An Einstein Encyclopedia
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The complete guide to everything you ever wanted to know about Einstein
This is the single most complete guide to Albert Einstein's life and work for students, researchers, and browsers alike. Written by three leading Einstein scholars who draw on their combined wealth of expertise gained during their work on the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, this authoritative and accessible reference features more than one hundred entries and is divided into three parts covering the personal, scientific, and public spheres of Einstein’s life.
An Einstein Encyclopedia contains entries on Einstein’s birth and death, family and romantic relationships, honors and awards, educational institutions where he studied and worked, citizenships and immigration to America, hobbies and travels, plus the people he befriended and the history of his archives and the Einstein Papers Project. Entries on Einstein’s scientific theories provide useful background and context, along with details about his assistants, collaborators, and rivals, as well as physics concepts related to his work. Coverage of Einstein’s role in public life includes entries on his Jewish identity, humanitarian and civil rights involvements, political and educational philosophies, religion, and more.
Commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the theory of general relativity, An Einstein Encyclopedia also includes a chronology of Einstein’s life and appendixes that provide information for further reading and research, including an annotated list of a selection of Einstein’s publications and a review of selected books about Einstein.
- More than 100 entries cover the rich details of Einstein’s personal, professional, and public life
- Authoritative entries explain Einstein’s family relationships, scientific achievements, political activities, religious views, and more
- More than 40 illustrations include photos of Einstein and his circle plus archival materials
- A chronology of Einstein’s life, appendixes, and suggestions for further reading provide essential details for further research
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An Einstein Encyclopedia - Alice Calaprice
AN
EINSTEIN ENCYCLOPEDIA
AN
EINSTEIN ENCYCLOPEDIA
ALICE CALAPRICE, DANIEL KENNEFICK, AND ROBERT SCHULMANN
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket photographs: Albert Einstein speaks at an event in favor of a Refugee Foundation, Royal Albert Hall, London, 1933 (b/w photo), English photographer, (20th century) / Bridgeman Images. Einstein at the Swiss Federal Patent Office, photo by Lucien Chavan. Photograph of Einstein playing the violin courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Calaprice, Alice, author.
An Einstein encyclopedia / Alice Calaprice, Daniel Kennefick, and Robert Schulmann.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14174-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Einstein, Albert, 1879–1955—Encyclopedias. 2. Physicists—Biography—Encyclopedias. 3. Relativity (Physics)—History—Encyclopedias. 4. Physics—History—20th century—Encyclopedias. I. Kennefick, Daniel, author. II. Schulmann, Robert J., author. III. Title.
QC16.E5C343 2015
530.092—dc23
2015008233
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in in Minion Pro
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Walter Hunziker (1935–2012), mathematical physicist, unflagging supporter of Einstein research, and steadfast friend
Contents
Preface xiii
Chronology xv
Credo: What I Believe
xxi
Part I. The Personal and Family Spheres 1
VITAL INFORMATION: CERTIFICATES IN FACSIMILE 3
Birth Certificate 3
Report Card 4
Doctoral Certificate 5
Nobel Prize Certificate 6
U.S. Naturalization Certificate 8
Death Certificate 9
BIRTH INFORMATION 9
ARCHIVES 10
Helen Dukas 11
Otto Nathan 12
AWARDS, HONORARY DEGREES, AND HONORARY MEMBERSHIPS IN FOREIGN SOCIETIES 13
Awards, Medals, and Miscellaneous Honors 13
Honorary Degrees 14
