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An old purported quote from theoretical physicist Albert Einstein embarked on another lap around the internet in April 2018 as some global citizens fretted about the start of a new world war after the United States, the United Kingdom, and France launched missiles at targets in Syria: This quote (or at least a version of it) dates back to the 1940s, when the first nuclear weapons were being developed. Although Albert Einstein didn't actually develop the atom bomb, his work did make such a device possible: His work was so entwined with the development of nuclear weapons that Time featured a picture of Einstein on their July 1946 cover, in front of an explosion with the equation E=mc2 written in the mushroom cloud: Einstein was, in other words, well aware of how nuclear weapons could affect the world. However, although he did repeatedly warn the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons, this quote doesn't appear to be an exact record of the physicist's words and even the earliest records appear to be anecdotal. In March 1947, reports appeared about an exchange that Einstein reportedly had with a group of friends at a dinner party: Although these reports appear to be more anecdotal than factual, an account of Einstein saying something similar is reportedly documented in the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1949, Liberal Judaism published an interview entitled Einstein at 70 between Einstein and his contemporary Alfred Werner, which purportedly contains a similar exchange. Even if Einstein expressed this exact sentiment, he was not the first to do so. In September 1946, more than six months before the quote was first attributed to Einstein, a reporter attributed this quip to an unnamed Army lieutenant: Einstein may have been paraphrasing something he had heard earlier during his interview with Werner — or this may simply be an anecdote relaying the physicist's attitude toward nuclear weapons. Einstein was, after all, a signatory on the Russel-Einstein Manifesto, which warned about the potentially world-altering devastation of nuclear weaponry: We found several other instances of people making similar statements at around the same time, indicating that this was a popular opinion at that time that was evidently shared by Albert Einstein. However, we have been unable to find a direct quote from the physicist that matches this particular meme.
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