W.A. Hiltner and the Beginnings of Modern Astronomy in Chile

This post began with a sentence that astronomer Stephen "Shec" Shectman wrote in an email to me about the role my father, W. Albert Hiltner, played in the trajectory of astronomy in the 20th century. 

"Al of course installed the first telescope on Cerro Tololo, while the administrative structure of the observatory was still being set up."

Shec's email got me wondering. How special was that first telescope? Cerro Tololo is a mountain in northern Chile, 8000 feet up in the Atacama Desert--an extremely dry stretch of the Andes where half of the world's land-based astronomical research is now conducted, with more giant telescopes under construction. Where did Cerro Tololo and that modest telescope sit in the history of astronomy? Was it the first modern telescope in Chile? In South America? In the southern hemisphere?

My brother Bill had recently sent me an old family photo of that very telescope. On one of his trips to the mountain in the 1960s, my father was evidently so excited to start observing that he got the 0.9 meter telescope up and running before a dome had been built to house it. There were no worries about rain in the desert during the dry season. 

In the mid-1960s, my father took our family along on a couple of his trips to Tololo, where telescopes were just beginning to sprout. 

Seeking to understand that telescope's place in history, I researched telescopes in the southern hemisphere. Many had been built in the north, but the southern skies had gone relatively unstudied. Northern telescopes could not see the center of the galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds, nor countless other celestial objects visible only from the southern hemisphere. One notable telescope in the south was a 36" telescope built in 1903 on San Cristóbal Hill in the middle of Santiago, Chile, by the University of California's Lick Observatory. This telescope would of course have become less and less useful as Santiago grew and light pollution increased. South Africa drew some interest from European and American universities as a site for telescopes, culminating in the construction of the Radcliffe Telescope in 1948. At 74", it was the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere at the time. 

During this same stretch, in the first half of the 20th century, many observatories were being built in the north. After founding Yerkes Observatory in 1897, with the world's largest refracting telescope, the great visionary George Hale moved to Caltech in California to build a 100" reflector on Mount Wilson, and the 200" at Mount Palomar. Yerkes looked to western Texas for darker skies and a larger telescope. My father would take us along on his trips to Texas to use the 80" at McDonald Observatory. 

The sleepy pace of astronomy in the southern hemisphere ended in 1958. The story begins, surprisingly, at Yerkes Observatory, on the outskirts of a little town called Williams Bay in southeastern Wisconsin, where I grew up. For the first half of the 20th century, rural Wisconsin offered an adequate escape from urban light pollution, and enough dark, clear, photometric nights to advance knowledge. Even in the 1960s, most of the University of Chicago's astronomy faculty lived at Yerkes, widely regarded as "the birthplace of astrophysics." 

My father would serve as director of Yerkes for a stretch in the 1960s, but in 1958, a prominent astronomer by the name of Gerard Kuiper was director. That was the year Yerkes also served as birthplace for what would prove to be a great blossoming of astronomy along that extraordinary stretch of desert extending north from Chile into Peru. Astronomer Frank Edmondson tells the story in his book about the evolution of AURA--a fortuitous acronym for the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Throughout my father's career, from the 1940s through the 1980s, he participated in an ongoing search for drier, darker corners of the planet to collect light from the universe. His interest shifted from rural Wisconsin to drier parts of the country--McDonald Observatory in Texas, and Kitt Peak outside Tucson, AZ--with the desert of northern Chile beckoning as a final frontier for land-based astronomy. 

In May of 1958, a Chilean astronomer named Federico Rutllant traveled to the U.S. "seeking help to build up astronomy in Chile."  His timing was auspicious. The Russian's launch of Sputnick in 1957 had sent shockwaves through America, focusing new interest on the heavens above and greatly expanding government funding of research. Yet Rutillant aroused little interest during his visits to west coast observatories. Only when he came to Yerkes and met with Gerard Kuiper and my father did he get the response he sought.

