Einstein on the Run Read online

  EINSTEIN ON THE RUN

  Copyright © 2019 Andrew Robinson

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932771

  ISBN 978-0-300-23476-3

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my wife, Dipli,

  moromere, as ever

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue A Wanderer on the Face of the Earth

  1 The Happiest Thought of My Life

  2 Hats Off to the Fellows! From a Swiss Jew

  3 A Stinking Flower in a German Buttonhole

  4 God Does Not Play Dice with the Universe

  5 A Barbarian among the Holy Brotherhood in Tails

  6 The Reality of Nature and the Nature of Reality

  7 On the Run

  8 I Vill a Little T’ink

  Epilogue An Old Gypsy in a Quaint and Ceremonious Village

  Notes and References

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  Einstein under guard in Norfolk, 1933. Archant Library, Norwich.

  Solvay Congress in Brussels, 1911.

  Einstein with Arthur Eddington, 1930. Winifred Eddington /from The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington by A. Vibert Douglas.

  Manuscript of an article on relativity by Einstein, 1919. Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem.

  Einstein on his first visit to England, 1921. Ullstein Bild / Granger.

  Drawing of Einstein by William Rothenstein, 1927. From Twelve Portraits by William Rothenstein.

  Einstein and group at Government House, Jerusalem, 1923. Courtesy of École Biblique, Jerusalem.

  Einstein and George Bernard Shaw at a dinner in London, 1930. Topical Press Agency / Hulton Archives / Getty Images.

  Solvay Congress in Brussels, 1927.

  Einstein during his doctoral ceremony in Oxford, 1931. Zuma Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo.

  Einstein’s blackboard in Oxford, 1931.

  Letter to the Rhodes trustees from Robert Gunther, 1931. Courtesy of Rhodes Trustees, Oxford.

  Drawing of Einstein by F. Rizzi, 1933. Courtesy of Senior Common Room, Christ Church, Oxford.

  Einstein and two men in Oxford, probably 1931. Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem.

  Einstein seated in Oxford, 1931–33. Private collection.

  Cartoon of Einstein by an unknown German artist, 1933. From Einstein on Politics, edited by David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann.

  Einstein in Christ Church quadrangle, Oxford, 1933. Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock Photo.

  Einstein’s landing card at Dover, 1933.

  Einstein at the Oxford Union, 1933. Gillman & Soame, Oxford.

  Einstein with Winston Churchill, Chartwell, 1933. Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

  Einstein with Oliver Locker-Lampson, London, 1933. Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo.

  Cartoon of Einstein by Charles Raymond Macauley, 1933. From Einstein on Politics, edited by David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann.

  Einstein and wife with a Belgian police officer, 1933. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo.

  Einstein on the front page of the Daily Express, 1933. Courtesy of Daily Express / Express Syndication.

  Einstein alone in Norfolk, 1933. Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

  Cartoon of Einstein by David Low, 1933. Courtesy of Caltech Archives, Pasadena.

  Einstein with his bronze bust and Jacob Epstein, 1933. Bettmann / Getty Images.

  Einstein speaks at the Albert Hall, London, 1933. Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo.

  Cartoon of Einstein by Sidney ‘George’ Strube, 1933. Courtesy of Daily Express / Express Syndication.

  Einstein in his study at Princeton, 1951. Ernst Haas / Getty Images.

  Russell–Einstein Manifesto: cover of a recording by Bertrand Russell, 1955. Private collection.

  Einstein in a stained-glass window of Christ Church Hall, Oxford. Courtesy of Christ Church, Oxford.

  Cartoon by Herbert Lawrence Block, 1955. Herb Block Foundation, Washington DC.

  Preface

  Whenever we think of the world’s best-known scientist, we generally picture him in relation to Germany, where Albert Einstein was born, or Switzerland, where he first became a physicist, or the United States, where he settled during his last two decades, or Israel, to which he willed his massive archives because of his Jewish sympathies.

