BIB_ID
432784
Accession number
MA 23469.1
Creator
Dukas, Helen.
Display Date
Princeton, New Jersey, 1968 April 23.
Credit line
Purchased for The Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection as the gift of the Heineman Foundation, 2019.
Description
1 item (1 page) ; 20.2 x 15.6 cm
Notes
On stationery with the letterhead: "112 Mercer Street / Princeton, New Jersey / 08540."
In the letter, Dukas refers to an important moment in Einstein's biography: when Einstein accepted a full professorship at Charles University in Prague he was required (by order of Emperor Franz Josef) to indicate his religious affiliation. In the relevant space on the form, Dukas explains, he used a word she interprets as "dissident," not "without religion."
Acquired with a typescript containing Dukas's corrections to Bernstein's New Yorker article on Einstein, "The Secrets of the Old One," cataloged as MA 23469.2.
In the letter, Dukas refers to an important moment in Einstein's biography: when Einstein accepted a full professorship at Charles University in Prague he was required (by order of Emperor Franz Josef) to indicate his religious affiliation. In the relevant space on the form, Dukas explains, he used a word she interprets as "dissident," not "without religion."
Acquired with a typescript containing Dukas's corrections to Bernstein's New Yorker article on Einstein, "The Secrets of the Old One," cataloged as MA 23469.2.
Provenance
Purchased from Swann Auction Galleries, Sale 2502, lot 107, 21 March 2019.
Summary
Praising his new book A Comprehensible World: On Modern Science and Its Origins, a few chapters of which she read recently while babysitting for the Dyson family; mentioning how touched she was to see the dedication to Philipp Frank and adding "You are right: it is a shame that he could not write the final chapter for the Einstein-Biographie" (referring to Frank's Einstein: His Life and Times); informing him that a new French edition of the biography is in preparation and the translator, André George (who she describes as "a science-writer and close friend of Louis de Broglie--also a personal friend of Margot Einstein"), is writing a section on Einstein's last years; saying that she sent George several corrections to errors she found in the original book, "as f.i. about Einstein's alleged severing his connection with Judaism. This was quite wrong, he never did this--just wrote in the rubric 'Religion' (in Prague) 'religionslos'"; explaining further in a handwritten note "He used the word 'dissident'"; reiterating how much she enjoyed his book and sending regards from Imme Dyson.
Catalog link
Department