How a letter from Einstein to FDR changed Oak Ridge
On Aug. 2, 1939, a letter was sent that changed American history.
The letter, written by Albert Einstein, was mailed directly to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and no one knew the effect it would have for decades to come in the small East Tennessee community of Oak Ridge.
“Today is kind of like our pre-birthday,” Kathryn King, Y-12 spokeswoman, said. “This letter is the reason for our existence.”
The professor’s letter warned the president that Germany might develop
atomic bombs and urged the administration to act quickly and start its own nuclear program — the program we all know now as the Manhattan Project that thousands of Secret City citizens spent their days working on.
“Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard … leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future,” Einstein wrote.
“This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable — though much less certain — that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.”
So Roosevelt got to work. The president wrote back to Einstein, saying that he had put together a board consisting of the head of the Bureau of Standards and representatives from the Army and Navy to investigate the possibilities of uranium. The Manhattan Project had begun.
The Secret City set up shop in Oak Ridge and workers from across the country flocked to work on the top-secret assignment, helping build the world’s first nuclear weapons that were much stronger than even Einstein thought possible.
They never imagined they’d be building the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan, killing tens of thousands of people over the years.
Eighty years later, the scientists at Y-12 have continued to be considered the nation’s leading uranium experts. Y-12 scientists still maintain and produce all uranium parts for every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and they are constantly experimenting and innovating with uranium.
Some of the facility’s most recent projects include a collaboration with NASA to create the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) and a partnership with local pharmaceutical company Coqui Pharma to produce a medical isotope.
Whether the scientists at Y-12 are fueling space exploration or making medical procedures of the future, it all began with Einstein’s letter 80 years ago.