61. Einstein to Mileva Mari
, Aug. 28, 1921, Einstein family trust correspondence, letter in possession of Bob Cohn. On this trip, in deference to Elsa’s feelings, he decided at the last moment not to stay at Mari’s apartment.
50. Seelig 1956a, 183; Frank 1947, 285; Clark, 743.
51. New York Times , July 31, 1921.
52. Einstein to Felix Frankfurter, May 28, 1921, AEA 36-210.
53. See Ben Halpern, A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann and American Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
54. Boston Herald , May 19, 1921.
55. New York Times , May 18, 1921; Frank 1947, 185; Brian 1996, 129; Illy, 25–32.
56. Hartford (Conn.) Daily Times, May 23, 1921. Also, Hartford Daily Courant , May 23, 1921.
57. Cleveland Press , May 26, 1921.
58. Illy, 185.
59. Fölsing, 51.
60. Einstein, “How I Became a Zionist,” interview in Jüdische Rundschau, June 21, 1921, conducted on May 30, CPAE 7: 57.
61. Einstein to Mileva Mari
62. Einstein to Walther Rathenau, Mar. 8, 1917; Walther Rathenau to Einstein, May 10, 1917.
63. Reiser, 146, describes the Weizmann-Rathenau-Einstein discussions. See also Fölsing, 519; Elon, 364.
64. Weizmann, 288; Elon, 268.
65. Frank 1947, 192.
66. Reiser, 145.
67. Milena Wazeck, “Einstein on the Murder List,” in Renn 2005d, 222; Einstein to Max Planck, July 6, 1922, AEA 19-300.
68. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, July 16, 1922, AEA 21-180.
69. Einstein to Marie Curie, July 4, 1922, AEA 34-773; Marie Curie to Einstein, July 7, 1922, AEA 34-775.
70. Fölsing, 521.
71. Nathan and Norden, 54.
72. Hermann Struck to Pierre Comert, July 12, 1922; Nathan and Norden, 59. (Einstein sent word to League press official Comert through their mutual friend, the painter Struck.)
73. Nathan and Norden, 70.
74. Einstein, “Travel Diary: Japan-Palestine-Spain,” AEA 29-129. All quotes in this section from Einstein’s diary are from this document.
75. Joan Bieder, “Einstein in Singapore,” 2000, www.onthepage.org/outsiders/einstein_in_singapore.htm.
76. Fölsing, 527; Clark, 368; Brian 1996, 143; Frank 1947, 199.
77. Einstein to Hans Albert and Eduard Einstein, Dec. 12, 1922, AEA 75-620.
78. Frank 1947, 200.
79. Einstein, “Travel Diary: Japan-Palestine-Spain,” AEA 29-129.
80. Clark, 477–480; Frank 1947, 200–201; Brian 1966, 145; Fölsing, 528–532.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: NOBEL LAUREATE
1. Svante Arrhenius to Einstein, Sept. 1, 1922, AEA 6-353; Einstein to Svante Arrhenius, Sept. 20, 1922, AEA 6-354.
2. Pais 1982, 506–507; Elzinga, 82–84.
3. R. M. Friedman 2005, 129. See also Friedman’s book, The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), especially chapter 7, “Einstein Must Never Get a Nobel Prize!”; Elzinga; Pais 1982, 502.
4. Pais 1982, 508; Hendrik Lorentz and Dutch colleagues to the Swedish Academy, Jan. 24, 1920; Niels Bohr to the Swedish Academy, Jan. 30, 1920; Elzinga, 134.
5. Brian 1996, 143, citing research and interviews by the writer Irving Wallace for his novel The Prize.
6. Elzinga, 144.
7. R. M. Friedman, 130. See also Pais 1982, 508.
8. Arthur Eddington to the Swedish Academy, Jan. 1, 1921.
9. Pais 1982, 509; R. M. Friedman, 131; Elzinga, 151.
10. Marcel Brillouin to the Swedish Academy, Jan. 1922; Arnold Sommerfeld to the Swedish Academy, Jan. 11, 1922.
11. Christopher Aurivillius to Einstein, Nov. 10, 1922. In another translation and version, the actual Nobel citation sent to Einstein includes the phrase “independent of the value that (after eventual confirmation) may be credited to the relativity and gravitation theory.”
12. Elzinga, 182.
13. Svante Arrhenius, Nobel Prize presentation speech, Dec. 10, 1922, nobel prize.org/physics/laureates/1921/press.html.
14. Einstein, “Fundamental Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity,” Nobel lecture, July 11, 1923.
15. Einstein to Hans Albert and Eduard Einstein, Dec. 22, 1922, AEA 75-620. The full story of the Nobel money was complex and over the years caused considerable disputes, as became clear in letters between Einstein and Mari
16. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Dec. 6, 1917.
17. “All the really great discoveries in theoretical physics—with a few exceptions that stand out because of their oddity—have been made by men under thirty.” Bernstein 1973, 89, emphasis in the original. Einstein finished his work on general relativity when he was 36, but his initial step, what he called his “happiest thought” about the equivalence of gravity and acceleration, came when he was 28. Max Planck was 42 when, in Dec. 1900, he gave his lecture on the quantum.
18. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Aug. 11, 1918; Clive Thompson, “Do Scientists Age Badly?,”Boston Globe , Aug. 17, 2003. John von Neumann, a founder of modern computer science, once claimed that the intellectual powers of mathematicians peaked at the age of 26. One study of a random group of scientists showed that 80 percent did their best work before their early forties.
19. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Apr. 27, 1906.
20. Aphorism for a friend, Sept. 1, 1930, AEA 36-598.
21. Einstein to Hendrik Lorentz, June 17, 1916; Miller 1984, 55–56.
22. Einstein, “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” speech at University of Leiden, May 5, 1920, CPAE 7: 38.
23. Einstein to Karl Schwarzschild, Jan. 9, 1916.
24. Einstein, “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” speech at University of Leiden, May 5, 1920, CPAE 7: 38.
25. Greene 2004, 74.
26. Janssen 2004, 22. Einstein made this clearer in his 1921 Princeton lectures, but also continued to say, “It appears probable that Mach was on the right road in his thought that inertia depends on a mutual action of matter.” Einstein 1922a, chapter 4.
27. Einstein, “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” speech at University of Leiden, May 5, 1920, CPAE 7: 38.
28. Einstein, “On the Present State of the Problem of Specific Heats,” Nov. 3, 1911, CPAE 3: 26; the quote about “really exist in nature” appears on p. 421 of the English translation of vol. 3.
29. Robinson, 84–85.
30. Holton and Brush, 435.
31. Lightman 2005, 151.
32. Clark 202; George de Hevesy to Ernest Rutherford, Oct. 14, 1913; Einstein 1949b, 47.
33. Einstein, “Emission and Absorption of Radiation in Quantum Theory,” July 17, 1916, CPAE 6: 34; Einstein, “On the Quantum Theory of Radiation,” after Aug. 24, 1916, CPAE 6: 38, and also in Physikalische Zeitschrift 18 (1917). See Overbye, 304–306; Rigden, 141; Pais 1982, 404–412; Fölsing, 391; Clark, 265; Daniel Kleppner, “Rereading Einstein on Radiation,”Physics Today (Feb. 2005): 30. In addition, in 1917 Einstein wrote a paper on the quantization of energy in mechanical theories called “On the Quantum Theorem of Sommerfeld and Epstein.” It shows the problems that the classical quantum theory encountered when applied to mechanical systems we would now call chaotic. It was cited by earlier pioneers of quantum mechanics, but has since been largely forgotten. A good description of it and its importance in the development of quantum mechanics is Douglas Stone, “Einstein’s Unknown Insight and the Problem of Quantizing Chaos,”Physics Today (Aug. 2005).
34. Einstein to Michele Besso, Aug. 11, 1916.
35. I am grateful to Professor Douglas Stone of Yale for help with the wording of this.
36. Einstein to Michele Besso, Aug. 24, 1916.
37. Einstein, “On the Quantum Theory of Radiation,” after Aug. 24, 1916, CPAE 6: 38.
38. Einstein to Max Born, Jan. 27, 1920.
39. Einstein to Max Born, Apr. 29, 1924, AEA 8-176.
40. Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein,” in Schilpp, 205–206; Clark, 202.
41. Einstein to Niels Bohr, May 2, 1920; Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, May 4, 1920.
42. Niels Bohr to Einstein, Nov. 11, 1922, AEA 8-73.
43. Fölsing, 441.
44. John Wheeler, “Memoir,” in French, 21; C. P. Snow, “Albert Einstein,” in French, 3.
45. Bohr’s quip is often quoted. One source I can find for it, in a less pithy fashion, is from Bohr’s own descriptions of being with Einstein at the 1927 Solvay Conference: “Einstein mockingly asked us whether we could really believe that the providential authorities took recourse to dice-playing (‘. . . ob der liebe Gott würfelt’), to which I replied by pointing at the great caution, already called for by ancient thinkers, in ascribing attributes to Providence in everyday language.” Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein,” in Schilpp, 211. Werner Heisenberg, who was at these discussions, also recounts the quip: “To which Bohr could only answer: ‘But still, it cannot be for us to tell God how he is to run the world.’ ” Heisenberg 1989, 117.
46. Holton and Brush, 447; Pais 1982, 436.
47. Pais 1982, 438. Wolfgang Pauli recalled, “In a discussion at the physics meeting in Innsbruck in the autumn of 1924, Einstein proposed to search for interference and diffraction phenomena with molecular beams.” Pauli, 91.
48. Einstein, “Quantum Theory of Single-Atom Gases,” part 1, 1924, part 2, 1925. This quote occurs in part 2, section 7. The manuscript of this paper was found in Leiden in 2005.
49. I am grateful to Professor Douglas Stone of Yale for helping to craft this section and explaining the fundamental importance of what Einstein did. A theoretical condensed matter physicist, he is writing a book on Einstein’s contributions to quantum mechanics and how far-reaching they really were, despite Einstein’s later rejection of the theory. According to Stone, “99% of the credit for this fundamental discovery called Bose-Einstein condensation is really owed to Einstein. Bose did not even realize that he had counted in a different way.” Regarding the Nobel Prize for achieving Bose-Einstein condensation, see www.nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2001/public.html.
50. Bernstein 1973, 217; Martin J. Klein, “Einstein and the Wave-Particle Duality,”Natural Philosopher (1963): 26.
51. Max Born, “Einstein’s Statistical Theories,” in Schilpp, 174.
52. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, Feb. 28, 1925, AEA 22-2.
53. Don Howard, “Spacetime and Separability,” 1996, AEA Cedex H; Howard 1985; Howard 1990b, 61–64; Howard 1997. The 1997 essay identifies the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer as an influence on Einstein’s theories of spatial separability.
54. Bernstein 1996a, 138.
55. More precisely, it is the square of the wave function that is proportional to the probability. Holton and Brush, 452.
56. Einstein to Hedwig Born, Mar. 7, 1926, AEA 8-266; Einstein to Max Born, Dec. 4, 1926, AEA 8-180.
57. aip.org/history/heisenberg/p07.htm; Born 2005, 85.
58. Max Born to Einstein, July 15, 1925, AEA 8-177; Einstein to Hedwig Born, Mar. 7, 1926, AEA 8-178; Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Sept. 25, 1925, AEA 10-116.
59. Werner Heisenberg to Einstein, June 10, 1927, AEA 12-174.
60. Heisenberg 1971, 63; Gerald Holton, “Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein,”Physics Today (2000), www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-7/p38.html.
61. Frank 1947, 216.
62. Aage Petersen, “The Philosophy of Niels Bohr,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Sept. 1963): 12.
63. Dugald Murdoch, Niels Bohr’s Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 47, citing the Niels Bohr Archives: Scientific Correspondence, 11: 2.
64. Einstein, “To the Royal Society on Newton’s Bicentennial,” Mar. 1927.
65. Einstein to Michele Besso, Apr. 29, 1917; Michele Besso to Einstein, May 5, 1917; Einstein to Michele Besso, May 13, 1917. For a good analysis, see Gerald Holton, “Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality,” in Holton 1973, 240.
66. “Belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.” Einstein, “Maxwell’s Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality,” 1931, in Einstein 1954, 266.
67. Einstein to Max Born, Jan. 27, 1920.
68. Einstein’s introduction to Rudolf Kayser, Spinoza (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946). Kayser was married to Einstein’s stepdaughter and wrote a semi-authorized memoir of Einstein.
