Einstein, the A-bomb and a summer on LI 

Lost in the hype about Long Island connections to the film “Oppenheimer” is a small cottage, tucked on a bluff overlooking Cutchogue Harbor. There are no signs, no historic markers. But had it not been for that little hideaway and the remarkable scientist who rented it in the summer of 1939, Nazi Germany may have beaten us to the atomic bomb.

I’m talking about Albert Einstein.

Einstein enjoyed taking working vacations. In 1939, he summered on what we now call Nassau Point. He desired it for its relative isolation and proximity to both Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay. Einstein loved to sail, and transported his 14-foot sailboat to a marina in Cutchogue for the season. He named the boat “Tinef,” a Yiddish word that loosely translates to “junk.” He may have been the smartest man in the world, but his sailing skills were lacking. According to local legend, he was often rescued in the tricky winds and currents around the North Fork. (The legend is probably an exaggeration, but we do know Einstein was banned from Princeton Lake in New Jersey because of the frequency of rescues.) 

It was a pleasant Long Island summer for Einstein, but dark clouds formed elsewhere. In Germany, scientists had split an atom for the first time. They raced to advance the research, believing that splitting atoms could unleash a chain reaction of awesome destructive power. At Columbia University, a Hungarian scientist named Leo Szilard was conducting similar research. Szilard believed that an “atom bomb” was possible, and desperately wanted to warn President Franklin Roosevelt that the world could not afford to allow Hitler to produce one.

There were two problems. First, Szilard was considered eccentric by many, and had no way of contacting the White House, much less be taken seriously. He needed a credible envoy, namely Einstein. That led to the second problem: Einstein didn’t accept Szilard’s dire warnings. He said that “splitting the atom by bombardment is something akin to shooting birds in the dark in a place where there are only a few birds.” 

On July 16, 1939, Szilard decided to force the issue. He left Columbia with a colleague and headed to Nassau Point. After much meandering — the physicists had no address, just a general sense of where Einstein was — they finally asked for directions from a young boy who led them to a cottage near the end of Old Grove Road. There they found Einstein.

Szilard tried to prove to Einstein that an explosive chain reaction could be produced in uranium layered with graphite by the neutrons released from nuclear fission. Finally, Einstein was convinced, proclaiming, “I never thought of that!”

On Aug. 2, 84 years ago this past week, a letter from Einstein and Szilard warning Roosevelt of Germany’s plan to secure uranium to develop a bomb was finally complete and ready to be sent. 

It would be another two months before Alexander Sachs, a friend of FDR, was ushered into the Oval Office to brief the president on the letter written on the North Fork. That evening, plans were formulated for an ad hoc committee of scientists to focus on the development of an atomic bomb.

That successful effort was led and engineered by J. Robert Oppenheimer. But it began in a nondescript cottage, overlooking a harbor where Albert Einstein loved to sail. The cottage survives, and thanks to the discussions that occurred there as World War II began, so do we all. 

This guest essay reflects the views of former Rep. Steve Israel, who is writing a novel about Albert Einstein and the race to a nuclear bomb.