Einstein on the Point
Much has been written about Albert Einstein’s summer on Nassau Point and the letter he wrote to President Roosevelt of the possibilities of the use of nuclear fission for a weapon of war.
Einstein was actually a summer resident for three years, 1937-39, renting a house at 1255 West Cove Road. During his stay author and fellow physicist C.P. Snow was a visitor along with two time Academy Award actress Luise Rainer and her husband, playwright Clifford Odets. Einstein apparently flirted with Rainer so much si that Odets had his head cut out of some of the photographs that were taken.
Although the famous letter was signed by Einstein, it was in fact created out of a visit by Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner. The scientists were concerned about Nazi Germany’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. After a visit to the Point in 1939, Szilard said he would draft a letter for Einstein’s signature.
Surprisingly, Einstein was not all that familiar with nuclear fission at that time.
Germany has invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, securing a major source of uranium deposits. Another source was the Belgian Congo. Einstein was friendly with the royal family of the Congo and Szilard at first suggested that the letter would be addressed to them with an indication of what Germany was planning.
After drafting the letter, Szilard had second thoughts and felt that sending the letter to FDR might be better placed. Szilard then made a second trip to the Point with the letter. Edward Teller, who would later be known as the “Father of the Hydrogen Bomb,” drove him out.
Roosevelt immediately established a board to review the potential uses of uranium. It wasn’t until 1942 that the Manhattan Project and the development of the bomb was started. Einstein wrote two other letters to Roosevelt on the subject, in 1940.
David Rothman was in his work clothes and Albert Einstein was dressed for the beach when they posed on this rock at Horseshoe Cove in Nassau Point in the summer of 1939.
MJ Paul spent her summers on the North Fork and as a teenager, played on the beach in front of the property she now owns. She remembers seeing Einstein on the beach, a man with wild hair blowing in the wind. He had not yet achieved his iconic status and was to her and her friend, another vacationer. Einstein kept a boat in the harbor and loved to sail, but he was according to MJ (and others) a terrible sailor. “He would get the boat in the wind, but could never maneuver his way out of it,” she recalls.
Just recently, Time magazine, which had selected Einstein as their man of the Century had a picture of Einstein sitting on a rock with water in the background. The rock is on the beach in Cutchogue harbor, partially on the property owned by MJ Paul and the Burgers, at the bottom of a now overgrown right of way.
The Burger property was formerly owned by Tom Kelly, the man responsible for the Grumman Aviation project to design the Lunar Excursion Module, the device that actually landed on the moon. One can only assume that at some time Kelly and Einstein sat on the same rock. And one can marvel at the synchronicity of two men living 100 yards apart in a different time, one who spent his life developing theories of space and time and the other solving one of the problems of space and time.
There has been some discussion about how much impact Einstein’s letter had, but it is not too far fetched to say that the nuclear age began around the corner on West Cove Road.
Some of the information in this article came from stories written by Nicole Flotteron and Karl Mamola.