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Einstein, the travelling physicist

26 Apr 2012

Einstein on the Road
Josef Eisinger
2011 Prometheus Books £21.95/ $25.00hb 219pp

Escape from it all

Albert Einstein did not normally keep a diary, but he often wrote in travel notebooks. From 1921 to 1933 his itinerary included trips to New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malacca, Penong, Palestine, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Havana, Palm Springs, Oxford, Panama, Honduras, Salvador and beyond. Josef Eisinger’s Einstein on the Road tells the story of these journeys, drawing mostly from Einstein’s unpublished notebooks.

After newspapers trumpeted the eclipse observations that supported Einstein’s theory of gravity, turning him into an international celebrity in 1919, people around the world clamoured to see him. The worsening political situation back home in Germany also led him to travel. At first, Einstein had appreciated the Weimar Republic as his political dreams come true, but growing hostilities there – including the 1922 assassination of his Jewish friend Walther Rathenau, the republic’s foreign minister – meant that he soon found reasons to travel outside “woeful Europe”.

The title Einstein on the Road is something of a misnomer, since most of Einstein’s journeys took place aboard cruise ships. Einstein did not want to give guest lectures anywhere. He despised photograph sessions, tiresome receptions and the barrage of journalists’ inane questions: “Define the fourth dimension in one word”, “Define relativity in one sentence”. But travel on board ship was different. Away from reporters and fans, he had some leisure time to think about physics, and to pay attention to little things. He noticed, for example, that younger people are more prone to being seasick than old people, and women more susceptible than men. Once, when his ship was in a storm, he stood on a bathroom scale and noted with interest that his weight oscillated between heaviest and lightest in the ratio of 3:2. From this, he computed the ship’s acceleration as it dropped into the trough between waves.

Einstein’s notes contain some clever moments, but also biases. I was particularly amused by the way he seemed to subscribe to the old theory that regional climates determine native behaviours. While travelling through the Strait of Messina, towards the Mediterranean, Einstein reacted to the heat and “severity” of the landscapes by speculating that the climate must have been different in antiquity, such that the Greeks and Jews inhabited a temperate zone more suitable for intellectual work. He also thought that the people of the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and China were primitive and miserable because of their tropical climates. Tepid water in the equator, he argued, spread serenity and drowsiness.

On land, Einstein’s experiences and impressions were varied. In person, he was gracious, patient and clever. But in his travel books he recorded snippy thoughts too. He was delighted by the enthusiasm and friendliness of the people of Japan, but he disliked their music and inferred that the Japanese were more artistic than intellectual by nature. He was deeply affected by visiting Palestine, yet when he saw many Jews praying at the Wailing Wall he thought “the dull-witted fellow-members of the tribe” made a deplorable scene. Einstein thought that the Chinese, though modest and gentle, were the most unfortunate people on Earth: listless, cruelly abused and treated worse than cattle. Meanwhile, in Pasadena, California, people seemed to him like scentless flowers.

Thousands of admirers swarmed around Einstein, on docks, in the streets, in lecture halls. They bought expensive tickets to see him. Most did not understand what he said, in German or in French, yet they were fascinated. Einstein complained that he did not know why people were so interested in his theories. He made few public pronouncements at events and receptions, and told his wife, Elsa, that he felt like a con artist who did not give people what they expected. Unlike the work of Copernicus, he said, his theories of relativity did not effect any radical change of perspective on humanity’s place in the universe. Although he accepted honorary degrees, he did not wear the medals. He tolerated countless handshakes and journalists as a slow form of torture, recalling the German proverb “Anyone can get used to being hanged”.

Eisinger’s book records such amusing complaints, but it also gradually demolishes the old impression that Einstein wanted to be a recluse. He said that he did, but his actions give a different impression. He met scores of individuals and carried out a voluminous correspondence with them. He socialized until it made him physically ill. Though he claimed to be indifferent to social standing, he took especial care to befriend people who were wealthy and successful. He hobnobbed with presidents and royalty. He was accessible to famous musicians. With them, many times, Einstein played Mozart on his violin, to the extent that Mozart could have been a secondary character in the book.

Einstein on the Road is easy to read, and Eisinger, an emeritus professor who has worked on nuclear physics and molecular biology, makes a pleasant narrator. At its best, his book is an interesting travelogue. But at its worst, it illustrates a little too well the tedium Einstein suffered by constantly meeting boring strangers. The book is thin on scientific content, with just faint glimpses of Einstein’s work on physics, though perhaps more relating to astronomy and cosmology, such as his support of Richard Tolman’s model of a pulsating universe. Similarly, most of Einstein’s more intriguing encounters are mentioned much too briefly. Passing descriptions of meetings with Clarence Darrow, Winston Churchill and many others are gone in a blink. Eisinger also mentions books that Einstein read at sea – on Chinese wisdom, Jewish history and so on – but lacks discussion of their substance. It would have been better to select fewer anecdotes and develop them more.

Einstein on the Road includes 42 photographs but unfortunately most are already well known: Einstein as a child; at the patent office; with his first wife Mileva Mari? with Charlie Chaplin. Photographs of Einstein in the many countries he visited would have been much better. The book also suffers from minor mistakes, mostly in the background material. For example, Eisinger states that Einstein was recognized as a child prodigy entering the Zürich Polytechnic (he was not), that his daughter was “quietly given up for adoption” (we do not know what happened to her) and that his first paper of 1905 showed the equivalence of mass and energy (it was on the photoelectric effect). Nonetheless, Einstein on the Road is a welcome contribution to the literature as it illuminates how Einstein gradually departed from the isolated individual he once was.

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