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Seminar Commemorates Life and Work of Albert Einstein
 Photo GalleryGerman Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon and Swiss Ambassador Christian Blickenstorfer and the President of the National Academy of Sciences Dr. Bruce Alberts, together hosted a seminar on May 19 at the German Embassy on the life and work of Albert Einstein, citizen of the world. Both the World Year of Physics and Einstein Year 2005 in Germany mark the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s “Miraculous Year,” in which he published five essays in quick succession which revolutionized the classical concept of space, time, matter and energy. Honoring a Global Legacy
Einstein was born in Germany, educated in Switzerland, was once offered the presidency of Israel, and was a US citizen from 1940 on, so an event commemorating him rightly included all these nations, Ambassador Ischinger said in opening remarks. “He was a citizen of the world and it is in this spirit that we are getting together today to honor his life, his work, his global legacy,” Ischinger said. While he had roots and deep bonds to these four nations and to Europe, he was a man without a country, a non-conformist, said Fritz Stern, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, in the first keynote presentation. From Berlin, the Mecca of European and world science at the time, Einstein experienced the outbreak of World War I and “nationalist delirium” for which he had so much contempt, Stern said. It was in the wake of this war that Einstein became almost overnight a scientific hero when his theory of general relativity was confirmed in 1919. “The new hero appeared at a time when the old heroes had been buried in the rubble of war,” Stern said.
Professor Stern, who fled Nazi Germany to the United States with his parents in 1938, is a noted historian and author who has served as an adviser to international leaders. In “Einstein’s German World: Essays in European History,” published in 1999, Stern examines a German society in which Jewish and Christian citizens lived and worked together but in which prejudice was also prevalent. In 1999, Stern was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, one of Germany’s highest literary honors, and in 2004 he was awarded the Leo Baeck Medal by the Leo Baeck Institute. In the second keynote presentation, Dr. Hermann Grunder, a native of Switzerland and former director of Argonne National Laboratory, compared Einstein’s impact on his time to Newton’s impact on his era. As Newton’s theories were not immediately accepted and even seen as challenging conventional religion, so did Einstein meet with some rejection. Ultimately though, Grunder said, “Einstein was the founder of modern physics, creating a framework which is so advanced, that 100 years later we have not solved its questions.” The presentations were followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Professor Jürgen Renn, director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and a key organizer of conferences and expositions during Einstein Year 2005 in Germany. All photos by Victor Holt for the German Embassy May 19, 2005 Links
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