(Physicist and Noble Prize winner. 1879-1955). Typed Letter Signed, written in German to Edward Singer.

EINSTEIN, ALBERT.

Princeton

31st December, 1933

When Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Albert Einstein was in America, visiting the California Institute of Technology. Reliably advised that he was near the top of Hitler’s hit list, with a bounty on his head, and with his books being burned in the streets of Berlin, he decided not to return to the Academy of Sciences there, becoming, instead, one of the founding fellows of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Research on the unified field theory aside, he found himself immediately serving as a one-man clearinghouse for displaced German Jewish scientists, using his influence to find them jobs outside Germany, especially in the United States. Lifelong activist that he was, this was a role that he embraced more than willingly. In this letter, Einstein responds to an appeal for help of this kind made on behalf of “Herr Jung” by Edward Singer, who had been teaching in the Department of Anatomy at Columbia University since 1930. The burden of Einstein’s cordial reply is that if he is going to try and help find Jung a job, first he will need Singer to provide him with a detailed profile of the man and his work. This, as he explains, is for two reasons. First, it is important that he recommends only scientists whose work is truly outstanding; and, second, he would in any case need more information about Jung’s accomplishments to be in a position to venture an intervention.