69. Fölsing, 703–704; Einstein to Fritz Reiche, Aug. 15, 1942, AEA 20-19.
70. Einstein to Max Born, Dec. 4, 1926, AEA 8-180.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: UNIFIED FIELD THEORIES
1. Einstein, “Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity,” Nobel lecture, July 11, 1923. Available at nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes. This section draws from these papers on Einstein’s unified field quest: van Dongen 2002, courtesy of the author; Tilman Sauer, “Dimensions of Einstein’s Unified Field Theory Program,” forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to Einstein, courtesy of the author; Norton 2000; Goenner 2004.
2. Einstein, “The Principles of Research,” a toast in honor of Max Planck, Apr. 26, 1918, CPAE 7: 7.
3. Einstein to Hermann Weyl, Apr. 6, 1918.
4. Einstein to Hermann Weyl, Apr. 8, 1918. In a letter to Heinrich Zangger, May 8, 1918, Einstein called Weyl’s theory “ingenious” but “physically incorrect.” It did, however, later become one of the recognized precursors of Yang-Mills gauge theory.
5. My description of the work of Kaluza and Klein relies on Krauss, 94–104, which is an engaging book on the role extra dimensions have played in explaining the universe.
6. Einstein to Theodor Kaluza, Apr. 21, 1919.
7. Einstein to Niels Bohr, Jan. 10, 1923, AEA 8-74.
8. Einstein to Hermann Weyl, May 26, 1923, AEA 24-83.
9. Einstein, “On the General Theory of Relativity,” Prussian Academy, Feb. 15, 1923.
10. New York Times , Mar. 27, 1923.
11. Pais 1982, 466; Einstein, “On the General Theory of Relativity,” the Prussian Academy, Feb. 15, 1923.
12. Einstein, “Unified Field Theory of Gravity and Electricity,” July 25, 1925; Hoffmann 1972, 225.
13. Steven Weinberg, “Einstein’s Mistakes,”Physics Today (Nov. 2005).
14. Einstein, “On the Unified Theory,” Jan. 30, 1929.
15. Einstein to Michele Besso, Jan. 5, 1929, AEA 7-102.
16. New York Times , Nov. 4, 1928; Vallentin, 160.
17. Clark, 494;London Daily Chronicle , Jan. 26, 1929.
18. “Einstein’s Field Theory,”Time , Feb. 18, 1929. Einstein also appeared on Time’s cover on Apr. 4, 1938, July 1, 1946, and posthumously Feb. 19, 1979, and Dec. 31, 1999. Elsa appeared on the cover Dec. 22, 1930.
19. Fölsing, 605; Clark, 496; Brian 1996, 174.
20. New York Times , Feb. 4, 1929.
21. Einstein to Maja Winteler-Einstein, Oct. 22, 1929, AEA 29-409.
22. Wolfgang Pauli to Einstein, Dec. 19, 1929, AEA 19-163.
23. New York Times , Jan. 23, Oct. 26, 1931; Einstein to Wolfgang Pauli, Jan. 22, 1932, AEA 19-169.
24. Goenner 2004; Elie Cartan, “Absolute Parallelism and the Unified Theory,” Review Metaphysic Morale (1931).
25. For a two-minute home movie of the conference shot by Irving Langmuir, the 1932 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, see www.maxborn.net/index.php? page=filmnews.
26. Einstein to Hendrik Lorentz, Sept. 13, 1927, AEA 16-613.
27. Pauli, 121.
28. John Archibald Wheeler and Wojciech Zurek, Quantum Theory and Measurement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 7.
29. Fölsing, 589; Pais 1982, 445, from Proceedings of the Fifth Solvay Conference.
30. Heisenberg 1989, 116.
31. Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein,” in Schilpp, 211–219, offers a detailed and loving description of the Solvay and other discussions; Otto Stern recollections, in Pais 1982, 445; Fölsing, 589.
32. “Reports and Discussions,” in Solvay Conference of 1927 (Paris: GauthierVillars, 1928), 102. See also Travis Norsen, “Einstein’s Boxes,”American Journal of Physics, vol. 73, Feb. 2005, pp. 164-176.
33. Louis de Broglie, “My Meeting with Einstein,” in French, 15.
34. Einstein, “Speech to Professor Planck,” Max Planck award ceremony, June 28, 1929.
35. Léon Rosenfeld, “Niels Bohr in the Thirties,” in Rozental 1967, 132.
36. Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein,” in Schilpp, 225–229; Pais 1982, 447–448. I am grateful to Murray Gell-Mann and David Derbes for the phrasing of this section.
37. Einstein, “Maxwell’s Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality,” 1931, in Einstein 1954, 266.
38. Einstein, “Reply to Criticisms” (1949), in Schilpp, 669.
39. A fuller discussion of Einstein’s realism is in chapter 20 of this book. For contrasting views on this issue, see Gerald Holton, “Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality,” in Holton 1973, 219, 245 (he argues that there is a very clear change in Einstein’s philosophy: “For a scientist to change his philosophical beliefs so fundamentally is rare”); Fine, 123 (he argues that “Einstein underwent a philosophical conversion, turning away from his positivist youth and becoming deeply committed to realism”); Howard 2004 (which argues, “Einstein was never an ardent ‘Machian’ positivist, and he was never a scientific realist”). This section also draws on van Dongen 2002 (he argues, “Broadly speaking, one can say that Einstein moved from Mach’s empiricism, earlier in his career, to a strong realist position later on”). See also Anton Zeilinger, “Einstein and Absolute Reality,” in Brockman, 121–131.
40. Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” the Herbert Spencer lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933, in Einstein 1954, 270.
41. Einstein 1949b, 89.
42. Einstein, “Principles of Theoretical Physics,” inaugural address to the Prussian Academy, 1914, in Einstein 1954, 221.
43. Einstein to Hermann Weyl, May 26, 1923, AEA 24-83.
44. John Barrow, “Einstein as Icon,”Nature , Jan. 20, 2005, 219. See also Norton 2000.
45. Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” the Herbert Spencer lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933, in Einstein 1954, 274.
46. Steven Weinberg, “Einstein’s Mistakes,”Physics Today (Nov. 2005): “Since Einstein’s time, we have learned to distrust this sort of aesthetic criterion. Our experience in elementary-particle physics has taught us that any term in the field equations of physics that is allowed by fundamental principles is likely to be there in the equations.”
47. Einstein, “Latest Developments of the Theory of Relativity,” May 23, 1931, the third of three Rhodes Lectures at Oxford, this one coming on the day he was awarded his honorary doctorate there. Reprinted in the Oxford University Gazette, June 3, 1931.
48. Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” Oxford, June 10, 1933, in Einstein 1954, 270.
49. Marcia Bartusiak, “Beyond the Big Bang,”National Geographic (May 2005). Elsa’s quip is widely reported but never fully sourced. See Clark, 526.
50. Associated Press, Dec. 30, 1930.
51. Einstein to Michele Besso, Mar. 1, 1931, AEA 7-125.
52. Greene 2004, 279: “That would certainly have ranked among the greatest discoveries—it may have been the greatest discovery—of all time.” See also Edward W. Kolb, “The Greatest Discovery Einstein Didn’t Make,” in Brock-man, 201.
53. Einstein,“On the Cosmological Problem of the General Theory of Relativity,” Prussian Academy, 1931; “Einstein Drops Idea of ‘Closed’ Universe,”New York Times , Feb. 5, 1931.
54. Einstein 1916, appendix IV (first appears in the 1931 edition).
55. Gamow 1970, 149.
56. Steven Weinberg, “The Cosmological Constant Problem,” in Morris Loeb Lectures in Physics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1988); Steven Weinberg, “Einstein’s Mistakes,”Physics Today (Nov. 2005); Aczel 1999, 167; Krauss 117; Greene 2004, 275–278; Dennis Overbye, “A Famous Einstein ‘Fudge’ Returns to Haunt Cosmology,”New York Times , May 26, 1998; Jeremy Bernstein, “Einstein’s Blunder,” in Bernstein 2001, 86–89.
57. Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve and Michael Turner of the University of Chicago have argued that an explanation of the universe requires use of a cosmological term that is different from the one Einstein added into his field equations and then discarded. Their version arises from quantum mechanics, not general relativity, and is based on the premise that even “empty” space does not necessarily possess zero energy. See Krauss and Turner, “A Cosmic Conundrum,”Scientific American (Sept. 2004).
58. “Einstein’s Cosmological Constant Predicts Dark Energy,”Universe Today , Nov. 22, 2005. This particular headline was based on a research project known as the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). According to a press release from Caltech, SNLS “aims to discover and examine 700 distant supernovae to map out the history of the expansion of the universe. The survey confirms earlier discoveries that the expansion of the universe proceeded more slowly in the past and is speeding up today. However, the crucial step forward is the discovery that Einstein’s 1917 explanation of a constant energy term for empty space fits the new supernova data very well.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TURNING FIFTY
1. Vallentin, 163.
2. New York Times , Mar. 15, 1929.
3. Reiser, 205.
4. Reiser, 207; Frank 1947, 223; Fölsing, 611.
5. www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/caputh-e.html; Jan Otakar Fischer, “Einstein’s Haven,”International Herald Tribune , June 30, 2005; Fölsing, 612; Einstein to Maja Einstein, Oct. 22, 1929; Erika Britzke, “Einstein in Caputh,” in Renn 2005d, 272.
6. Vallentin, 168.
7. Reiser, 221.
8. Einstein to Betty Neumann, Nov. 5 and 13, 1923. These letters are part of a set given to Hebrew University and are not catalogued in the Einstein archives.
9. Einstein to Betty Neumann, Jan. 11, 1924; Pais 1982, 320.
10. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, Aug. 14, 1924, part of sealed correspondence released in 2006; Einstein to Betty Neumann, Aug. 24, 1924. I am grateful to Ze’ev Rosenkranz of the Einstein archives in Jerusalem and Caltech for helping me find and translate these letters.
11. Einstein to Ethel Michanowski, May 16 and 24, 1931, in private collection.
12. Einstein to Elsa Einstein and Einstein to Margot Einstein, May 1931, part of sealed correspondence released in 2006. I am grateful for the help of Ze’ev Rosenkranz of the Einstein Papers Project for providing context and translation.
13. Einstein to Margot Einstein, May 1931, sealed correspondence released in 2006.
14. This is a sentiment that lasted through his life. Einstein to Eugenia Anderman, June 2, 1953, AEA 59-097: “You must be aware that most men (and many women) are by nature not monogamous. This nature is asserted more forcefully when tradition stands in the way.”
15. Fölsing, 617; Highfield and Carter, 208; Marianoff, 186. (Note: Fölsing spells her name Lenbach, which is not correct according to the Einstein archive copies.)
16. Elsa Einstein to Hermann Struck, 1929.
17. George Dyson, “Helen Dukas: Einstein’s Compass,” in Brockman, 85–94 (George Dyson was the son of Freeman Dyson, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and Dukas worked as his babysitter after Einstein died). See also Abraham Pais, “Eulogy for Helen Dukas,” 1982, American Institute of Physics Library, College Park, Md.
18. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Mar. 4, 1930, AEA 21-202.
19. Einstein to Mileva Mari
20. Ibid.
21. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, Feb. 2, 1927, AEA 75-738, and Feb. 23, 1927, AEA 75-739.
22. Highfield and Carter, 227.
23. Einstein to Eduard Einstein, Dec. 23, 1927, AEA 75-748.
24. Einstein to Eduard Einstein, July 10, 1929, AEA 75-782.
25. Eduard Einstein to Einstein, May 1, Dec. 10, 1926. Both are in sealed correspondence folders that were released in 2006 and not catalogued in the archives.
26. Eduard Einstein to Einstein, Dec. 24, 1935. Also in the sealed correspondence folders released in 2006 and not catalogued in the archives.
27. Sigmund Freud to Sandor Ferenczi, Jan. 2, 1927. For an analysis of the interwoven influence of Freud and Einstein, see Panek 2004.
28. Viereck, 374; Sayen, 134. See also Bucky, 113: “I have many doubts about some of his theories. I think Freud placed too much emphasis on dream theories. After all, a junk closet does not bring everything forth . . . On the other hand, Freud was very interesting to read and he was also very witty. I certainly do not mean to be overly critical.”
29. Einstein to Eduard Einstein, 1936 or 1937, AEA 75-939.
30. Einstein to Eduard Einstein, Feb. 5, 1930, not catalogued; Highfield and Carter, 229, 234. See translation in epigraph source note on p. 565.
