An Einstein Encyclopedia

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,

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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.)

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)