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Albert Einstein arriving in New York.

 

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist and Nobel

laureate who developed the Theory of Relativity (1905). A

professor at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, he

demonstratively resigned his post after the Nazi takeover

in 1933. He emigrated to the United States accepting a

professorship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in

Princeton, New Jersey. In 1941, after information reached

the American scientific community that Nazi Germany had

undertaken a uranium project, Einstein agreed to sign a

letter to Franklin Roosevelt pointing out the feasibility

of atomic energy. It was this letter that sparked the

Manhattan Project and the developments of the atomic bomb.

Einstein, however, was strongly opposed to the use of

atomic weapons and became active in efforts to outlaw their

manufacture in the 1940s and 1950s.

 

Restriction: NOT FOR RELEASE without the permission of the Hulton Getty

Picture Collection

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