31. Einstein to Eduard Einstein, Dec. 23, 1927, AEA 75-748.
32. Einstein to Mileva Mari
33. Marianoff, 12. He apparently mistakes the year of his own wedding, as he refers to the fall of 1929 when it was in fact just before Einstein’s second visit to the United States in late 1930. Barbara Wolff of the Einstein archives at Hebrew University says she believes this anecdote to be embellished.
34. Elsa Einstein to Antonina Vallentin, undated, in Vallentin, 196.
35. Einstein, Trip Diary to the U.S.A., Nov. 30, 1930, AEA 29-134.
36. “Einstein Works at Sea,”New York Times , Dec. 5, 1930.
37. “Einstein Puzzled by Our Invitations,”New York Times , Nov. 23, 1930.
38. “Einstein Consents to Face Reporters,”New York Times , Dec. 10, 1930.
39. Einstein, Trip Diary, Dec. 11, 1930, AEA 29-134.
40. “Einstein on Arrival Braves Limelight for Only 15 Minutes,”New York Times , Dec. 12, 1930.
41. “He Is Worth It,”Time , Dec. 2, 1930.
42. Brian 1996, 204; “Einstein Receives Keys to the City,”New York Times , Dec. 14, 1930.
43. “Einstein Saw His Statue in Church Here,”New York Times , Dec. 28, 1930.
44. George Sylvester Viereck, profile of John D. Rockefeller, Liberty , Jan. 9, 1932; Nathan and Norden, 157. Einstein also mentions his visit to Rockefeller in a letter to Max Born, May 30, 1933, AEA 8-192.
45. Einstein, New History Society speech, Dec. 14, 1930, in Nathan and Norden, 117; “Einstein Advocates Resistance to War,”New York Times , Dec. 15, 1930, p. 1; Fölsing, 635.
46. “Einstein Considers Seeking a New Home,” Associated Press, Dec. 16, 1930.
47. Einstein,Trip Diary, Dec. 15–31, 1931, AEA 29-134; “Einstein Welcomed by Leaders of Panama,”New York Times , Dec. 24, 1930; “Einstein Heard on Radio,”New York Times , Dec. 26, 1930.
48. Brian 1996, 206.
49. Hedwig Born to Einstein, Feb. 22, 1931, AEA 8-190.
50. Amos Fried to Robert Millikan, Mar. 4, 1932; Robert Millikan to Amos Fried, Mar. 8, 1932; cited in Clark, 551.
51. Brian 1996, 216.
52. Seelig 1956a, 194. At the movie, Einstein “stared bewildered, utterly absorbed, like a child at a Christmas pantomime,” according to a vivid report by Cissy Patterson, an ambitious young journalist who had also described him sun-bathing nude. She would later own the Washington Herald. Brian 1996, 214, citing Washington Herald, Feb. 10, 1931.
53. Einstein address, Feb. 16, 1931, in Nathan and Norden, 122.
54. “At Grand Canyon Today,”New York Times , Feb. 28, 1931; Einstein at Hopi House, www.hanksville.org/sand/Einstein.html.
55. “Einstein in Chicago Talks for Pacifism,”New York Times , Mar. 4, 1931; Nathan and Norden, 123.
56. Fölsing, 641; Einstein talk to War Resisters’ League, Mar. 1, 1931, in Nathan and Norden, 123.
57. Nathan and Norden, 124.
58. Marianoff, 184.
59. Einstein to Mrs. Chandler and the Youth Peace Federation, Apr. 5, 1931; Nathan and Norden, 124; Fölsing, 642. For an image of the note, see www.alberteinstein.info/db/ViewImage.do?DocumentID=21007&Page=1.
60. Einstein interview with George Sylvester Viereck, Jan. 1931, in Nathan and Norden, 125.
61. Einstein to Women’s International League, Jan. 4, 1928, AEA 48-818.
62. Einstein to London chapter of War Resisters’ International, Nov. 25, 1928; Einstein to the League for the Organization of Progress, Dec. 26, 1928.
63. Einstein statement, Feb. 23, 1929, in Nathan and Norden, 95.
64. Manifesto of the Joint Peace Council, Oct. 12, 1930; Nathan and Norden, 113.
65. Einstein, “The 1932 Disarmament Conference,”The Nation , Sept. 23, 1931; Einstein 1954, 95; Einstein, “The Road to Peace,”New York Times , Nov. 22, 1931.
66. Nathan and Norden, 168; “Einstein Assails Arms Conference,”New York Times , May 24, 1931.
67. Einstein to Kurt Hiller, Aug. 21, 1931, AEA 46-693; Nathan and Norden, 143.
68. Jerome, 144. See in particular chapter 11, “How Red?”
69. Einstein, “The Road to Peace,”New York Times , Nov. 22, 1931; Einstein 1954, 95.
70. Thomas Bucky interview with Denis Brian, in Brian 1996, 229.
71. Einstein to Henri Barbusse, June 1, 1932, AEA 34-543; Nathan and Norden, 175–179.
72. Einstein to Isaac Don Levine, after Jan. 1, 1925, AEA 28-29.00 (for image of handwritten document, see www.alberteinstein.info/db/ViewImage.do? DocumentID=21154&Page=1; Roger Baldwin and Isaac Don Levine, Letters from Russian Prisons (New York: Charles Boni, 1925); Robert Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union (New York: Columbia, 2001), 180.
73. Einstein to Isaac Don Levine, Mar. 15, 1932, AEA 50-922.
74. Einstein, “The World As I See It,” originally published in 1930, reprinted in Einstein 1954, 8.
75. “Ask Pardon for Eight Negroes,”New York Times , Mar. 27, 1932; “Einstein Hails Negro Race,”New York Times , Jan. 19, 1932, citing an Einstein piece in the forthcoming Crisis magazine of Feb. 1932.
76. Brian 1996, 219.
77. Einstein to Chaim Weizmann, Nov. 25, 1929, AEA 33-411.
78. Einstein, “Letter to an Arab,” Mar. 15, 1930; Einstein 1954, 172; Clark, 483; Fölsing, 623.
79. Einstein to Sigmund Freud, July 30, 1932, www.cis.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Einstein.html.
80. Sigmund Freud to Einstein, Sept. 1932, www.cis.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Einstein.html.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: EINSTEIN’S GOD
1. Charles Kessler, ed., The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (New York: Grove Press, 2002), 322 (entry for June 14, 1927); Jammer 1999, 40. Jammer 1999 provides a thorough look at the biographical, philosophical, and scientific aspects of Einstein’s religious thought.
2. Einstein, “Ueber den Gegenwertigen Stand der Feld-Theorie,” 1929, AEA 4-38.
3. Neil Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck: Poet and Propagandist (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1968); George S. Viereck, My Flesh and Blood: A Lyric Autobiography with Indiscreet Annotations (New York: Liveright, 1931).
4. Viereck, 372–378; Viereck first published the interview as “What Life Means to Einstein,”Saturday Evening Post , Oct. 26, 1929. I have generally followed the translation and paraphrasing in Brian 2005, 185–186 and in Calaprice. See also Jammer 1999, 22.
5. Einstein, “What I Believe,” originally written in 1930 and recorded for the German League for Human Rights. It was published as “The World As I See It” in Forum and Century, 1930; in Living Philosophies (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1931); in Einstein 1949a, 1–5; in Einstein 1954, 8–11. The versions are all translated somewhat differently and have slight revisions. For an audio version, see www.yu.edu/libraries/digital_library/einstein/credo.html.
6. Einstein to M. Schayer, Aug. 5, 1927, AEA 48-380; Dukas and Hoff-mann, 66.
7. Einstein to Phyllis Wright, Jan. 24, 1936, AEA 52-337.
8. “Passover,”Time , May 13, 1929.
9. Einstein to Herbert S. Goldstein, Apr. 25, 1929, AEA 33-272; “Einstein Believes in Spinoza’s God,”New York Times , Apr. 25, 1929; Gerald Holton, “Einstein’s Third Paradise,”Daedalus (fall 2002): 26–34. Goldstein was the rabbi of the Institutional Synagogue in Harlem and the longtime president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
10. Rabbi Jacob Katz of the Montefiore Congregation, quoted in Time, May 13, 1929.
11. Calaprice, 214; Einstein to Hubertus zu Löwenstein, ca. 1941, in Löwenstein’s book, Towards the Further Shore (London: Victor Gollancz, 1968), 156.
12. Einstein to Joseph Lewis, Apr. 18, 1953, AEA 60-279.
13. Einstein to unknown recipient, Aug. 7, 1941, AEA 54-927.
14. Guy Raner Jr. to Einstein, June 10, 1948, AEA 57-287; Einstein to Guy Raner Jr., July 2, 1945, AEA 57-288; Einstein to Guy Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, AEA 57-289.
15. Einstein, “Religion and Science,”New York Times , Nov. 9, 1930, reprinted in Einstein 1954, 36–40. See also Powell.
16. Einstein, speech to the Symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Sept. 10, 1941, reprinted in Einstein 1954, 41; “Sees No Personal God,” Associated Press, Sept. 11, 1941. A yellowed clipping of this story was given to me by Orville Wright, who was a young naval officer at the time and had kept it for sixty years; it had been passed around his ship and had notations from various sailors saying such things as, “Tell me, what do you think of this?”
17. “In the mind there is no absolute or free will, but the mind is determined by this or that volition, by a cause, which is also determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so on ad infinitum.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics , part 2, proposition 48.
18. Einstein, statement to the Spinoza Society of America, Sept. 22, 1932.
19. Sometimes translated as “A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.” I cannot find this quote in Schopenhauer’s writings. The sentiment, nevertheless, comports with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. He said, for example, “A man’s life, in all its events great and small, is as necessarily predetermined as are the movements of a clock.” Schopenhauer,“On Ethics,” in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2:227.
20. Einstein, “The World As I See It,” in Einstein 1949a and Einstein 1954.
21. Viereck, 375.
22. Max Born to Einstein, Oct. 10, 1944, in Born 2005, 150.
23. Hedwig Born to Einstein, Oct. 9, 1944, in Born 2005, 149.
24. Viereck, 377.
25. Einstein to the Rev. Cornelius Greenway, Nov. 20, 1950, AEA 28-894.
26. Sayen, 165.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE REFUGEE
1. Einstein trip diary, Dec. 6, 1931, AEA 29-136.
2. Einstein trip diary, Dec. 10, 1931, AEA 29-141.
3. Flexner, 381–382; Batterson, 87–89.
4. Abraham Flexner to Robert Millikan, July 30, 1932, AEA 38-007; Abraham Flexner to Louis Bamberger, Feb. 13, 1932, in Batterson, 88.
5. Einstein trip diary, Feb. 1, 1932, AEA 29-141; Elsa Einstein to Rosika Schwimmer, Feb. 3, 1932; Nathan and Norden, 163.
6. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Apr. 3, 1932, AEA 10-227.
7. Clark, 542, citing Sir Roy Harrod.
8. Flexner, 383.
9. Einstein to Abraham Flexner, July 30, 1932; Batterson, 149; Brian 1996, 232.
10. Elsa Einstein to Robert Millikan, June 22, 1932, AEA 38-002.
11. Robert Millikan to Abraham Flexner, July 25, 1932, AEA 38-006; Abraham Flexner to Robert Millikan, July 30, 1932, AEA 38-007; Batterson, 114.
12. “Einstein Will Head School Here,”New York Times , Oct. 11, 1932, p. 1.
13. Frank 1947, 226.
14. Woman Patriot Corporation memo to the U.S. State Department, Nov. 22, 1932, contained in Einstein’s FBI file, section 1, available at foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/einstein.htm. This episode is nicely detailed in Jerome, 6–11.
15. Reprinted in Einstein 1954, 7. Einstein’s relationship with Louis Lochner of United Press is detailed in Marianoff, 137.
16. New York Times , Dec. 4, 1932.
17. “Einstein’s Ultimatum Brings a Quick Visa,” “Consul Investigated Charge,” and “Women Made Complaint,” all in New York Times, Dec. 6, 1932; Sayen, 6; Jerome, 10.
18. This was uncovered by Richard Alan Schwartz of Florida International University, who did the original research into Einstein’s FBI files. The versions he received were redacted by 25 percent. Fred Jerome was able to get fuller versions under the Freedom of Information Act, which he used in his book. Schwartz’s articles on the topic include “The F.B.I. and Dr. Einstein,”The Nation , Sept. 3, 1983, 168–173, and “Dr. Einstein and the War Department,” Isis (June 1989): 281–284. See also Dennis Overbye, “New Details Emerge from the Einstein Files,”New York Times , May 7, 2002.