Sampling of Honorary Memberships in Foreign Academies of Sciences and Societies 15
CAREER 17
List of Years, Job Titles, and Employers 17
Employment History 18
Places of Employment 18
CITIZENSHIPS AND IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES 22
DOMICILES 26
EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS ATTENDED 28
Educational Background 28
Schools and Universities Attended 30
EINSTEIN PAPERS PROJECT (EPP) AND THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF ALBERT EINSTEIN (CPAE) 30
Prehistory of the EPP 31
Early Days 32
The Project Gets Under Way 33
The Boston Offices 33
The Move to Caltech 35
CPAE Volumes and Editors 36
FAME 37
The Media 37
Art and Commercialism 38
FAMILY 44
Family Relationships 44
Grandparents and Parents 48
Sister: Maria (Maja) Winteler-Einstein—Husband, Paul Winteler 50
Family No. 1 (Consisting of Einstein, Mileva, and Their Offspring) 51
Family No. 2 (Consisting of Einstein, Elsa, and Elsa’s Two Daughters) 60
FRIENDS 65
Michele Besso 65
Max and Hedwig Born 66
Lucien Chavan 67
Jakob Ehrat 68
Paul Ehrenfest 69
Elisabeth, Queen of the Belgians 70
Marcel Grossmann 70
Conrad Habicht 71
Hans Mühsam 72
Georg Nicolai 73
Janos Plesch 74
Romain Rolland 75
Maurice (Moritz) Solovine 76
Winteler Family 76
Stephen Wise 77
Heinrich Zangger 79
HEALTH 80
Health Exam 80
Health Problems 80
MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS 81
Asperger’s Syndrome 81
Bad Student 81
Communist 82
Could Have Gone Fishing 82
Responsible for the Atom Bomb 83
Left-Handedness 83
Mileva Marić as Alleged Collaborator 84
Only Ten or Twelve People Can Understand Relativity Theory 85
Political Naiveté 86
Vegetarian 87
Verification of General Relativity Theory Was Unimportant to Einstein 87
Was Only a Theorist 88
PASTIMES 89
Hiking 89
Music 89
Reading 91
Sailing 92
Writing Poems and Aphorisms 92
ROMANTIC INTERESTS: ACTUAL, PROBABLE, AND POSSIBLE 98
Marie Winteler 99
Betty Neumann 100
Else Kotányi Jerusalem 102
Estella Katzenellenbogen 102
Margarete Lebach 103
Ethel Michanowsky 103
Toni Mendel 104
Margarita Konenkova 105
Johanna Fantova 106
SECRETARIES 107
TEACHERS 107
At the Aargau Cantonal School 107
At the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School (ETH) 108
At the University of Zurich 108
TRAVELS AND TRAVEL DIARIES 109
America, 1921 109
Asia, 1922–1923: The Far East and Palestine 111
Spain, 1923 115
South America, 1925 116
Back to America, 1930–1931 118
Oxford, May 1931 119
America, 1931–1932 120
America, 1932–1933 121
DEATH 122
An Account of Einstein’s Last Days by Helen Dukas 123
Removal of the Brain 126
Last Will and Testament 127
Part II. A Life in Science 133
ANNUS MIRABILIS 135
ASSISTANTS 135
COLLABORATORS 138
COLLEAGUES 146
Friedrich (Fritz) Adler 146
Niels Bohr 147
Marie Curie 147
Arthur Stanley Eddington 148
Kurt Gödel 149
Fritz Haber 150
David Hilbert 151
Paul Langevin 151
Max von Laue 152
Philipp Lenard 152
H. A. Lorentz 153
Walther Nernst 154
J. Robert Oppenheimer 155
Paul Painlevé 155
Wolfgang Pauli 156
Max Planck 157
Willem de Sitter 158
Arnold Sommerfeld 158
CONCEPTS 159
Action-at-a-Distance—Quantum Teleportation 159
Arrow of Time 160
Asymmetric Theory 160
Atoms 161
Blackbody (Thermal) Radiation 162
Bose-Einstein Condensate 164
Bose-Einstein Statistics 164
Brownian Motion 165
Canal Rays 166
Cosmological Constant 167
Cosmology 169
Determinism 171
Distant Parallelism 171
E = mc² 172
Ehrenfest’s Paradox 173
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox 174
Einstein-Rosen Bridge 175
Equipartition Theorem 176
Fluctuations, Theory of 177
Ghost Field 178
Gravitational Waves 178
Gravito-Magnetism 179
Hole Argument 180
Length Contraction 181
Metric 182
Overdetermination and the Unified Field Theory 183
Photoelectric Effect 184
Photon (Light Quantum) 185
Principles of Relativity Theory 186
Quantum Mechanics 189
Radiometer Effect 190
Relativity of Simultaneity 190
Spacetime 191
Specific Heat Capacity 192
Third Law of Thermodynamics 193
Time 194
Time Dilation 195
Wave-Particle Duality 195
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION 197
