Einstein on the Run Read online

  Drawing of Einstein by F. Rizzi, a little-known Tyrolese peasant artist, produced in Einstein’s rooms at Christ Church during his third visit to Oxford, in 1933. It is now on display in the college’s Senior Common Room.

  VISITOR AT CHRIST CHURCH

  Christ Church’s relationship with Einstein proved amiable but eccentric from beginning to end. The dinner-jacketed and gowned Christ Church dons were ‘the holy brotherhood in tails’ (‘der heiligen Brüderschaar im Frack’), noted a wryly amused Einstein in his diary. He always disliked having to wear formal dress – and even, famously, socks – whether he was in Germany, England, the United States or any other country. ‘He was by nature a rebel who enjoyed being unconventional,’ wrote his Oxford-educated scientific collaborator in Princeton, Banesh Hoffmann. ‘Whenever possible he dressed for comfort, not for looks.’ Einstein regarded such formalities as part of the German Zwang (‘compulsion’ or ‘coercion’) that he resisted throughout his life, from childhood onwards. One of the Christ Church dons, the economist Sir Roy Harrod (whom we encountered in 1919 as an undergraduate interested in relativity), later remarked of their famous visitor: ‘In our governing body I sat next to him; we had a green baize table-cloth; under cover of this he held a wad of paper on his knee, and I observed that all through our meetings his pencil was in incessant progress, covering sheet after sheet with equations.’ Another don, Gilbert Murray (who had befriended Einstein while serving on the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation in the 1920s), remembered coming across the political refugee Einstein in 1933 sitting alone in the college’s grand Tom Quad with a smiling, faraway look on his face. ‘Dr. Einstein, do tell me what you are thinking.’ Einstein replied: ‘We must remember that this is a very small star, and probably some of the larger and more important stars may be very virtuous and happy.’

  Appropriately enough, Einstein’s first set of Christ Church rooms, overlooking Tom Quad, had been occupied in the later nineteenth century by the mathematician (and clergyman) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and, of course, the poem which inspired ‘The Einstein and the Eddington’ quoted earlier. By 1931, the rooms were home to a war veteran and classical scholar, Robert Hamilton Dundas, who was away from England on a world tour in 1930–31, luckily for Einstein. When Dundas returned, he was charmed to find that Einstein had written a poem of his own in the visitors’ book. More doggerel than Carroll, it is nonetheless quite thoughtful and witty, in this free translation from Einstein’s rhymed German by an Oxford literary scholar, J. B. Leishman:

  Dundas lets his rooms decay

  While he lingers far away,

  Drinking wisdom at the source

  Where the sun begins its course.

  That his walls may not grow cold

  He’s installed a hermit old,

  One who undeterredly preaches

  What the art of Numbers teaches.

  Shelves of towering folios

  Meditate in solemn rows;

  Find it strange that one can dwell

  Here without their aid so well.

  Grumble: Why’s this creature staying

  With his pipe and piano playing?

  Why should this barbarian roam?

  Could he not have stopped at home?

  Often, though, his thoughts will stray

  To the owner far away,

  Hoping one day face to face

  To behold him in this place.

  A year later, Einstein and Dundas – the ‘barbarian’ and his bibliophile host – did meet, when Einstein returned to Christ Church in 1932. The poem was published in The Times soon after Einstein’s death, and in due course the visitors’ book was donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

  Einstein’s joke against himself refers to perhaps his only serious reservation about Christ Church (and in fact the university as a whole): its penchant for formality, symbolised by the dreaded dinner-jacket. His two earliest diary entries after arrival in the college with Lindemann catch the flavour well. ‘Evening club meal in dinner-jacket. The apartment is reminiscent of a small fortress and belongs to a philologist who is currently in India. Young servant; communication droll,’ he noted on 1 May. ‘The dinner takes place with about 500 professors and students, the former all in dinner-jackets and black gowns, a bizarre as well as boring affair. Of course the service is men only. One gets a slight idea of how horrible life would be without women. All in a kind of art basilica!’ (Today Christ Church’s dining-hall displays Einstein in a stained-glass window.) And in his next, briefer entry on 2/3 May he wrote: ‘Silent existence in the hermitage in bitter cold. In the evening the solemn Communion Supper of the holy brotherhood in tails. On 3 May with deans (clergymen), who introduce me as a quasi-guest, taciturn and solemn but benevolent with delicate jokes on the tips of their tongues.’ Among them was of course Dean White, who would later fall asleep at Einstein’s third, and toughest, Rhodes lecture.