19. “Einstein Resumes Packing,”New York Times , Dec. 7, 1932; “Einstein Embarks, Jests about Quiz” and “Stimson Regrets Incident,”New York Times , Dec. 11, 1932.
20. Einstein (from Caputh) to Maurice Solovine, Nov. 20, 1932, AEA 21-218; Frank 1947, 226; Pais 1982, 318, 450. Both Frank and Pais recount Einstein’s prophetic words to Elsa about Caputh, and each likely heard the anecdote directly from them. Pais, among others, says they carried thirty pieces of luggage. Elsa, in her call to reporters after the U.S. consulate interrogation, said she had packed six trunks, but she may not have been finished packing, or may have been referring only to trunks, or may have understated the number so as not to inflame German authorities (or Pais may have been wrong). Barbara Wolff of the Einstein archives in Jerusalem thinks the tale that she packed thirty trunks is a fabrication, as is the tale that Einstein told her to “take a very good look at it” when they left Caputh (private correspondence with the author).
21. “Einstein Will Urge Amity with Germany,”New York Times , Jan. 8, 1933.
22. Nathan and Norden, 208; Clark, 552.
23. “Einstein’s Address on World Situation” (text of speech) and “Einstein Traces Slump to Machine,”New York Times , Jan. 24, 1933.
24. Fölsing, 659.
25. Einstein to Margarete Lebach, Feb. 27, 1933, AEA 50-834.
26. Evelyn Seeley, interview with Einstein, New York World-Telegram , Mar. 11, 1933; Brian 1996, 243.
27. Marianoff, 142–144.
28. Michelmore, 180. Michelmore got much of his material from Hans Albert Einstein, though this quote may have been exaggerated.
29. Einstein, Statement against the Hitler regime, Mar. 22, 1933, AEA 28-235.
30. Einstein to the Prussian Academy, Mar. 28, 1933, AEA 36–55.
31. Max Planck to Einstein, Mar. 31, 1933.
32. Max Planck to Heinrich von Ficker, Mar. 31, 1933, cited in Fölsing, 663.
33. Prussian Academy declaration, Apr. 1, 1933. The exchanges are reprinted in Einstein 1954, 205–209.
34. Einstein to Prussian Academy, Apr. 5, 1933.
35. Frank 1947, 232.
36. Prussian Academy to Einstein, Apr. 7 and 13, 1933; Einstein to Prussian Academy, Apr. 12, 1933.
37. Max Planck to Einstein, Mar. 31, 1933, AEA 19-389; Einstein to Max Planck, Apr. 6, 1933, AEA 19-392.
38. Einstein to Max Born, May 30, 1933, AEA 8-192; Max Born to Einstein, June 2, 1933, AEA 8-193.
39. Einstein to Fritz Haber, May 19, 1933, AEA 12-378. For a good profile of the Einstein-Haber relationship and this final episode, see Stern, 156–160. Also very useful is John Cornwall, Hitler’s Scientists (New York: Viking, 2003), 137–139.
40. Fritz Haber to Einstein, Aug. 1, 1933, AEA 385; Einstein to Fritz Haber, Aug. 8, 1933, AEA 12-388.
41. Einstein to Willem de Sitter, Apr. 5, 1933, AEA 20-575; Frank 1947, 232; Clark, 573.
42. Vallentin, 231.
43. Frank 1947, 240–242.
44. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Apr. 23, 1933, AEA 21-223.
45. Einstein to Paul Langevin, May 5, 1933, AEA 15-394.
46. “Einstein Will Go to Madrid,”New York Times , Apr. 11, 1933; Abraham Flexner to Einstein, Apr. 13, 1933, AEA 38-23; Pais 1982, 493.
47. Abraham Flexner to Einstein, Apr. 26 and 28, 1933, AEA 38-25, 38-26.
48. “Einstein Lists Contracts; Princeton, Paris, Madrid, Oxford Lectures Are Only Engagements,”New York Times , Aug. 5, 1933; Einstein to Frederick Lindemann, May 1, 1933, AEA 16-372.
49. Hannoch Gutfreund, “Albert Einstein and Hebrew University,” in Renn 2005d, 318.
50. Einstein to Fritz Haber, Aug. 9, 1933, AEA 37-109; Einstein to Max Born, May 30, 1933, AEA 8-192.
51. Jewish Chronicle , Apr. 8, 1933; Chaim Weizmann to Einstein, Apr. 3, 1933, AEA 33-425; Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, June 14, 1933, AEA 10-255.
52. Einstein to Herbert Samuel, Apr. 15, 1933, AEA 21-17; Einstein to Chaim Weizmann, June 9, 1933, AEA 33-435.
53. “Weizmann Scores Einstein’s Stand,”New York Times , June 30, 1933.
54. “Albert Einstein Definitely Takes Post at Hebrew University,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 3, 1933; Abraham Flexner to Elsa Einstein, July 19, 1933, AEA 33-033; “Einstein Accepts Chair: Dr. Weizmann Announces He Has Made Peace with Hebrew University in Jerusalem,”New York Times , July 4, 1933.
55. Einstein to the Rev. Johannes B. Th. Hugenholtz, July 1, 1933, AEA 50-320.
56. Nathan and Norden, 225.
57. The queen’s name has been spelled Elizabeth in many books, but as carved on her statue and national monument in Brussels, and in most official sources, it is Elisabeth.
58. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, Nov. 1, 1930, uncatalogued new material provided to author.
59. Einstein to King Albert I of Belgium, Nov. 14, 1933, in Nathan and Norden, 230.
60. Einstein to Alfred Nahon, July 20, 1933, AEA 51-227.
61. New York Times , Sept. 10, 1933.
62. Einstein to E. Lagot, Aug. 28, 1933, AEA 50-477.
63. Einstein to Lord Ponsonby, Aug. 28, 1933, AEA 51-400.
64. Einstein to A. V. Frick, Sept. 9, 1933, AEA 36-567.
65. Einstein to G. C. Heringa, Sept. 11, 1933, AEA 50-199.
66. Einstein to P. Bernstein, Apr. 5, 1934, AEA 49-276.
67. Romain Rolland, Sept. 1933 diary entry, in Nathan and Norden, 232.
68. Michele Besso to Einstein, Sept. 18, 1932, AEA 7-130; Einstein to Michele Besso, Oct. 21, 1932, AEA 7-370.
69. Einstein to Frederick Lindemann, May 9, 1933, AEA 16-377.
70. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, July 21, 1933, AEA 143-250.
71. Locker-Lampson speech, House of Commons, July 26, 1933; “Einstein a Briton Soon: Home Secretary’s Certificate Preferred to Palestine Citizenship,”New York Times , July 29, 1933; Marianoff, 159.
72. New York World Telegram , Sept. 19, 1933, in Nathan and Norden, 234.
73. “Dr. Einstein Denies Communist Leanings,”New York Times , Sept. 16, 1933; “Professor Einstein’s Political Views,”Times of London, Sept. 16, 1933, in Brian 1996, 251.
74. Einstein, Appreciation of Paul Ehrenfest, written in 1934 for a Leiden almanac and reprinted in Einstein 1950a, 236.
75. Clark, 600–605; Marianoff, 160–163; Jacob Epstein, Let There Be Sculpture (London: Michael Joseph, 1940), 78.
76. Dukas and Hoffmann, 56.
77. Einstein, “Civilization and Science,” Royal Albert Hall, Oct. 3, 1933;Times of London, Oct. 4, 1933; Calaprice, 198; Clark, 610–611. Clark’s version is more faithful to the way the speech was given than the written version, which had two references to Germany that Einstein, diplomatically, decided to omit.
1. Abraham Flexner telegram to Einstein, Oct. 1933, AEA 38-049; Abraham Flexner to Einstein, Oct. 13, 1933, AEA 38-050.
2. “Einstein Arrives; Pleads for Quiet / Whisked from Liner by Tug at Quarantine,”New York Times , Oct. 18, 1933.
3. “Einstein Views Quarters,”New York Times , Oct. 18, 1933; Rev. John Lampe interview, in Clark, 614; “Einstein to Princeton,”Time , Oct. 30, 1933.
4. Brian 1996, 251.
5. “Einstein Has Musicale,”New York Times , Nov. 10, 1933. The sketches that Einstein made for Seidel are now in the Judah Magnes Museum, endowed by the president of Hebrew University with whom Einstein fought.
6. Bucky, 150.
7. Thomas Torrance,“Einstein and God,” Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton, ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_1/torrance.htm. Torrance says a friend related the tale to him.
8. Eleanor Drorbaugh interview with Jamie Sayen, in Sayen, 64, 74.
9. Sayen, 69; Bucky, 111; Fölsing, 732.
10. “Had Pronounced Sense of Humor,”New York Times , Dec. 22, 1936.
11. Brian 1996, 265.
12. Abraham Flexner to Einstein, Oct. 13, 1933, in Regis, 34.
13. “Einstein, the Immortal, Shows Human Side,” (Newark) Sunday Ledger, Nov. 12, 1933.
14. Abraham Flexner to Elsa Einstein, Nov. 14, 1933, AEA 38-055.
15. Abraham Flexner to Elsa Einstein, Nov. 15, 1933, AEA 38-059. Flexner also wrote to Herbert Maass, an Institute trustee, on Nov. 14, 1933: “I am beginning to weary a little of this daily necessity of ‘sitting down’ on Einstein and his wife. They do not know America. They are the merest children, and they are extremely difficult to advise and control. You have no idea the barrage of publicity I have intercepted.” Batterson, 152.
16. Abraham Flexner to Einstein, Nov. 15, 1933, AEA 38-061.
17. “Fiddling for Friends,”Time , Jan. 29, 1934; “Einstein in Debut as Violinist Here,”New York Times , Jan. 18, 1934.
18. Stephen Wise to Judge Julian Mack, Oct. 20, 1933.
19. Col. Marvin MacIntyre report to the White House Social Bureau, Dec. 7, 1933, AEA 33-131; Abraham Flexner to Franklin Roosevelt, Nov. 3, 1933; Einstein to Eleanor Roosevelt, Nov. 21, 1933, AEA 33-129; Eleanor Roosevelt to Einstein, Dec. 4, 1933, AEA 33-130; Elsa Einstein to Eleanor Roosevelt, Jan. 16, 1934, AEA 33-132; Einstein to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, Jan. 25, 1934, AEA 33-134; “Einstein Chats about Sea,”New York Times , Jan. 26, 1934.
20. Einstein to Board of Trustees of the IAS, Dec. 1–31, 1933.
21. Johanna Fantova, Journal of conversations with Einstein, Jan. 23, 1954, in Calaprice, 354.
22. Einstein to Max Born, Mar. 22, 1934; Erwin Schrödinger to Frederick Linde-mann, Mar. 29, 1934, Jan. 22, 1935.
23. Einstein to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, Nov. 20, 1933, AEA 32-369. The line is usually translated as “puny demigods on stilts.” The word Einstein uses, stelzbeinig, means stiff-legged, as if the legs were wooden stilts. It has nothing to do with height. Instead, it evokes the gait of a peacock.
24. Einstein, “The Negro Question,”Pageant , Jan. 1946. In this essay, he was juxtaposing the generally democratic social tendency of Americans to the way they treated blacks. That became more of an issue for him than it was back in 1934, as will be noted later in this book.
25. Bucky, 45; “Einstein Farewell,”Time , Mar. 14, 1932.
26. Vallentin, 235. See also Elsa Einstein to Hertha Einstein (wife of music historian Alfred Einstein, a distant cousin), Feb. 24, 1934, AEA 37-693: “The place is charming, altogether different from the rest of America . . . Here everything is tinged with Englishness—downright Oxford style.”
27. “Einstein Cancels Trip Abroad,”New York Times , Apr. 2, 1934.
28. Marianoff, 178. Other sources report that Ilse’s ashes, or at least some of them, were brought to a cemetery in Holland, to a place chosen by the widower Rudi Kayser.
29. This entire story is from an interview given by the Blackwoods’ son James to Denis Brian on Sept. 7, 1994, and is detailed in Brian 1996, 259–263.
30. Ibid. See also James Blackwood, “Einstein in the Rear-View Mirror,”Princeton History , Nov. 1997.
31. “Einstein Inventor of Camera Device,”New York Times , Nov. 27, 1936.
32. Bucky, 5. Bucky’s book is written, in part, as a running conversation, though there are sections that actually draw from other Einstein interviews and writings.
