allen, who died in 2018.

Einstein's original letter was kept at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in New York, but the physicist also signed the second letter he left with another scientist, Leo Szilard, for safekeeping.

In the letter, Einstein and Szilard suggested that the uranium chain reaction could be converted into nuclear energy that would lead to a very strong' bomb construction.

"A single bomb of this kind... may be able to destroy the entire port together with some of the surrounding areas."

Einstein and Szilard advised the president to "maintain for permanent contact between administration and groups of physicists working on chain reactions in America."

"One way to achieve this is probably by you entrusting this task to someone you trust and who you might be able to act in unofficial capacity."

Einstein, who is Jewish, fled to the US from Germany during the Nazi regime and sent the letter to President Roosevelt less than a month before Germany invaded Poland.

Two years after the letter was written, the Manhattan Project led by J. Robert Oppenheimer was founded to build an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Hiroshima in Japan in 1945.