The four conversations
included in this article are excerpted from my Memoir on
Albert Einstein in Princeton 1950-55, and represent
reconstructions of them in honor of the Einstein celebration
1979-1980.
The greatest experience of my life was without a doubt
the time I spent in association with Albert Einstein at the
Institute of Advanced Study. The selection of my talks has
been judicious and I hope they convey to the reader
inspiration of this experience in my pursuit of scientific
truth. It is my wish that the present generation will be
influenced by this inspiration and enthusiasm to pursue this
truth even further.
The present paper is included in my address delivered
before the Hellenic American Society in Athens on March 14,
1980.
In anticipation and expectation of my coming to Athens
to deliver the Einstein Lecture on March 14, 1980 to honor
Albert Einstein in celebration of the centennial anniversary
of his birth on March 14, 1879 and which marks the close of
the Einstein year 1979-80, I wish to state that I had
previously learned from Einstein that he never visited
Greece or gave a lecture here. Most likely, because he
considered space-time as non-Euclidean, for as everybody
knows, Euclidean space is flat and space-time is curved.
1.
January 9, 1950
After taking my Doctoral examination at the John Hopkins
University in the Fall of 1949, I was appointed a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, to
commence the following January. Having studied General
Relativity under F. D. Murnaghan, Hopkins' Applied Mathematician
and my Chairman, I was immediately attracted to its originator
Albert Einstein, then in residence at the Institute, as
Professor-Emeritus in its School of Physics.
Professor
Einstein usually left his home at 112 Mercer Street shortly
after 10 o'clock in the morning for his daily walk to the
Institute, via Witherspoon Lane, arriving promptly in his office
at eleven. On my first day, which happened to be Monday, January
9, 1950, I left my office on the first floor of Fuld Hall to go
to the library on the second floor, (Fuld Hall was named after
the deceased sister of Louis Bamberger, Newark merchant and
first benefactor of the Institute for Advanced Study.) It was my
good fortune to encounter Einstein in the corridor, as he was
proceeding to his office in room 115. I approached him and we
greeted each other. I need not describe his appearance then, for
it is well-known. As an opening line, I said that "when I was in
Jerusalem, just before World War II, I had been in the Einstein
Amphitheatre of the old campus of the Hebrew University on Mt.
Scopus and gazed upon the magnificent view of Transjordania and
the Dead Sea below me." Einstein replied "that he did not recall
the naming of this amphitheatre with his own." Evidently, my
statement concerning the Hebrew University elicited the
following question "What is the purpose of the Institute for
Advanced Study?"
I pondered this
question. It is well-known that Abraham Flexner (1866-1959),
founded and organized the Institute and then served as its first
director between the years 1930 to 1939. In 1930, he managed to
persuade Louis Bamberger, a Newark, New Jersey merchant to
donate five million dollars to found a Center of Higher Learning
for the mathematical sciences; that Einstein needed a haven, for
Nazism was on the rise in Germany and living in Berlin had
become dangerous for the Einstein family. The first building was
named Fuld Hall in memory of Louis Bamberger's deceased sister.
My temptation was
to reply "the Institute was built as a home for you." But
standing in awe of this great man and perceiving his innate
modesty I replied "that the Institute was founded to provide the
intellectual atmosphere for its members to think and research in
Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy and Ancient Cultures: the
non-laboratory disciplines. Its members are to be free of the
usual obligations of teaching, administration, strict schedules
and financial worries." Nowadays we call such institutes 'think
tanks.' Then he said "that he did his best work while working
forty hours a week as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in
Berne to support his wife and one-year-old son, while creating
his first paper in the theory of relativity."
In the year 1905
Einstein published his four papers in Annalen der Physik. His
first paper entitled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"
was his first paper on relativity. In his paper entitled "Does
the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content?" he
formulated his now famous E=mc2.
His paper on Brownian motion linked the numbers connected with
diffusion rates with the theory of gases (a new determination of
the size of molecules). A fourth paper dealt with the
photo-electric effects and contains Einstein's theory of
photons. Each paper began a new branch of physics.
2.
September 1953
Professor
Einstein during his 25 year stay at the Institute sought a
mathematical theory that would unify the electro-magnetic field
and the gravitational field, usually referred to as unified
theory. In his original paper on General Relativity published in
1915, he postulated their separate existence. He was able to
explain the 43" advance of the path of the planet Mercury in its
100 year travel around the Sun, predict the bending of light and
the red shift of the spectrum of sodium in the Sun due to its
gravitational pull. The bending of light was verified in the now
famous complete solar eclipse in the Argentine in 1919 and also
made Einstein world famous at the age of 40.
During my stay at
the Institute Dr. Einstein and I had many discussions related to
unified field theory for its conception appealed to my
mathematically abstract mind. During the Summer of 1953 I
attended the first Summer Institute sponsored by the National
Science Foundation, on Jordan Algebras at Colby College,
Waterville, Maine. The site of the Institute was favored by
Marston Morse, the Mathematician's representative on the
National Science Foundation for he was Colby College's most
famous graduate. I wrote a letter to Albert Einstein concerning
his mathematical representation of unified field theory. His
notation dated back to the first decade of this century and I
suggested that he try using the notation of permutations. On my
return to Princeton I called on him at his office in room 115
and he mentioned my letter. I told him that "his notation was
old-fashioned and should be made more abstract." (The notation
he was using was introduced by Ricci and Levi-Cevita, Italian
geometers whose life span covered the late part of the 19th and
early part of the 20th centuries, and whose work Einstein used
in his General Relativity of 1915.) He then replied "But I do
not know abstract mathematics. Why do you not teach me abstract
mathematics?" I was taken aback and gathering my thoughts, I
said to myself "God, who teaches Albert Einstein?" After
regaining my composure, I said that "I shall send you some of my
papers and we shall discuss them." The fact that he was willing
to be taught by me impressed me deeply. Here sat before me a
Great Mind who exemplified the saying that "the true quality of
greatness is humility."
