Einstein on the Run Read online

  Einstein’s main practical recommendation for managing nuclear weapons (which he sensibly anticipated the Soviet Union would soon develop) was that they could be controlled only by what he called a ‘world government’. This would be an essentially military organisation, to which the world’s leading nations would contribute armed forces, which would then be ‘commingled and distributed as were the regiments of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire’, and which would have the power to enforce international law according to the direction of its representative executive. ‘Do I fear the tyranny of a world government? Of course I do. But I fear still more the coming of another war or wars.’ The United States, he said, should immediately announce its readiness to commit the secret of the atomic bomb to this world government. And the Soviet Union should be sincerely invited to join it. In September 1947, Einstein proposed his idea in an open letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations. If the UN were to have a chance of becoming such a world government, he said, then ‘the authority of the General Assembly must be increased so that the Security Council as well as all other bodies of the UN will be subordinated to it.’ (He even grimly suggested to an American friend that ‘it might not be altogether illogical to place a statue of the contemptible Hitler in the vestibule of the future palace of world government since he, ironically, has greatly helped to convince many people of the necessity of a supranational organisation’.)

  Perhaps needless to say, as the Cold War hotted up in 1947, no leading power was remotely interested in Einstein’s world government. It was assailed from all sides. Four top scientists of the Russian Academy replied respectfully but in unequivocal opposition, virtually accusing Einstein of advocating American imperialism. Einstein was not surprised but pleaded in response that:

  If we hold fast to the concept and practice of unlimited sovereignty of nations it only means that each country reserves the right for itself of pursuing its objectives through warlike means. . . . I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself.

  ‘World government’ enjoyed a brief vogue among a spectrum of American intellectuals – on the right as well as on the left – and then faded from view. So too did the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, a brainchild of Szilard, which Einstein agreed to chair in May 1946. Both fell victim to the Cold War.

  More effective was Einstein’s opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his 1950s Red Scare in the United States. Einstein helped to turn the tide against the climate of fear and precipitate the decline of McCarthyism. In this period he made a number of public statements and supported several individuals threatened with dismissal from their jobs for having Communist sympathies. But the one that really stirred public controversy was Einstein’s letter to a New York teacher of English, William Frauenglass, in May 1953. Frauenglass had refused to testify before a congressional committee about his political affiliations and now faced dismissal from his school. He asked for advice from Einstein, who wrote (no doubt thinking of his experience of German intellectuals in the First World War and under Nazism):

  The reactionary politicians have managed to instil suspicion of all intellectual efforts into the public by dangling before their eyes a danger from without. . . . What ought the minority of intellectuals to do against this evil? Frankly, I can only see the revolutionary way of non-cooperation in the sense of Gandhi’s. Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify, i.e., he must be prepared for jail and economic ruin, in short, for the sacrifice of his personal welfare in the interest of the cultural welfare of his country. . . . If enough people are ready to take this grave step they will be successful. If not, then the intellectuals of this country deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them.

  Mahatma Gandhi was ‘the greatest political genius of our time’, wrote Einstein in 1952. ‘His work on behalf of India’s liberation is living testimony to the fact that man’s will, sustained by an indomitable conviction, is more powerful than material forces that seem insurmountable.’

  When the advice to Frauenglass was published in the New York Times with Einstein’s permission, he feared that, at the age of seventy-four and in poor health, he might have to go to jail. Immediately, McCarthy told the paper that ‘anyone who gives advice like Einstein’s to Frauenglass is himself an enemy of America. . . . That’s the same advice given by every Communist lawyer that has ever appeared before our committee.’ (A week later, he modified ‘enemy of America’ to ‘a disloyal American’.) The New York Times, in an editorial, agreed with McCarthy’s criticism of Einstein’s advice.

  At the same time, Einstein received two expressions of support from England. The first was a private cable from Locker-Lampson, sent on the very day of McCarthy’s first published statement against Einstein. Long out of contact with Einstein, and now a retired recluse living in London, but still the impulsive romantic he was in 1933, Locker-Lampson recalled their alliance against Nazism: ‘Commander Locker-Lampson offers same humble hut as sanctuary in England.’ The second was a punchy public letter from Bertrand Russell. It was published after some delay caused by internal debate within the New York Times. Russell wrote:

  In your issue of June 13 you have a leading article disagreeing with Einstein’s view that teachers questioned by Senator McCarthy’s emissaries should refuse to testify. You seem to maintain that one should always obey the law, however bad. I cannot think you have realised the implications of this position.

  Do you condemn the Christian martyrs who refused to sacrifice to the emperor? Do you condemn John Brown? Nay, more, I am compelled to suppose that you condemn George Washington, and hold that your country ought to return to allegiance to Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. As a loyal Briton I of course applaud your view, but I fear it may not win much support in your country.

