Immigrants to America who made a Difference
History Book Club
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Albert Einstein
Wednesday, May 25, 2022. Immigrants to America who have
made a difference. Read and tell us the story of an immigrant to the U.S.
who has brought a wondrous addition to his/her new nation. Perhaps the
newcomers started a family of creative Americans; perhaps they themselves made
important advances. Look at Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Sergey Brin, Audrey
Hepburn, Chinua Achebe, Cary Grant, Irving Berlin, Nikola Tesla, more. [Proposed
by Mary Beth Smith.]
Walter Isaacson: Einstein: His Life and Universe; New York;
Simon & Schuster, 2007, 681 pp.
Albert
Einstein was born in Ulm, Würtemburg, Germany, March 14, 1879 and died in
Princeton, NJ April 18, 1955.
Einstein gave the world his name to
describe anyone who was brilliant, and he certainly was, but it wasn’t always
apparent, and for a brilliant young man he had a hell of a time getting a job.
Author Isaacson, who has also
written biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, delved deeply
into Einstein’s private correspondence and found that young Albert was good at
writing love letters, and describes his early love life, as well as his method
of using personal mental images to frame his thoughts about how the universe
works.
Einstein was always working on a pad
of paper, discovering how molecules work, and about atoms, and why and how we
live in this amazing world.
Einstein met Mileva Marić when
both entered Zurich Polytechnic in a class of five men and Mileva. Although she
was three years older than Albert, not pretty, and had a permanent limp, she
was bright and spirited and the two enjoyed life together. She was a Serbian,
the daughter of a well-to-do Serb military man. Albert was a Jew, Mileva a
Christian.
One thing happened to Albert and
Mileva that made a terrible scar on their lives. They had just graduated from
the Zurich Polytechnic, and albert
was desperately trying to get a job, so he could afford to marry. Even though in this time having a baby out of
wedlock would have disqualified him for the jobs he sought, Albert and Mileva had a baby in 1902.
Mileva went back to her parents to
have the baby, a little girl named Lieserl. Albert never traveled to Serbia to
see his child. He never told his
parents. He never saw the child. He and Mileva burned all letters relating to
the child, who contracted scarlet fever and either died or was passed off for
adoption. Author Isaacson discovered this from letters that were sealed until
1986, 31 years after Albert died.
Then they married in 1903 and had
Hans Albert in 1904 and Eduard in 1910. Albert
and Mileva separated in 1914 and divorced in 1919. Albert in the divorce papers
promised to give Mileva the money from the Nobel prize whenever he won it, for
care of the boys. Einstein won the prize
in 1921 and transferred the money to her.
The same year Albert divorced Mileva
he married Elsa, his first cousin.
Albert, who always resembled the
forgetful “absent-minded professor”, made brilliant discoveries, and had
brilliant friends and acquaintances. He came to America in 1933 and never
returned to Europe.
Einstein is best known for developing
the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to
the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum
mechanics are together the two pillars of modern physics.
Albert found a home in Princeton
University and bought a house in Princeton at 112 Mercer St. that has since
become a monument to him. He continued a
lifelong collaboration with other brilliant thinkers. He and Elsa had a good,
rather quiet life, although by this time he was world famous.
In 1939 he learned that the Germans
were working on a bomb that employed the fusion of atoms of uranium, and the
U.S. should do everything to prohibit Germans from obtaining uranium from
Belgian mines in Africa. Einstein visited President Franklin D. Roosevelt and
urged him to take notice. Roosevelt
began a query that became the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic
bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Albert, however, was on FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover’s list for organizations he had been asked to endorse and
sentiments he had expressed which suggested that he was friendly with
communism. Accordingly, he was not asked
to join the Army’s effort in developing the atomic bomb, but the Navy found him
suitable for providing his genius to classified security projects.
As World War II ended with the
bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki Einstein began to spend the last ten years
of his life looking for a way to prevent more nuclear warfare and to create a
supranational military force that would share nuclear bomb technology with
member nations. Before this idea could
gain traction the Cold War between America, Britain and the USSR began.
Einstein died peacefully in
Princeton in 1955.
-end-
2022
Lincoln
Assassination
Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Assassinations and executions of leaders. Read the stories of how famous people were assassinated
and what came after. From modern times--- Anwar Sadat, Olaf Palme, Yitzhak
Rabin, Aldo Moro, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, or Presidents Lincoln,
Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy, or Franz Ferdinand, King of Albania, Nicholas
II of Russia, or earlier-- Henry VI, James III, Henry III, Julius Caesar.
[Proposed by Janos Posfai]
Ironclad USS Monitor, 1862
Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Game changing maritime inventions.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022. How Should We Deal with China? Let's dig into the history of China and try to learn how
the United States should approach China, in terms of human rights, trade
policy, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Global Warming, Nuclear Weapon Proliferation,
autonomous weapons, public health, and much more. We are tremendously
interdependent: should we continue to view China as an Opponent? [Proposed
by Bruce Frederick]
Ethel
and Julius Rosenberg
Wednesday, September 28, 2022. Trials of historical significance. Read about the Nuremberg
War Crimes Trials (1945-46), or the Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951),
Burning of the Reichstag trial (1933), or the Trial of Galileo Galilei (1633), Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms,
(1521) (not what it sounds like), the Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato (399
BC), or many more. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]