According to my father, "The three of us, that is Kuiper and Rutllant and myself, were sitting in Kuiper's office. And Rutllant at that time, at least it was my impression, was very discouraged about getting any cooperation from American institutions to build an observatory in Chile. And I can so well recall in our discussion my remarking to Kuiper, 'Well, how about Chicago trying it?" 

It turned out that the University of Chicago was not in a position to fund it, nor was AURA, which had just formed the year before. Fortunately, just days before Rutllant's visit to Yerkes, my father's proposal for a research project entitled "Galactic Field Studies" had been submitted to the Air Force. That proposal was ultimately adapted by the Air Force to fund an astronomical research station in Chile. 

Now, it's one thing to find interest and secure funding, but another altogether to figure out where to site an observatory. The Atacama Desert offers many mountains to choose from. An astronomer named Jurgen Stock was sent by AURA to test the skies above and sources of all important water below. Among the many factors, a mountain must be low enough to be accessible in winter, but high enough to stand above the fog that reaches inland from the coast each night. 7-8,000 feet proved ideal.

According to a timeline of AURA, in August 1961 a 0.41-m telescope was hauled on mule back up the 8000 foot mountain, Cerro Tololo, to test the site. An article by Hilmar Duerbeck, National and International Astronomical Activities in Chile 1842-2002, says the mountain was officially chosen for the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in 1962, and the first small telescopes went into operation in 1965.

My father took the family along on a couple of his many trips. We would stay in a house called Casa Tres on a hill overlooking La Serena, the coastal town where the observatory had its headquarters, and sometimes head up to the mountain. It was a two hour trip on dirt roads with steep, breathtaking, nerve-racking dropoffs as we wound our way 8000 feet up the mountain. My brother and I would hold Kleenex over our noses in an attempt to filter out the dust seeping up through the floorboards of the van. If it was night, jack rabbits with outsized ears would scamper off the road ahead of us. A southern hemisphere's version of a saguaro cactus stood like a sentinel at the final turn before we reached the top.

My older brother Bill remembers the evolution of the observatory this way: "Dad had been making trips there for some time. I don't know the sequence of events, but at some point a road was cut (I recall Dad talking about how big the bulldozer was) and the top of the mountain was blown off and leveled. When we were there in 1966 there were already several small telescopes installed. If I remember, two 16", a 36" (probably the one in the photo), and a Schmidt camera. All were under domes. They were probably relocated from U.S. observatories, and used for final site evaluation."

That conflicts with the account in Frank Edmonson's book, which has the 36" being installed a year later:

"During Hiltner's third period as Acting Director, January-May 1967, he had the 36" telescope mounted in the open on a concrete pad in order to carry out observations while the dome was being installed. There was little risk in doing this because it never rained at this time of year."

That year my father also hired Puerto Rican astronomer Victor Blanco as the second director of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, ushering in 14 years of capable leadership. Blanco oversaw installation of a 4 meter telescope that would become the most productive telescope in the southern hemisphere during that era. The telescope, sister to the 4 meter on Kitt Peak in Arizona, was later named in Victor Blanco's honor.

AURA's success in establishing the first observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile drew the interest of European nations that had previously focused their interest on South Africa. Both the climate and the political climate in South Africa were problematic, however, and in 1963, a mountain north of Tololo called La Silla was chosen for the European Southern Observatory (ESO). 

Carnegie, which had been unreceptive in 1958, also realized it needed to invest in an observatory in the desert of northern Chile to stay competitive. During our visits to Cerro Tololo in the mid-1960s, we'd sometimes drive to the next mountain over, Cerro Morado, where an astronomer named John Irwin (tall man on the left in the photo) was living with his wife. Only now, researching the story sixty years later, do I realize his job there was to find a suitable mountain for Carnegie's observatory. In 1966, he found the right mountain, named Las Campanas for the bell-like sound some of the rocks make when struck.

My research left some questions. Was that 0.9 meter telescope my father got up and running, reportedly in March of 1967, a first in some way for astronomy in the Chilean desert? ESO's timeline says their 1 meter telescope on La Silla "witnessed first light" in November of 1966, but that seems a stretch if the road to the mountain had only been completed earlier in the same year. 