  Einstein responded privately to Russell with deep appreciation on 28 June:

  All the intellectuals in this country, down to the youngest student, have become completely intimidated. Virtually no one of ‘prominence’ besides yourself has actually challenged these absurdities in which the politicians have become engaged. . . . The cruder the tales they spread, the more assured they feel of their re-election by the misguided population.

  Hence the fact, he added, that President Eisenhower had not dared to commute the death sentences of the Soviet spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg – American citizens who had been electrocuted on 19 June – even though Eisenhower ‘well knew how much their execution would injure the name of the United States internationally.

  You should be given much credit for having used your unique literary talent in the service of public enlightenment and education. I am convinced that your literary work will exercise a great and lasting influence particularly since you have resisted the temptation to gain some short-lived effects through paradoxes and exaggerations.

  THE RUSSELL–EINSTEIN MANIFESTO

  No doubt this exchange prepared the ground for what would be the last public act of Einstein’s life: the Russell–Einstein Manifesto of 1955. It started with a letter from Russell to Einstein in February 1955, which began:

  In common with every other thinking person, I am profoundly disquieted by the armaments race in nuclear weapons. You have on various occasions given expression to feelings and opinions with which I am in close agreement. I think that eminent men of science ought to do something dramatic to bring home to the public and governments the disasters that may occur. Do you think it would be possible to get, say, six men of the very highest scientific repute, headed by yourself, to make a very solemn statement about the imperative necessity of avoiding war? These men should be so diverse in their politics that any statement signed by all of them would be obviously free from pro-Communist or anti-Communist bias.

  Einstein was immediately responsive. In fact he suggested upping the number of s
ignatories to ‘twelve persons whose scientific attainments (scientific in the widest sense) have gained them international stature and whose declarations will not lose any effectiveness on account of their political affiliations’. In the United States, the choice would be particularly tricky, he said, because ‘this country has been ravaged by a political plague that has by no means spared scientists’. As for obtaining Russian signatures, his colleague L. Infeld, professor at the University of Warsaw, might possibly be of assistance.

  Einstein’s signature, on 11 April, was the last one he ever gave. It reached Russell only after Einstein’s death. The statement was made public at a meeting called by him in London in July 1955. The other nine signatories, apart from Einstein and Russell, were all scientists, the majority of them physicists: Max Born (from Germany), Percy Bridgman (United States), Leopold Infeld (Poland), Frédéric Joliot-Curie (France), Hermann Muller (United States), Linus Pauling (United States), Cecil Powell (Britain), Joseph Rotblat (Britain) and Hideki Yukawa (Japan). All eleven of them, except for Infeld, received the Nobel prize (twice over in the case of Pauling, for both chemistry and peace). Significantly, there was no signatory from the Soviet Union.

  The Russell–Einstein Manifesto against nuclear weapons, 1955: cover of a sound recording made by Bertrand Russell after Einstein’s death in April. It was Einstein’s last, and most enduring, political statement.

  The final paragraph of the manifesto warned:

  There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

  As Rotblat, the youngest signatory, regretted in an article about ‘Einstein’s quest for global peace’ written shortly before his own death in 2005, this warning ‘is as valid today as it was then’. Rotblat had spent the half-century since signing the manifesto in building up the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, meeting in the village of Pugwash in Canada with the aim of bringing together intellectuals and public figures to promote dialogue towards reducing the dangers of armed conflict. In 1995, he and Pugwash were jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize.

  Einstein himself was lucky with his death. He had once told Infeld: ‘if I knew that I should have to die in three hours it would impress me very little. I should think how best to use the last three hours, then quietly order my papers and lie peacefully down.’ Soon after writing to Russell, he was taken to a Princeton hospital, still in possession of all his faculties but knowing that his death was imminent. He died early in the morning of 18 April, leaving pages of calculations about his unified field theory beside his bed.

  Princeton is a wonderful little spot, a quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts. Yet, by ignoring certain special conventions, I have been able to create for myself an atmosphere conducive to study and free from distraction.

  Letter from Einstein to Elisabeth, Queen of Belgium, November 1933

  Einstein’s very last interview was focused on Sir Isaac Newton, as mentioned earlier. The interviewer was a historian of science from Harvard University, I. Bernard Cohen, with a burgeoning interest in Newton. Published in Scientific American in July 1955, even now Cohen’s lengthy article reads as a lively portrait of Einstein, both as a scientist and as a personality. As they sat together in Einstein’s Princeton study, observed by the portraits of Faraday and Maxwell (and Gandhi) on its walls, ‘His face was contemplatively tragic and deeply lined, and yet his sparkling eyes made him seem ageless. His eyes watered almost continually; even in moments of laughter he would wipe away a tear with the back of his hand. He spoke softly and clearly; his command of English was remarkable, though marked by a German accent,’ wrote Cohen. ‘The contrast between his soft speech and his ringing laughter was enormous. He enjoyed making jokes; every time he made a point that he liked, or heard something that appealed to him, he would burst into booming laughter that echoed from the walls.’