  Lindemann, and some other Christ Church colleagues, notably Harrod and Murray, compensated for the overall atmosphere of formality. Einstein ‘was a charming person, and we entered into relations of easy intimacy with him,’ Harrod recalled. ‘He divided his time between his mathematics and playing his violin; as one crossed the quad, one was privileged to hear the strains coming from his rooms.’ (Like Lindemann, however, Harrod thought Einstein ‘naïve’ in human affairs.) Furthermore, over time Einstein himself came to appreciate somewhat better the college’s English reserve, if not so much its clerical aura. On the whole, though, Einstein’s most fruitful contacts in Oxford took place less in Christ Church than in other settings, ranging from other colleges and university societies to private houses and more informal meetings – including, of course, the dinner-concerts at Gunfield organised by Deneke.

  Einstein in conversation, possibly in German, somewhere in Oxford, probably in 1931. The man on the right might be Hermann Fiedler, professor of the German language and literature at Oxford, who according to Einstein’s diary went for walks in the city with him. The man in the middle might be Frederick Lindemann, professor of experimental philosophy (physics) at Oxford, Einstein’s host at the university, who was later the chief scientific adviser to Winston Churchill. If so, this ‘mystery’ picture is the only British photograph of Einstein with Lindemann, who disliked being photographed.

  PHYSICS, PACIFISM, SPORTS AND WANDERING IN OXFORD

  Some of these encounters naturally concerned physics and mathematics. Einstein ‘threw himself into all the activities of Oxford science, attended the colloquiums and meetings for discussions and proved so stimulating and thought provoking that I am sure his visit will leave a permanent mark on the progress of our subject’, Lindemann wrote in June 1931, after Einstein’s departure. ‘Combined with his attractive personality, his kindness and sympathy have endeared him to all of us and I have hopes that his period as Rhodes lecturer may initiate more permanent connections with this university which can only prove fertile and advantageous in every respect.’

  Admittedly, Lindemann addressed this encomium of Einstein to Lothian at the Rhodes Trust, probably with an eye on future funding for him in Oxford. Nevertheless, Lindemann’s comments were essentially true concerning Einstein’s attitude. What they overlooked, however, was the fundamentally experimental orientation of Oxford science in 1931, which included hardly any theoreticians capable of discussing physics and mathematics at Einstein’s level. There was to be no Oxford equivalent for Einstein of Cambridge’s Sir Arthur Eddington.

  Thus, Einstein’s dinner at New College with John Sealy Townsend, Wykeham Professor of Physics, led nowhere, other than a visit to the college chapel for a fine performance of Mozart’s Requiem and a tour of Townsend’s laboratory. And a lunch at Wadham College with the eminent pure mathematician G. H. (Godfrey Harold) Hardy, author of A Mathematician’s Apology, was noteworthy only for Hardy’s showing Einstein an interesting game with matches. The most promising can
didate for a serious discussion was a cosmologist, Edward Arthur Milne, who had been appointed the first Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford in 1929. On 5 May 1931, Einstein attended a meeting with Milne at Trinity College, during which Milne gave a speech on novae (new stars) to a small group. He is a ‘very clever man’, Einstein noted in his diary. The following day Milne had further discussions with Einstein in the company of Lindemann, and another meeting with Einstein the day after that. But when Milne went on during 1932 to develop a theory of ‘kinematical relativity’ based on his conviction that general relativity was unsound, which aimed to derive cosmological models by extending the kinematical principles of special relativity, Einstein regarded this approach as unsound. Einstein’s doubts were confirmed by two independent analyses in 1935 and 1936, which ‘showed that Milne’s distinctive approach led, ironically, to the same set of basic models already studied in relativistic cosmology’, noted The Cambridge Companion to Einstein.