INFLUENTIAL SCIENTIFIC FOREBEARS AND CONTEMPORARIES 197
KINETIC THEORY 198
LECTURES, MAJOR SCIENTIFIC 200
Published Lectures 200
Unpublished Lectures 201
NOBEL PRIZE 201
PATENTS AND INVENTIONS 202
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (CONTRIBUTED BY THOMAS RYCKMAN, STANFORD UNIVERSITY) 203
QUANTUM THEORY 205
RELATIVITY THEORY 208
Special Relativity 208
General Relativity 211
Anti-Relativity Campaign 216
RIVALS 216
SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 219
SCIENTIFIC SIDELIGHTS 219
SOLVAY CONFERENCES 221
THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS 222
UNIFIED FIELD THEORY 224
Early Unified Field Theories That Influenced Einstein 226
Part III. Identity and Principles 229
CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS 231
EDUCATION: EINSTEIN’S VIEWS 232
The Nightmare
232
Uproar in the Lecture Hall
233
JEWISH IDENTITY AND TIES 234
Allegiances, Old and New 234
Catalyst: The Role of Kurt Blumenfeld 235
The Cultural Zionist Ideal 236
Hebrew University of Jerusalem 237
The Jewish Question and Its Resolution 238
ORGANIZATIONAL TIES 241
Olympia Academy 241
Bund Neues Vaterland (Association for a New Fatherland) 242
International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation 243
Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists 244
POLITICAL CONTEXTS 246
The First World War and the Weimar Republic, 1914–1932 246
Hitler in Power and the Second World War, 1933–1945 252
Postwar and Cold War, 1946–1955 257
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 263
Pacifism 263
Socialism 266
World Government 266
RELIGION 268
Appendixes 269
Appendix A. Select Books and Documentaries 271
Appendix B. Copyright, Licensing, and Permissions 281
Appendix C. Select Annotated Bibliography 283
References 327
Index 333
Preface
To mark the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s greatest accomplishment—the general theory of relativity—we introduce a reference work that presents the many sides of his life and work: the personal, scientific, spiritual, ethical, intellectual, and sociopolitical. The selections reflect our personal vision based on our collective knowledge and experience, but we have aimed to include subject matter that will interest not only scientists but also the general public.
Organization of the Book
Einstein made indelible contributions in very different areas of endeavor—in physics as a giant of the first rank, and in the human sphere as a moral and humanitarian icon. Thus, we have divided our volume into three parts, with each one tracing a different aspect of his life.
The book is not designed to be read cover to cover, but to be consulted and browsed according to the reader’s interests. What follows is a guide that, we hope, offers readers ready accessibility to the many topics that help define Einstein.
We begin the volume with a chronology of Einstein’s life and significant achievements, followed by his credo, What I Believe,
written in midlife in 1930, in which he summarized his way of looking at the world, his Weltanschauung. The three parts of the book follow: Part I addresses Einstein’s personal and family life; Part II his scientific accomplishments and related material; and Part III his nonscientific involvements, including his Jewish identity. Within each of these three major parts, we have arranged many of the topics in alphabetical order, though a few historical events, such as birth and death information and sections of Part III, are in chronological sequence. Subentries are listed alphabetically when possible and chronologically when necessary, the latter arrangement used generally with historical subjects. If we violated our general rule on the rare occasion when we could not come up with a clear solution for placement, we hope that readers will overlook the minor lapse. Supplementary information that did not fit neatly into the three major categories appears in appendixes. The contents and index, as well as the many cross-references, provide ways to navigate the book.
