The John Adams Institute proudly hosted an evening with Abraham Pais, previously Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Rockefeller University in New York and at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. His featured work was a collection of essays called Einstein Lived Here. In 1983, Abraham Pais, who knew Albert Einstein personally, described the scientific side of Einstein’s life in a highly acclaimed biography, Subtle is the Lord. In Einstein Lived Here, Pais shows the other side of the world’s most famous scientist. he explores various aspects of Einstein’s life on the basis of passages from letters and interviews. Essays on his visions on religion, philosophy, politics and the media are interspersed with Einstein peculiarities such as his request for six pairs of nylon stockings from Romania. Controversies are unraveled: was it really his first wife Mileva who developed the theory of relativity and why was he not present at the presentation of the Nobel prize? Pais provides surprising answers. In 1932, Einstein fled from Nazi-Germany to America where he won recognition by the general public like no other scientist before him. Not only his name, but even his hair-style became a symbol of science. As he told a Dutch journalist: “I am sure that it is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to them”. Frans Boenders, who worked for the Belgian Radio and Television and was chief editor of Magazine Art & Culture in Belgium, introduced Abraham Pais, interviewed him and led the discussion with the audience.
_________________________________________________________