Another interesting tidbit is a story of La Silla stating that Gerard Kuiper made the "first explorations of the Andes" in March of 1959. Might my father have been part of that initial expedition? 

Other great observatories have since been built in northern Chile, named for the mountains they were built upon. John Irwin participated in initial site selection for Cerro Pachon, close to Tololo and home of the Vera Rubin telescope. In the 1980s, my father was project manager for the Magellan Telescopes on Las Campanas. ESO built another observatory eight hours north at Paranal.

Astronomical facilities in northern Chile continue to grow, taking on massive dimensions. The Vera Rubin telescope is 8.4 meters across. The Giant Magellan Telescope on Las Campanas will combine seven mirrors, each 8.4 meters across. And the Extremely Large Telescope being built by ESO will have a combined diameter of 39 meters.

And it all began with a fortuitous meeting at Yerkes Observatory in 1958 of Chilean astronomer Federico Rutllant, Gerard Kuiper, and my father, W.A. Hiltner.

Fun fact: In the 1980s, the famed educator Neil deGrasse Tyson would do research for his dissertation on the 0.9 meter telescope at Tololo.

The Many Unique Features of Veblen House -- a 1920s Prefab

Below are compiled writings and photos of the many special features of the Veblen House--a prefab of unusual construction and style that was moved from Morristown, NJ to Princeton in 1930 by the Whiton-Stuarts, then bought and augmented by the Veblens in 1941. 

It was bequeathed to Mercer County in 1974, to be added to Herrontown Woods. The will states the Veblens' vision for the house: "and in addition thereto I give and bequeath all of my pictures, radio receivers and phonograph records to the said County, to be kept by it in the house herein devised as a part of the proposed library and museum of Herrontown Wood."

That vision was not realized by Mercer County. Instead, the house was rented out, then closed down and largely abandoned in 1998. In 2017, the Friends of Herrontown Woods fought off demolition, facilitated safe transfer of ownership to Princeton municipality, and now lease the House with the goal of rehabilitation as a place for meetings, small concerts, talks, museum exhibits, and nature learning.

THE HOUSE

1939 Description of the House

Veblen House in the 1950s 

Some Beautiful Features of Veblen House

Distinctive Windows of Veblen House

A Roof That's Lasted 85 Years

• The Durable Tin Top

Balusters from "It's a Wonderful Life"

The Double Walls

Ornamentation on the Outside

1930s Insulation 

Housewrap Made of Sisal

Fun little clues found inside the walls of Veblen House

• Writings on the Inner Walls
• Who Was James Demarest?
• Initials in Old Bricks

The Wallboard

The Veblens' Furnishings, including Einstein's Chests

The Artwork on the Walls

• Charles Oppenheimer 
• Kate Cory

An Antique Septic Tank

Exterior Drainage

THE GARDEN AND GROUNDS

Spring flowers

Elizabeth's daffodils

The Longtime Caretaker

The Horse Run

The Hay Barrack

Related Post:

The Veblens' Original Vision for Herrontown Woods, Veblen House and Cottage

Einstein, and Einstein's Cousin, at Veblen House and Cottage

It was an honor and a joy to welcome a cousin of Einstein's, Karen Carlson, and her husband Don Johnson to Herrontown Woods on Jan. 15. Growing up in Illinois, Karen didn't find out that she was related to Einstein until she was 18. Her mother, whose escape from Nazi Germany in 1939 was sponsored by Einstein, had wanted to protect Karen from anti-semitism. Now retired, Karen and her husband have traveled to 14 countries to trace her family's history. She is on the advisory board for the Princeton Einstein Museum of Science. 

Elizabeth Romanaux, who leads the museum initiative, was the one who suggested Karen visit Herrontown Woods, given that Einstein was a close friend of Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen, and often came to visit. 

While in town, Karen gave several talks, including one at the Princeton Public Library entitled "How Albert Einstein Saved My Family and Why History Matters." To a full house, Karen told her story of growing up unaware of her her family's jewish heritage, and her mission in recent years to reconnect with relatives in her mother's native Ulm and elsewhere.

