Albert Einstein, in Discussion with Robert Oppenheimer in Office Institute for Advanced Study (1946)

Albert Einstein, in Discussion with Robert Oppenheimer in Office Institute for Advanced Study (1946)
by Alfred Eisenstaedt

Less than a year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, NBC collaborated with Albert Einstein to explain to the American public the science behind the atomic weapons. Anthony’s Fine Art has a copy of Einstein’s own, signed script of the series that dramatized his discovery of the iconic E=mc² equation.

Titled “The Atom,” Einstein worked with the New York City Board of Education and  NBC for the program which aired on May 14, 1946, only nine months after the War with Japan ended. There was tremendous popular interest in Einstein, whose work had hugely influenced, Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the Manhattan Project, and applied many of Einstein’s theories to create the atomic bomb.

The script talks about these developments, along with Einstein’s special theory of relativity.  The manuscript is one of only a few that combine Einstein’s own handwriting, his famous equation, and story, and is estimated to be valued at more than $1 million.