Like @TheOtherHobbes above, I had disbelief about the Einstein quote ("Wasn't Einstein presciently aware of where nuclear fission technology was going?"). But,

Like @TheOtherHobbes above, I had disbelief about the Einstein quote ("Wasn't Einstein presciently aware of where nuclear fission technology was going?"). But, poking around a bit, I came to the same understanding you have. Here's some more of the time line: The quote in the OP (which I can't find online; the Einstein archives at Caltech are, alas, not indexed) about Einstein's skepticism about nuclear energy is dated 1932. The first demonstrations of nuclear fission were years later, in late 1938 and into 1939. And as you said, Einstein is reported to have said, "I had not thought of that." -- regarding the chain reaction. The fabled Einstein-Szilard letter to Franklin Roosevelt, warning about the Nazis getting the atomic bomb, was written in August 1939 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein–Szilárd_letter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein–Szilárd_letter), and then relayed to Roosevelt in October after the flurry of activity due to the Nazis invading Poland had died out.