33. Bucky, 16–21.
34. New York Times , Aug. 4, 1935; Brian 1996, 265, 280.
35. Vallentin, 237.
36. Brian 1996, 268.
37. Fölsing, 687; Brian 1996, 279.
38. Calaprice, 251.
39. Bucky, 25.
40. Clark, 622.
41. Pais 1982, 454.
42. Jon Blackwell, “The Genius Next Door,”The Trentonian , www.capitalcentury.com/1933.html; Seelig 1956a, 193; Sayen, 78; Brian 1996, 330.
43. Einstein to Barbara Lee Wilson, Jan. 7, 1943, AEA 42-606; Dukas and Hoff-mann, 8; “Einstein Solves Problem That Baffled Boys,”New York Times , June 11, 1937.
44. “Einstein Gives Advice to a High School Boy,”New York Times , Apr. 14, 1935; Sayen, 76.
45. Elsa Einstein to Leon Watters, Dec. 10, 1935, AEA 52-210.
46. Vallentin, 238.
47. Bucky, 13.
48. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, Jan. 4, 1937, AEA 75-926.
49. Hoffmann 1972, 231.
50. Einstein, “Lens-like Action of a Star by Deviation of Light in the Gravitational Field,”Science (Dec. 1936); Einstein with Nathan Rosen, “On Gravitational Waves,”Journal of the Franklin Institute (Jan. 1937). The gravitational wave paper was originally submitted to Physical Review. Editors there sent it to a referee, who noted flaws. Einstein was outraged, withdrew the paper, and had it published instead by the Franklin Institute. He then realized he was wrong after all (after the anonymous referee indirectly let him know), and he and Rosen juggled many modifications, just as Elsa was dying. Daniel Kinneflick uncovered the details of this saga and provides a fascinating acount in “Einstein versus the Physical Review,”Physics Today (Sept. 2005).
51. Einstein to Max Born, Feb. 1937, in Born 2005, 128.
52. Einstein, “The Causes of the Formation of Meanders in the Courses of Rivers and of the So-Called Baer’s Law,” Jan. 7, 1926.
53. “Dr. Einstein Welcomes Son to America,”New York Times , Oct. 13, 1937.
54. Bucky, 107.
55. Einstein to Mileva Mari
56. Einstein to Frieda Einstein, Apr. 11, 1937, AEA 75-929.
57. Robert Ettema and Cornelia F. Mutel, “Hans Albert Einstein in South Carolina,”Water Resources and Environmental History , June 27, 2004; “Einstein’s Son Asks Citizenship,”New York Times , Dec. 22, 1938. He applied for citizenship on Dec. 21, 1938, at the U.S. District Court in Greenville, S.C. Some biographies have him living in Greensboro, N.C., at the time, but that is incorrect.
58. Einstein to Hans Albert and Frieda Einstein, Jan. 1939; James Shannon,“Einstein in Greenville,”The Beat (Greenville, S.C.), Nov. 17, 2001.
59. Highfield and Carter, 242.
60. “Hitler Is ‘Greatest’ in Princeton Poll: Freshmen Put Einstein Second and Chamberlain Third,”New York Times , Nov. 28, 1939. The story reports that this was for the second year in a row.
61. Collier’s , Nov. 26, 1938; Einstein 1954, 191.
62. Sayen, 344; “Einstein Fiddles,”Time , Feb. 3, 1941. Time reported of a little concert in Princeton for the American Friends Service Committee: “Einstein proved that he could play a slow melody with feeling, turn a trill with elegance, jigsaw on occasion. The audience applauded warmly. Fiddler Einstein smiled his broad and gentle smile, glanced at his watch in fourth-dimensional worriment, played his encore, peered at the watch again, retired.”
63. Jerome, 77.
64. Einstein to Isaac Don Levine, Dec. 10, 1934, AEA 50-928; Isaac Don Levine, Eyewitness to History (New York: Hawthorne, 1973), 171.
65. Sidney Hook to Einstein, Feb. 22, 1937, AEA 34-731; Einstein to Sidney Hook, Feb. 23, 1937, AEA 34-735.
66. Sidney Hook, “My Running Debate with Einstein,”Commentary , July 1982, 39.
CHAPTER TWENTY: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT
1. Hoffmann 1972, 190; Rigden, 144; Léon Rosenfeld, “Niels Bohr in the Thirties,” in Rozental 1967, 127; N. P. Landsman, “When Champions Meet: Re-thinking the Bohr–Einstein Debate,”Studies in the History and Science of Modern Physics 37 (Mar. 2006): 212.
2. Einstein 1949b, 85.
3. Ibid.
4. Einstein to Max Born, Mar. 3, 1947, in Born 2005, 155 (not in AEA).
5. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, June 19, 1935, AEA 22-47.
6. New York Times , May 4 and 7, 1935; David Mermin, “My Life with Einstein,” Physics Today (Jan. 2005).
7. Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Regarded as Complete?,” Physical Review, May 15, 1935 (received Mar. 25, 1935); www.drchinese.com/David/EPR.pdf.
8. Another formulation of the experiment would be for one observer to measure the position of a particle while at the “same moment” another observer measures the momentum of its twin. Then they compare notes and, supposedly, know the position and momentum of both particles. See Charles Seife, “The True and the Absurd,” in Brockman, 71.
9. Aczel 2002, 117.
10. Whitaker, 229; Aczel 2002, 118.
11. Niels Bohr, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Regarded as Complete?,”Physical Review , Oct. 15, 1935 (received July 13, 1935).
12. Greene 2004, 102. Note that Arthur Fine says that the synopsis of EPR used by Bohr “is closer to a caricature of the EPR paper than it is to a serious reconstruction.” Fine says that Bohr and other interpreters of Einstein feature a “criterion of reality” that Einstein in his own later writings on EPR does not feature, even though the EPR paper as written by Podolsky does talk about determining “an element of reality.” Brian Greene’s book is among those that do emphasize the “criterion of reality” element. See Arthur Fine, “The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory,”Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/, and also: Fine 1996, chapter 3; Mara Beller and Arthur Fine, “Bohr’s Response to EPR,” in Jann Faye and Henry Folse, eds., Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), 1–31.
13. Arthur Fine has shown that Einstein’s own critique of quantum mechanics was not fully captured in the way that Podolsky wrote in the EPR paper, and especially in the way that Bohr and the “victors” described it. Don Howard has built on Fine’s work and emphasized the issues of “separability” and “locality.” See Howard 1990b.
14. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, May 31, 1928, AEA 22-22; Fine, 18.
15. Erwin Schrödinger to Einstein, June 7, 1935, AEA 22-45, and July 13, 1935, AEA 22-48.
16. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, June 19, 1935, AEA 22-47.
17. Erwin Schrödinger, “The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics,” third installment, Dec. 13, 1935, www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html.
18. More specifically, Schrödinger’s equation shows the rate of change over time of the mathematical formulation of the probabilities for the outcome of possible measurements made on a particle or system.
19. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, June 19, 1935, AEA 22-47.
20. I am grateful to Craig Copi and Douglas Stone for helping to compose this section.
21. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, Aug. 8, 1935, AEA 22-49; Arthur Fine, “The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory,”Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/. Note that Arthur Fine uncovered some of the Einstein-Schrödinger correspondence. Fine, chapter 3.
22. Erwin Schrödinger to Einstein, Aug. 19, 1935, AEA 22-51.
23. Erwin Schrödinger, “The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics,” Nov. 29, 1935, www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html.
24. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, Sept. 4, 1935, AEA 22-53. Schrödinger’s paper had not been published, but Schrödinger included its argument in his Aug. 19, 1935, letter to Einstein.
25. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodinger’s_cat.
26. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, Dec. 22, 1950, AEA 22-174.
27. David Bohm and Basil Huey, “Einstein and Non-locality in the Quantum Theory,” in Goldsmith et al., 47.
28. John Stewart Bell, “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,”Physic 1, no. 1 (1964).
29. Bernstein 1991, 20.
30. For an explanation of how Bohm and Bell set up their analysis, see Greene 2004, 99–115; Bernstein 1991, 76.
31. Bernstein 1991, 76, 84.
32. New York Times , Dec. 27, 2005.
33. New Scientist , Jan. 11, 2006.
34. Greene 2004, 117.
35. In the decoherent-histories formulation of quantum mechanics, the coarse graining is such that the histories don’t interfere with one another: if A and B are mutually exclusive histories, then the probability of A or B is the sum of the probabilities of A and of B as it should be. These “decoherent” histories form a tree-like structure, with each of the alternatives at one time branching out into alternatives at the next time, and so forth. In this theory, there is much less emphasis on measurement than in the Copenhagen version. Consider a piece of mica in which there are radioactive impurities emitting alpha particles. Each emitted alpha particle leaves a track in the mica. The track is real, and it makes little difference whether a physicist or other human being or a chinchilla or a cockroach comes along to look at it. What is important is that the track is correlated with the direction of emission of the alpha particle and could be used to measure the emission. Before the emission takes place, all directions are equally probable and contribute to a branching of histories. I am grateful to Murray Gell-Mann for his help with this section. See also Gell-Mann, 135–177; Murray Gell-Mann and James Hartle, “Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology,” in W. H. Zurek, ed., Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990), 425–459, and “Equivalent Sets of Histories and Multiple Quasiclassical Realms,” May 1996, www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9404013. This view is derived from the many-worlds interpretation pioneered in 1957 by Hugh Everett.
36. The literature on Einstein and realism is fascinating. This section relies on the works of Don Howard, Gerald Holton, Arthur I. Miller, and Jeroen van Dongen cited in the bibliography.
Don Howard has argued that Einstein was never a true Machian nor a true realist, and that his philosophy of science did not change much over the years. “On my view, Einstein was never an ardent ‘Machian’ positivist, and he was never a scientific realist, at least not in the sense acquired by the term ‘scientific realist’ in later twentieth-century philosophical discourse. Einstein expected scientific theories to have the proper empirical credentials, but he was no positivist; and he expected scientific theories to give an account of physical reality, but he was no scientific realist. Moreover, in both respects his views remained more or less the same from the beginning to the end of his career.” Howard 2004.
Gerald Holton, on the other side, argues that Einstein underwent “a pilgrimage from a philosophy of science in which sensationalism and empiricism were at the center, to one in which the basis was a rational realism ... For a scientist to change his philosophical beliefs so fundamentally is rare” (Holton 1973, 219, 245). See also Anton Zeilinger, “Einstein and Absolute Reality,” in Brockman, 123: “Instead of accepting only concepts that can be verified by observation, Einstein insisted on the existence of a reality prior to and independent of observation.”
Arthur Fine’s The Shaky Game explores all sides of the issue. He develops for himself what he calls a “natural ontological attitude” that is neither realist nor antirealist, but instead “mediates between the two.” Of Einstein he says, “I think there is no backing away from the fact that Einstein’s so-called realism has a deeply empiricist core that makes it a ‘realism’ more nominal than real.” Fine, 130, 108.
37. Einstein to Jerome Rothstein, May 22, 1950, AEA 22-54.
38. Einstein to Donald Mackay, Apr. 26, 1948, AEA 17-9.
39. Einstein 1949b, 11.
40. Gerald Holton, “Mach, Einstein and the Search for Reality,” in Holton 1973, 245. Arthur I. Miller disagrees with some of Holton’s interpretation. He stresses that Einstein’s point was that for something to be real it should be measurable in principle, even if not actually measurable in real life, and he was content using thought experiments to “measure” something. Miller 1981, 186.
41. Einstein 1949b, 81.
42. Einstein to Max Born, comments on a paper, Mar. 18, 1948, in Born 2005, 161.
43. Einstein, “The Fundamentals of Theoretical Physics,”Science , May 24, 1940; Einstein 1954, 334.
44. For example, Arthur Fine argues, “Causality and observer-independence were primary features of Einstein’s realism, whereas a space/time representation was an important but secondary feature.” Fine, 103.
45. Einstein, “Physics, Philosophy and Scientific Progress,”Journal of the International College of Surgeons 14 (1950), AEA 1-163; Fine, 98.
46. Einstein, “Physics and Reality,”Journal of the Franklin Institute (Mar. 1936), in Einstein 1954, 292. Gerald Holton says that this is more properly translated: “The eternally incomprehensible thing about the world is its comprehensibility”; see Holton, “What Precisely Is Thinking?,” in French, 161.
47. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Mar. 30, 1952, in Solovine, 131 (not in AEA).
48. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Jan. 1, 1951, in Solovine, 119.
49. Einstein to Max Born, Sept. 7, 1944, in Born 2005, 146, and AEA 8-207.
50. Born 2005, 69. He put Einstein in the category of “conservative individuals who were unable to free their minds from the prevailing philosophical prejudices.”
51. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Apr. 10, 1938, in Solovine, 85.
52. Einstein and Infeld, 296.
53. Ibid., 241.
54. Born 2005, 118, 122.
55. Brian 1996, 289.
56. Hoffmann 1972, 231.
57. Regis, 35.
58. Leopold Infeld, Quest (New York: Chelsea, 1980), 309.
59. Brian 1996, 303.
60. Infeld, introduction to the 1960 edition of Einstein and Infeld; Infeld, 112–114.
61. Pais 1982, 23.
62. Vladimir Pavlovich Vizgin, Unified Field Theories in the First Third of the 20th Century (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1994), 218. Matthew 19:6, King James Version: “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
63. Einstein to Max von Laue, Mar. 23, 1934, AEA 16-101.
64. From Whitrow, xii: “Einstein agreed that the chance of success was very small but the attempt must be made. He himself had established his name; his position was assured, so he could afford to take the risk of failure. A young man with his way to make in the world could not afford to take a risk by which he might lose a great career, so Einstein felt that in this matter he had a duty.”
65. Hoffmann 1972, 227.
66. Arthur I. Miller, “A Thing of Beauty,”New Scientist , Feb. 4, 2006.
67. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, June 27, 1938. See also Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Dec. 23, 1938, AEA 21-236: “I have come across a wonderful subject which I am studying enthusiastically with two young colleagues. It offers the possibility of destroying the statistical basis of physics, which I have always found intolerable. This extension of the general theory of relativity is of very great logical simplicity.”
68. William Laurence, “Einstein in Vast New Theory Links Atoms and Stars in Unified System,”New York Times , July 5, 1935; William Laurence, “Einstein Sees Key to Universe Near,”New York Times , Mar. 14, 1939.
69. Hoffmann 1972, 227; Bernstein 1991, 157.
70. William Laurence, “Einstein Baffled by Cosmos Riddle,”New York Times , May 16, 1940.
71. Fölsing, 704.
72. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Dec. 29, 1934.
73. William Laurence, “Einstein Sees Key to Universe Near,”New York Times , Mar. 14, 1939.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE BOMB
1. FBI interview with Einstein regarding Leó Szilárd, Nov. 1, 1940, obtained by Gene Dannen under the Freedom of Information Act, www.dannen.com/ein stein.html. It is ironic that the FBI had such an extensive and friendly interview with Einstein to check out Szilárd’s worthiness for a security clearance, because Einstein had been denied such a clearance himself. See also Gene Dannen, “The Einstein-Szilárd Refrigerators,”Scientific American (Jan. 1997).
2. Recollections of Chuck Rothman, son of David Rothman, www.sff.net/peo ple/rothman/einstein.htm.
3. Weart and Szilard 1978, 83–96; Brian 1996, 316.
4. An authoritative narrative is in Rhodes, 304–308.
5. See Kati Marton, The Great Escape: Nine Hungarians Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
6. Leó Szilárd to Einstein, July 19, 1933, AEA 76-532.
7. Some popular accounts suggest that Einstein merely signed a letter that Szilárd wrote and brought with him. Along these lines, Teller told the writer Ronald W. Clark in 1969 that Einstein had signed, with “very little comment,” a letter that Szilárd and Teller had brought that day. See Clark, 673. This is contradicted, however, by Szilárd’s own detailed description of that day and the notes of the conversation made by Teller that day. The notes and new draft letter in German as dictated by Einstein are in the Teller archives and reprinted in Nathan and Norden, 293. It is true that the letter dictated by Einstein was based on a draft Szilárd brought that day, but that was a translation of the one Einstein had dictated two weeks earlier. Some accounts, including occasional comments made later by Einstein himself, try to minimize his role and say he simply signed a letter that someone else wrote. In fact, even though Szilárd prompted and propelled the discussions, Einstein was fully involved in writing the letter that he alone signed.
8. Einstein to Franklin Roosevelt, Aug. 2, 1939. The longer version is in the Franklin Roosevelt archives in Hyde Park, New York (with a copy in AEA 33-143), the shorter one in the Szilárd archives at the University of California, San Diego.
9. Clark, 676; Einstein to Leó Szilárd, Aug. 2, 1939, AEA 39-465; Leó Szilárd to Einstein, Aug. 9, 1939, AEA 39-467; Leó Szilárd to Charles Lindbergh, Aug. 14, 1939, Szilárd papers, University of California, San Diego, box 12, folder 5.
10. Charles Lindbergh, “America and European Wars,” speech, Sept. 15, 1939, www.charleslindbergh.com/pdf/9_15_39.pdf.
11. Leó Szilárd to Einstein, Sept. 27, 1933, AEA 39-471. Lindbergh later did not recall getting any letters from Szilárd.
12. Leó Szilárd to Einstein, Oct. 3, 1939, AEA 39-473.
13. Moore, 268. The Napoleon tale is clearly one that Sachs or someone garbled, as Robert Fulton did in fact work on building ships for Napoleon, including a failed submarine; see Kirkpatrick Sale, The Fire of His Genius (New York: Free Press, 2001), 68–73.
14. Sachs told this tale to a U.S. Senate special committee on atomic energy hearing, Nov. 27, 1945. It is recounted in most histories of the atom bomb, including Rhodes, 313–314.
15. Franklin Roosevelt to Einstein, Oct. 19, 1939, AEA 33-192.
16. Einstein to Alexander Sachs, Mar. 7, 1940, AEA 39-475.
17. Einstein to Lyman Briggs, Apr. 25, 1940, AEA 39-484.
18. Sherman Miles to J. Edgar Hoover, July 30, 1940, in the FBI files on Einstein, foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein1a.pdf. A good analysis and context for these files is Jerome.
19. J. Edgar Hoover to Sherman Miles, Aug. 15, 1940.
20. Einstein to Henri Barbusse, June 1, 1932, AEA 34-543. The FBI refers to this conference with a different translation of its name, the World Congress against War.
21. Jerome, 28, 295 n. 6. The Miles note is on the copy in the National Archives but not the FBI files.
22. Jerome, 40–42.
23. Einstein, “This Is My America,” unpublished, summer 1944, AEA 72-758.
24. “Einstein to Take Test,”New York Times , June 20, 1940; “Einstein Predicts Armed League,”New York Times , June 23, 1940.
25. “Einstein Is Sworn as Citizen of U.S.,”New York Times , Oct. 2, 1940.
26. Einstein, “This Is My America,” unpublished, summer 1944, AEA 72-758.
27. Frank Aydelotte to Vannevar Bush, Dec. 19, 1941; Clark, 684.
28. Vannevar Bush to Frank Aydelotte, Dec. 30, 1941.
29. Pais 1982,12; George Gamow, “Reminiscence,” in French, 29; Fölsing, 715.
30. Sayen, 150; Pais 1982, 147. The manuscripts were purchased by the Kansas City Life Insurance Co. and were subsequently donated to the Library of Congress.
31. Einstein to Niels Bohr, Dec. 12, 1944, AEA 8-95.
32. Clark, 698.
33. Einstein to Otto Stern, Dec. 26, 1944, AEA 22-240; Clark, 699–700.
34. Einstein to Franklin Roosevelt, Mar. 25, 1945, AEA 33-109.
35. Sayen, 151.
36. Time , July 1, 1946. The portrait was by the longtime cover artist for the magazine, Ernest Hamlin Baker.
37. Newsweek , Mar. 10, 1947.
38. Linus Pauling report of conversation, Nov. 16, 1954, in Calaprice, 185.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: ONE-WORLDER
1. Brian 1996, 345; Helen Dukas to Alice Kahler, Aug. 8, 1945: “One of the young reporters who was a guest at the Sulzbergers from the New York Timescame over late at night ... Arthur Sulzberger also called constantly for a statement. But no dice.” Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. told me that his father, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and uncle David summered at Saranac Lake and knew Einstein.
2. United Press interview, Sept. 14, 1945, reprinted in New York Times, Sept. 15, 1945.
3. Einstein to J. Robert Oppenheimer (care of a post office box in Santa Fe near Los Alamos), Sept. 29, 1945, AEA 57-294; J. Robert Oppenheimer to Einstein, Oct. 10, 1945, AEA 57-296.
4. When he realized that Oppenheimer had not written the statement he considered too timid, Einstein wrote to the scientists in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who actually had. In the letter, he explained his thoughts about what powers a world government should and should not have. “There would be no immediate need for member nations to subordinate their own tariff and immigration legislation to the authority of world government,” he said. “In fact, I believe the sole function of world government should be to have a monopoly over military power.” Einstein to John Balderston and other Oak Ridge scientists, Dec. 3, 1945, AEA 56-493.
5. It is reprinted in Nathan and Norden, 347, and Einstein 1954, 118. See also Einstein, “The Way Out,” in One World or None, Federation of Atomic Scientists, 1946, www.fas.org/oneworld/index.html. The book is an important look at the ideas of scientists at the time—including Einstein, Oppenheimer, Szilárd, Wigner, and Bohr—on how to use world federalism to control nuclear arms.
6. Einstein realized there was no lasting “secret” of the bomb to protect. As he said later, “America has temporary superiority in armament, but it is certain that we have no lasting secret. What nature tells one group of men, she will tell in time to any other group.” Einstein, “The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of Men,”New York Times Magazine , June 23, 1946.
7. Einstein, remarks at the Nobel Prize dinner, Hotel Astor, Dec. 10, 1945, in Einstein 1954, 115.
8. Einstein, ECAS fund-raising telegram, May 23, 1946. Material relating to this is in folder 40-11 of the Einstein archives. The history and archives of the ECAS can be found through www.aip.org/history/ead/chicago_ecas/20010108_content.html#top.
9. Einstein, ECAS letter, Jan. 22, 1947, AEA 40-606; Sayen, 213.
10. Newsweek , Mar. 10, 1947.
11. Richard Present to Einstein, Jan. 30, 1946, AEA 57-147.
12. Einstein to Dr. J. J. Nickson, May 23, 1946, AEA 57-150; Einstein to Louis B. Mayer, June 24, 1946, AEA 57-152.
13. Louis B. Mayer to Einstein, July 18, 1946, AEA 57-153; James McGuinness to Louis B. Mayer, July 16, 1946, AEA 57-154.
14. Sam Marx to Einstein, July 1, 1946, AEA 57-155; Einstein to Sam Marx, July 8, 1946, AEA 57-156; Sam Marx to Einstein, July 16, 1946, AEA 57-158.
15. Einstein to Sam Marx, July 19, 1946, AEA 57-162; Leó Szilárd telegram to Einstein, and Einstein note on reverse, July 27, 1946, AEA 57-163, 57-164.
16. Bosley Crowther, “Atomic Bomb Film Starts,”New York Times , Feb. 21, 1947.
17. William Golden to George Marshall, June 9, 1947, Foreign Relations of the U.S.; Sayen, 196.
18. Halsman’s quote from Einstein, recounted by Halsman’s widow, is in Time’s Person of the Century issue, Dec. 31, 1999, which has the portrait he took (shown on p. 487) as the cover.
19. Einstein comment on the animated antiwar film, Where Will You Hide?, May 1948, AEA 28-817.
20. Einstein interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism , Apr.–May 1949.
21. Norman Cousins, “As 1960 Sees Us,”Saturday Review , Aug. 5, 1950; Einstein to Norman Cousins, Aug. 2, 1950, AEA 49-453. (A weekly magazine is actually published one week earlier than it is dated.)
22. Einstein talk (via radio) to the Jewish Council for Russian War Relief, Oct. 25, 1942, AEA 28-571. See also, among many examples, Einstein unsent message regarding the May-Johnson Bill, Jan. 1946; in Nathan and Norden, 342; broadcast interview, July 17, 1947, in Nathan and Norden, 418.
23. “Rankin Denies Einstein A-Bomb Role,” United Press, Feb. 14, 1950.
24. Einstein to Sidney Hook, Apr. 3, 1948, AEA 58-300; Sidney Hook, “My Running Debate with Einstein,”Commentary (July 1982).
25. Einstein to Sidney Hook, May 16, 1950, AEA 59-1018.
26. “Dr. Einstein’s Mistaken Notions,” in New Times (Moscow), Nov. 1947, in Nathan and Norden, 443, and Einstein 1954, 134.
27. Einstein, Reply to the Russian Scientists, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (the publication of the Emergency Committee that he chaired), Feb. 1948, in Einstein 1954, 135; “Einstein Hits Soviet Scientists for Opposing World Government,”New York Times , Jan. 30, 1948.
