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" Einstein was filled with good humor and sagacity, both qualities lacking in Gödel, whose intense logic sometimes overwhelmed common sense. This was on glorious display when Gödel decided to become a U.S. citizen in 1947. He took his preparation for the exam very seriously, studied the Constitution carefully, and (as might be expected by the formulator of the incompleteness theory) found what he believed was a logical flaw. There was an internal inconsistency, he insisted, that could allow the entire government to degenerate into tyranny.
Concerned, Einstein decided to accompany — or chaperone — Gödel on his visit to Trenton to take the citizenship test, which was to be administered by the same judge who had done so for Einstein. On the drive, he and a third friend tried to distract Gödel and dissuade him from mentioning this perceived flaw, but to no avail. When the judge asked him about the constitution, Gödel launched into his proof that the internal inconsistency made a dictatorship possible. Fortunately, the judge, who by now cherished his connection to Einstein, cut Gödel off. ‘You needn’t go into all that,’ he said, and Gödel’s citizenship was saved. "
― Walter Isaacson , Einstein: His Life and Universe
186
" I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilárd proposes to submit to you,” Einstein wrote. “The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilárd is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy.”34 Roosevelt never read the letter. It was found in his office after he died on April 12 and was passed on to Harry Truman, who in turn gave it to his designated secretary of state, James Byrnes. The result was a meeting between Szilárd and Byrnes in South Carolina, but Byrnes was neither moved nor impressed. The atom bomb was dropped, with little high-level debate, on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima. Einstein was at the cottage he rented that summer on Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, taking an afternoon nap. Helen Dukas informed him when he came down for tea. “Oh, my God,” is all he said.35 Three days later, the bomb was used again, this time on Nagasaki. The following day, officials in Washington released a long history, compiled by Princeton physics professor Henry DeWolf Smyth, of the secret endeavor to build the weapon. The Smyth report, much to Einstein’s lasting discomfort, assigned great historic weight for the launch of the project to the 1939 letter he had written to Roosevelt. Between the influence imputed to that letter and the underlying relationship between energy and mass that he had formulated forty years earlier, Einstein became associated in the popular imagination with the making of the atom bomb, even though his involvement was marginal. Time put him on its cover, with a portrait showing a mushroom cloud erupting behind him with E=mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story that was overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose flair from the period: Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis… Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.36 It was a perception that plagued him. When Newsweek did a cover on him, with the headline “The Man Who Started It All,” Einstein offered a memorable lament. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I never would have lifted a finger.”37 Of course, neither he nor Szilárd nor any of their friends involved with the bomb-building effort, many of them refugees from Hitler’s horrors, could know that the brilliant scientists they had left behind in Berlin, such as Heisenberg, would fail to unlock the secrets. “Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”38 "
― Walter Isaacson , Einstein: His Life and Universe
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" Los avances que forjó durante un frenético período de cuatro meses entre marzo y junio de 1905 se anunciaban ya en la que se convertiría en una de las más famosas cartas personales de toda la historia de la ciencia. Conrad Habicht, su jocoso colega filosófico de la Academia Olimpia, acababa de trasladarse a vivir fuera de Berna, lo cual, afortunadamente para los historiadores, proporcionó a Einstein una razón para escribirle a finales de mayo: Querido Habicht: Ha descendido entre nosotros un aire de silencio tan solemne que casi siento que estuviera cometiendo un sacrilegio al romperlo ahora con un poco de cháchara insustancial... ¿Qué es, pues, de ti, ballena congelada, trozo de alma ahumado, seco y enlatado...? ¿Por qué no me has enviado todavía tu tesis? ¿No sabes que yo soy uno de los 1 1/2 colegas que la leerán con interés y placer, oh, miserable? Te prometo cuatro artículos a cambio. El primero trata de la radiación y las propiedades energéticas de la luz, y es bastante revolucionario, como podrás ver si primero me envías tu trabajo. El segundo artículo es una determinación del verdadero tamaño de los átomos ... El tercero prueba que los cuerpos del orden de magnitud de 1/1.000 mm, suspendidos en líquidos, deben realizar ya un movimiento aleatorio observable, que está producido por el movimiento térmico. Este movimiento de los cuerpos en suspensión ha sido observado ya de hecho por los fisiólogos, que lo denominan movimiento molecular browniano. El cuarto artículo, que en este momento es solo un tosco borrador, es una electrodinámica de los cuerpos en movimiento que emplea una modificación de la teoría del espacio y el tiempo.[7] "
― Walter Isaacson , Einstein: His Life and Universe
