Why did Einstein write a letter to Franklin Roosevelt?
<answer> With the emergence of Nazis in Germany, Einstein emigrated to the United States. It was the fact that the Nazis had the ability to develop the atomic bomb. It could destroy the whole world. So he warned Franklin D. Roosevelt in his letter. <context> 1. ALBERT Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 in the
German city of Ulm, without any indication that he
was destined for greatness. On the contrary, his
mother thought Albert was a freak. To her, his head
seemed much too large.
2. At the age of two-and-a-half, Einstein still wasn’t
talking. When he finally did learn to speak, he uttered
everything twice. Einstein did not know what to do
with other children, and his playmates called him
“Brother Boring.” So the youngster played by himself
Otto Neugebauer, the historian of ancient mathematics, told a
story about the boy Einstein that he characterises as a “legend”,
but that seems fairly authentic. As he was a late talker, his parents
were worried. At last, at the supper table one night, he broke his
silence to say, “The soup is too hot.” Greatly relieved, his parents
asked why he had never said a word before. Albert replied,
“Because up to now everything was in order.”
much of the time. He especially loved mechanical
toys. Looking at his newborn sister, Maja, he is said
to have said: “Fine, but where are her wheels?”
3. A headmaster once told his father that what
Einstein chose as a profession wouldn’t matter,
because “he’ll never make a success at anything.”
Einstein began learning to play the violin at the
age of six, because his mother wanted him to; he
later became a gifted amateur violinist, maintaining
this skill throughout his life.
4. But Albert Einstein was not a bad pupil. He went
to high school in Munich, where Einstein’s family
had moved when he was 15 months old, and scored
good marks in almost every subject. Einstein hated
the school’s regimentation, and often clashed with
his teachers. At the age of 15, Einstein felt so stifled
there that he left the school for good.
5. The previous year, Albert’s parents had moved to
Milan, and left their son with relatives. After prolonged
discussion, Einstein got his wish to continue his
education in German-speaking Switzerland, in a city
which was more liberal than Munich.
6. Einstein was highly gifted in mathematics and
interested in physics, and after finishing school,
he decided to study at a university in Zurich. But
science wasn’t the only thing that appealed to the
dashing young man with the walrus moustache.
7. He also felt a special interest in a fellow student,
Mileva Maric, whom he found to be a “clever
creature.” This young Serb had come to Switzerland
because the University in Zurich was one of the few
in Europe where women could get degrees. Einstein
saw in her an ally against the “philistines”—
those people in his family and at the university
with whom he was constantly at odds. The couple
fell in love. Letters survive in which they put their
affection into words, mixing science with
tenderness. Wrote Einstein: “How happy and proud
I shall be when we both have brought our work on
relativity to a victorious conclusion.”
In 1900, at the age of 21, Albert Einstein was a
university graduate and unemployed. He worked
as a teaching assistant, gave private lessons and
finally secured a job in 1902 as a technical expert
in the patent office in Bern. While he was supposed
to be assessing other people’s inventions, Einstein
was actually developing his own ideas in secret. He
is said to have jokingly called his desk drawer at
work the “bureau of theoretical physics.”
9. One of the famous papers of 1905 was Einstein’s
Special Theory of Relativity, according to which time
and distance are not absolute. Indeed, two perfectly
accurate clocks will not continue to show the same
time if they come together again after a journey if
one of them has been moving very fast relative to
the other. From this followed the world’s most
famous formula which describes the relationship
between mass and energy:
E = mc2
10. While Einstein was solving the most difficult
problems in physics, his private life was
unravelling. Albert had wanted to marry Mileva right
after finishing his studies, but his mother was
against it. She thought Mileva, who was three years
older than her son, was too old for him. She was
also bothered by Mileva’s intelligence. “She is a
book like you,” his mother said. Einstein put the
wedding off.
11. The pair finally married in January 1903, and had
two sons. But a few years later, the marriage
faltered. Mileva, meanwhile, was losing her
intellectual ambition and becoming an unhappy
housewife. After years of constant fighting, the
couple finally divorced in 1919. Einstein married
his cousin Elsa the same year.
12.Einstein’s new personal chapter coincided with his
rise to world fame. In 1915, he had published his
General Theory of Relativity, which provided a new
interpretation of gravity. An eclipse of the sun in
1919 brought proof that it was accurate. Einstein
had correctly calculated in advance the extent to
which the light from fixed stars would be deflected
through the sun’s gravitational field. The newspapers
proclaimed his work as “a scientific revolution.”
13. Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1921. He was showered with honours and invitations
from all over the world, and lauded by the press.
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 in an uproar. Many of them
had fled from Fascism, just as Einstein had, and
now they were afraid the Nazis could build 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 did not 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 missive 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 an end to the arms buildup and using
his popularity to campaign for peace and democracy.
17. When Einstein died in 1955 at the age of 76, he
was celebrated as a visionary and world citizen as
much as a scientific genius.