28. Einstein, “Atomic War or Peace,” part 2, Atlantic Monthly , Nov. 1947.
29. Einstein to Henry Usborne, Jan. 9, 1948, AEA 58-922.
30. Einstein to James Allen, Dec. 22, 1949, AEA 57-620.
31. Otto Nathan contributed to this phenomenon with the 1960 book of excerpts he coedited from Einstein’s political writings, Einstein on Peace. Nathan, as the coexecutor with Helen Dukas of Einstein’s literary estate, had a lot of influence over what was published early on. He was a committed socialist and pacifist. His collection is valuable, but in searching through the full Einstein archives, it becomes noticeable that he tended to leave out some material in which Einstein was critical of Russia or of radical pacifism. David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann, in their own anthology of Einstein’s political writings published in 2007, Einstein’s Political World , provide a counterbalance. They stress that Einstein “was not tempted to give up free enterprise in favor of a rigidly planned economy, least of all at the price of basic freedoms,” and they also emphasize the realistic and practical nature of Einstein’s evolution away from pure pacifism.
32. Einstein to Arthur Squires and Cuthbert Daniel, Dec. 15, 1947, AEA 58-89.
33. Einstein to Roy Kepler, Aug. 8, 1948, AEA 58-969.
34. Einstein to John Dudzik, Mar. 8, 1948, AEA 58-108. See also Einstein to A. Amery, June 12, 1950, AEA 59-95: “However much I may believe in the necessity of socialism, it will not solve the problem of international security.”
35. “Poles Issue Message by Einstein: He Reveals Quite Different Text,”New York Times , Aug. 29, 1948; Einstein to Julian Huxley, Sept. 14, 1948, AEA 58-700; Nathan and Norden, 493.
36. Einstein to A. J. Muste, Jan. 30, 1950, AEA 60- 636.
37. Today with Mrs. Roosevelt, NBC, Jan. 12, 1950, www.cine-holocaust.de/cgibin/gdq?efw00fbw002802.gd;New York Post , Feb. 13, 1950.
38. D. M. Ladd to J. Edgar Hoover, Feb. 15, 1950, and V. P. Keay to H. B. Fletcher, Feb. 13, 1950, both in Einstein’s FBI files, box 1a, foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/einstein.htm. Fred Jerome’s book The Einstein File offers an analysis. Jerome says that when making Einstein the Person of the Century, Time refrained from noting that he was a socialist: “As if the executives at Time decided to go so far but no farther, their article makes no mention of Einstein’s socialist convictions.” As the person who was the magazine’s managing editor then, I can attest that the omission may indeed have been a lapse on our part, but it was not the result of a policy decision.
39. Gen. John Weckerling to J. Edgar Hoover, July 31, 1950, Einstein FBI files, box 2a.
40. See foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/einstein.htm. Herb Romerstein and Eric Breindel in The Venona Secrets (New York: Regnery, 2000), an attack on Soviet espionage based on the “Venona” secret cables sent by Russian agents in the United States, have a section called “Duping Albert Einstein” (p. 398). It says that he was regularly willing to be listed as the “honorary chairman” of a variety of groups that were fronts for pro-Soviet agendas, but the authors say there is no evidence that he ever went to communist meetings or did anything other than lend his name to various worthy-sounding organizations, with names like “Workers International Relief,” that occasionally were part of the “front apparatus” of international Comintern leaders.
41. Marjorie Bishop,“Our Neighbors on Eighth Street,” and Maria Turbow Lampard, introduction, in Sergei Konenkov, The Uncommon Vision (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 52–54, 192–195.
42. Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks , updated ed. (Boston: Back Bay, 1995), appendix 8, p. 493; Jerome, 260, 283; Sotheby’s catalogue, June 26, 1988; Robin Pogrebin, “Love Letters by Einstein at Auction,”New York Times , June 1, 1998. The role of Konenkova has been confirmed by other sources.
43. Einstein to Margarita Konenkova, Nov. 27, 1945, June 1, 1946, uncatalogued.
44. Einstein, “Why Socialism?,”Monthly Review , May 1949, reprinted in Einstein 1954, 151.
45. Princeton Herald , Sept. 25, 1942, in Sayen, 219.
46. Einstein, “The Negro Question,”Pageant , Jan. 1946, in Einstein 1950a, 132.
47. Jerome, 71; Jerome and Taylor, 88–91; “Einstein Is Honored by Lincoln University,”New York Times , May 4, 1946.
48. Einstein,“To the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto,” 1944, in Einstein 1950a, 265.
49. Einstein to James Franck, Dec. 6, 1945, AEA 11-60; Einstein to James Franck, Dec. 30, 1945, AEA 11-64.
50. Einstein to Verlag Vieweg, Mar. 25, 1947, AEA 42-172; Einstein to Otto Hahn, Jan. 28, 1949, AEA 12-72.
51. Brian 1996, 340; Milton Wexler to Einstein, Sept. 17, 1944, AEA 55-48; Roberto Einstein (cousin) to Einstein, Nov. 27, 1944, AEA 55-49.
52. Einstein to Clara Jacobson, May 7, 1945, AEA 56-900.
53. Sayen, 219.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: LANDMARK
1. Seelig 1956b, 71.
2. Pais 1982, 473.
3. See Bird and Sherwin.
4. J. Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, Jan. 11, 1935, in Alice Smith and Charles Weiner, eds., Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 190.
5. Sayen, 225; J. Robert Oppenheimer,“On Albert Einstein,”New York Review of Books , Mar. 17, 1966.
6. Jim Holt, “Time Bandits,”New Yorker , Feb. 28, 2005; Yourgrau 1999, 2005; Goldstein. Yourgrau 2005, 3, discusses the connections of incompleteness, relativity, and uncertainty to the zeitgeist. Holt’s piece explains the insights they shared.
7. Goldstein, 232 n. 8, says that, alas, various research efforts have failed to discover the precise flaw Gödel thought he had discovered.
8. Kurt Gödel, “Relativity and Idealistic Philosophy,” in Schilpp, 558.
9. Yourgrau 2005, 116.
10. Einstein, “Reply to Criticisms,” in Schilpp, 687–688.
11. Einstein to Han Muehsam, June 15, 1942, AEA 38-337.
12. Hoffmann 1972, 240.
13. Einstein 1949b, 33.
14. Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, “Non-Existence of Regular Solutions of Relativistic Field Equations,” 1943.
15. Einstein and Valentine Bargmann, “Bivector Fields,” 1944. He is sometimes referred to as Valentin, but in America he signed his name Valentine.
16. Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, Jan. 22, 1946, AEA 22-93.
17. Erwin Schrödinger to Einstein, Feb. 19, 1946, AEA 22-94; Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, Apr. 7, 1946, AEA 22-103; Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, May 20, 1946, AEA 22-106; Einstein, “Generalized Theory of Gravitation,” 1948, with subsequent addenda.
18. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity , 1950 ed., appendix 2, revised again for the 1954 ed.; William Laurence, “New Theory Gives a Master Key to the Universe,”New York Times , Dec. 27, 1949; William Laurence, “Einstein Publishes His Master Theory: Long-Awaited Chapter to Relativity Volume Is Product of 30 Years of Labor; Revised at Last Minute,”New York Times , Feb. 15, 1950.
19. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Nov. 25, 1948, AEA 21-256; Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Mar. 28, 1949, AEA 21-260; Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Feb. 12, 1951, AEA 21-277.
20. Tilman Sauer, “Dimensions of Einstein’s Unified Field Theory Program,” courtesy of the author; Hoffmann 1972, 239; I am grateful for the help of Sauer, who is doing research in Einstein’s late work on field theories.
21. Whitrow, xii.
22. Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein,” in Schilpp, 199.
23. Abraham Pais, in Rozental 1967, 225; Clark, 742.
24. John Wheeler, “Memoir,” in French, 21; John Wheeler, “Mentor and Sounding Board,” in Brockman, 31; Einstein quoted in Johanna Fantova journal, Nov. 11, 1953. In letters to Besso in 1952, Einstein defended his stubbornness. He insisted that a complete description of nature would describe reality, or a “deterministic real state,” rather than merely describe observations. “The orthodox quantum theoreticians generally refuse to admit the notion of a real state (based on positivist considerations). One thus ends up with a situation that resembles that of the good Bishop Berkeley.” Einstein to Michele Besso, Sept. 10, 1952, AEA 7-412. A month later he noted that quantum theory declared that “laws don’t apply to things, but only to what observation informs us about things ... Now,I can’t accept that.” Einstein to Michele Besso, Oct. 8, 1952, AEA 7-414.
25. Einstein to Mileva Mari
26. Fölsing, 731; Highfield and Carter, 253; Brian 1996, 371; Einstein to Karl Zürcher, July 29, 1947.
27. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, Jan. 21, 1948, AEA 75-959.
28. Einstein to Carl Seelig, Jan. 4, 1954, AEA 39-59; Fölsing, 731.
29. Sayen, 221; Pais 1982, 475.
30. Sarasota Tribune, Mar. 2, 1949, AEA 30-1097; Bucky, 131. Jeremy Bernstein writes, “Anyone who spent five minutes with Miss Dukas would understand what a lunatic accusation this is.” Bernstein 2001, 109.
31. Hans Albert Einstein interview, in Whitrow, 22.
32. “Trouble is brewing between Maja and Paul. They ought to divorce as well. Paul is supposedly having an affair and the marriage is quite in pieces. One shouldn’t wait too long (as I did) ... No mixed marriages are any good (Anna says: oh!).” Einstein to Michele Besso, Dec. 12, 1919. The half-joking reference to Anna was about Anna Winteler Besso, who was Michele Besso’s wife and Paul Winteler’s sister. The Wintelers were not Jewish; Besso and the Einsteins were.
33. Highfield and Carter, 248.
34. Einstein to Solovine, Nov. 25, 1948, AEA 21-256; Sayen, 134.
35. Einstein to Lina Kocherthaler, July 27, 1951, AEA 38-303; Sayen, 231.
36. “Einstein Repudiates Biography Written by His Ex-Son-in-Law,”New York Times , Aug. 5, 1944; Frieda Bucky, “You Have to Ask Forgiveness,”Jewish Quarterly (winter 1967–68), AEA 37-513.
37. “Einstein Extolled by 300 Scientists,”New York Times , Mar. 20, 1949; Sayen, 227; Fölsing, 735.
38. Einstein to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium, Jan. 6, 1951, AEA 32-400; Sayen, 139.
39. Einstein to Max Born, Apr. 12, 1949, AEA 8-223.
40. “3,000 Hear Einstein at Seder Service,”New York Times , Apr. 18, 1938; Einstein, “Our Debt to Zionism,” in Einstein 1954, 190.
41. “Einstein Condemns Rule in Palestine,”New York Times , Jan. 12, 1946; Sayen, 235–237; Stephen Wise to Einstein, Jan. 14, 1946, AEA 35-258; Einstein to Stephen Wise, Jan. 14, 1946, AEA 35-260.
42. “Einstein Statement Assails Begin Party,”New York Times , Dec. 3, 1948; “Einstein Is Assailed by Menachim Begin,”New York Times , Dec. 7, 1948.
43. Einstein to Hans Muehsam, Jan. 22, 1947, AEA 38-360, and Sept. 24, 1948, AEA 38-379.
44. Einstein to Lina Kocherthaler, May 4, 1948, AEA 38-302.
45. Dukas interview, in Sayen, 245; Abba Eban to Einstein, Nov. 17, 1952, AEA 41-84; Einstein to Abba Eban, Nov. 18, 1952, AEA 28-943.
46. Einstein’s travails with Hebrew University are recounted in Parzen 1974. For his relationship with Brandeis, see Abram Sacher, Brandeis University (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 1995), 22. The one place with which he had a great relationship was Yeshiva University. He was made the honorary chair of the fund-raising drive to build the College of Medicine there in 1952, and the following year allowed the medical college to be named after him. I am grateful to Edward Burns for providing information. See www.yu.edu/libraries/digital_library/einstein/panel10.html.
47. Einstein to Maariv newspaper editor Azriel Carlebach, Nov. 21, 1952, AEA 41-93; Sayen, 247; Nathan and Norden, 574; Einstein to Joseph Scharl, Nov. 24, 1952, AEA 41-107.
48. Yitzhak Navon, “On Einstein and the Presidency of Israel,” in Holton and Elkana, 295.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: RED SCARE
1. Einstein to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium, Jan. 6, 1951, AEA 32-400.
2. Einstein to Leopold Infeld, Oct. 28, 1952, AEA 14-173; Einstein to Russian students in Berlin, Apr. 1, 1952, AEA 59-218.
