EINSTEIN TLS TO STRAUS | ON HIS OPPOSITION TO THE MILITARIZATION OF THE US, 24 FEB 1948

EINSTEIN, ALBERT

Typed letter signed to Lewis S. Strauss, declining permission to use his name for an award, and disapproving of secrecy in research and militarization. Princeton, New Jersey, 24 February, 1948

1 page (11 x 7 ⅞), signed "A. Einstein", on Einstein's blind embossed Princeton letterhead, with holograph correction; creases where previously folded. With a draft carbon of reply from Strauss (not sent).

"I AM A CONVINCED ADVERSARY OF THE MILITARIZATION OF THIS COUNTRY..." Einstein expresses frank opposition to U.S. government efforts towards militarization and to its policy of secrecy around scientific research at the outset of the Cold War, in a letter to one of the original commissioners of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis L. Strauss (1896-1974). The unpublished letter is a reply to one by Strauss (Einstein Archive 58-868), in which he sought permission to name an award in Einstein's honor. Reading in part:

"I feel, however, quite unable to consent to this. I am a convinced adversary of the militarization of this country which is growing rapidly and which is endangering the traditional liberal structure of America.”

Strauss was appointed to the AEC by Truman and served from 1946-1950; he was appointed chair of the commission by Eisenhower in 1953, and was at the center of the heated public debate over the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Present with the letter is a reply drafted but never sent by Strauss, in which he defends militarization as preparation for emergency, and describes secrecy as the result, rather than the cause, of international distrust.

Strauss ultimately persuaded Einstein and the first Albert Einstein Award, endowed by the Strauss family, was given in 1951 to Kurt Gödel and Julian Schwinger. Among the eleven subsequent recipients were Richard Feynman, Leó Szilárd, and Stephen Hawking.

LITERATURE:

Einstein Archive 58-869 (retained carbon)