Page 34 - DIVA_1_2013

the top of a tower. But he failed to Germany, Einstein felt a special res-
see that his calculations would also ponsibility toward the Jews. Anti-
ultimately lead to the revelation of Semitism erupted into violence on
black holes. 24 June 1922 with the assassination
of the German Foreign Minister
But better was to come. Einstein Walther Rathenau, an internatio-
calculated that rays of starlight gra- nal Jewish figure—as was Einstein.
zing the surface of the sun would be Nevertheless, in Berlin art and
deflected by 1.75 seconds of arc. In science seemed to be living a Golden
short, a massive body distorts time Age, so there he stayed. However, in
and space around it. In the midst of 1929 with the Stock Market Collapse
the First World War the British phy- the ground was ready for the eter-
sicist Arthur Eddington received a nal conflict of scientific inquiry and
copy of Einstein's theory. Eddington political dogma to surface.
knew that a particularly favourable
Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. eclipse of the sun would take place Plans were made for a Jewish Uni-
Despite the fact that he had been between Brazil and Africa on 29 May versity in Jerusalem and Einstein
born in Germany, he insisted that he 1919. He mounted an expedition to was asked to make a fund-raising
would not become a German citizen. take photographs of the eclipse and tour of the United States. As soon as
He was thus now a foreigner ... and to measure the deviation of starlight. the news was known he was deluged
a Jew. When Einstein moved to By September news reached Einstein with invitations to visit, lecture and
Berlin, his wife stayed behind in that the eclipse results confirmed accept honours at American univer-
Zurich with their children - the his predictions—he became world- sities. His arrival in New York was
marriage was over. famous. In November 1919, when met with tumultuous enthusiasm.
bitter memories of the First World He was received by President Har-
Einstein took no part in the First War were still vivid, Einstein's work ding in the White House, and ac-
World War, but immersed himself was acknowledged by the Royal So- claimed at Princeton and Columbia
in his long research on the Gene- ciety in the United Kingdom as "one Universities. On his way home he
ral Theory of Relativity, which was of the greatest—perhaps the grea- gave lectures at Manchester Univer-
concerned with gravity. test—of achievements in the history sity and King's College, London --
of human thought." He was awarded in German! Further visits followed
If nothing could travel faster than the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 to France, Sweden, Japan, Spain
light, how could gravity apparently "for his services to Theoretical and Palestine.
work in a vacuum as an instanta- Physics, and especially for his disco-
neous force-at-a-distance every- very of the law of the photoelectric When Hitler came to power in
where at once? One of his findings effect". He gave the Nobel money January 1933, Einstein happened
was that gravitation warps time, and to his first wife. For fourteen years to be with his wife in Pasadena,
if it warps time it must also warp Einstein had been in the forefront California, and he immediately
space. After years of toil on his cal- of scientific fashion. His last great realized that he could never go back
culations, Einstein found that gra- contribution to science was working home again. In Berlin his books were
vity should not be treated as a force, out the role of probability in quan- burned and he officially renounced
but as a peculiarity of space itself. tum theory. Quantum mechanics his German citizenship. Planck tried
pursued its course, but even though to defend Einstein, until Hitler told
Could Einstein's theories be proved? he had helped to found it, Einstein him that but for his advanced age
The motion of the planet Mercury could not accept it. He soon came he would be sent to a concentration
did not conform to Newton's pre- to be regarded condescendingly camp.
dictions. There was an advance of by his fellow physicists as an out-
between 40 and 50 seconds of arc moded conservative pursuing futile Meanwhile, Einstein had been invi-
per century in its perihelion—the research. But that is another story. ted to join the faculty of the Institute
point of its orbit nearest the sun. In for Advanced Studies at Princeton
1915 Einstein's theory explained that In 1919 Einstein married Elsa, his University—and to name his own
Mercury should have an advance of widowed cousin. Forgetting his salary. As darkness gathered over
43 seconds of arc per century! This earlier resolution, in the same year Europe, Einstein took up residence
dazzling result was a momentous he became a German citizen—a in the tiny collegiate town of Prince-
climax to years of mathematical decision he would come to regret. ton, New Jersey, in 1933, and this is
drudgery. In passing, Einstein put Germany had lost the First World where he spent the last twenty-two
forward the mechanism for making War and the zealots of German na- years of his life. In August 1939 and
lasers, although it would be nearly tionalism were looking for a scape- again in March 1940 it was Einstein
fifty years before physicists succeed- goat. Their attention focused on the the pacifist who wrote to President
ed in making them. He also pre- Jews, who were accused of being Roosevelt to warn him about the ad-
dicted that atomic clocks would be aliens who poisoned the wellsprings vent of the atomic bomb.
affected by gravity -- time passes of pure German culture. With
more slowly on the ground than at the rapid rise of anti-Semitism in JOHN FOX

132