14. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Einstein emigrated to the United States. Five years later, the discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin had American physicists a uproar. Many of them had fled from Fascism, just an Einstein had, and now they were afraid the Nazis could built and use an atomic bomb.
15. At the urging of a colleague, Einstein wrote a letter to the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on 2 August 1939, in which he warned: " a single bomb of this type . . . . exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory". His words didn't fail to have an effect. The Americans developed the atomic bomb in a secret project of their own and dropped it on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
16. Einstein was deeply shaken by the extent of the destruction. This time he wrote a public massive to the United Nations. In it he proposed the formation of a world government. Unlike the letter to Roosevelt, this one made no impact. But over the next decade, Einstein got ever more involved in politics— agitating for end to the arms buildup and using his popularity to campaign for peace and democracy.
17. When Einstein died in 1955 at he age of 76, he was celebrated as a visionary and world citizen as much as a scientific genius.
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A Truly Beautiful Mind
Non-FictionWho do you think of, when you hear the word 'Genius' ? Who is a genius? This story is about a young German civil servant who took the world by storm about a hundred years ago. In the summer of 1905, the 26- year- old published in quick succession fo...
