Editing Cutchogue, New York (section)

== Albert Einstein and Cutchogue ==
An avid sailor, [[Albert Einstein]] once called [[Little Peconic Bay]] in Cutchogue "the most beautiful sailing ground I ever experienced."<ref name="nytimes">{{cite news|last=Kilgannon|first=Corey|title= No Sailor, for Sure, but He Had Relativity Down Cold|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/nyregion/21einstein.html|newspaper=New York Times|access-date=2011-02-27|date=21 July 2007}}</ref> In the summers of 1938 and 1939 he rented a cottage on Old Cove Road, now called West Cove Road, on Nassau Point, and spent many hours alone in a little sailboat he called Tineff ([[Yiddish]] for "worthless"). Albert Einstein was taught to sail on Little Peconic Bay but his sailing skills left much to be desired.<ref name="nytimes" />

While in Cutchogue on August 2, 1939, pipe-smoking Einstein was visited by fellow Jewish physicists from Hungary [[Leó Szilárd]] (who had produced a nuclear chain reaction in a laboratory at [[Columbia University]]) and [[Edward Teller]] (both prompted by [[Niels Bohr]]), and dictated the famous [[Einstein–Szilárd letter|Letter to President Roosevelt]], alerting him to the new developments in [[nuclear physics]] and hinting that the Germans might be working on an atomic bomb, urging him to launch his own program.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lanouette |first1=William |last2=Silard |first2=Bela |title=Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilárd: The Man Behind The Bomb |location=New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |year=1992 |isbn=0-684-19011-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/geniusinshadowsa00lano/page/202 202] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/geniusinshadowsa00lano/page/202 }}</ref> The letter is widely credited with setting in motion the [[Manhattan Project]], the US government effort that built the first [[atomic bomb]].

When Szilárd first explained the concept of a [[nuclear chain reaction]] to him, Einstein gave the famous reply, "Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht!" ("I really never thought of that before").<ref>{{cite book| last=Isaacson| first=Walter| title=Einstein: His Life and Universe| year=2008| publisher=Simon and Schuster| isbn=978-0-7432-6473-0| pages=[https://archive.org/details/einsteinhislifeu0000isaa/page/472 472]| url=https://archive.org/details/einsteinhislifeu0000isaa| url-access=registration| quote=einstein I never thought of that.}}</ref>