Abstract
Albert Einstein is highlighted as an individual engaged in decision making about both his science and his friendships in Paul D’Andrea and Jon Klein’s The Einstein Project. The play moves variously from one scene to another, using memory, news reporting, and relativistic physics to produce a spatio-temporal field in which Einstein’s various decisions are interrogated together. The play’s judgment of Einstein proceeds on the basis of whether he has had time to understand how his science and his choices will affect those whom he loves. Ultimately, following the causal sequence of the play’s plot rather than reorganizing events into their historical order pulls apart cause and effect to undermine efforts to assign blame in the absence of adequate understanding.
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Notes
- 1.
Heinar Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer is of particular note as a nearly factual play, while numerous examples of silliness exist, including Terry Johnson’s Insignificance, in which ‘The Actress’ (Marilyn Monroe) meets up with ‘The Professor’ (Einstein) the evening before he fails to appear before the House Committee for Un-American Activities, and Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, in which Einstein and Picasso compete for a place in history—and to impress the women they encounter.
- 2.
Historically, there were in addition several other German physicists detained along with these four.
- 3.
British Pathe (named for the founder, Charles Pathe) “were established in London in 1902, and by 1910 were producing their famous bi-weekly newsreel the Pathe Gazette” (British Pathe).
- 4.
In The Einstein Project , contrary to historical fact, Einstein writes the letter himself, not just signing off on Szilárd’s prose.
- 5.
It should be noted that this letter, as well as a shorter version also signed by Einstein, was actually written by Leó Szilárd. See Isaacson 473–474. Subsequent quotations from Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt come from the copy of the (longer) letter posted on Argonne National Laboratory’s website.
- 6.
Einstein mentions, specifically, that Carl Friedrich von Weizsäker’s father is the German Under-Secretary of State, implying the sort of access and prioritization Einstein was expecting his proposed American point person to accomplish.
- 7.
D’Andrea and Klein name their character “Edward,” but Einstein’s actual son was “Eduard,” called Tete by his parents. I will use “Eduard” when referring to the historical individual and “Edward” in reference to the character.
The terms of Einstein’s separation from Mileva Marić, including financial provisions for Marić and their two sons, were formalized by a legal contract. Yet Einstein’s relationship with his sons was sincere, though by turns a fraught or absentminded love (Isaacson 185–187 and passim).
- 8.
Similarly, in the play Edward’s “madness” requires constant supervision by 1922 (31). This, again, suggests that the character Edward is closer to Heisenberg’s age than to Eduard’s actual age.
- 9.
Although the play underscores the connections between its character and the historical figure (indeed, between all of its characters and their historical counterparts), treating the play’s characters as characters is also essential; thus, throughout the remainder of this chapter, unless otherwise noted, my references are to the character in the play rather than to the historical person.
- 10.
That Einstein’s naming of the fingers on Edward’s ‘other hand’ begins with ‘ten’ is another point of access to solving the problem Einstein sets up. The problem with which he is presenting Edward is not insoluble. Yet the boy’s ongoing frustration with this problem, and the additional energy generated by the suggestion that his own hands are wrong, presents Einstein’s lack of understanding of his son with much more clarity than his desire to connect with the boy.
- 11.
Furthermore, the historical Einstein’s friendship with the royal family of Belgium began in the late 1920s (see Isaacson 414–417).
- 12.
This was historically the case as well. As Isaacson notes, “Einstein performed. He gave interviews readily, peppered them with delightful aphorisms, and knew exactly what made for a good story” (269).
- 13.
Even Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists has its Einstein—a German physicist undercover in an asylum, pretending to believe himself Einstein—reflecting on his power to influence military research.
- 14.
Jeremy Bernstein, in the preface to his presentation of the declassified transcripts of conversations held at Farm Hall , remarks that “it became clear to me that they constitute a dramatic encounter analogous to a stage play” (ix). The object of his annotations is to make the drama and the history accessible to an audience not well versed in physics. This is not unlike the efforts to which many science dramatists go, to explain the science so necessary to their plays.
- 15.
See Chap. 1 for further discussion of Kirsten Shepherd-Barr’s categorizing concept of “enaction ” of science in drama.
- 16.
This is the judgment implied by their conversation. Later in the play, when the responsibility for the American bomb project lands squarely on Einstein, the absence of other physicists of note in America—in this play—will reinforce Einstein’s responsibility.
- 17.
See Chap. 5 for an analysis of this position in terms of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen . D’Andrea and Klein’s presentation consistently treats Heisenberg’s denial as truthful.
- 18.
The Haber process was initially directed toward agricultural ends: developing ammonia from nitrogen and thus increasing the availability of nitrates for fertilizers. It was for this application that the Nobel prize committee would grant him the 1918 chemistry prize (Feldman 209). However, the production of various poison gases during the First World War followed similar processes, under Haber’s enthusiastic direction (Feldman 228–231).
- 19.
Historically, Samuel Goudsmit reportedly included both von Laue and Hahn in the group to be detained for reasons having more to do with politics than science. That is, he wanted these two to be at the forefront of reestablishing scientific practice in Germany after the war. Both were respected senior physicists and von Laue had been vocal in his opposition to Naziism (Cassidy, “Introduction” xvii). Yet the chief determinant of which physicists were to be detained was ostensibly to cut off German research into fission, making the detention of von Laue (who had had no participation in research during the war) and Hahn (whose role during the war was minor, despite his participation in the discovery of fission) inexplicable to the detainees at the time (see Cassidy, “Introduction” xvi–xviii).
- 20.
Many of Gerlach’s fellow German physicists believed him to be more invested in the survival of German physics than in the success of the Nazi’s undertakings. One colleague recorded Gerlach having expressed his intention not “to make any war physics nor to help the Nazis in all their war efforts. I just want to help physics and our physicists. We must keep whatever we have, let all our good physicists continue their work […] and save whatever you can, both men and material, into the time after the defeat. This will be my task, my work and my duty and nothing else” (Rosbaud, qtd. in Powers 325).
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Halpin, J.G. (2018). Relativistic Intertextuality: Einstein as a Figure. In: Contemporary Physics Plays. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75148-1_3
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