einstein

for help finding a job. After visiting the cafés and talking physics for hours that day, the two men became deeply devoted friends. Ehrenfest’s mind
was very different from Einstein’s in many ways. He had “an almost morbid lack of self-confidence,” Einstein said, and was better at critically poking
holes in existing theories than at building new ones. That made him a good teacher, “the best I have ever known,” but his “sense of inadequacy,
objectively unjustified, plagued him incessantly.”
But there was one important way in which he was like Einstein. He could never make his peace with quantum mechanics. “To learn and teach
things that one cannot fully accept in one’s heart is always a difficult matter,” Einstein wrote of Ehrenfest, “doubly difficult for a man of fanatical
honesty.”
Einstein, who knew what it was like to turn 50, followed this with a description that said as much about his own approach to quantum mechanics
as it did about Ehrenfest’s: “Added to this was the increasing difficulty of adapting to new thoughts which always confronts the man past fifty. I do
not know how many readers of these lines will be capable of fully grasping that tragedy.” 74 Einstein was.
Ehrenfest’s suicide deeply unnerved Einstein, as did the increased intensity of the threats against his own life. His name had been falsely
associated with a book attacking Hitler’s terror; as was often the case, he had let his name be used as the honorary chair of a committee, which
then published the book, but he had not read any of it. German papers headlined “Einstein’s infamy” in red letters. One magazine pictured him on a
list of enemies of the German regime, listed his “crimes,” and concluded with the phrase “not yet hanged.”
So Einstein decided to take Locker-Lampson up on his English hospitality yet again for the final month before his scheduled departure for
America in October. Elsa, who wanted to stay behind in Belgium to pack, asked a reporter from the Sunday Express to arrange for Einstein to get
to England safely. Being a good journalist, he accompanied Einstein on the trip himself and reported that on the channel crossing Einstein pulled
out his notebook and went to work on his equations.
In a drama worthy of a James Bond movie, Locker-Lampson had two young female “assistants” take Einstein up to a secluded cottage he owned
that was nestled on a coastal moor northeast of London. There he was swept into a slapstick whirl of secrecy and publicity. The two young women
posed next to him holding hunting shotguns for a picture that was given to the press agencies, and Locker-Lampson declared, “If any unauthorized
person comes near they will get a charge of buckshot.” Einstein’s own assessment of his security was less intimidating. “The beauty of my
bodyguards would disarm a conspirator sooner than their shotguns,” he told a visitor.
Among those who penetrated this modest security perimeter were a former foreign minister, who wanted to discuss the crisis in Europe;
Einstein’s stepson-in-law, Dimitri Marianoff, who had come to interview him for an article he had sold to a French publication; Walther Mayer, who
helped continue the Sisyphean task of finding unified field theory equations; and the noted sculptor Jacob Epstein, who spent three days making a
beautiful bust of Einstein.
The only one who ran afoul of the female guards was Epstein, who asked if they would take one of the doors off its hinges so he could get a
better angle for his sculpting. “They facetiously asked whether I would like the roof off next,” he recalled. “I thought I should have liked that too, but I
did not demand it as the attendant angels seemed to resent a little my intrusion into the retreat of their professor.” After three days, however, the
guardians warmed to Epstein, and everyone began drinking beer together at the end of his sittings. 75
Einstein’s humor stayed intact through it all. Among the letters he received in England was one from a man who had a theory that gravity meant
that as the earth rotated people were sometimes upside down or horizontal. Perhaps that led people to do foolish things, he speculated, like falling
in love. “Falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do,” Einstein scribbled on the letter, “but gravitation cannot be held responsible for
it.” 76
Einstein’s main appearance on this trip was a speech on October 3 in London’s Royal Albert Hall, which was designed to raise money for
displaced German scholars. Some suspected, no doubt with reason, that Locker-Lampson had hyped the security threat and publicity about
Einstein’s hideaway in order to promote ticket sales. If so, he was successful. All nine thousand seats were filled, and others jammed the aisles and
lobbies. A thousand students acted as guides and guards against any pro-Nazi demonstration that might materialize (none did).
Einstein spoke, in English, about the current menace to freedom, but he was careful not to attack the German regime specifically. “If we want to
resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake,” he said. “Without such freedom
there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister.” Freedom was a foundation for creativity.
He also spoke of the need for solitude. “The monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind,” he said, and he repeated a suggestion he had
made when younger that scientists might be employed as lighthouse keepers so they could “devote themselves undisturbed” to thinking. 77
It was a revealing remark. For Einstein, science was a solitary pursuit, and he seemed not to realize that for others it could be far more fruitful
when pursued collaboratively. In Copenhagen and elsewhere, the quantum mechanics team had been building on one another’s ideas with a frenzy.
But Einstein’s great breakthroughs had been those that could be done, with perhaps just an occasional sounding board and mathematical
assistant, by someone in a Bern patent office, the garret of a Berlin apartment, or a lighthouse.
The ocean liner Westmoreland, which had sailed from Antwerp with Elsa and Helen Dukas aboard, picked up Einstein and Walther Mayer in
Southampton on October 7, 1933. He did not think he would be away for long. In fact, he planned to spend another term at Christ Church, Oxford,
the next spring. But although he would live for another twenty-two years, Einstein would never see Europe again.