While we showed her and Don the Veblen House and Cottage grounds, there was a chance to also learn something of Don's life. When he was a child in Honduras, his mother moved to the U.S. in search of a better life. She found it in NY City, then arranged for Don and his two siblings to join her when he was 14. He later sang in rhythm and blues bands for awhile, and remembers reading books by Oswald Veblen's uncle Thorstein as part of his studies of sociology at UMass in Amherst. During that time, he went south to cover some of the race demonstrations in the 1960s, then pursued a career in journalism. Don first knew of Einstein not as a mathematician or physicist but as a folk hero in NY in the 1950s. He remembered the fascination people felt for Einstein's combination of genius and unassuming informality, captured thirty years prior in a description in the NY Times during Einstein's first visit to America in 1921. 

“A man in a faded gray raincoat and a flopping black hat that nearly concealed the gray hair that straggled over his ears stood on the boat deck of the steamship Rotterdam yesterday, timidly facing a battery of cameramen. In one hand he clutched a shiny briar pipe and with the other clung to a precious violin. He looked like an artist — a musician. He was.”

In 2018, a feature article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, The Power of Small Numbers, gave a similar description of Oswald Veblen's attire: 

Tall and lanky, he had the furtive vanity typical of a mathematician, dressing in handsome but deliberately shabby suits. One of his colleagues, Hermann Goldstine, recalled, “We always had a theory with Veblen that after he bought a new jacket and pants he would hire somebody to wear them for a few years so that they wouldn’t look new when he put them on.”

Karen and Don enjoyed our "Inside Out Museum" that tells the story of the Veblens' legacy on the outside walls of the house. 

Einstein had multiple reasons to visit Veblen House and Cottage. First was close professional ties. Oswald was the first faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein the second. Veblen designed the building, Old Fine Hall, where Einstein had his first office after moving to Princeton in 1933. Oswald Veblen's vision and tireless effort proved instrumental in Einstein's decision to move to Princeton. 

After Elizabeth Veblen died in 1974, long after Oswald and Einstein had passed away, a list of household items to be auctioned off included "trunks of Einstein" -- left in the attic of Veblen House for storage.

At the Veblens', Einstein would also have found an opportunity to speak his native German. The longtime caretaker, Max Latterman, was a German immigrant. 

Rebecca Martin tells the story of her ancestors once living in the Veblen Cottage, further into the woods from the House, and having Einstein come by.

"My grandmother lived in the farm cottage along with her parents and siblings during the 1930s. There's a story about Albert Einstein walking through the woods around the house and speaking to my great grandmother, who would feed him a sandwich and talk with him. She spoke German, so I'm guessing that if this story is true, he probably appreciated communicating with someone in his native language."

Veblen later used the Cottage as a study and getaway, and sometimes Einstein would join him. Both Karen and Don spoke of the peacefulness of the site, and Karen said it seemed the sort of place she could come to write her book. Given that Einstein's sponsorship saved the lives of her and her family, she is naming the book Einstein's Gift. 

We showed Karen and Don a chessboard, found in the Veblen Cottage back in the late 1960s and recently donated to the Friends of Herrontown Woods. It may well be a board used by Einstein and Veblen to play chess on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Herrontown Woods, long ago.

How Oswald Veblen Quietly Created Einstein's Princeton

On Thursday evening, Sept. 4, historian Cindy Srnka and I (Steve Hiltner) gave a talk to a standing room only crowd about two extraordinary people, one of whom audience members surely knew very well, and another they may have never heard of. The talk was hosted by the Princeton Public Library. 

A videotape of the talk is now available at this link. Below is my portion of the talk converted to a blog post. 

Oswald Veblen was a mathematician and visionary who had a huge impact on mathematics in Princeton and beyond in the first half of the 20th century. But his influence went far beyond mathematics. He also had an impact on the development of computers, and on the lives and careers of countless scholars. He and his wife Elizabeth can even be said to have founded the open space movement in Princeton.