3.
Christmas Eve 1954
The annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society was held
during the Christmas vacation of 1954 at the University of
Pittsburgh. Before enplaning for my trip to Pittsburgh, I wrote
Professor Einstein that I was coming East during this vacation
and that I wished to call on him in Princeton. I had heard that
he had become ill late in October and was confined to his home
at 112 Mercer Street. After delivering my contributed paper to
the Society, I entrained for my trip to New York City with a
stop-over in Princeton. I went straight to 112 Mercer Street and
rang his doorbell. Darkness had already settled over Princeton,
but Miss Helen Dukas, Einstein's faithful secretary and
housekeeper, did not hesitate to open the door and upon seeing
me she greeted and told me to go upstairs 'for Einstein was
expecting me.' I climbed the one flight of stairs to his study
and to my dismay I saw that Einstein was marching to and fro in
his study. I asked him "Professor Einstein, what is your illness
and what is your treatment?" He said that "he was ill with
anemia and was being treated with cortisone." Cortisone has the
effect of making the patient nervous, which explains his
constant marching. "Is this treatment doing you any good?" I
asked. "No" was the answer. "If so, why not put a stop to it?" I
suggested. Apparently, he may have followed my suggestion, for
he returned to his office in room 115 at the Institute sometime
in the following January. Meanwhile, he sat down in a rocking
chair in a corner of the room and we resumed talking about his
favorite subject of unified field theory. He said that he knew
he was correct. He phrased it as follows: "If there exists a
field, then I am right." Theoretical physicists are today split
into two schools of thought, the particle theorists and the
field theorists. Being seriously ill, he commented subjectively
on the functioning of the human organism which he said "goes
arye if not healthy and this could not be a product of chance."
Einstein to the very day he died was philosophically a
determinist, while quantum theorists are indeterministic. Our
conversation was interrupted by Helen Dukas who came upstairs to
set the dinner table and pointedly made me aware that Einstein
must eat his dinner. Not being invited, I was shown out the
front door and I continued on to New York City.
Einstein worked
as well as he could and in April was visited by the Israeli
Consul General to invite Einstein to deliver an address in
celebration of the seventh birthday of the State of Israel.
While preparing this address he fell seriously ill and was
rushed to the Princeton Hospital, where he remained conscious
until he died before the dawn of April 19, 1955. He still worked
until his death. A published sheet of paper with his handwriting
on unified field theory still survives. On that Monday before
daybreak Albert Einstein uttered his last words in German, but
to our great loss his attending nurse did not understand this
language. So his last words are not known. But he most likely
said "Let there be photons of light" and then fell back into
darkness.
4. September
1955
I obtained an
educational grant to travel in Western Europe for the academic
year 1955-56 and to spend my leave at universities in eight
countries. On my way to embark on the S.S. Kungsholm in New York
City for Sweden, I stopped over to pay a visit to Ms. Helen
Dukas, who had served Albert Einstein so well as secretary and
housekeeper from 1928 on and is now with Dr. Otto Nathan,
executors of his estate. I related to her my travel plans. Since
the horrifying details of the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi
Germany was still vivid in our minds, I asked whether I should
visit West Germany. I had been in touch with several surviving
mathematicians in then Gottingen, the Mecca of Mathematics
before World War II and they had tendered me an invitation. I
asked her "what Einstein would have recommended had he been
alive today." Einstein's retort would have been "a Jew should
not visit Germany." She also informed me that Einstein's chosen
official biographer was Carl Seelig, then residing in Zurich and
also working as a newspaper critic. His book "Albert
Einstein---A Documentary Biography" was subsequently published
in 1956. When I was in Geneva in November 1955, I contacted him
to arrange a meeting in Zurich. We met at the St. Gotthard
Hotel, where I stayed while in Zurich, on a wintery afternoon.
As I went up to him in the lobby, he said that "he expected a
much older man." (He probably thought that Einstein's followers
were of his own generation.) Einstein's second son Eduard, then
hospitalized for melancholia since 1930 at Burghoelzli, the
sanatorium of the University of Zurich, was the main subject of
our conversation. Carl Seelig later told me that he had received
a letter from Albert Einstein which stated that he had solved
many problems in his lifetime, but he could not solve the
problem of his son: and this was a heartache to him. Then
Carl Seelig related this story which appears in his book.
"Eduard, as a 9-year-old schoolboy asked his father: Why are you
so famous, papa? Einstein laughed and said to him seriously, You
see, when a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe,
he doesn't notice that the track he has covered is curved. I was
lucky to have spotted this." We talked about visiting Eduard but
this did not come about for Carl Seelig had to review a
nightclub act that evening and my own travel plans were tight.
Robert
Oppenheimer, on the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the
General Relativity at a Symposium in Paris in 1965, stated
"Although Einstein commanded the affection, or, more rightly the
love of everyone to see through his program, he lost contact
with the profession of physics, because there were things which
had been learned which came too late in life for him to concern
himself with them." However, C. N. Yang, Nobel laureate, said at
the Einstein Centennial Symposium, held at the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, "The best students of our time are dissatisfied,
as Einstein was, with the answers that present day quantum
mechanics can give to ultimate questions." Yang believes one of
these students will someday be the one to find the key that can
turn the probabilist dice game into the majestic universe of
knowable and comprehensive law for which Einstein yearned.
__________
Bourne,
Samuel. "Four Conversations With and About Albert
Einstein." Th.M. Rassias,
G.M. Rassias, eds.,
Selected Studies. North-Holland Publishing Company
(1982)
pp. 309-314.