EINSTEIN’S fiftieth birthday, 14 March 1929, was a major event, with gifts and messages of congratulation pouring in from all over the world and reporters of all sorts seeking interviews. Fearing something of the sort, Einstein had fled his Berlin apartment and gone into hiding. When it was over, Einstein was faced with the problem of thanking the many friends who had sent him birthday greetings. He solved it by composing a rhyme, of which the following is a translation, having a printer prepare copies of his handwritten manuscript, and sending these holograph copies to his friends—often with a brief personal greeting added:

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Among the letters that Einstein received on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday was one from the Nobel laureate Fritz Haber. Here is an excerpt from it:

“Centuries from now the man in the street will know of our time as the period of the [First] World War, but the educated man will associate the first quarter of our century with your name, just as today some people think of the end of the seventeenth century as the time of the wars of Louis XIV and others as the time of Newton.”

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A decade later, for Einstein’s sixtieth birthday, the Nobel laureate Max von Laue, to whom Einstein felt close, sent the following (Einstein was now in Princeton):

“… Now indeed you are safe, and beyond the reach of that hatred. As I know you, you have come to terms with it within and you stand above your fate. But, more than ever, your work is and remains beyond the reach of passion of any kind, and will endure as long as there exists a civilized community on this earth.”

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On 1 May 1936 a prominent American publisher wrote to ask Einstein a favor. The publisher had just broken ground for a new library wing for his country home and wanted to place in the cornerstone an airtight metal box containing items that would be of archeological interest to posterity. There would be, for example, an issue of the New York Times specially printed on long-lasting rag paper. He asked Einstein to contribute a message and enclosed, for Einstein to write it on, a sheet of coupon bond paper made out of rag stock that, he assured Einstein, was expected to last a thousand years.

On 4 May 1936 Einstein sent the following message, presumably typed on the special, long-lasting paper:

Dear Posterity,

If you have not become more just, more peaceful, and generally more rational than we are (or were)—why then, the Devil take you.

Having, with all respect, given utterance to this pious wish,

I am (or was),

Your,

Albert Einstein

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A correspondent asked Einstein two questions. The first was whether he owed anything to so-called speculative philosophy. The second, which was rather rambling, was whether Einstein thought also that, with current physical researches into space, time, causality, the boundaries of the universe, Beginning, and End, this “science,” i.e. speculative philosophy, had become unemployed, or, quoting the scientist R. C. Tolman, whether Einstein agreed that “philosophy is the systematic misuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose.”

On 28 September 1932 Einstein responded from Berlin as follows:

Philosophy is like a mother who gave birth to and endowed all the other sciences. Therefore one should not scorn her in her nakedness and poverty, but should hope, rather, that part of her Don Quixote ideal will live on in her children so that they do not sink into philistinism.

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In 1957 a correspondent, learning that the Estate of Albert Einstein would welcome relevant material, wrote telling of a proposed television program seven years earlier that was entitled “How I Would Spend the Last Two Minutes.” Presumably each person interviewed would somehow know that the two minutes in question were indeed going to be those immediately preceding death. Distinguished people such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Schweitzer were to be approached, and the correspondent sent an invitation to Einstein. The topic sounds fascinating—but only at first glance. Einstein saw more deeply. Here is Einstein’s response, written in English and dated 26 August 1950:

I feel unable to participate in your projected Television Broadcast “The last two minutes.” It seems to me not so relevant how people are to spend the last two minutes before their final deliverance.

In telling of this, the correspondent added the remark: “Needless to say this considerably changed my life.”

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Einstein was notoriously unconcerned about his attire, which was often quite sloppy. In 1955, early in March, the children in a fifth grade class in an elementary school in the state of New York became aware not only of Einstein’s existence but also of the fact that his seventy-sixth birthday would fall a few days hence. With the help of their teacher, they sent Einstein a letter on 10 March wishing him many happy returns, and with the letter they sent a present consisting of a tie clasp and a set of cuff links. It was to be Einstein’s last birthday.

On 26 March 1955 Einstein wrote back in English as follows:

Dear Children,

I thank you all for the birthday gift you kindly sent me and for your letter of congratulation. Your gift will be an appropriate suggestion to be a little more elegant in the future than hitherto. Because neckties and cuffs exist for me only as remote memories.

From a boarding school in Cape Town, South Africa, on 10 July 1946, a British student wrote a long and naively charming letter to Einstein in Princeton asking for his autograph. Here is an excerpt: “I probably would have written ages ago, only I was not aware you were still alive. I am not interested in history, and I thought that you had lived in the eighteenth century or somewhere near that time. I must have been mixing you up with Sir Isaac Newton or someone.” The student, mentioning a friend, went on to tell that they were much interested in astronomy and would creep past the prefect’s room at night so as to observe the stars and planets despite being caught and punished a few times. The student confessed an inability to understand curved space. And ended by saying with sturdy patriotism, “I am sorry that you have become an American citizen. I would much prefer you in England.”

On 25 August 1946 Einstein replied in English as follows:

Dear Master …,

Thank you for your letter of July 10th. I have to apologize to you that I am still among the living. There will be a remedy for this, however.

Be not worried about “curved space.” You will understand at a later time that for it this status is the easiest it could possibly have. Used in the right sense the word “curved” has not exactly the same meaning as in everyday language.

I hope that you and your friend’s future astronomical investigations will not be discovered any more by the eyes and ears of your school-government. This is the attitude taken by most good citizens towards their government and I think rightly so.

Yours sincerely,

The student was thrilled to receive this autographed letter, even though Einstein had mistakenly thought, from her unusual first name, that she was a boy. In her reply, dated 19 September 1946, she wrote: “I forgot to tell you … that I was a girl. I mean I am a girl. I have always regretted this a great deal, but by now I have become more or less resigned to the fact.” And later in the letter she said: “I say, I did not mean to sound disappointed about my discovery that you were still alive.”

Einstein replied:

I do not mind that you are a girl, but the main thing is that you yourself do not mind. There is no reason for it.

* Artists used to write on their canvases the word “fecit,” which is the Latin for “he made [it],” and would then write their name and the date. Here Einstein uses the word “peccavit,” which is the Latin for “he sinned [it].”