  Next to physics and music, Einstein’s other preoccupation in Oxford was political, on each of his three visits. For example, on 22 May he visited Ruskin College, an independent institution set up as Ruskin Hall in 1899 with the support of the trades union movement to offer courses for working-class students unable to gain access to the University of Oxford. Ruskin students were permitted to attend the university’s lectures, however. Having met its forty or so young men and women, Einstein pronounced Ruskin an ‘excellent institution’, and noted that nineteen British Members of Parliament were former members of Ruskin.

  He also had meetings with political activists from both inside and outside the university. On 20 May, for example, he attended the League of Nations Society, and answered questions for two hours on internal German and Russian affairs. And on 23 May, on the evening of the day of his doctoral ceremony, he met pacifist university students at a private house, and was impressed by their political maturity – especially as compared with their ‘pitiful’ German equivalents in Berlin.

  Another meeting on 26 May, with some members of War Resisters’ International under its chairman, the British member of parliament A. Fenner Brockway – who had served time in prison during the First World War for his anti-conscription activities – brought forth a categorical response from Einstein, recorded by Brockway. He exclaimed: ‘There are so many fictitious peace societies. They are prepared to speak of peace in time of peace, but they are not dependable in time of war. Advocates of peace who are not prepared to stand for peace in time of war are useless. To advocate peace and then to flinch when the test comes means nothing – absolutely nothing.’ Surely this was a statement Einstein would come to regret in 1933.

  A final meeting, with the Quaker-run Friends’ Peace Committee on 27 May 1931, was probably the most revealing of all about Einstein’s pacifist views. A report of it in The Friend opened with a reference to his recent controversial ‘Two-per-cent speech’ in the United States, and discussed his views of how to organise war resistance in countries without conscription (such as post-war Britain), and also how to promote peace internationally. ‘For example, he suggested that it is very important to organise the churches and get declarations from them against participation in war’, in particular the Roman Catholic Church, ‘as this would have so much influence in France and Italy.’ As for diminishing Germany’s rising militancy, Einstein advised that pacifist endeavours to denounce the war guilt clause in the Versailles peace treaty were less likely to work than international efforts to relieve Germany’s ‘terrible economic depression’ by finding a solution to its war reparations problem. But he was not optimistic when asked about the prevention of war by international diplomacy, no doubt because of his experiences with the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. ‘He pointed out that the machinery is there in the League of Nations, but that unfortunately in his view it is too weak. He believes, however, that the machinery is capable of being made strong and effective. “That depends,” he said, “on what the people will.”’ Apropos, Einstein paid this unexpected tribute to religion:

  To Friends, perhaps the most interesting part of the interview was Professor Einstein’s statement that his attitude to war was held because he can ‘do no other.’ He agreed that the strongest anti-war convictions are those with a religious basis. People may be convinced intellectually that war is futile, but that is not enough. This greatest of thinkers does not trust to the intellect alone. ‘Reason,’ he says, ‘is a factor of secondary importance.’

  Yet it would be untrue to leave the impression that all of Einstein’s time in Oxford during May 1931 was taken up with scientific, musical and political activities. As his diary made plain, albeit often laconically, he had a varied range of other experiences.

  For example, a physics research student at Christ Church, Douglas Roaf, hearing of Einstein’s love of sailing, took him out on the River Thames in a skiff down to the Abingdon Cut. Seeing that Roaf was properly attired for the occasion and wearing plimsolls, Einstein offered to take off his brown boots. He also saw at first hand the sporty side of Lindemann, who had been a championship tennis player in both Germany and England in his younger days. While Lindemann played squash on a private squash court, Einstein watched from the spectators’ gallery, as the mysteries of the game were explained to him by one of his undergraduate friends at Christ Church, Alfred Ubbelohde (later professor of thermodynamics at Imperial College in London). On another occasion, having attended a university regatta by the river in the afternoon, Einstein went to an extraordinary lecture in the university church about old Coptic music. He noted that the (unnamed) lecturer – ‘a fat giant with a red face’, standing in a blue habit on a blue podium – was ‘a picturesque swindler’. More productively, he visited the Ashmolean Museum with Lindemann to see the famous objects excavated from the Minoan civilisation in Crete by Sir Arthur Evans. They struck Einstein as ‘more Egyptian than Greek in character’.