"He was a little deceptive … He had a rather hesitant way of speaking, very tentative and diffident, but he really was an extremely forceful man. I think he played a great part in building up the Department at Princeton. He's not the only one who helped, but I think he was one of the strongest forces in that."

– Deane Montgomery, mathematician, IAS

FLYING UNDER THE RADAR

That you haven’t heard of Oswald Veblen and his extraordinary legacy has to do with his uncanny ability to fly under the radar. Though he played a vital role in building the math department in Princeton from small beginnings in 1905 to a world center in 1931, he was never the department chair. And though it was his vision that triumphed in the evolution of the Institute for Advanced Study, he was never director. His aim was to advance mathematics and the careers of talented mathematicians, and he worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve that. He did not mind being overshadowed by the great mathematicians he brought to Princeton–people like Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, and Kurt Godel.

“I think the nicest part about Veblen is that however great a mathematician he was, and he certainly was a great mathematician, he recognized greatness in mathematicians and in scientists, and as far as I know he had no envy for people who were greater than he.”

-Hermann Goldstein, mathematician and computer scientist

UNCLE THORSTEIN

Perhaps related to this, from an early age, he had become used to living in the shadow of his highly prominent Uncle Thorstein, the famed economist, social critic, and author of the Theory of the Leisure Class. No matter how much Oswald achieved in life, he would continue to be confused with his famous Uncle Thorstein. 

FLEXNER-CENTRIC HISTORY OF THE IAS

Oswald Veblen’s greatest achievement, realizing his dream for a mathematical institute through the Institute for Advanced Study, also long lay hidden because it was the Institute’s founding director, Abraham Flexner, whose version of events prevailed. 

Flexner, who had a tendency to take credit for things, wrote an autobiography. Veblen did not. Though Flexner and Veblen worked closely to develop the IAS, they ultimately came into conflict. Whether out of revenge or self-absorption, Flexner managed to write Veblen out of the story of the Institute’s development, and the story of how Einstein came to Princeton.

BIOGRAPHIES OF EINSTEIN

For some reason, perhaps for the sake of a simplified storyline, Abraham Flexner’s version of events was taken as gospel in Einstein biographies. The story of Oswald Veblen was lost.

STEVE BATTERSON

And so the story of Oswald Veblen slept in the archives of the Institute for Advanced Study and the Library of Congress. But in 2007, mathematician Steve Batterson wrote an article entitled “The Vision, Insight, and Influence of Oswald Veblen.” His aim was to refamiliarize readers with Veblen, the renowned mathematician who by the time he retired in 1950 had become known around the world as the “Statesman of Mathematics.”

I first came to appreciate Veblen’s significance when I began research for a book on the origins of the Institute for Advanced Study. In discussing my project with others it became evident that Veblen’s contributions were largely unknown to the mathematicians of today. Oswald was frequently confused with his more famous uncle, economist Thorstein Veblen.

- Steve Batterson, 2007 

HERRONTOWN WOODS AND INSTITUTE WOODS

By coincidence, it was also 2007 when I first learned about Veblen, not through mathematics but by happening upon a house out in the woods, up along the ridge in northeastern Princeton. One thing I’ve done in Princeton is conduct plant inventories of most of the nature preserves, and back in 2007 I was in Herrontown Woods when I came upon a house in the forest, boarded up, abandoned. The preserve was neglected as well, with trails overgrown. I contacted the county, which owned the preserve at the time, and learned that the Veblens had donated Herrontown Woods–nearly 100 acres in their time–as Princeton’s first nature preserve in 1957. Finding that house made me curious. Searching the internet, casting names into google to see what came up, I became something of a history buff. My research into the Veblens became my window into an era I otherwise would have known little about. In 2013, a few of us formed the Friends of Herrontown Woods, began reopening the trails, and fought successfully to keep the house from being demolished. The Veblens had donated the house to become a museum, gathering place, and library, and that is the dream of our nonprofit as well.

Several years ago, on the other side of town, Cindy Srnka had her own discovery of Oswald Veblen, due to her interest in the Institute Woods.  