  Just before Cohen left the house, Einstein delightedly showed off a brand-new gadget specially designed for his seventy-sixth birthday on 14 March by a Princeton physics professor, Eric Rogers. It consisted of a small upright plastic tube enclosing a spring, anchored at the bottom of the tube and attached near the top of the tube to a string, from the other end of which hung a little ball draped over the outer part of the tube. The spring was not forceful enough to pull the hanging ball into the tube against the force of gravity acting downwards on the ball. But when Einstein raised the gadget to the ceiling and let it freely accelerate downwards to the floor – like a man falling freely from a rooftop – no gravitational force acted on the ball, and so the spring was now forceful enough to pull the ball into the tube. Thus the gadget demonstrated the equivalence between acceleration and gravity in relativity: ‘the happiest thought’ of Einstein’s life back in the Patent Office in Bern in 1907, two centuries after Newton.

  The interview was illuminating about Newton, mostly as a scientist and occasionally as a man. When Cohen brought into the discussion Newton’s notorious refusal to publish any acknowledgement of the ideas of Robert Hooke in the preface to his Principia Mathematica, Einstein responded: ‘That, alas, is vanity. You find it in so many scientists. You know, it has always hurt me to think that Galileo did not acknowledge the work of Kepler.’ Later in the discussion he pointed out that vanity may appear in many different forms. A man might often say that he had no vanity, but this too was a kind of vanity because he took such special pride in the fact. ‘It is like childishness,’ Einstein said. Then he turned to Cohen and let out a booming laugh that filled the room as he remarked, ‘Many of us are childish; some of us more childish than others. But if a man knows he is childish, then that knowledge can be a mitigating factor.’

  Was Einstein perhaps including himself here? According to Russell, ‘I never saw in him any trace, however faint, of vanity or envy, which are vices to which even the greatest men, such as Newton and Leibniz, are prone.’ That said, Einstein had an increasing tendency with the passing of the years to write about his creation of relativity without much reference to others whom he had earlier acknowledged as providing important help, such as his close friends Besso, Ehrenfest and Grossmann. ‘As with many other major breakthroughs in the history of science, Einstein was standing on the shoulders of many scientists, not just the proverbial giants,’ according to a recent study in Nature. On the other hand, according to what Einstein told Cohen, his forgetfulness was most probably not due to vanity:

  Einstein said most emphatically that he thought the worst person to document any ideas about how discoveries are made is the discoverer. Many people, he went on, had asked him how he had come to think of this or how he had come to think of that. He had always found himself a very poor source of information concerning the genesis of his own ideas. Einstein believed that the historian is likely to have a better insight into the thought processes of a scientist than the scientist himself.

  For all its interest, the Einstein–Cohen conversation barely touched on two important aspects of its subject that are key to this book. It contained nothing significant about Einstein’s view of Newton’s relationship with English history and culture, and nothing at all about Einstein’s own relationship with English history and culture, other than his obvious admiration of Newton as a scientist. When Einstein and Cohen discussed Newton’s long-running, anti-Trinitarian, linguistic study of theology, Einstein said he regarded this as a ‘weakness’. If Newton did not accept the Trinitarian view of Scripture, why did he still believe that Scripture must be true?

  Einstein apparently had little feeling for the way in which a man’s mind is imprisoned by his culture and the character of his thoughts is moulded by his intellectual environment. . . . I was struck by the fact that in physics Einstein could see Newton as a ma
n of the seventeenth century, but that in the other realms of thought and action he viewed each man as a timeless, freely acting individual to be judged as if he were a contemporary of ours.

  Einstein’s attitude here certainly clashes with the strong admiration for English tradition and continuity he had expressed on the bicentenary of Newton’s death in 1927, as quoted earlier, which surely motivated Newton’s intensive theological studies. It prompts the question: how much of an Anglophile was Einstein really – and why did he settle in America after 1933 rather than in England? Let us end by considering the evidence.

  ANGLOPHILE, OR NOT?

  There is a clue in Einstein’s conversation about England with C. P. Snow, a visitor in 1937 to Einstein’s summer house on Long Island invited by their mutual friend, Infeld, while he and Einstein were working closely together on The Evolution of Physics. Einstein talked to Snow of the countries he had lived in. He said he preferred them in inverse proportion to their size. How did he like England? asked Snow. ‘Yes, he liked England. It had some of the qualities of his beloved Holland. After all, by world standards, England was becoming a small country.’ They talked of the people Einstein had met in England, not only of the scientists, such as Eddington, but also the politicians, such as Churchill. ‘Einstein admired him. I said that progressives of my kind wanted him in the government as a token of resistance: this was being opposed, not so much by the Labour Party, but by Churchill’s own Tories. Einstein was brooding. To defeat Nazism, he said, we should need every kind of force, including nationalism, that we could bring together.’