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instein, the Religionist
rabbi JULIUS s. FISHER
Beaufort, S. C.
ere is a legend about Jacob
d. According to it when Ja-
ied the kings of the neighbor-
countries hastened to his fu-
! and, as a sign of their hom-
they laid their crowns upon
coffin, so that Jacob’s bier was
rounded with crowns, even as
id is surrounded with a fence,
recalled this legend when I
l read of the passing of the
eatest scientist of our age, Al-
. crt Einstein.
booking back at his life, one
moot but say that his was a hap-
v lot as scientists go. Many a
•ientist remained unacknowledg
ed during his lifetime, many of
them were persecuted, some of
them had to die for their convic
tions.
Keppler was hounded from
country to country.; Galilei was
humiliated to the dust and com
pelled to revoke his teachings. Ty
cho de Brahe, the great Dutch as
tronomer, was dismissed from his
position of royal astronomer be
cause his work was considered to
u superfluous, Baruch Spinoza
was excommunicated and lived an
outcast, Giordano Bruno was burn
ed at the stake.
How different was Einstein’s
life. At the age of 26, an unknown
clerk at the Swiss patent office, he
-ubmitted four essays to the fore-
n st scientific monthly of Europe,
the Annalen der Physik in Berlin.
Aiter their publication, each of
the essays created sensation in its
respective field. This happened in
1905. fifty years ago.
Soon his name became known
and admired throughout the sci
entific world. Universities vied in
offering him chairs. In 1921 he
received the Nobel prize. All the
universities of Europe and
An i ica, dozens of them, bestowed
honorary degrees on him.
Hr rose from success to success.
U a wizard, like a scientific pro-
he predicted future develop-
They all came true. He
predicted certain astronomic phe
nomena and a body of British sci
entists verified them.
He predicted the transformation
of matter into energy and set up
the now historical equation of E
equals mc(2) indicating that vast
amounts of energy will be released
through this process and lived to
see the demonstration of the cor
rectness of his formula. In 1939
in his letter to President Franklin
D. Roosevelt he predicted the dis
covery of the atomic bomb and six
years after the first atomic bomb
was exploded.
Thus, as the years rolled by. his
authority and fame grew and
grew. And when he died the an
cient legend became true. The
kings of all countries hastened to
his funeral. What kings? Not
kings of flesh and blood who sit
on their tottering thrones, but the
kings in the luminous realm of
science and thought. A galaxy of
scientists lamented his departure
and laid their crowns, as it were,
on his bier by acknowledging that
he, Einstein, was the Master and
they the pupils, that he, Einstein,
was the greatest among the great.
It is hard to reflect briefly on
Einstein. His life was so rich, his
activities so manifold, his person
ality so colorful that one is em
barrassed by the vastness of the
subject.
The most amazing feature of his
character was, in my opinion, that
he possessed all the qualities of
a genius without any of its short
comings or weaknesses. Think of
Rousseau, who threw away his
children, five cf them, one after
the other, of Voltaire, who was
money-mad, of Nietsche who was
half insane until his mind became
entirely deranged, of Bernard
Shaw, how asocial and preposter
ously vainglorious he was. Con
trast Einstein with them and you
will see an entirely harmoniously
tuned personality. He was not
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