Sources
For much of the information in this volume, we relied on the Einstein Archives and the currently available volumes (1 to 14) of the comprehensive edition of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. We received valuable additional family information from the Einstein Archives’ information officer, Barbara Wolff, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Each of us also drew on our own experiences and memories from our work with these papers—an accumulated total of almost eighty years. We provide sources for direct quotations and often provide archival and other documentation for specific information so that readers can consult primary material. If we give only an author’s last name and a short title of his or her work, readers can consult the References section at the back of the book for complete source information.
Appendix A discusses books about Einstein that we have often turned to—or rejected—in our own work. Appendix B addresses the complex copyright issues related to Einstein’s works. Appendix C provides an annotated bibliography of Einstein’s publications, listing what we believe are all the most important and representative publications from Einstein’s various fields of interest.
Acknowledgments
We express our gratitude to Barbara Wolff of the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for correcting some of our errors and supplying valuable additional information and insights. Andor Carius, József Illy, Michel Janssen, Osik Moses, Jürgen Renn, Ze’ev Rosenkranz, Tilman Sauer, John Stachel, and Jeroen van Dongen helped to clarify a number of murky issues and points or offered suggestions on the many topics covered here, and we are grateful for their contributions. We are also very grateful to Thomas Ryckman for agreeing to provide a section on Einstein’s philosophy of science. Anne Savarese, our editor at Princeton University Press, saw promise in our project, provided valuable suggestions, and made sure the manuscript became a book, and our copyeditor, Karen Verde, caught our infelicities and bloopers. Sara Lerner cheerfully and skillfully guided the book through production. We are grateful to the Press’s readers for giving us input that we hope improves the book’s organization, and for taking valuable time to challenge us on some topics. We also thank Diana Buchwald and the staff at the Einstein Papers Project, especially former editor Osik Moses, for helping with specific questions and leading us to selected photographs and documents; Barbara Wolff at the Einstein Archives for supplying facsimile certificates; and Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for granting permission to use copyrighted material.
Chronology
Credo: What I Believe
Einstein conjoined politics and ethics on numerous occasions, but never more poignantly than in What I Believe.
This essay was first published in 1930 as one in a series of Living Philosophies
in the journal Forum and Century. Because this credo describes Einstein’s beliefs in his own words, we present it here in the full original text, which differs significantly from the version that appeared in the edited collection of Einstein’s essays in Ideas and Opinions.
What I Believe
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men—above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.
I do not believe we can have any freedom at all in the philosophical sense, for we act not only under external compulsion but also by inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying—A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills
—impressed itself upon me in youth and has always consoled me when I have witnessed or suffered life’s hardships. This conviction is a perpetual breeder of tolerance, for it does not allow us to take ourselves or others too seriously; it makes rather for a sense of humor.
To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
Without the sense of collaborating with like-minded beings in the pursuit of the ever unattainable in art and scientific research, my life would have been empty. Ever since childhood I have scorned the commonplace limits so often set upon human ambition. Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or teamwork. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years.
Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions, and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.
My political ideal is democracy. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized. It is an irony of fate that I should have been showered with so much uncalled-for and unmerited admiration and esteem. Perhaps this adulation springs from the unfulfilled wish of the multitude to comprehend the few ideas which I, with my weak powers, have advanced.
Full well do I know that in order to attain any definite goal it is imperative that one person should do the thinking and commanding and carry most of the responsibility. But those who are led should not be driven, and they should be allowed to choose their leader. It seems to me that the distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force. I am convinced that degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proved that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.
For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to such regimes as exist in Russia and Italy today. The thing which has discredited the European forms of democracy is not the basic theory of democracy itself, which some say is at fault, but the instability of our political leadership, as well as the impersonal character of party alignments.
