einstein

“Bird of Passage”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE REFUGEE
1932–1933
With Winston Churchill at his home, Chartwell, 1933
“Today I resolved to give up my Berlin position and shall be a bird of passage for the rest of my life,” Einstein wrote in his travel diary. “I am
learning English, but it doesn’t want to stay in my old brain.” 1
It was December 1931, and he was sailing across the Atlantic for a third visit to America. He was in a reflective mood, aware that the course of
science might be proceeding without him and that events in his native land might again make him rootless. When a ferocious storm, far greater
than any he had ever witnessed, seized his ship, he recorded his thoughts in his travel diary. “One feels the insignificance of the individual,” he
wrote, “and it makes one happy.” 2
Yet Einstein was still torn about whether to forsake Berlin for good. It had been his home for seventeen years, Elsa’s for even longer. Despite the
challenge from Copenhagen, it was still the greatest center for theoretical physics in the world. For all of its dark political undercurrents, it remained
a place where he was generally loved and revered, whether he was holding court in Caputh or taking his seat at the Prussian Academy.
In the meantime, his options continued to grow. This trip to America was for another two-month visiting professorship at Caltech, which Millikan
was trying to turn into a permanent arrangement. Einstein’s friends in Holland had for years also been trying to recruit him, and now so too was
Oxford.
Soon after he settled into his rooms at the Athenaeum, the graceful faculty club at Caltech, yet another possibility arose. One morning, he was
visited there by the noted American educator Abraham Flexner, who spent more than an hour walking the cloistered courtyard with him. When Elsa
found them and summoned her husband to a luncheon engagement, he waved her off.
Flexner, who had helped reshape American higher education as an officer of the Rockefeller Foundation, was in the process of creating a
“haven” where scholars could work without any academic pressures or teaching duties and, as he put it, “without being carried off in the maelstrom
of the immediate.” 3 Funded by a $5 million donation from Louis Bamberger and his sister Caroline Bamberger Fuld, who had the good fortune to
sell their department store chain just weeks before the 1929 stock market crash, it would be named the Institute for Advanced Study and located in
New Jersey, probably next to (but not formally affiliated with) Princeton University, where Einstein had already spent some enjoyable time.
Flexner had come to Caltech to get some ideas from Millikan, who (to his later regret) insisted he talk to Einstein. When Flexner finally set up
such a meeting, he was impressed, he later wrote, with Einstein’s “noble bearing, simply charming manner, and his genuine humility.”
It was obvious that Einstein would be a perfect anchor and ornament for Flexner’s new institute, but it would have been inappropriate for Flexner
to make an offer on Millikan’s home turf. Instead, they agreed that Flexner would visit Einstein in Europe to discuss matters further. Flexner claimed
in his autobiography that, even after their Caltech meeting, “I had no idea that he [Einstein] would be interested in being connected to the Institute.”
But that was belied by the letters he wrote to his patrons at the time, in which he referred to Einstein as an “unhatched chicken” whose prospects
they needed to treat circumspectly. 4
By then Einstein had grown slightly disenchanted with life in southern California. When he gave a speech to an international relations group, in
which he denounced arms-control compromises and advocated complete disarmament, his audience seemed to treat him as celebrity
entertainment. “The propertied classes here seize upon anything that might provide ammunition in the struggle against boredom,” he noted in his
diary. Elsa reflected his annoyance in a letter to a friend. “The affair was not only lacking in seriousness but was treated as a kind of social
entertainment.” 5
As a result, he was dismissive when his friend Ehrenfest in Leiden wrote to ask for his help in getting a job in America. “I must tell you honestly
that in the long term I would prefer to be in Holland rather than in America,” Einstein replied. “Apart from the handful of really fine scholars, it is a
boring and barren society that would soon make you shiver.” 6
Nevertheless, on this and other topics Einstein’s mind was not a simple one. He clearly enjoyed America’s freedom, excitement, and even (yes)
the celebrity status it conferred upon him. Like many others, he could be critical of America yet also attracted to it. He could recoil at its occasional
displays of crassness and materialism, yet find himself powerfully drawn to the freedoms and unvarnished individuality that were on the flip side of
the same coin.
Soon after returning to Berlin, where the political situation had become even more unnerving, Einstein went to Oxford to give another series of
lectures. Once again, he found its refined formality oppressive, especially in contrast to America. At the stultifying sessions of the governing body of