Knowing Einstein

Palisadian Jack Rosenberg thinks he may be the only personal friend of Albert Einstein still alive. They first met in 1949, on Einstein’s 70th birthday, when Rosenberg was a 31-year-old electrical engineer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and Einstein was a world-renowned member of the faculty. Rosenberg was working for mathematician John Von Neumann designing what would be the first central processing unit for the first digital computer. A music fan, Rosenberg had developed sophisticated audio equipment for his own personal use, which attracted the interest of mathematicians at the Institute, who asked him to build them similar systems. Professor Erwin Panofsky, a good friend of Einstein’s, heard about this music system and asked Rosenberg to make one for Einstein as a 70th birthday gift. Rosenberg did, and it was the start of a friendship. Between late 1949 and 1951 they saw each other once a month. Even after Rosenberg moved away, he visited once or twice a year until Einstein’s death in 1955. On the occasion of the Skirball Cultural Center’s upcoming Einstein exhibit, which will run from September 14 to May 29, Rosenberg shared with the Palisadian-Post his personal memories of Einstein. Rosenberg grew up in New Jersey, the son of Russian parents who were interested in classical music. He studied engineering at MIT, and was on a troop ship in the Pacific heading towards invading Japan during World War II when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This led Rosenberg to an interest in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and his first job at Princeton, working with some physics professors. After that he began work on the Johnniac, the world’s first digital computer, named after its inventor, John Von Neumann. It was while working there at the Institute of Advanced Studies, through his love of music, that Rosenberg met Einstein. Born in Germany, Einstein was 26 when he had what he called his ‘annus mirabilis’ in 1905. He published four papers (including his famous E=MC2 formula) that revolutionized present concepts of time and space, energy and matter, and that same year he received his Ph.D. from Zurich University, all while working at the Swiss Patent Office. He was a professor of theoretical physics in Prague and Zurich, and later in Berlin and received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. He joined the Institute in 1933. By the time Rosenberg met him, Einstein was a world-famous figure who spent a lot of time thinking about philosophical interests other than science. That’s what Einstein discussed with Rosenberg and his wife, Frances (who died 10 years ago). ‘I was absolutely bewildered in his presence. I was tongue-tied,’ said Rosenberg of meeting Einstein. ‘He had a lot of humility; none of the other scientists I had ever met had this. He was a man who had nothing to prove.’ Rosenberg entered Einstein’s house surreptitiously several times to set up the audio system to play FM music over the radio. One time he installed a roof antenna, and several other times he was let in by Einstein’s longtime secretary, Helen Dukas. High-fidelity audio was not commercially available at this time. Einstein was fascinated when Rosenberg brought in the three pieces of furniture’the speaker, the FM receiver and the amplifier’that made up his surprise gift. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had worked on the Manhattan Project, was head of the Institute at the time, and came with Rosenberg to greet Einstein on his birthday. ‘Einstein said, ‘You’re not allowed to go in there,’ when I headed to his study,’ Rosenberg recalls. ‘I said, ‘Please, you’ll understand later.” Once he learned about the surprise gift, Einstein, an amateur violinist, had a look of pleasure on his face. ‘What could I do to repay you?’ he asked. Rosenberg asked for permission to take his picture, which he granted. Rosenberg was thrilled to have met Einstein, and thought that would be the end of their association. But a month later he received a personal note from Einstein, thanking him for the ‘singing bird’ as he called his music system, on which he enjoyed Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute.’ Several months later, professor Panofsky called, asking Rosenberg how Einstein could thank him once again for building the music system. Rosenberg asked if he could record Einstein’s voice on a recording system he had in his home. The recording device was not portable, so Einstein would have to come to the small apartment where Jack and Frances lived. In October 1949, the Rosenbergs had their interview with Einstein, who said he would answer all questions, but requested that the recording be only for their private use, and would not be made public. The Rosenbergs asked Einstein questions for half an hour, about world affairs, what he thought about the atomic bomb, his political ideas, and his favorite music. In his autobiography now in progress, Rosenberg describes Einstein’s answers as ‘shockingly candid. Many were so direct and surprising they left no room for further inquiry on that subject.’ When asked about whether he agreed we had to drop atomic bomb on Japan, Einstein said that he didn’t agree. He believed there there had been secret peace negotiations going on with Japan and they would have surrendered before the bombs were dropped. Two weeks later, Einstein’s secretary called saying that Einstein would like to have the Rosenbergs over for tea and cookies. This time, Einstein asked the questions. ‘I’m interested in what young Americans think about,’ he said. Although Jack and Frances protested that they weren’t typical young Americans, the first interview lasted two hours, and they visited once a month for the next year and a half, until they moved from Princeton. Einstein became a mentor and advisor, and was the motivating force behind the couple’s move from Princeton, claiming it was a closed society where people couldn’t speak freely. Only this year, at a lecture Rosenberg attended at Caltech, did he learn why Einstein felt that way. Caltech professor Diana Kormos Buchwald, editor of Einstein’s collected papers, explained that Dr. Abraham Flexner, head of the institute through 1939, had forbidden Einstein from speaking about his opinions publicly. Eventually, Rosenberg switched employers, and after leaving Princeton, got a job with GE in Syracuse, New York. He moved to the Palisades in 1954 to work for a subsidiary of General Dynamics. He later learned that mathematicians from Los Alamos were using the computer he worked on at the Institute for Advanced Studies to develop the hydrogen bomb. ‘I felt I had dirtied my hands,’ says Rosenberg. ‘When I mentioned it to Einstein in 1953, he said ‘I thought that was what they used it for. I thought they would find a way to design the hydrogen bomb. I feel that instead of making the U.S. more secure, this weapon has made us less secure.’ Sure enough, in the year after the U.S. exploded it, the Soviet Union also exploded its hydrogen bomb. So Einstein was right, there was no security.’ Einstein passed away in 1955 at 76, of a rupture of the aortic aneurysm. Living in the Palisades at the time, the Rosenbergs wept when they heard the news. ‘Einstein got criticism from both scientists and laypeople that he should stop spending time on political matters and world matters, and completely devote himself to science,’ Rosenberg says. ‘Even though he couldn’t solve the world’s political problems he felt he had to think about them, and when he thought about a subject, he thought about it more thoroughly than anyone else I ever met.’