  Less often considered is Britain. Yet, it would be no exaggeration to say that Britain is the country that made Einstein into the worldwide phenomenon he is today. Profound and creative, Einstein’s entanglement with Britain was both intellectual and emotional. In 1927, while he was living in Germany, he wrote to a British physicist in Oxford: ‘in England . . . my work has received greater recognition than anywhere else in the world’. In 1933, while revisiting Britain, he remarked with uncharacteristic fervour to a London journalist: ‘I love this country.’ In 1937, having relocated from Europe to the United States, he told a refugee German physicist in Edinburgh that Britain was ‘the most civilised country of the day’.

  Einstein’s relationship with Britain flourished for over half a century. In the 1890s, British theoretical and experimental physics, as epitomised by Isaac Newton, sparked his scientific development during his school and college education in Switzerland. In 1919, British astronomers confirmed his general theory of relativity, which made Einstein internationally famous. In 1933, Britain saved him from likely assassination by Nazi extremists by offering him refuge. And in 1955, Britain gave rise to his most enduring political statement: the Russell–Einstein Manifesto against the spread of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, initiated by the philosopher, mathematician and political activist Bertrand Russell – the last document signed by Einstein before his death.

  All this was despite Einstein’s never fluent, indeed at times comical, grasp of English, which he had not formally learned. ‘It just won’t stick to my ancient skull,’ he confessed to his diary in 1931 (of course in German), after trying to study English on a long ocean voyage while going to lecture in the United States. ‘Einstein’s English was very simple, containing about 300 words pronounced in a very peculiar way,’ noted his English-speaking physicist friend Leopold Infeld, a Polish refugee from Nazism who collaborated closely with Einstein at Princeton in the 1930s in the writing of their joint popular success, The Evolution of Physics. ‘I cannot write in English, because of the treacherous spelling,’ Einstein confessed in 1944 to another physicist, Max Born, an old friend from Germany who had studied in Cambridge as a young man and was comfortable with speaking and writing the language. ‘When I am reading it, I only hear it and am unable to remember what the written word looks like.’

  Even so, ‘Einstein was an Anglophile,’ declared three American scholars of Einstein – Alice Calaprice, Daniel Kennefick and Robert Schulmann – without hesitation or qualification in their study, An Einstein Encyclopedia, published by Princeton University Press in 2015. Nonetheless, Einstein specialists,
including his many biographers, have tended to downplay his relationship with Britain because of its diversity and subtlety. I myself underrated it in my book, Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity – as did the book’s nine expert contributors.

  This book, Einstein on the Run, is the first to focus on Einstein and Britain. It brings together material that is both familiar and unfamiliar – some of it hitherto unpublished – from disparate parts of the Einstein archives. These archives at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem contain a total of around 30,000 documents, making them similar in size to the archives of Napoleon Bonaparte and several times the size of those of Newton and Galileo, according to the unique Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology. Since the 1980s, the project has overseen the publication of fifteen large volumes of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (CPAE ), the latest of which concludes in 1927 – leaving nearly three decades of his life still to be published. No wonder that Einstein still has the power to surprise and fascinate the world. As George Bernard Shaw said of him in a speech in London in 1930, at a dinner to honour Einstein: ‘I rejoice at the new universe to which he has introduced us. I rejoice in the fact that he has destroyed all the old sermons, all the old absolutes, all the old cut and dried conceptions, even of time and space, which were so discouraging . . .’.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of the Albert Einstein Archives in Jerusalem, which made available to me Einstein’s articles, lectures and letters, some of which are unpublished, plus related material and letters to Einstein. Its archivists, Barbara Wolff and Chaya Becker, were consistently helpful while I was researching both this book and Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity. My deepest gratitude goes to their colleague Or Orith Burla, who not only retrieved much archival material at my request but also suggested material I was not aware of and on occasion helped me to translate it from German into English. Her assistance with my research was generous, invaluable and particularly welcome to a freelance author.

