Einstein Letter to FDR on A-Bomb Sold for $220,000
A letter written by Albert Einstein on Aug. 2, 1939, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to coordinate research on the building of an atomic bomb was sold for $220,000 at Christie’s auction house today.
The buyer was millionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes, who said the letter was an important document that changed the course of the world.
The letter was one of two versions written at the urging of L. Szilard, a Hungarian-born physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb.
The signed, 25-line typewritten document is 20 lines shorter than the one hand-delivered to the White House on Oct. 11, 1939. The longer version is in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, N.Y. The shorter letter remained in Szilard’s family after his death in 1964 and was acquired recently by today’s seller, who was not identified.
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