  In addition, he enjoyed plenty of informally dressed walking in Oxford, either with others – including Hermann Fiedler, the professor of the German language and literature – or, quite frequently, wandering on his own in the streets and parks. As he told Deneke: ‘The types of humanity in the streets here are interesting to me – they are quite unlike those seen at home.’ And he was taken out of Oxford by car into the Cotswold countryside, the beauty of which he much appreciated. Lindemann introduced him to his eighty-five-year-old father at his country house in the Thames Valley, who impressed Einstein with his liveliness. Adolph Lindemann, besides being an amateur astronomer keenly interested in relativity, had been an engineer and businessman making ships for the Russian navy under the tsars. He spoke of corruption in Russia. Having delivered ten ships, he was paid for nine of them. When he asked the government official in charge of the purchase about payment for the tenth ship, the official replied: ‘Make sure you get home as soon as possible.’ At another country house, belonging to a friend of Lindemann, old Lady Fitzgerald, Einstein was tickled to see a strange, new, technological advance: drinking fountains for cows. When a cow pressed her muzzle against a metal plate, a valve opened and the water flowed into a drinking bowl. ‘Soon there will be water-closets for cows,’ mused Einstein, the former patent clerk, in his diary. ‘Long live civilisation!’

  Not recorded in the diary was his brief flirtation with a woman who had followed him from Germany to Oxford. In total contrast to the musical Margaret Deneke, Ethel Michanowski was a Berlin socialite. Einstein composed a brief poem for her on a notecard from Christ Church, which began: ‘Long-branched and delicately strung, / Nothing that will escape her gaze’. Michanowski then sent him an expensive present, which he did not welcome. ‘The small package really angered me,’ he wrote. ‘You have to stop sending me presents incessantly. . . . And to send something like that to an English college where we are surrounded by senseless affluence anyway!’

  But probably the most evocative memory of Einstein in Oxford concerned simply his charisma. It was recalled in an a
ccount of a chance encounter by William Golding, the future author of Lord of the Flies and Nobel laureate, who started as an undergraduate in science and then changed to literature. Sometime in 1931, Golding happened to be standing on a small bridge in Magdalen Deer Park looking at the river when a ‘tiny moustached and hatted figure’ joined him. ‘Professor Einstein knew no English at that time, and I knew only two words of German. I beamed at him, trying wordlessly to convey by my bearing all the affection and respect that the English felt for him.’ For about five minutes the two of them stood side by side. At last, said Golding, ‘With true greatness, Professor Einstein realised that any contact was better than none.’ He pointed to a trout wavering in midstream. ‘Fisch,’ he said. ‘Desperately I sought for some sign by which I might convey that I, too, revered pure reason. I nodded vehemently. In a brilliant flash I used up half my German vocabulary: ‘Fisch. Ja. Ja.’ I would have given my Greek and Latin and French and a good slice of my English for enough German to communicate. But we were divided; he was as inscrutable as my headmaster.’ For another five minutes, the unknown undergraduate Englishman and the world-famous German scientist stood together. ‘Then Professor Einstein, his whole figure still conveying goodwill and amiability, drifted away out of sight.’

  Einstein in Oxford during one of his three visits in 1931, 1932 and 1933. He liked to stroll around the city on his own, comparing its life with that of Berlin. The precise location is unknown.

  ELECTED ‘STUDENT’ OF CHRIST CHURCH

  Even before Einstein left Oxford on 28 May 1931, Lindemann appears to have begun negotiations within Christ Church to lure him back. His idea was that Einstein should be elected a ‘research student’ (i.e. a fellow) of the college and be offered a bursary from college funds so that he could spend relatively brief periods of time in Oxford each year at his own convenience. By late June, Dean White of Christ Church informed Lindemann that the college was in a position to offer a ‘studentship’ to Einstein for five years, with an annual stipend of £400, a dining allowance and accommodation during his periods of residence, which it was hoped would last for about a month each year during Oxford term time. Lindemann promptly intimated this possibility to Einstein in a letter.