Berlin, Exile, and Princeton

The Rise

Once the 1905 papers were understood, the academic world moved quickly to make up for having ignored him. He became a professor in Zurich in 1909, in Prague in 1911, and at his old Polytechnic in Zurich in 1912. In 1914 he moved to Berlin, then the capital of world physics, to take up a research position at the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

He completed general relativity there in November 1915, during the First World War, which he opposed openly when almost no German academic did.

Fame

On 6 November 1919 the results of the British eclipse expeditions were announced in London: starlight bends as Einstein predicted. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic ran the story on their front pages, and he became, almost overnight, the most famous scientist in the world.

There had never been a scientific celebrity like him. Crowds met him in New York in 1921, in Japan in 1922, and in Palestine and Spain in 1923. The Nobel Prize was announced while he was travelling to Japan, and the news reached him in Shanghai.

The Target

Fame made him a target at home. From 1920 he was attacked by an organized campaign that denounced relativity as "Jewish physics," a cause later championed by two German Nobel laureates. After the foreign minister Walther Rathenau, a Jewish acquaintance of his, was murdered by nationalists in 1922, Einstein was warned that he was also on the assassins' list.

He was visiting the United States when Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. He never set foot in Germany again. His house was raided, his property seized, and his books burned. He resigned from the Prussian Academy before it could expel him and gave up his German citizenship for the second time. After some months in Europe, including a stay in England, he sailed for America.

Princeton

In October 1933 Einstein arrived in Princeton, New Jersey, to take up a post at the new Institute for Advanced Study. He was fifty-four. He lived there for the rest of his life, from 1935 in a modest white house at 112 Mercer Street, with Elsa, his stepdaughter Margot, his secretary Helen Dukas, and later his sister Maja.

He became an American citizen in 1940, keeping his Swiss citizenship as well.

His days followed a pattern: a walk to the Institute in the morning, work on his unified field theory with an assistant, a walk home, more work, music in the evening. He used his fame to help others escape Europe, signing affidavits and writing letters for refugees until American officials stopped taking his recommendations seriously because there were so many.

The Letter

In the summer of 1939 the physicist Leo Szilard came to tell him that a nuclear chain reaction in uranium now looked possible, and that Germany might be working toward a bomb. Einstein signed a letter, drafted mostly by Szilard, warning President Roosevelt. It was dated 2 August 1939.

Apart from a follow-up letter and some unrelated consulting for the Navy, that was the extent of his involvement. He was considered a security risk and took no part in the Manhattan Project. He came to regret the letter deeply. See Nuclear Energy and Convictions.

Last Years

After the war he devoted his public voice to the control of nuclear weapons, to civil rights, and to the defense of intellectual freedom. In 1952 he was offered the presidency of Israel, a ceremonial post, and declined, saying he lacked the aptitude for dealing with people.

Days before his death he agreed to sign a manifesto drafted by Bertrand Russell calling on governments to renounce war in the nuclear age. It was one of his last public acts.

Death

On 18 April 1955 Einstein died in Princeton Hospital, aged seventy-six, of a ruptured aneurysm of the aorta. He had refused surgery that might have prolonged his life, saying it was tasteless to prolong life artificially and that he would go when he wanted to.

He was cremated the same day, and his ashes were scattered at a place that was never disclosed.

Not all of him was cremated. The pathologist who performed the autopsy removed Einstein's brain, without permission from the family, and kept it for decades, distributing pieces to researchers. Hans Albert reluctantly gave his consent afterward, on condition that it be used only for science. See Myths and Misconceptions for what, if anything, was learned.