April 18: The Death of Albert Einstein

The death of Albert Einstein on this date in 1955 brought messages of condolence to Princeton University from all around the world. Einstein had entered the hospital two days earlier and refused surgery — which, according to John Cameron Swazy’s NBC television report (focusing primarily on Einstein’s anti-nuclear weaponry activism), would not have spared the great scientist from dying from a burst artery. Since arriving at Princeton in 1933, Einstein had become widely known as an ethical leader, unafraid to speak out against the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racism, and in favor of socialism and one-world government, all of which earned him a 1,500-page FBI file. “No other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of the 20th century knowledge,” said President Dwight D. Eisenhower upon Einstein’s death. “Yet no other man was more modest in the possession of the power that is knowledge, more sure that power without wisdom is deadly.”

“The word ‘god’ is for me nothing more than the expressions and products of human weakness, the Bible a collection of pleasurable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. . . . And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me from all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, though they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.” —Albert Einstein, letter dated January 3, 1954