That Nice Old Man with the Crazy Hair
Albert Einstein's personal letters have been released, per his stepdaughter's will, twenty years after her death. (Einstein himself died just over fifty years ago.) What I have seen so far of them is enlightening, to say the least. I am eager to read them in their entirety.
My impression of Einstein has always been of the scientist, the man always deep in thought, the one who reportedly told someone that he was not interrupting because the scientist was always thinking, or words to that effect. I know that's an unrealistic portrait and that, as with anyone, the truth is much more complex.
And indeed Einstein was a complicated man. Various sources have chosen to focus on different aspects of the man, and each is distinct. There was the philanderer who had the temerity even to talk to his beloved stepdaughter (the custodian of these letters) about his affairs and ask her to pass messages to a lover. There was the anxious, competitive scientist cagily fearful of mathematician-physicist David Hilbert's effort to beat him to the general relativity punch.
But the aspect that most shocked me was his reaction to his younger son's mental illness. On the face, it's pretty distressing:
The context is presumably his frustration with his son's schizophrenia, one that would leave him institutionalized for the rest of his life because there were no other options for treatment. (Truth is, even today's drugs work well for some people but leave others nonfunctional.) He also goes on to worry about the expense of the boy's care and his inability to manage it. Certainly many parents of severely ill children have had thoughts in the dark of night about whether the child might have been better off dying or not being born; few have committed them to paper and even fewer have been notable enough to have those thoughts published for all the world to see.
I would like to believe that the entirety of the letters will paint a more flattering picture. I suspect they won't. That's disappointing, but is no comment on the quality and importance of Einstein's work. It only makes him, in spite of his genius, a much more normal if much less admirable human being.
My impression of Einstein has always been of the scientist, the man always deep in thought, the one who reportedly told someone that he was not interrupting because the scientist was always thinking, or words to that effect. I know that's an unrealistic portrait and that, as with anyone, the truth is much more complex.
And indeed Einstein was a complicated man. Various sources have chosen to focus on different aspects of the man, and each is distinct. There was the philanderer who had the temerity even to talk to his beloved stepdaughter (the custodian of these letters) about his affairs and ask her to pass messages to a lover. There was the anxious, competitive scientist cagily fearful of mathematician-physicist David Hilbert's effort to beat him to the general relativity punch.
But the aspect that most shocked me was his reaction to his younger son's mental illness. On the face, it's pretty distressing:
. . . if only the cursed drive to beget children didn't aim to extend the misery into infinity! This drive, in concert with the medical arts to keep alive something that is not viable beyond the years of fertility is undermining civilized humanity. So it would be urgently necessary that physicians conducted a kind of inquisition for us with the right and duty to castrate without leniency in order to sanitize the future.Castrating to sanitize the future?! Didn't a fellow named Hitler come along with a not dissimilar idea a few years later? (The difference being that Hitler did something about it.)
The context is presumably his frustration with his son's schizophrenia, one that would leave him institutionalized for the rest of his life because there were no other options for treatment. (Truth is, even today's drugs work well for some people but leave others nonfunctional.) He also goes on to worry about the expense of the boy's care and his inability to manage it. Certainly many parents of severely ill children have had thoughts in the dark of night about whether the child might have been better off dying or not being born; few have committed them to paper and even fewer have been notable enough to have those thoughts published for all the world to see.
I would like to believe that the entirety of the letters will paint a more flattering picture. I suspect they won't. That's disappointing, but is no comment on the quality and importance of Einstein's work. It only makes him, in spite of his genius, a much more normal if much less admirable human being.
posted by Maines at 12:49 AM
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