The Man Who Stalked Einstein Read Online Free Page A

The college’s leafy walkways and gothic, fitted-stone architecture were more appealing
     to Einstein, and especially to Elsa, than the foreign, materialistic feel of Southern
     California. Sensing triumph, with only one more hurdle to surpass, Flexner timorously
     asked Einstein what sort of salary he had in mind. The Rockefeller Foundation had
     given him a generous budget, but perhaps not enough to command the attention of such
     a great man. Einstein naïvely suggested $3,000 annually, quite a low figure by American
     standards. Smiling, Flexner told him that he would work out his salary with Elsa.
     Einstein readily agreed. They settled at $16,000.
    The freedom to think and write and the flexibility of the arrangement that Flexner
     promised so appealed to Einstein that he quickly agreed in principle to become the
     second faculty member of the institute, after the mathematician Hermann Weyl. This
     is not to say that Einstein hadn’t any qualms about moving to such a strange place
     as America. He had expressed how he felt about the United States in a 1925 letter
     to his friend Michael Besso, who had worked with him on the theory of special relativity:
     “To find Europe delightful, you have to visit the United States. While people have
     fewer prejudices there, they nevertheless are hollow and uninteresting, much more
     so than in Europe.” In a similarly dismissive vein, he noted, “American men are nothing
     but the pet dogs of their wives. People seem to be endlessly bored.”
    The threat to his and his wife’s lives demanded that Einstein reconsider those views.
     In the end, Einstein agreed to spend four or five months annually in Princeton at
     what would become the Institute for Advanced Studies. In the worst case, he thought,
     he would make up for U.S. intellectual deficiencies by spending the rest of his time
     at Oxford or Leiden or Madrid, where he also had accepted a yet-to-be-defined appointment.
     It was not to be. Despite living another twenty-two years, Einstein never again touched
     foot on European soil.
    Einstein grew restless with domestic life in Le Coq sur Mer while waiting for some
     signal from Flexner that things were settled with U.S. Immigration and ready for him
     in Princeton. An unusual opportunity presented itself in the form of an invitation
     from a wealthy member of the British Parliament, a former army commander and pilot
     named Oliver Locker-Lampson, whom Einstein had once met at Oxford. Einstein traveled
     to England without Elsa, who preferred her quiet existence along the Belgian shore.
    Locker-Lampson was an admirer of Einstein and was greatly pleased by Einstein’s acceptance
     of his invitation. During the few short weeks of his visit, the two men became good
     friends. At Einstein’s request, Locker-Lampson introduced a bill in Parliament to
     increase opportunities for Jews to emigrate from Germany to Great Britain. In proposing
     the law, Locker-Lampson nodded to Einstein, who was standing in the gallery of the
     House of Commons that day, and said, “Germany has turned out its most glorious citizen.
     . . . The Huns have stolen his savings, plundered his place of residence, and even
     taken his violin. . . . How proud this country must be to have offered him shelter.”
    The shelter Locker-Lampson provided was a cottage on the Norfolk moors. While Elsa
     prepared in Le Coq sur Mer for their voyage to America, her husband contemplated the
     universe—or so he said—guarded by two attractive young women who had been introduced
     to him as Locker-Lampson’s “assistants.” Einstein happily spent his final days in
     England drinking beer with his well-proportioned protectors and greeting visitors
     wishing to meet the famous scientist. The press delighted in photographing Einstein
     with his shotgun-toting “bodyguards.” When asked whether he felt secure with his protectors’
     sharpshooting talents, he speculated, “The beauty of my bodyguards would disarm