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Einstein’s years at Princeton are treated cursorily in this short volume, almost as an epilogue. Gimbal discusses how Einstein’s concern that the Germans might develop an atomic bomb prompted him to co-sign a letter to President Roosevelt, urging Roosevelt to pre-empt the German effort. This led to the Manhattan Project, in which Einstein was not directly involved. Horrified by the actual use of nuclear weaponry in Japan in 1945, Einstein came to regret his limited role in unleashing this awesome force. Supposedly, he remarked, “I could burn my fingers that I wrote that letter to Roosevelt” (p172), although this quotation has not been verified. Gimbal also notes that Einstein became an ardent supporter of civil rights, seeing similarities between the treatment of African Americans in the United States and Jews in Europe. His support for civil rights prompted J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to open a file on him.
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Einstein’s last years at Princeton were spent writing and speaking for pacifistic causes, working to help Jewish refugees flee Europe, and continuing to work on a grand unified theory of the universe. On his deathbed, Einstein uttered a single sentence in German, his native tongue, before he passed away. An American nurse heard his words but could not understand them. “In death as in life,” Gimbel concludes, “Albert Einstein left us a mystery” (p.177).
Thomas H. Peebles
La Châtaigneraie, France
September 5, 2016