Gary scott thompson biography of albert einstein
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Albert Einstein's Post
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Noteworthy
Select Prizes and Awards to Members
National Medal of Arts, 2013
Maxine Hong Kingston (University of California, Berkeley)
Albert Maysles (Maysles Films, Inc.)
Billie Tsien (Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, LLC)
James Turrell (Turrell Trading Company)
Tod Williams (Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, LLC)
National Humanities Medal, 2013
M. H. Abrams (Cornell University)
David Brion Davis (Yale University)
William Theodore de Bary (Columbia University)
Darlene Clark Hine (Northwestern University)
Anne Firor Scott (Duke University)
Nobel Prizes, 2014
Chemistry
William E. Moerner (Stanford University)
Economic Sciences
Jean Tirole (Institut d’Economie Industrielle)
National Medal of Science
Bruce Alberts (University of California, San Francisco)
Robert Axelrod (University of Michigan)
May Berenbaum (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
David Blackwell (University of California, Berkeley)
Alexandre J. Chorin (University of California, Berkeley)
Thomas Kailath (Stanford University)
Judith P. Klinman (University of California, Berkeley)
Jerrold Meinwald (Cornell University)
Burton Richter (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; Stanford University)
Sean C. Solomon (Columb
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Albert Einstein Writes the 1949 Essay “Why Socialism?” and Attempts to Find a Solution to the “Grave Evils of Capitalism”
Image by Ferdinand Schmutzer, via Wikimedia Commons
Albert Einstein was a complicated human being, with a wide range of interests. His personality seemed balanced between a certain chilliness when it came to personal matters, and a great deal of warmth and compassion when it came to the wider human family. The physicist struck up friendships with famed American activists Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and he championed the cause of Civil Rights in the U.S. He professed a deep admiration for Gandhi, and praised him several times in letters and speeches. And in 1955, just days before his death, Einstein collaborated with another outspoken public intellectual, Bertrand Russell, on a peace manifesto, which was signed by six other scientists.
Einstein saw a public role for scientists in matters social, political, and even economic. In 1949, he published an article in the Monthly Review titled “Why Socialism?” Anticipating his critics, he begins by asking “is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on