Now, if you go to the Institute Woods, you may come across these four plaques that list the wonderful donors and open space groups that helped purchase a conservation easement to protect nearly 600 acres of the woods in the 1990s. Left unmentioned is the person who talked the Institute into acquiring that land half a century earlier. As Cindy learned as she researched the Woods at the Institute archives, without Oswald Veblen’s efforts and advocacy in the 1930s and 1940s, there would have been no Institute Woods to preserve.

COMPUTERS

“Princeton’s computing story begins not with Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, John von Neumann, or Albert Einstein, but with Oswald Veblen”

-Jon R. Edwards, “An early history of computing at Princeton”
Alan Turing Centennial

2012 was another big year in rediscovering another facet of Veblen’s legacy. Princeton University hosted an Alan Turing Centennial to celebrate the birth of the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing, who is considered the father of theoretical computer science. I missed the conference, but was astonished to later learn that Oswald Veblen had been celebrated at the conference for his computer-related ballistics work for the military in WWI. 

George Dyson, who grew up at the Institute, included a chapter on Veblen in his book Turing’s Cathedral, and David Alan Grier had also written about Veblen’s military service, in an article entitled "Oswald Veblen Takes a Uniform: Mathematics in the First World War." In addition to Veblen's ballistics work in WWI, it was his decision in 1943, as chief scientist of the Army Ballistics Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland during World War II, to fund the development of what became known as the ENIAC: the first general-purpose electronic computer.

FINE HALL

I encountered another lost story of Veblen at an extraordinary building on the Princeton University campus now called Jones Hall. 

If you go there you will see beautiful oak paneling, a common room where great mathematicians and physicists once gathered, and a famous quote by Einstein above the fireplace. 

You may find tourists looking for Einstein’s first office. It would be understandable to think that the building was designed by an architect. And yet, read the oral histories of the math department, and you learn that it was Oswald Veblen who designed what was originally called (Old) Fine Hall, named after Henry Fine, who was the first and only chair of the Princeton math department from the turn of the century until he died tragically in 1928. The Joneses, wealthy friends of Henry Fine, provided the funding for this “palace of mathematics.”

“Every little door knob, every little gargoyle, every little piece of stained glass that has a word on it, was something that Veblen personally supervised,”

 - Herman Goldstine

The Fine Hall that opened in 1931 was a dream Oswald Veblen had been dreaming and refining for many years prior. Veblen, who had traveled many times to Europe and studied closely the architecture and workings of its great universities, incorporated elements particularly from Oxford and Gottingen. Wanting to advance mathematics, Veblen designed a building that would meet the physical, emotional, and social needs of the scholars who would use it. Prior to the building of Fine Hall, most math professors lacked offices and had to work out of their homes. Fine Hall served as home not only to the math department but also the Institute for Advanced Study for its first eight years. The building’s size, comfort, and design, reflecting Veblen’s vision, was a critical component in making Princeton uniquely attractive to Einstein and other great scholars.

Elyse Graham, in a Princeton Alumni Weekly article entitled "Adventures in Fine Hall," quoted Veblen on his approach:

Veblen wanted the mathematicians in Fine Hall to be able to "... group themselves for mutual encouragement and support. [It had to be a place where] the young recruit and the old campaigner [could have] those informal and easy contacts that are so important to each of them." However he also wanted a room reserved for professors since "... not always understood by those who try to bring about closer relations between faculty and students [is] that in all forms of social intercourse the provisions for privacy are as important as those for proximity."

DISPLACED SCHOLARS

There was another facet of Veblen’s career I had not been aware of. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Veblen sprung into action to help find positions for displaced European scholars, not only in Princeton and at the newly formed Institute, but across the country. Elyse Graham has done some wonderful research on this, and Cindy Srnka also shared some of these stories at our September presentation.

