Einstein: Creation and Destruction

But through this act of destruction, Einstein created the “fourth dimension”, the dimension of time, to the three dimensions we were accustomed to thinking in. A number of artists were inspired by this concept of adding an additional dimension to their work, or showing the effect of the additional dimensions. Salvador Dalí, with his surrealism, was inspired by science in general, and the theory of relativity in particular, as was explained by a scholar, "Dalí was fascinated by the theory of relativity because it offered the idea that reality could not be reduced to a single flow." His painting “The Persistence of Memory” with the melted watches was a testament to that idea. (In 1968, Dalí painted a portrait of Einstein as one of the “Famous Men” who inspired him.)

In 1935, a number of famous artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, and Alexander Calder, signed “The Dimensionist Manifesto” embracing the new realities and understandings of “space-time”. A recent art exhibit entitled “Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein” showed how his research and thought process inspired a movement of the greats. As the last line by Edward Rothstein in that Wall Street Journal review notes 

“The manifesto may have been more an expression of scientific influence than a cause of it, but after seeing the work of its followers, abstraction looks more and more like a form of realism.”

And in returned, the art inspired Einstein. When he watched, entranced and mesmerized, Calder’s motorized depiction of , “A Universe”, for 45 minutes, he reportedly said “I wish I thought of that.” When you give artists a concept, they embrace it and reimagine it in ways you could never fathom.

In 1940, Einstein helped get Philippe Halsman, Dalí’s longtime collaborator and photographer, a U.S. visa to help him escape the Nazi invasion of France. Then Halsman shot one of the most famous portraits of Einstein in 1947, which turned into the portrait for his postage stamp. He wrote in his book, “Philippe Halsman: A Retrospective” about the photograph:

The question of how to capture the essence of such a man in a portrait filled me with apprehension. Finally, in 1947, I had the courage to bring on one of my visits my Halsman camera and a few floodlights. After tea, I asked for permission to set up my lights in Einstein's study. The professor sat down and started peacefully working on his mathematical calculations. I took a few pictures. Ordinarily, Einstein did not like photographers, whom he called Lichtaffen (light monkeys). But he cooperated because I was his guest and, after all, he had helped save me.


Suddenly looking into my camera, he started talking. He spoke about his despair that his formula E=mc2 and his letter to President Roosevelt had made the atomic bomb possible, that his scientific search had resulted in the death of so many human beings. "Have you read," he asked, "that powerful voices in the United States are demanding that the bomb be dropped on Russia now, before the Russians have time to perfect their own?" With my entire being I felt how much this infinitely good and compassionate man was suffering from the knowledge that he had helped to put in the hands of politicians a monstrous weapon of devastation and death.


He grew silent. His eyes had a look of immense sadness. There was a question and a reproach in them.

The spell of this moment almost paralyzed me. Then, with an effort, I released the shutter of my camera. Einstein looked up, and I asked him, "So you don't believe that there will ever be peace?"

"No," he answered. "As long as there will be man there will be wars."

Five years later, in 1952, scientists discovered a new element, with the atomic number of 99, in the aftermath of the first successful hydrogen bomb test at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. They named it Einsteinium in Einstein’s honor. The element has virtually no practical uses and was the product of destruction, a product of a bomb that Einstein himself opposed its creation.

In 2014, the BBC produced a special called “When Time Stood Still: A Hiroshima survivor’s story”.

"I clasped my hand around the metal mass and lifted my father's pocket watch from the debris. I recognised our house key chained to it. I turned the watch face up. The glass had been blown off, as had the watch hands. The metal was rusted and burned. The unimaginable intense heat that reached several thousand degrees Fahrenheit from the blast had fused the shadows of the hands into the face of the timepiece, slightly displaced, leaving distinct marks where the hands had been at the moment of the explosion. It was enough to clearly see the exact moment the watch stopped." The watch had recorded the moment Shinji's world had been blown apart - 08:15. "It had stopped working at the very moment of the blast, forever marking that moment in time."

Sometimes, a moment can last forever.