Einstein's Letter Suggesting Atomic Bomb Development to Be Auctioned

TapTechNews June 27th, during World War II, a letter from renowned scientist Albert Einstein suggesting the US develop the world's first atomic bomb and triggering subsequent nuclear weapons race and this significant letter will be auctioned off in September this year.

According to BBC, this letter is a collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 65. Allen's personal collection will be auctioned at Christie's in New York in September.

In 1939, Einstein wrote to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany might be able to build such a weapon and suggesting that the US start its own atomic bomb project. Three years later, the US began the famous Manhattan Project.

It is reported that the letter is valued between 4 million and 6 million US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 29.141 million to 43.712 million Chinese yuan).

In fact, this letter was written by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard with the help of other scientists and then signed by Einstein. Because Einstein, as one of the greatest scientific figures of all time, his status can make this letter more likely to draw the attention of the US president.

The date of this letter is August 2, 1939, and it warns that Germany may have already developed a plan to build atomic bombs:

It is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed

But reportedly, Einstein later regretted signing this letter. In 1947, he once said, If I had known that the Germans would not succeed in making an atomic bomb, I would never have lifted a finger.

Along with the letter being auctioned is a 1971 computer, a DEC PDP-10: KI-10 model, with an expected price between 30,000 and 50,000 US dollars (currently about 219,000 to 364,000 Chinese yuan).

There is also an astronaut Ed White's spacesuit, valued at 80,000 to 120,000 US dollars (currently about 583,000 to 874,000 Chinese yuan), who became the first American to conduct a spacewalk in 1965.

In 2022, Paul Allen's art collection set a new world record for the largest auction amount in an auction, raising more than 1.5 billion US dollars (currently about 10.928 billion Chinese yuan), and he hoped to use the proceeds for charity. He donated more than 2 billion US dollars (currently about 14.571 billion Chinese yuan) to charity throughout his life and established art and culture museums. According to Forbes' estimate, his net worth at the time of his death exceeded 20 billion US dollars (currently about 145.706 billion Chinese yuan).

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