- Person
- Albert Einstein
- Lived
- 1879–1955
- Field
- Physics
- From
- German-American
The story
In April 1933 the new Nazi government passed laws barring Jews from holding official positions, including teaching at universities. As the historian Gerald Holton has described, thousands of Jewish scientists were forced out of their posts with virtually no protest from their colleagues. Albert Einstein, who had renounced his German citizenship and was living temporarily in Belgium, was without a permanent home himself, but he was equally worried about the fate of the scientists still in Germany.
In the summer of 1933 he spent about six weeks in England at the invitation of the Member of Parliament Oliver Locker-Lampson. There he met Winston Churchill, Austen Chamberlain and the former prime minister David Lloyd George and asked them to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. Churchill responded by sending the physicist Frederick Lindemann to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities.
Einstein also wrote to leaders of other nations. In September 1933 he wrote to Turkey's prime minister, İsmet İnönü, asking him to place unemployed German Jewish scientists at Turkish institutions. Turkey was then reforming its higher education: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk wanted the old university in Istanbul to become a modern research institution. That summer the émigré pathologist Philipp Schwartz, himself dismissed from Frankfurt, had negotiated with Turkey's education minister and secured offers for 30 professors.
According to sources cited in Einstein's biography, Jewish invitees to Turkey as a result of these efforts eventually totalled more than 1,000 people, including scientists and their families. By the end of 1933, 42 German academics had started work at Istanbul University, and about 300 displaced German scientists went to Turkey in all.
The newcomers helped transform Turkish science and culture. The astronomer Erwin Finlay Freundlich led a new astronomy institute and helped establish the country's first observatory, the physicist Harry Dember led physics teaching, and the composer Paul Hindemith helped launch the Ankara State Conservatory. Many refugee professors came to call Istanbul the best German university. Einstein's appeal turned his personal reputation into a lifeline for colleagues who had lost their posts, their income and, in many cases, their safety.
Why it matters
Einstein's appeals helped persecuted scholars and their families reach safety while strengthening universities in the countries that took them in, including a new generation of Turkish research institutions.
About Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist; relativity, the photoelectric effect, E=mc². Reshaped 20th-century physics and won the 1921 Nobel Prize.
More about Albert Einstein
- Einstein published four world-changing papers in 1905In 1905, while working as a patent clerk in Bern, Albert Einstein published four papers that transformed physics. Historians call it his miracle year.
- A 1919 eclipse confirmed Einstein's general relativityEinstein's 1915 theory of general relativity predicted that the sun bends starlight. Eclipse measurements in May 1919 matched his calculations and made him world famous.
- Einstein's photoelectric law, basis of modern light techIn 1905 Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by proposing that light comes in packets of energy, work that won him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Einstein predicted a new state of matter in 1924Building on work by Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, Albert Einstein predicted in 1924 that atoms cooled near absolute zero would merge into one quantum state. It was created in 1995.
- Einstein predicted gravitational waves in 1916In 1916 Albert Einstein predicted ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. LIGO detected them directly on 14 September 2015, nearly one hundred years later.
- Einstein's 1917 idea of stimulated emission led to the laserIn 1917 Albert Einstein introduced the concept of stimulated emission of light. Decades later it became the working principle of the maser and the laser.
- Einstein welcomed Marian Anderson into his home in 1937When a Princeton hotel refused a room to the Black contralto Marian Anderson in 1937, Albert Einstein invited her to stay at his house. She stayed with him on later visits.
- Einstein campaigned for Black civil rights in AmericaAlbert Einstein joined the NAACP, called racism America's worst disease, and in 1946 spoke at Lincoln University, a historically Black college that gave him an honorary degree.
- Einstein inspired the founding of the Rescue CommitteeIn 1933 the American branch of the International Relief Association was founded at Albert Einstein's suggestion to help people suffering under Hitler. It grew into the IRC.
- Einstein helped raise funds to found the Hebrew UniversityIn 1921 Chaim Weizmann asked Albert Einstein to help raise money for a planned Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Einstein toured America for the cause, and the university opened in 1925.
Sources
- Albert Einstein Wikipedia
- The unlikely haven for 1930s German scientists Physics Today
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.