I believe that you in the United States have hit upon the right idea. You choose a President for a reasonable length of time and give him enough power to acquit himself properly of his responsibilities. In the German Government, on the other hand, I like the state’s more extensive care of the individual when he is ill or unemployed. What is truly valuable in our bustle of life is not the nation, I should say, but the creative and impressionable individuality, the personality—he who produces the noble and sublime while the common herd remains dull in thought and insensible in feeling.
This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind—the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake—the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism—how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds [sic] than participate in such doings.
Such a stain on humanity should be erased without delay. I think well enough of human nature to believe that it would have been wiped out long ago had not the common sense of nations been systematically corrupted through school and press for business and political reasons.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.
Source: Originally published in Forum and Century 84, no. 4 (October 1930): 193–194. Reprinted in Rowe and Schulmann, Einstein on Politics, pp. 226–230. Reprinted courtesy of The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Part I
The Personal and Family Spheres
FIGURE 1. Birth certificate. (Courtesy of The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Vital Information: Certificates in Facsimile
Below we present samples of important extant facsimile documents relating to Einstein’s life. Translations or further information can be found in the cited cross-references.
Fig. 1. Birth Certificate. See also Birth Information and Family, p. 9
Fig. 2. School Report Card. See also Education and Schools Attended, pp. 28–30
FIGURE 2. School report card. (Courtesy of The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Fig. 3. Doctoral Certificate. See also Part II, Doctoral Dissertation
FIGURE 3. Doctoral certificate. (Courtesy of The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Fig. 4. Nobel Prize Certificate. See also Part II, Nobel Prize
FIGURE 4. Nobel Prize certificate. (Courtesy of The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Fig. 5. U.S. Naturalization Certificate. See also Citizenships and Immigration to the United States, pp. 22–26
FIGURE 5. U.S. Naturalization certificate. (Courtesy of The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Fig. 6. Death Certificate. See also Death, pp. 122–132
FIGURE 6. Death certificate. (Courtesy Mercer County Courts)
Birth Information
(As given on Birth Certificate, fig. 1, pp. 2–3)
Date of Birth: March 14, 1879, at 11:30 in the morning, a male child, first name of Albert
Place of Birth: Parents’ apartment, Bahnhofstrasse B, No. 135, Ulm, Württemberg [Germany]
Parents: Pauline née Koch, a homemaker; Hermann Einstein, a merchant
Parents’ Religion: Jewish
Signed by: Hermann Einstein
Archives
(See also Einstein Papers Project and The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, below)
When, in March 1933, Einstein did not return to Germany after the Nazis came to power, his stepdaughter Ilse, with the help of her husband, Rudolf Kayser, and her sister, Margot, packed up his papers in the Berlin residence along with some furniture and other belongings. Rudolf also bundled together some papers at the Einsteins’ summer home in Caputh. Through connections with the French ambassador to Germany, André François-Poncet, the Kaysers were able to remove these portions of Einstein’s literary estate to France via sealed diplomatic pouch. From there they were shipped to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein took up residence in autumn 1933 (see Fölsing, Albert Einstein, p. 666). These papers and files constituted the earliest form of what later became the Einstein Archives.
In accord with Einstein’s Last Will and Testament (see Death, below), his literary estate was bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). The will stipulated that the files were to be transferred to the university from the Institute after the deaths of Margot Einstein and Helen Dukas (see sec. 13E of the will). Enriched by additional originals, copies, and transcriptions, this literary estate became the foundation of the Einstein Archives.
After Einstein’s death in 1955, Dukas, later with the help of Gerald Holton of Harvard University, began a systematic organization of Einstein’s literary legacy. In the meantime, Otto Nathan, the executor of Einstein’s estate, launched a campaign to acquire new material for the archive, also with the help of Dukas and Holton. One of the goals of their project was to prepare the correspondence, writings, and documents for eventual publication by Princeton University Press (PUP) as The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. PUP established an advisory board in the 1970s to jumpstart the ambitious project.