  I am also grateful to the fellows of Christ Church, Lady Margaret Hall and Nuffield College in Oxford, to the Rhodes House Trustees and to the English-Speaking Union, for permission to quote correspondence relating to Einstein’s visits to Oxford, notably the Oxford diary of Margaret Deneke and the letters of Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell).

  Sebastian Born, on behalf of the Born family, generously granted permission to quote passages from the letters written by his grandfather Max Born to Einstein, originally published in English translation as The Born–Einstein Letters. ‘I’m sure he would have been, and we are, happy that your work continues to reveal his thought and insight in these conversations with his great friend Einstein.’

  Many archivists, based mainly in Britain, have been unusually helpful with my research. It is a pleasure to thank: Nicolas Bell (Trinity College, Cambridge), Judith Curthoys (Christ Church, Oxford), Gavin Fuller (Telegraph Media Group, London), Emma Huber (Taylor Institution Library, Oxford), Michael Hughes (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Clare Kavanagh (Nuffield College, Oxford), Suzanne Keyte (Royal Albert Hall, London), Oliver Mahony (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford), Charlotte Oxendale (Rhodes House, Oxford), Niels Sampath (Oxford Union Library), Michael Simonson (Leo Baeck Institute, New York) and Anna Towlson (London School of Economics). Others include: Frank Baker (John Rylands Library, Manchester), Jessica Borge (King’s College, London), Rosemary Dixon (Archant Library, Norwich), Melissa Downing (Rhodes House, Oxford), Heidi Egginton (Churchill Archives, Cambridge), Robyn Haggard (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford), Stephen Hebron (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Laura Hilton-Smith (Leeds University Library), Loma Karklins (Caltech Archives, Pasadena), Lee Macdonald (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford), Wilma Minty (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Alistair Murphy (Cromer Museum), Laura Outterside (Royal Society, London), Emma Quinlan (Nuffield College, Oxford), Ed Smithson (Nuffield College, Oxford), Jean-Michel de Tarragon (École Biblique, Jerusalem), Bridget Whittle (McMaster University, Hamilton) and Harry Wright (Friends House, London).

  In the world of Einstein scholarship, it was a delight to discuss a range of issues with someone as well informed, open-minded and amusing as Robert Schulmann, former director of the Einstein Papers Project, author of influential books on Einstein and contributor to Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity, who shares my curiosity about Einstein’s attitude to Britain. I also enjoyed interacting with Robert’s former colleagues at the Einstein Papers Project: Alice Calaprice, editor of The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, who, despite her retirement from Princeton University Press, was always willing to answer my questions about Einstein quotations (genuine, probable and invented); and David Rowe, co-editor with Robert Schulmann of Einstein on Politics, who drew my attention to Antonina Vallentin’s arresting account of Einstein in 1933, plus other sources. Among the current members of the Einstein Papers Project I am grateful to its director, Diana Kormos Buchwald, another contributor to Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity, for her general support, and to its assistant director, Ze’ev Rosenkranz, who took trouble to advise me on Einstein’s travel diaries, his relationship to Palestine and other matters. In Oxford, Robert Fox was a generous source of information while he was researching an article on Einstein in Oxford for the Royal Society’s journal, Notes and Records.

  In the wider academic world, beyond Einstein studies, I owe a special debt to the physicist and historian of science Graham Farmelo, fellow author, biographer and journalist, who wrote excellent book reviews for me when I was literary editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement. Graham introduced me to Yale University Press.

  Other friends and contacts inside and outside academe who deserve thanks for their advice on Einstein and/or Einstein-related matters are: Joanna Ashbourn, Jonathan Bowen (Edmund Bowen), Paul Cartledge, Jodie Collins (Oliver Locker-Lampson), David Dunmur (Frederick Lindemann), David Dutton (Austen Chamberlain), Josef Eisinger (Einstein’s travel diaries), Mordechai Feingold (Isaac Newton), Nancy Greenspan (Max Born), Hanoch Gutfreund (The Hebrew University), Richard Hawkins (Samuel Untermyer), Gordon Johnson (Isaiah Berlin), David Levey, Jonathan Locker-Lampson, Alex May (entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Michael Musgrave (Marie Soldat), Cormac O’Raifeartaigh (Einstein’s cosmology), David Robinson (Einstein’s lecture at King’s College, London), Tom Wakeford and Thomas Weber (Adolf Hitler).

