Reaching
for the Stars: Einstein
At the American Museum of Natural History
Half way through the Einstein exhibit
currently at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City
is a larger than-life-sized statue of the famed physicist. Made
of a crinkly kind of bronze by sculptor Robert Berks, it is an
avuncular Albert Einstein, an older man in rumpled clothes seated on a
curved bench in a recess that was, during the time of our visit,
crowded with real, live kids. |

Albert Einstein
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Third graders, high school seniors, and
every level in between, they were leaning up against the statue,
sitting on the bench beside it or cross-legged on the floor,
scribbling in notebooks, kidding around, hanging out. You felt the man
who forever changed the way we look at the world and our place in it
would have been pleased. |
The exhibit, a many-layered journey through the
mysteries of the universe and into the soul of a great humanitarian,
begins in New York, moves on to the Skirball Cultural Center of Los
Angeles, and will wind up at Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem in
2005 in time to celebrate the centennial of Einstein’s “miracle year.” It
was in 1905 that the 26-year-old patent-office worker established the
existence and sizes of molecules, explained light as particles and waves
moving at a never-changing speed, and created the Special Theory of
Relativity which defines the relationship between mass and energy.
Originally envisioned as a showcase for Einstein’s
scientific theories, the exhibit’s scope was expanded when Hebrew
University offered to loan the Museum original documents from its Albert
Einstein Archives. The result is a wonderful hybrid that combines video
and interactive installations, films, high-tech sculptures, computer
simulations, and digital clocks with letters, manuscripts, photographs
from all stages of the scientist’s life, even a report card. From this
cornucopia, a complex portrait emerges of the genius who achieved
international fame and acclaim yet never lost touch with his essential
humanity.

A high school report card – Einstein was a good science
student but rather mediocre in French
During a solar eclipse in 1919, light rays suddenly
visible from distant stars appeared in unexpected positions confirming
Einstein’s three year old theory of General Relativity which predicted the
sun’s gravity would deflect light from distant stars. Gravity is not the
force between objects Newton thought it was, said Einstein, but a
consequence of mass warping the fabric of space and time. You see as much
upon entering the exhibit where a video installation shows your own image
distorted by the imaginary gravity of a projected black hole.
Some yards away, a high-tech light sculpture creates
moving light patterns, a visual demonstration of Einstein’s discovery of
the single constant in the universe: the speed of light. Nearby a display
of digital clocks keeping time at different rates illustrates the
relativity of time. And just beyond, a graphic panel revealing the
difference between fusion and fission as methods of releasing energy shows
the relationship between mass and energy expressed in the forever famous
equation E=mc2.

Original handwritten notes of the famous equation
Along the way are objects that document the chronology
and causes of an eventful life: a magnetic compass and a Nobel Prize,
original hand-written manuscripts of the Special and General Theories of
Relativity, Einstein’s letter to President Roosevelt that sparked the
Manhattan Project, FDR’s reply, and a subsequent letter from Einstein in
1945 warning FDR not to use the bomb (which probably arrived after the
president’s death) – arguably three of the most significant letters of the
twentieth century.
Einstein the global citizen is as much on display as
Einstein the scientist. The great discoveries were made during the first
half of his life, but its second half was devoted to using his fame in the
service of humanitarian causes. He was an ardent Zionist, an outspoken foe
of anti-Semitism, racism, McCarthyism, and nuclear proliferation. He was a
faithful correspondent to children who wrote to him from all over the
world. He was an accomplished amateur violinist. “Mozart’s music is so
pure and beautiful, that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of
the universe,” he once said, and “I get most joy of life out of music.”
During the last decades of his life at Princeton
University’s Institute for Advance Studies, Einstein searched for a “Grand
Unified Theory” that would explain all physical phenomena from the
smallest atomic particle to the largest galaxy. Though its discovery
eluded him, it continues to challenge the leading physicists of our day
who describe Einstein’s legacy of achievement and commitment in videotaped
interviews.
One comes away from this multi-faceted exhibit with an
enhanced understanding of Einstein’s theoretical discoveries that have so
dramatically altered our world view and a nuanced appreciation of his
exceptional humanity. Though his life spanned the last decades of the
19th century and the first half of the 20th, he seems the most
contemporary of men. The concerns we face today are in part consequences
of his discoveries; the issues we confront were those he recognized and
articulated so well.
An image lingers long after one’s visit. It is the
exhibit’s motif, a photograph of an elderly Einstein, the familiar crown
of white hair blowing in the wind, joyfully riding a bicycle before a
field of stars. The light on the bicycle, the light from the stars are
beacons that seem to illuminate the way to new understandings. And we know
-- because he told us so -- they are all traveling at the same speed.
Images courtesy American Museum of Natural
History
Einstein can be seen through August 10, 2003 at:
The American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY
Phone: 212-769-5800
Email:
communications@amnh.org
Web: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/
- Hours 10:00 am to 5:45 pm daily
- Tickets to exhibit and admission to Museum:
- $17 for adults; $12.50 for children and seniors; $10
for children
- Advance sales: 212-769-5200
# # #
About the Authors: Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer are a wife and husband
team who successfully bridge the worlds of popular culture and traditional
scholarship. Co-authors of the critically acclaimed interactive oral histories
It Happened in the Catskills, It Happened in Brooklyn, Growing Up Jewish in
America, It Happened on Broadway, It Happened in Manhattan, It Happened in
Miami. They teach what they practice as professors at Dartmouth College.
They are also travel writers who specialize in luxury properties and fine dining
as well as cultural history and Jewish history and heritage in the United
States, Europe, and the Caribbean.
More
about these authors.
You can contact the Frommers at:
Email: myrna.frommer@Dartmouth.EDU
Email: harvey.frommer@Dartmouth.EDU
Web:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~frommer/travel.htm.
This Article is Copyright © 1995 - 2012 by Harvey and Myrna Frommer. All rights
reserved worldwide.
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