einstein

celebrity, were thrilled that the newly discovered genius was not a drab or reserved academic. Instead, he was a charming 40-year-old, just passing
from handsome to distinctive, with a wild burst of hair, rumpled informality, twinkling eyes, and a willingness to dispense wisdom in bite-sized quips
and quotes.
His friend Paul Ehrenfest found the press attention rather ridiculous. “The startled newspaper ducks flutter up in a hefty bout of quacking,” he
joked. To Einstein’s sister, Maja, who grew up at a time before people actually liked publicity, the attention was astonishing, and she assumed that
he found it completely distasteful. “An article was published about you in a Lucerne paper!” she marveled, not fully appreciating that he had made
front pages around the world. “I imagine this causes you much unpleasantness that so much is being written about you.” 13
Einstein indeed bemoaned his newfound fame, repeatedly. He was being “hounded by the press and other riff-raff,” he complained to Max Born.
“It’s so dreadful that I can barely breathe anymore, not to mention getting around to any sensible work.” To another friend, he painted an even more
vivid picture of the perils of publicity: “Since the flood of newspaper articles, I’ve been so deluged with questions, invitations, and requests that I
dream I’m burning in Hell and the postman is the Devil eternally roaring at me, hurling new bundles of letters at my head because I have not yet
answered the old ones.” 14
Einstein’s aversion to publicity, however, existed a bit more in theory than in reality. It would have been possible, indeed easy, for him to have
shunned all interviews, pronouncements, pictures, and public appearances. Those who truly dislike the public spotlight do not turn up, as the
Einsteins eventually would, with Charlie Chaplin on a red carpet at one of his movie premieres.
“There was a streak in him that enjoyed the photographers and the crowds,” the essayist C. P. Snow said after getting to know him. “He had an
element of the exhibitionist and the ham. If there had not been that element, there would have been no photographers and no crowds. Nothing is
easier to avoid than publicity. If one genuinely doesn’t want it, one doesn’t get it.” 15
Einstein’s response to adulation was as complex as that of the cosmos to gravity. He was attracted and repelled by the cameras, loved publicity
and loved to complain about it. His love-hate relationship with fame and reporters might seem unusual until one reflects on how similar it was to the
mix of enjoyment, amusement, aversion, and annoyance that so many other famous people have felt.
One reason that Einstein—unlike Planck or Lorentz or Bohr—became such an icon was because he looked the part and because he could, and
would, play the role. “Scientists who become icons must not only be geniuses but also performers, playing to the crowd and enjoying public
acclaim,” the physicist Freeman Dyson (no relation to the Astronomer Royal) has noted. 16 Einstein performed. He gave interviews readily,
peppered them with delightful aphorisms, and knew exactly what made for a good story.
Even Elsa, or perhaps especially Elsa, enjoyed the attention. She served as her husband’s protector, fearsome in her bark and withering in her
near-sighted gaze when unwanted intruders barged into his orbit. But even more than her husband, she reveled in the stature and deference that
came with fame. She began charging a fee to photograph him, and she donated the money to charities that fed hungry children in Vienna and
elsewhere. 17
In the current celebrity-soaked age, it is hard to recall the extent to which, a century ago, proper people recoiled from publicity and disdained
those who garnered it. Especially in the realm of science, focusing on the personal seemed discordant. When Einstein’s friend Max Born published
a book on relativity right after the eclipse observations, he included, in his first edition, a frontispiece picture of Einstein and a short biography of
him. Max von Laue and other friends of both men were appalled. Such things did not belong in a scientific book, even a popular one, von Laue
wrote Born. Chastened, Born left these elements out of the next edition. 18
As a result, Born was dismayed when it was announced in 1920 that Einstein had cooperated on a forthcoming biography by a Jewish journalist,
Alexander Moszkowski, who had mainly written humor and occult books. The book advertised itself, in the title, as being based on conversations
with Einstein, and in fact it was. During the war, the gregarious Moszkowski had befriended Einstein, been solicitous of his needs, and brought him
into a semiliterary circle that hung around at a Berlin café.
Born was a nonpracticing Jew eager to assimilate into German society, and he feared that the book would stoke the simmering antiSemitism.
“Einstein’s theories had been stamped as ‘Jewish physics’ by colleagues,” Born recalled, referring to the growing number of German nationalists
who had begun decrying the abstract nature and supposed moral “relativism” inherent in Einstein’s theories. “And now a Jewish author, who had
already published several books with frivolous titles, came along and wanted to write a similar book on Einstein.” So Born and his wife, Hedwig,
who never shied from berating Einstein, launched a crusade with their friends to stop its publication.
“You must withdraw permission,” Hedwig hectored, “at once and by registered letter.” She warned him that the “gutter press” would use it to
tarnish his image and portray him as a self-promoting Jew. “A completely new and far worse wave of persecution will be unleashed.” The sin, she
emphasized, was not what he said but the fact that he was permitting any publicity for himself:
If I did not know you well, I would certainly not concede innocent motives under these circumstances. I would put it down to vanity. This book will
constitute your moral death sentence for all but four or five of your friends. It could subsequently be the best confirmation of the accusation of
self-advertisement. 19
Her husband weighed in a week later with a warning that all of Einstein’s anti-Semitic antagonists “will triumph” if he did not block publication.
“Your Jewish ‘friends’ [i.e., Moszkowski] will have achieved what a pack of anti-Semites have failed to do.”
If Moszkowski refused to back off, Born advised Einstein to get a restraining order from the public prosecutor’s office. “Make sure this is reported
in the newspapers,” he said. “I shall send you the details of where to apply.” Like many of their friends, Born worried that Elsa was the one who was
more susceptible to the lures of publicity. As he told Einstein, “In these matters you are a little child. We all love you, and you must obey judicious
people (not your wife).” 20
Einstein took the advice of his friends, up to a point, by sending Moszkowski a registered letter demanding that his “splendid” work not appear in
print. But when Moszkowski refused to back down, Einstein did not invoke legal measures. Both Ehrenfest and Lorentz agreed that going to court
would serve only to inflame the issue and make matters worse, but Born disagreed. “You can flee to Holland,” he said, referring to the ongoing effort
by Ehrenfest and Lorentz to lure him there, but his Jewish friends who remained in Germany “would be affected by the stench.” 21
Einstein’s detachment allowed him to affect an air of amusement rather than anxiety. “The whole affair is a matter of indifference to me, as is all
the commotion, and the opinion of each and every human being,” he said. “I will live through all that is in store for me like an unconcerned
spectator.” 22
When the book came out, it made Einstein an easier target for antiSemites, who used it to bolster their contention that he was a self-promoter
trying to turn his science into a business. 23 But it did not cause much of a public commotion. There were, as Einstein noted to Born, no “earth
tremors.”
In retrospect, the controversy over publicity seems quaint and the book harmless fluff. “I have browsed through it a little, and find it not quite as