Genius at Home

I don't like the family Stein:

There is Gert, there is Ep, and there's Ein;

Gert's poems are bunk,

Ep's statues are punk,

And nobody understands Ein.

Albert Einstein's position as one of the great popular idols of the 20th Century is a historic phenomenon of hero worship. Few of his millions of admirers understand his relativity theory, fewer still have any notion of how it might benefit mankind. He has been called atheist, radical, many another hard name. Yet Manhattan's famed Riverside Church has already enshrined him in stone among the great scientists of all time, and conservative heads of state delight to honor him.

As a lordly dweller in the remote, cool, abstract world of mathematics, Einstein inspires in ordinary earthlings something of the awe which would greet a visitor from Mars. But a new biography by a member of his household (Einstein--An Intimate Study of a Great Man) ; Doubleday, Doran; $2.75), published this week, suggests that another secret of his fame may be his vast and simple humanity.

This family's-eye view of genius was written by Son-in-Law Dimitri Marianoff, husband of Einstein's stepdaughter Margot, in collaboration with Writer Palma Wayne. Marianoff, who lived with the Einstein family for eight years, reports that the Einstein home in Princeton is visited by a constant stream of the world's great--statesmen, bankers, diplomats, composers, actors, writers, scientists. Hordes of correspondents from every corner of the world ask him for advice, money, help in scientific problems and personal affairs. He is deluged with gifts, which he almost invariably sends back; he once refused a $30,000 Guarnerius violin.

"Don't Ever Forget." When Einstein lived in England, the Government insisted on a Scotland Yard convoy wherever he went; pretty young society girls stood guard with rifles outside his hideaway on the English seacoast. At Manhattan's gilded Metropolitan Opera House, audiences have been known to rise to salute his entrance in the midst of an aria. Marianoff tells of overhearing a mother say to her small son in a city street: "There is Albert Einstein. Don't ever forget that you have seen him."

Einstein remains a fabulously simple, modest human being.* Says Marianoff:

"Einstein's face is one of the great, unforgettable faces of the world. . . . That startlingly arresting head . . . captured the imagination of the masses. ... It was a head that spoke to them of legends, of sagas, something of the grandiose and primitive." Einstein's attitude toward the world is as grandly primitive as his face.

Einstein rarely wears socks except in winter, at home usually dresses in slippers, baggy pants and a brown leather jacket, which he refuses to change even to receive distinguished visitors. His Spartan study at Princeton, from which even his family is sternly barred, is furnished only with an unpainted table, a few unpainted shelves, a pencil and paper for his mathematical calculations. Though his salary from the Institute for Advanced Study is $20,000 a year (four times the sum he suggested when the Institute asked him to name his own figure, according to Marianoff), he has never owned a car, fights off his family's efforts to make him buy a new suit, stops only at cheap hotels when he travels.

Once, after much urging, Einstein agreed to permit one of the Rockefeller foundations to send him $500 a year for an assistant. The first check (for $250) duly arrived, was never seen again. Asked later what had happened to it, Einstein meekly replied that he must have tucked it away in a book.

Irresistible Elevator Man. Einstein's softheartedness has forced his family to form a protective cordon against salesmen and favor seekers. Not long ago an elevator company called Dr. Abraham Flexner, then director of the Institute for Advanced Study, whom Einstein had given as a reference, and announced that it had an order to install an elevator in Einstein's two-story Princeton house. Exclaimed Flexner: "In heaven's name, Albert, what would you do with an elevator?" Replied Einstein: "I do not know, but the man who came to interest me in it--I liked him so much, I could not say no."

Gadgets and Dowagers. Einstein, whose love of music and sailing is well known, also likes to visit 5-&-10 stores, admiring their glittering gadgets. When a friend gave him a zipper bag, Einstein delightedly zipped and unzipped it again & again. He hates strenuous exercise, pretentious people. The usual conversational approach of dowagers when introduced to him is to ask him to explain his relativity theory. Einstein sometimes obliges, soon reduces them to stunned silence.

At home, Einstein is almost unvaryingly gentle, even-tempered, meekly obedient--and impersonal. He has never tried to explain relativity to his family. His scientific life is strictly solitary. When, as often happens even at mealtimes, he falls into long mathematical reveries, his family is careful not to disturb him. This cool detachment extends even to his closest personal relationships. When his wife died eight years ago, Einstein turned stoically "from her bedside, said quietly: "Bury her."

* Sir William Rothenstein once painted Einstein's portrait in Berlin. Throughout the sittings the great man conversed steadily with a thickspectacled stranger who sat in a corner looking "like an ancient tortoise." From time to time the stranger shook his head solemnly, and Einstein, crestfallen, would relapse into temporary silence. When Sir William took his final leave, Einstein explained apologetically: "He is my mathematician, who examines the problems I place before him and checks on their validity. You see, I am not myself a very good mathematician."

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