Valued between 3.7 and 5.6 million euros, the letter of 2 August 1939 with which Albert Einstein (1879-1955) warned the American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the possibility that Germany “built extremely powerful bombs” through nuclear fission, will go up for auction at Christie’s New York on September 10, 2024.
The document, with a note in pencil by the physicist Leo Szilard «Original, not sent!», a copy of the one that was sent instead, is part of the private collection of the late Paul G. Allen (1953-2018) co-founder of Microsoft together with Bill Gates. A relevant document because it set in motion the chain of events that led to the creation of the Manhattan Project, a military research and development program conducted by the USA, UK and Canada which led to the creation of the first atomic bombs during the Second World War.
Together with Einstein’s letter, another jewel of the three auctions organized by Christie’s New York in September, with the title «Gen One: Innovation from the Paul G. Allen Collection», which will disperse the collection of the Museum of Technology created in 2012 by Paul Allen closed permanently, it is the space suit of Ed White, astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first American to perform a spacewalk in June 1965 on the Gemini mission. Estimated between 80 thousand and 120 thousand dollars (74.8 thousand euros and 112.3 thousand euros), it will be sold to the highest bidder on September 10, 2024 in New York.
2024-06-26 23:44:08
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