Einstein: His Life and Universe

being inextricably a matter of ethnic kinship. “Despite my emphatic internationalist beliefs, I have always felt an obligation to stand up for my persecuted and morally oppressed tribal companions,” he said. “The prospect of establishing a Jewish university fills me with particular joy, having recently seen countless instances of perfidious and uncharitable treatment of splendid young Jews with attempts to deny their chances of education.”³²

And so it was that the Einsteins sailed from Holland on March 21, 1921, for their first visit to America. To keep things unpretentious and inexpensive, Einstein had said he was willing to travel steerage. The request was not granted, and he was given a nice stateroom. He also asked that he and Elsa be given separate rooms, both aboard the ship and at the hotels, so that he could work while on the trip. That request was granted.

It was, by all accounts, a pleasant Atlantic crossing, during which Einstein tried to explain relativity to Weizmann. Asked upon their arrival whether he understood the theory, Weizmann gave a delightful reply: “During the crossing, Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and by the time we arrived I was fully convinced that he really understands it.”³³

When the ship pulled up to the Battery in lower Manhattan on the afternoon of April 2, Einstein was standing on the deck wearing a faded gray wool coat and a black felt hat that concealed some but not all of his now graying shock of hair. In one hand was a shiny briar pipe; the other clutched a worn violin case. “He looked like an artist,” the New York Times reported. “But underneath his shaggy locks was a scientific mind whose deductions have staggered the ablest intellects of Europe.”³⁴

As soon as they were permitted, dozens of reporters and cameramen rushed aboard. The press officer of the Zionist organization told Einstein that he would have to attend a press conference. “I can’t do that,” he protested. “It’s like undressing in public.”³⁵ But he could, of course, and did.

First he obediently followed directions for almost a half hour as the photographers and newsreel men ordered him and Elsa to strike a variety of poses. Then, in the captain’s cabin, he displayed more joy than reluctance as he conducted his first press briefing with all the wit and charm of a merry big-city mayor. “One could tell from his chuckling,” the reporter from the Philadelphia Public Ledger wrote, “that he enjoyed it.”³⁶ His questioners enjoyed it as well. The whole performance, sprinkled with quips and pithy answers, showed why Einstein was destined to become such a wildly popular celebrity.

Speaking through an interpreter, Einstein began with a statement about his hope “to secure the support, both material and moral, of American Jewry for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.” But the reporters were more interested in relativity, and the first questioner requested a one-sentence description of the theory, a request that Einstein would face at almost every stop on his trip. “All of my life I have been trying to get it into one book,” he replied, “and he wants me to get it into one sentence!” Pressed to try, he provided a simple overview: “It is a theory of space and time as far as physics is concerned, which leads to a theory of gravitation.”

What about those, especially in Germany, who attacked his theory? “No one of knowledge opposes my theory,” he answered. “Those physicists who do oppose the theory are animated by political motives.”

What political motives? “Their attitude is largely due to antiSemitism,” he replied.

The interpreter finally called the session to a close. “Well, I hope I have passed my examination,” Einstein concluded with a smile.

As they were leaving, Elsa was asked if she understood relativity. “Oh, no, although he has explained it to me many times,” she replied. “But it is not necessary to my happiness.”³⁷

Thousands of spectators, along with the fife and drum corps of the Jewish Legion, were waiting in Battery Park when the mayor and other dignitaries brought Einstein ashore on a police tugboat. As blue-and-white flags were waved, the crowd sang the Star-Spangled Banner and then the Zionist anthem Hatikvah.

The Einsteins and Weizmanns intended to head directly to the Hotel Commodore in Midtown. Instead, their motorcade wound through the Jewish neighborhoods of the Lower East Side late into the evening. “Every car had its horn, and every horn was put in action,” Weizmann recalled. “We reached the Commodore at about 11:30, tired, hungry, thirsty and completely dazed.”³⁸

The following day Einstein entertained a steady procession of visitors and, with what the Times called “an unusual impression of geniality,” he even held another press gathering. Why, he was asked, had he attracted such an unprecedented explosion of public interest? He professed to being puzzled himself. Perhaps a psychologist could determine why people who generally did not care for science had taken such an interest in him. “It seems psycho-pathological,” he said with a laugh.³⁹

Weizmann and Einstein were officially welcomed later in the week at City Hall, where ten thousand excited spectators gathered in the park to hear the speeches. Weizmann got polite applause. But Einstein, who said nothing, got a “tumultuous greeting” when he was introduced. “As Dr. Einstein left,” the New York Evening Post reported, “he was lifted onto the shoulders of his colleagues and into the automobile, which passed in triumphal procession through a mass of waving banners and a roar of cheering voices.”⁴⁰

One of Einstein’s visitors at the Commodore Hotel was a German immigrant physician named Max Talmey, whose name had been Max Talmud back when he was a poor student in Munich. This was the family friend who had first exposed the young Einstein to math and philosophy, and he was unsure whether the now famous scientist would remember him.

Einstein did. “He had not seen me or corresponded with me for nineteen years,” Talmey later noted. “Yet as soon as I entered his room in the hotel, he exclaimed: ‘You distinguish yourself through eternal youth!’ ”⁴¹ They chatted about their days in Munich and their paths since. Einstein invited Talmey back various times during the course of his visit, and before he left even went to Talmey’s apartment to meet his young daughters.

Even though he spoke in German about abstruse theories or stood silent as Weizmann tried to cajole money for Jewish settlements in Palestine, Einstein drew packed crowds wherever he went in New York.“Every seat in the Metropolitan Opera House, from the pit to the last row under the roof, was filled, and hundreds stood,” reported the Times one day. About another lecture that week it likewise reported, “He spoke in German, but those anxious to see and hear the man who has contributed a new theory of space and time and motion to scientific conceptions of the universe filled every seat and stood in the aisles.”⁴²

After three weeks of lectures and receptions in New York, Einstein paid a visit to Washington. For reasons fathomable only by those who live in that capital, the Senate decided to debate the theory of relativity. Among the leaders asserting that it was incomprehensible were Pennsylvania Republican Boies Penrose, famous for once uttering that “public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and Mississippi Democrat John Sharp Williams, who retired a year later, saying, “I’d rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years.”