Verified answer

i am sure he had some, he was not a hermit and all

Nuclear theory? You may mean E = Mc^2

Actually, E = Mc^2 was almost just an after thought to his Special Relativity. E = Mc^2 was published some 2 or 3 months after publishing Special Relativity. It wasn't Einstein that worked out the concept behind the method for inducing a critical reaction in Uranium for building a nuclear bomb. There were many other scientists involved with the evolution of the atom bomb project. When asked about the possibility that E = Mc^2 could lead to a functioning nuclear bomb, Einstein did not initially believe that it could. He was certain that it would not be possible to get more energy out of Uranium than what would have to be put into it in order to maintain a critical chain reaction. It was another scientist (Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann who finally detected nuclear fission and Lise Meitner, a refugee in Sweden, who figured out how to maintain the necessary chain reaction that would lead to far greater output energy than input.

The only reason Einstein got involved with the atomic bomb project in the first place, there was good reason to believe that Germany was planning to build their own nuclear bomb. In 1939, he wrote a letter to then President Franklin Roosevelt, informing him of the possibility of a German nuclear bomb. This lead to the US Manhattan secret project. Can you imagine the death and destruction that would have resulted had Hitler got the bomb first? After WW-II, Einstein and the physics community worked very hard to try and keep an arms-race from happening between the USA and Russia. Einstein did everything humanly possible to prevent further development of nuclear weapons. People were not about to listen though. The cold-war occurred and the rest is history.

Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian

www.TEACH12.com

Yes, he did have outside influence.