  At Christ Church, Oxford, my old friend James Lawrie organised a talk for me at the college on Einstein in Oxford in 2015, the centenary of general relativity, followed by an article in the college magazine, Christ Church Matters, commissioned by his colleague Simon Offen.

  Among writers and journalists, various individuals in Norfolk kindly helped me in researching Einstein’s stay near Cromer in September–October 1933, in particular Glenys Hitchings, Stuart McLaren, Steve Snelling and Del Styan. Stuart kindly supplied me with a copy of the rare souvenir booklet published (presumably by Oliver Locker-Lampson) to commemorate Einstein’s speech at the Albert Hall meeting in October 1933. The BBC journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow provided further information about this meeting regarding the role of Locker-Lampson. Thanks, too, to various editors who have recently published articles of mine about Einstein and related subjects, in particular: Sara Abdulla (Nature), Marina Benjamin (Aeon), Tushna Commissariat (Physics World), Barb Kiser (Nature), James McConnachie (The Author) and Valerie Thompson (Science).

  It has been a distinct pleasure to work with the editorial staff of Yale University Press for the first time. My editor, Julian Loose – evidently fascinated by Einstein’s personality and British adventures – was imaginatively involved with the book from its commissioning to its completion. Marika Lysandrou did sterling work on the illustrations. Rachael Lonsdale and Clarissa Sutherland were remarkably careful and efficient editors.

  See him as he squats on Cromer beach doing sums, Charlie Chaplin with the brow of Shakespeare. . . . So it is not an accident that the N
azi lads vent a particular fury against him. He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast – intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump.

  ‘Einstein’ by John Maynard Keynes, New Statesman and Nation, October 1933

  In September 1933 – a few months after exiling himself forever from his German home in Berlin where he had lived since 1914 – Einstein found himself unexpectedly dwelling alone in a thatched wooden holiday hut located in a wild rural area of Norfolk in eastern England, close to the sea near the coastal town of Cromer. He was far from being on holiday, however. The hut was a secret refuge to avoid a rumoured attempt at assassination by agents acting for the Nazi regime in Germany; Einstein was guarded with guns by a small group of local English people, led by a Conservative member of parliament who was also a decorated veteran of the First World War.

  During March–April, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power, Einstein had publicly criticised the repressive policies of the new National Socialist government; resigned from the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin; applied for release from his Prussian (German) citizenship; and found a temporary home for himself and his wife on the coast of nearby Belgium. In response, he had been relentlessly attacked in the German press, and his scientific works had been publicly burned in Berlin. The government had confiscated his and his wife’s bank accounts. Their summer villa near Berlin had reportedly been searched for arms – on the grounds that Einstein was treasonously spreading Communist-influenced ‘atrocity propaganda’ against Germany from abroad. One especially prominent anti-Semitic German publication about Jews, approved by the government’s propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, showed a photograph of Einstein with the sinister caption in capital letters: ‘BIS JETZT UNGEHAENGT’, that is, ‘not yet hanged’.

  Soon Einstein was widely thought to be public enemy number one of the Nazis. He was given round-the-clock police protection by the Belgian royal family. However, he tried to evade the policemen’s watchful eyes and did not take rumours of an attack on him too seriously, despite his awareness of the disturbing history of political assassination in post-war Germany, which had claimed several lives including, most notoriously, that of Germany’s foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, a friend of Einstein and a prominent Jew, who was murdered in Berlin in broad daylight in 1922. (Rathenau’s photo was captioned ‘executed’.) As a long-standing devotee of sailing, Einstein was indifferent to danger or death, to the extent that he refused to carry life-jackets or life-belts on board his sailing-boat – even though he had never learned to swim.