Lot 1504

ROBERT A. MILLIKAN

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ROBERT A. MILLIKAN

Estimate: $200 - $300

Starting Bid: $100

(0 Bids)

by Alexander Historical Auctions LLC
July 31, 2026 10:00 AM EDT
Live Auction
106 East Main Street, Suite 103
Elkton, MD, US 21921

ROBERT A. MILLIKAN
(1868 - 1953) American physicist and 1926 Nobel Prize winner in Physics ‘for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect' (Nobel Prize Foundation). Important content T.L.S. on CalTech letterhead, 1p. 8vo., Pasadena, Oct. 27, 1942 to Ernest Angell, President of the Council for Democracy (an American interventionist and propaganda organization founded in July 1940 to counter isolationist rhetoric). Millikan, already part of the two-month-old Manhattan Project and clearly understanding that he would need German and Italian scientists in order to develop an atomic bomb, agrees to lobby for exceptions to the anti-enemy alien fervor sweeping the government and nation. He writes, in part: '...although I am very loathe to lend my name to letters in regard to situations which I can know only at long range, I am so much interested in such treatment of enemy aliens as is consistent with the best interests of the war effort that I think I am safe in this case in making an exception to my general rule and allowing my name to be added to those of the other signers of the request which you propose making to Attorney General Francis Biddle...' Fine condition. In the context of the Manhattan Project, 'enemy aliens' were top-tier, mostly Jewish, scientists from Axis nations who had fled fascism. Most prominent among them were Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch.

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Bid Increments
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$0 $99 $10
$100 $499 $20
$500 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 + $10,000