3. Einstein to T. E. Naiton, Oct. 9, 1952, AEA 60-664.
4. Einstein to Judge Irving Kaufman, Dec. 23, 1952, AEA 41-547.
5. Newark FBI Field Office to J. Edgar Hoover, Apr. 22, 1953, in Einstein FBI files, box 7.
6. Einstein to Harry Truman, with fifteen lines of equations on the other side, Jan. 11, 1953, AEA 41-551.
7. New York Times , Jan. 13, 1953.
8. Marian Rawles to Einstein, Jan. 14, 1953, AEA 41-629; Charles Williams to Einstein, Jan. 17, 1953, AEA 41-651; Homer Greene to Einstein, Jan. 15, 1953, AEA 41-588; Joseph Heidt to Einstein, Jan. 13, 1953, AEA 41-589.
9. Einstein to William Douglas, June 23, 1953, AEA 41-576; William Douglas to Einstein, June 30, 1953, AEA 41-577.
10. Generosa Pope Jr. to Einstein, Jan. 15, 1953, AEA 41-625; Daniel James to Einstein, Jan. 14, 1953, AEA 41-614.
11. Einstein to Daniel James, Jan. 15, 1953, AEA 60-696;New York Times , Jan. 22, 1953.
12. Einstein, Acceptance of the Lord & Taylor Award, May 4, 1953, AEA 28-979. In a letter to Dick Kluger, then a student editor of The Daily Princetonian,he wrote: “As long as a person has not violated the ‘social contract’ nobody has the right to inquire about his or her convictions. If this principal is not followed free intellectual development is not possible.” Einstein to Dick Kluger, Sept. 17, 1953, in Kluger’s possession.
13. Einstein to William Frauenglass, May 16, 1953, AEA 41-112; “Refuse to Testify Einstein Advises,”New York Times , June 12, 1953;Time , June 22, 1953.
14. All of these editorials ran on June 13, 1953, except the Chicago editorial, which ran on June 15.
15. Sam Epkin to Einstein, June 15, 1953, AEA 41-409; Victor Lasky to Einstein, June 1953, AEA 41-441; George Stringfellow to Einstein, June 15, 1953, AEA 41-470.
16. New York Times , June 14, 1953.
17. Bertrand Russell to New York Times, June 26, 1953; Einstein to Bertrand Russell, June 28, 1953, AEA 33-195.
18. Abraham Flexner to Einstein, June 12, 1953, AEA 41-174; Shepherd Baum to Einstein, June 17, 1953, AEA 41-202.
19. Richard Frauenglass to Einstein, June 20, 1953, AEA 41-181.
20. Sarah Shadowitz, “Albert Shadowitz,”Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 26, 2004. The author is the subject’s daughter.
21. Sayen, 273–276; Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Government Operations, “Testimony of Albert Shadowitz,” Dec. 14, 1953, and “Report on the Proceedings against Albert Shadowitz for Contempt of the Senate,” July 16, 1954; Albert Shadowitz to Einstein, Dec. 14, 1953, AEA 41-659; Einstein to Albert Shadowitz, Dec. 15, 1953, AEA 41-660. Shadowitz was cleared in July 1955, two years after his testimony, after the fall of McCarthy.
22. Jerome and Taylor, 120–121.
23. Bird and Sherwin, 133, 495.
24. Ibid., 495.
25. James Reston, “Dr. Oppenheimer Suspended by A.E.C. in Security Review,” New York Times, Apr. 13, 1954. On Sunday, Apr. 11, Joseph and Stewart Alsop, in their New York Herald Tribune column, had speculated that “leading physicists” were now a target of security investigations, but they did not mention Oppenheimer by name.
26. Pais 1982, 11; Bird and Sherwin, 502–504.
27. Johanna Fantova’s journal, June 3, 16, 17, 1954, in Calaprice, 359.
28. Einstein to Herbert Lehman, May 19, 1954, AEA 6-236.
29. Johanna Fantova’s journal, June 17, 1954, in Calaprice, 359.
30. Einstein to Norman Thomas, Mar. 10, 1954, AEA 61-549; Einstein to W. Stern, Jan. 14, 1954, AEA 61-470. See also Einstein to Felix Arnold, Mar. 19,1954,AEA 59-118:“The current investigations are an incomparably greater danger to our society than those few communists in the country could ever be.”
31. Johanna Fantova journal, Mar. 4, 1954, in Calaprice, 356; Einstein to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium, Mar. 28, 1954, AEA 32-410.
32. Theodore White, “U.S. Science,”The Reporter , Nov. 11, 1954. White went on to write The Making of the President series of books.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE END
1. Johanna Fantova journal, Mar. 19, 1954, in Calaprice, 356.
2. Einstein eulogy for Rudolf Ladenberg, Apr. 1, 1952, AEA 5-160.
3. Einstein to Jakob Ehrat, May 12, 1952, AEA 59-554; Einstein to Ernesta Marangoni, Oct. 1, 1952, AEA 60-406; Einstein to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium, Jan. 12, 1953, AEA 32-405.
4. Einstein interview with Lili Foldes, The Etude , Jan. 1947; Calaprice, 150. Information about his repeated playing of this record was given to me by someone who knew Einstein in his later years.
5. Einstein to Hans Muehsam, Mar. 30, 1954, AEA 38-434.
6. Einstein to Conrad Habicht and Maurice Solovine, Apr. 3, 1953, AEA 21-294; Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Feb. 27, 1955, AEA 21-306.
7. Sayen, 294.
8. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, May 1, 1954, AEA 75-918.
9. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, unfinished letter, Dec. 28, 1954, courtesy of Bob Cohn, purchased at Christie’s sale, Einstein Family Correspondence.
10. Gertrude Samuels, “Einstein, at 75, Is Still a Rebel,”New York Times Magazine , Mar. 14, 1954.
11. Johanna Fantova journal, 1954, in Calaprice, 354–363.
12. Wolfgang Pauli to Max Born, Mar. 3, 1954, in Born 2005, 213.
13. Einstein to Michele Besso, Aug. 10, 1954, AEA 7-420.
14. Einstein to Louis de Broglie, Feb. 8, 1954, AEA 8-311.
15. Einstein 1916, final appendix to the 1954 ed., 178.
16. Bertrand Russell to Einstein, Feb. 11, 1955, AEA 33-199; Einstein to Bertrand Russell, Feb. 16, 1955, AEA 33-200.
17. Einstein to Niels Bohr, Mar. 2, 1955, AEA 33-204.
18. Bertrand Russell, “Manifesto by Scientists for Abolition of War,” sent to Einstein on Apr. 5, 1955, AEA 33-209, and issued publicly July 9, 1955.
19. Einstein to Farmingdale Elementary School, Mar. 26, 1955, AEA 59-632; Alice Calaprice, ed., Dear Professor Einstein (New York: Prometheus, 2002), 219.
20. Einstein to Vero and Bice Besso, Mar. 21, 1955, AEA 7-245.
21. Eric Rogers, “The Equivalence Principle Demonstrated,” in French, 131; I. Bernard Cohen,“An Interview with Einstein,”Scientific American (July 1955).
22. Whitrow, 90; Einstein to Bertrand Russell, Apr. 11, 1955, AEA 33-212.
23. Einstein to Zvi Lurie, Jan. 5, 1955, AEA 60-388; Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), 191; Nathan and Norden, 640.
24. Helen Dukas, “Einstein’s Last Days,” AEA 39-71; Calaprice, 369; Pais 1982, 477.
25. Helen Dukas, “Einstein’s Last Days,” AEA 39-71; Helen Dukas to Abraham Pais, Apr. 30, 1955, in Pais 1982, 477.
26. Michelmore, 261.
27. Nathan and Norden, 640.
28. Einstein, final calculations, AEA 3-12. The final page can be viewed at www.alberteinstein.info/db/ViewImage.do?DocumentID=34430&Page=12.
EPILOGUE: EINSTEIN’S BRAIN AND EINSTEIN’S MIND
1. Michelmore, 262. Einstein’s will, which was witnessed by the logician Kurt Gödel, among others, gave Helen Dukas $20,000, most of his personal belongings and books, and the income from his royalties until she died, which she did in 1982. Hans Albert received only $10,000; he died while a visiting lecturer in Woods Hole, Mass., in 1973, survived by a son and daughter. Einstein’s other son, Eduard, received $15,000 to assure his continued care at the Zurich asylum, where he died in 1965. His stepdaughter Margot got $20,000 and the Mercer Street house, which was actually already in her name, and she died there in 1986. Dukas and Otto Nathan were made literary executors, and they guarded his reputation and papers so zealously that biographers and the editors of his collected papers would for years be stymied when they attempted to print anything verging on the merely personal.
2. “Einstein the Revolutionist,”New York Times , Apr. 19, 1955;Time , May 2, 1955. The lead story in the extra edition of The Daily Princetonian was written by R. W. “Johnny” Apple, a future Times correspondent.
3. The weird tale has produced two fascinating books: Carolyn Abraham’s Possessing Genius, a comprehensive account of the odyssey of Einstein’s brain, and Michael Paterniti’s Driving Mr. Albert, a delightful narrative of a ride across America with Einstein’s brain in the trunk of a rented Buick. There have also been some memorable articles, including Steven Levy’s “My Search for Einstein’s Brain,”New Jersey Monthly , August 1978; Gina Maranto’s “The Bizarre Fate of Einstein’s Brain,”Discover , May 1985; Scott McCartney, “The Hidden Secrets of Einstein’s Brain Are Still a Mystery,”Wall Street Journal , May 5, 1994. In addition, Einstein’s ophthalmologist Henry Abrams happened to wander into the autopsy room, and he ended up taking with him his former patient’s eyeballs, which he subsequently kept in a New Jersey safe deposit box.
4. Abraham, 22. Abraham interviewed the grown girl in 2000.
5. “Son Asked Study of Einstein’s Brain,”New York Times , Apr. 20, 1955; Abraham, 75. Harvey had indicated that he was going to send the brain to Montefiore Medical Center in New York to oversee the studies. But as doctors there waited in anticipation, he changed his mind and decided to keep it to himself. The dispute made headlines. “Doctors Row over Brain of Dr. Einstein,” reported the Chicago Daily Tribune. Abraham, 83, citing Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 20, 1955.
6. Levy 1978. See also www.echonyc.com/~steven/einstein.html.
7. See Abraham, 214–230, for an account of this issue.
8. Bill Toland, “Doctor Kept Einstein’s Brain in Jar 43 Years: Seven Years Ago, He Got ‘Tired of the Responsibility,’ ”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Apr. 17, 2005.
9. Marian Diamond, “On the Brain of a Scientist,”Experimental Neurology 88 (1985); www.newhorizons.org/neuro/diamond_einstein.htm.
10. Sandra Witelson et al., “The Exceptional Brain of Albert Einstein,”Lancet , June 19, 1999; Lawrence K. Altman, “Key to Intellect May Lie in Folds of Einstein’s Brain,”New York Times , June 18, 1999; www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/psychiatryneuroscience/faculty/witelson; Steven Pinker, “His Brain Measured Up,”New York Times , June 24, 1999.
11. Einstein to Carl Seelig, Mar. 11, 1952, AEA 39-013. See also Bucky, 29: “I am not more gifted than anybody else. I am just more curious than the average person, and I will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution.”
12. Seelig 1956a, 70.
13. Born 1978, 202.
14. Einstein to William Miller, quoted in Life magazine, May 2, 1955, in Calaprice, 261.
15. Hans Tanner, quoted in Seelig 1956a, 103.
16. André Maurois, Illusions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 35, courtesy of Eric Motley. Perse was the pseudonym of Marie René Auguste Alexis Léger, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1960.
17. Newton’s Principia, book 3; Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” the Herbert Spencer lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933, in Einstein 1954, 274.
18. Clark, 649.
19. Lee Smolin, “Einstein’s Lonely Path,”Discover (Sept. 2004).
20. Einstein’s foreword to Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), xv.
21. Einstein, “Freedom and Science,” in Ruth Anshen, ed., Freedom, Its Meaning (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 92, reprinted in part in Einstein 1954, 31.
22. Einstein to Phyllis Wright, Jan. 24, 1936, AEA 52-337.
23. Einstein to Herbert S. Goldstein, Apr. 25, 1929, AEA 33-272. For a discussion of Maimonides and divine providence in Jewish thought, see Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 229–250.
24. Banesh Hoffmann, in Harry Woolf, ed., Some Strangeness in the Proportion (Saddle River, N.J.: Addison-Wesley, 1980), 476.