The Einstein-Szilard letter was correspondence sent to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on August 2, 1939 signed by Albert Einstein but largely written by Leo Szilard in consultation with fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner.
The letter advised Roosevelt that Nazi Germany might be conducting research into the possibility of using nuclear fission to create atomic bombs, and suggested that the United States should begin researching the possibility itself. The letter was signed by Einstein on August 2, and delivered to Roosevelt by economist Alexander Sachs. After hearing Sachs’ summary of the letter, Roosevelt authorized the creation of the Advisory Committee on Uranium.
The letter has often been seen as the origins of the Manhattan Project, the successful wartime nuclear weapons project which produced the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Einstein himself did not work on the bomb project and, according to Linus Pauling, later regretted having signed this letter.