After Dukas’s death in early 1982, the archive of original documents was moved to Jerusalem late that year. Dukas had been Einstein’s longtime secretary, and after his death, she had become not only a literary trustee but also the first archivist of his papers. In Jerusalem, the first archivist/curator was Manfred Waserman (1988–1989), followed by Ze’ev Rosenkranz (1989–2003), and Roni Grosz (2004 to the present). The archives were shipped from Princeton to the Jewish National and University Library, administratively a part of the HUJI. They are now administered directly by the HUJI’s Library Authority.
Today the archives consist of approximately 80,000 items, a sharp increase from the 10,000 documents estimated in 1978 and 42,000 estimated in 1980. The 80,000 figure includes not only Einstein’s correspondence, writings, and documents, but also copies, transcriptions, translations, and third-party documents that are invaluable in providing context and preparing annotations. The number also reflects an active and continual search for new materials. As John Stachel, the founding editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, noted in his 1980 guide to the duplicate archive that is now located at Caltech, The Archive itself is a changing thing. Documents are added and sometimes transferred from one place to another. Annotations may be added, changed, or moved.
Einstein’s diaries, photos, medals, citations, music collection, and books from his personal library are stored in Jerusalem as well, making this the richest of scientific archives.
Duplicate archives for use by scholars have been established at the libraries of Boston University, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, and Princeton University in New Jersey. Smaller collections can be accessed in various institutes, colleges, and national archives, to which private parties have donated personal papers that include Einstein correspondence and photographs. Among these are Brandeis University (The Albert Einstein Collection); the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City, particularly useful for its photographs; Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York (Otto Nathan Papers); and the Prussian State Library in Berlin. The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, also has Einstein-related documents and photographs.
Because Helen Dukas and Otto Nathan were the principal figures in establishing the archives, we have placed their biographical information in this section.
Helen Dukas
Helene Dukas, later known as Helen or Helena Dukas, was born on October 17, 1896, in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, to Leopold and Hannchen Dukas. She was one of seven children. Following the premature death of her mother in 1909, she dropped out of high school to care for her siblings. She later became a kindergarten teacher in Munich and in 1923 moved to Berlin to work as a secretary for a publisher. When the small publishing firm was liquidated five years later, Dukas looked for another job. Her sister Rosa, a friend of Elsa Einstein’s, had heard that Einstein needed a new private secretary because Ilse Einstein, his first full-time secretary, had married Rudolf Kayser and chose to stop working for her stepfather. Rosa alerted Dukas to the open position. After Einstein had employed several temporary secretaries, including Siegfried Jacoby and Edwin Sicradz, Dukas began work in April 1928 as Einstein’s secretary, a position she held until the physicist’s death.
Helen Dukas was not a relative of Einstein’s, but everyone treated her like a family member. She became an enormously important person in Einstein’s life and, after immigrating to the United States, lived in his house with other family members, even after Einstein’s death, for the rest of her life. She never married.
Dukas arrived in Princeton in October 1933 with Einstein and his second wife, Elsa. After Elsa’s death in late 1936, Dukas became housekeeper in the Mercer Street home in addition to carrying out her duties as secretary. On October 1, 1940, she took the American oath of citizenship in nearby Trenton, New Jersey, together with Einstein and his stepdaughter Margot.
Dukas was known for being intelligent, modest, shy, and passionately loyal to Einstein. She was fiercer about protecting his privacy than even Einstein himself. This trait prompted Einstein to nickname her my Cerberus,
after the hound in Greek and Roman mythology that guarded the entrance to the underworld. Over time, this vigilance and buffering became partly responsible for much of the Einstein mythology. There is no evidence the two ever had a romantic relationship. As if trying to dissuade any rumors, she respectfully referred to him as Herr Professor
during his lifetime and the professor
after his death, never as Albert
—at least in public and in writing. In his last will of 1950, Einstein appointed Dukas, along with his friend Otto Nathan, as co-trustee of his literary estate. The will also stipulated that his personal effects and a sizeable portion of his financial assets be left to her. (See Death, Last Will and Testament.
