Albert Einstein

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27638, 20 April 1955, Page 12

Albert Einstein

With the death of Albert Einstein the world loses one of the greatest men of the century. It has been said that he remade the outlook of all who lived with him or after him, as Newton did and as Darwin did. In his own field Einstein was preeminent; his ideas changed the

perspective of science itself. But Einstein was a scientist known not merely to the scientific world. While ordinary men and women did not understand his work, somehow they were able to grasp its significance. To them, Einstein was the accepted human symbol of modern science. And he took on even greater stature in the eyes of ordinary men and women when he used his prestige as a scientist to attack cruelty, injustice, and folly. Einstein suffered in full measure fsom all three. His middle life was a pathetic period; but as he courageously assumed the special moral responsibilities that the Nazis thrust upon the most eminent Jew alive, it took on a grandeur that was an inspiration to all men. Einstein was only 26 when he made his first statement on the theory of Special Relativity; he had already taken a lead in framing the concepts of the new quantum physics. In the 50 years since then, *his influence has been as continuous as it has been profound. Einstein’s ideas, it has been said, are universal ideas, j reaching below mathematics and

physics to the basic conception of the relationship between man and nature. Einstein the man has gone; but of this man it can most truly be said that his work lives on.