Was Einstein an American?
May 15
Kevin Drum has Discovery Channel’s list of the 100 Greatest Americans. It is, as he says, something of an atrocity, but I will get to that later. What struck me was this comment from Kevin:
Albert Einstein? Sure, he became a U.S. citizen late in life, but he’s no more a “Greatest American” than Alexander Graham Bell was a “Greatest Canadian.” Come on, guys.
Well, no, that’s not right. America has always been a nation of immigrants. You could always come to this country and simply decide that you were an American now, not a Pole or a Mexican or a Nigerian. If Albert Einstein wanted to consider himself an American, who are we to force the accident of the geography of his birth ahead of that wish?
Einstein was an American by his own choice. That choice has to count for more than the mailing address of his parents.
#1 by Max G. Swanson at May 15th, 2005
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I couldn’t agree more. We should be really proud to claim Albert Einstein for our own!
#2 by Steve Plonk at May 15th, 2005
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Bert’s the man. He had the best nuke plans. Everything was
relativity to him and he wondered about string theory. Einstein
was as American as you and me.
#3 by Len Cleavelin at May 16th, 2005
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I’m torn. Einstein didn’t become a U.S. citizen until he was 61 years old (he lived to age 76), and at the time he became a U.S. citizen all his best work was behind him. Frankly, I’d list him as Swiss for this purpose (IIRC, he was a Swiss citizen when he did his greatest work), with German as a second choice since he was born in Germany. I’m not sure that he’d have ever come to the U.S. but for the war, and “claiming him for our own” seems to me to be an unjustified exercise in Americanocentrism to me.
#4 by Steve Plonk at May 19th, 2005
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Einstein chose America. He lived here for around 15 years. I saw him ride his bicycle
through Princeton, NJ when I was a kid on the way to visit relatives. He’s as American as you or me.