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After Einstein’s death in 1955, Dukas continued to live in the home on Mercer Street with Margot Einstein. She devoted herself to organizing a formal archive of Einstein’s considerable writings and correspondence, a task she undertook first in an office in the basement of Fuld Hall at the Institute and later in a small office on the third floor. She worked faithfully and diligently on the files, adding short notes and cross-references to many of the documents she had filed. Morever, she typed up thousands of transcriptions, mostly of Einstein-authored letters. In addition, she and Einstein’s former assistant Banesh Hoffmann, who became a mathematics professor at Queens College in New York, published two books, Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel and Einstein, the Human Side.
Dukas continued to come to the office in an Institute shuttle several times a week until her death on February 9, 1982, the result of a ruptured stomach ulcer, at age eighty-five. During her memorial service on February 12 at the Jewish Center in Princeton, Otto Nathan, who had known her for forty-eight years and was close to her for the final twenty-seven, tearfully proclaimed, When Helen closed her eyes for the last time three days ago, Einstein died a second time. No one was closer to him, no one more dedicated to him. Her purpose in life was to serve Einstein…. She was excited about every new item that came into the archive, as if a part of Einstein himself had returned…. No illustrious scientist could ever duplicate the work she has done.
(From Alice Calaprice’s notes of the service; see also the New York Times’s obituary.) She left her various assets mostly to her sisters and nieces, to Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and to Margot Einstein. She appointed Otto Nathan as the executor of her estate and bequeathed to him a signed, silver-framed photograph of Einstein. (See Einstein Archives 74-628 for a copy of her will.)
Otto Nathan
Otto Nathan was born on July 15, 1893, in Bingen, Germany. An economist, he served as an adviser to the Prussian government during the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1933 and left Germany after Hitler’s rise to power. After immigrating to the United States, he taught at several universities on the East Coast, including Princeton University, Vassar College, and Howard University, and published two books on Nazi economics. With Heinz Norden, he coauthored Einstein on Peace (1960).
Einstein and Otto Nathan met in Princeton in the mid-1930s, shortly after both established residence there. They quickly developed a trusting friendship that lasted until Einstein’s death. Einstein appointed his old friend as sole executor and a co-trustee of the Einstein estate. With the help of Helen Dukas, Nathan dedicated himself to preserving for posterity Einstein’s established legacy as a secular saint. For years, researchers had tried to construct a more realistic portrait of Einstein but were thwarted by the considerable lengths to which Nathan and Dukas went to avoid sharing information that might be damaging to the physicist’s established reputation. Nathan died in New York City on January 27, 1987, at the age of ninety-three, five years after Dukas. He bequeathed his papers to Vassar College and to HUJI.
Awards, Honorary Degrees, and Honorary Memberships in Foreign Societies
Helen Dukas prepared an incomplete list of awards and honors for the Einstein Archives (Einstein Archives 30-105; see also Reel 65 in the archives). She noted that the citations themselves were left in Germany and that her compilation was likely to be incomplete. However, the archives have since been updated, and we were able to verify all listed honorary degrees with the institutions themselves or with certificates in the archives, thereby adding many previously omitted entries to Dukas’s original short list. (Numbers in brackets are archival numbers; CPAE stands for The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.)
Awards, Medals, and Miscellaneous Honors
Honorary Degrees (Doctor honoris causa)
FIGURE 7. The element einsteinium. Einsteinium is a synthetic element with atomic number 99. The only element named for a person with a lower atomic number is curium, named for Marie Curie. The element was first observed in the debris of nuclear explosions. It is so radioactive that in this image the quartz crystal of the container next to the element itself is radioactive and glowing brightly. It is one of the heaviest elements to exist in macroscopic quantities. (Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Wikimedia Commons)
Sampling of Honorary Memberships in Foreign Academies of Sciences and Societies (while not a resident of that city or country)