WHO WAS OSWALD VEBLEN

So, who was this Oswald Veblen who achieved all these extraordinary things? Born and raised in Iowa, Oswald was the oldest of eight children, raised by a father who was the oldest of ten children. Oswald’s grandparents had immigrated from Norway and homesteaded in Wisconsin and Minnesota, building a progression of farms. Oswald’s father taught physics and math at the University of Iowa. He came from a family of educators and deep thinkers. Oswald graduated from the University at age 18, and despite his youth, won prizes in math and sharpshooting. He brought from the midwest a love of the outdoors, and a freedom from the conventions, formality, and prejudice that burdened some eastern establishments. Women, African Americans–he would in his career be an advocate for great mathematical talents like Emmy Noether and William Claytor.

HENRY FINE

Oswald Veblen arrived in academia at the dawn of the American century, when University education was in its infancy. The University of Chicago had opened its doors only eight years prior. And when Veblen arrived in Princeton in 1905, Woodrow Wilson and Henry Fine were ushering in a new era for the University. A host of young mathematical talent came through Princeton. Some stayed, while others went on to lead math programs at other institutions.

THE BRITISH CONNECTION

Through his marriage to Elizabeth Mary (“May”) Richardson, who had grown up in Yorkshire, England, Oswald fell in love not only with Elizabeth but also with England. 

Elizabeth’s brother Owen, a physicist and future winner of the Nobel Prize, would become an invaluable connection for Oswald to the highest levels of European science.

GENEALOGY

One novel way of measuring Oswald Veblen’s legacy as a mathematician is through the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

EINSTEIN’S OTHER OPTION

I want to mention the California Institute of Technology, which throughout the 1920s had been trying to attract Einstein to California. Einstein had options beyond CalTech and Princeton, but these were the main two that I know of.

In the early 1930s, as the Nazis rose to power, ultimately driving jewish scholars out of German universities and putting a price on Einstein’s head, it was not a given that Einstein would end up coming to Princeton. 

Physicist Robert Millikan had been courting Einstein for ten years, and hosted him at CalTech during three winters beginning in 1931. CalTech was attractive to Einstein, beyond the weather. 

Scientists there had done research that supported some of Einstein’s theories. At nearby Mt. Wilson, imminent astronomers like Edwin Hubble had access to the largest telescope in the world at that time. Einstein had also become good friends with Charlie Chaplin.

I was heartened to see that CalTech historian Diana Buchwald, in a 2023 presentation about Einstein in California, credited Oswald Veblen with attracting Einstein to New Jersey. Dr. Buchwald's presentation suggested another reason why Einstein chose Princeton: his progressive politics, his pacifism and outspoken concern about racial injustice, repeatedly caused friction with the more conservative donors at CalTech.

“In Pasadena, Einstein went to see Upton Sinclair, a writer who described and criticized the injustices of brutal capitalism and its terrible effects of poverty among the working class. They had in common abstinence from alcohol and meat. Einstein also went to see the movie All Quiet on the Western Front, based on a book that was banned in Germany at the time. He also wrote to the governor to exonerate the labor leader Tom Mooney who had been falsely convicted and sentenced to death of the San Francisco preparedness day bombing of 1916. The press, the governor, and Millikan expressed their displeasure to Einstein for doing these things and associating with these people.”

–Diana Buchwald

COLLECTED IMPETUSES

While researching this presentation, I collected a list of factors that likely played into Einstein’s decision to move to Princeton.

• Displaced from Berlin and his beloved country home in Caputh
• World-class math department at Princeton University
• Newly formed Institute for Advanced Study
• Good impressions of Princeton in 1921
• John D. Davies, PAW-"when Albert Einstein landed in New York in 1921, he told reporters he wanted to lecture at Princeton because its faculty first gave his theories American support."
• Relationship developed with Veblen over time
• (Old) Fine Hall accommodations and community
• Turned off by more conservative community of donors at CalTech
• More rural, Carnegie Lake (loved to sail)
• Einstein's notorious love of informality in dress and demeanor

LANDMARKS AROUND TOWN

There are a few landmarks in town that honor Veblen’s legacy, including a residential cul de sac named Veblen Circle just up from Einstein Drive. 

The University recently named the South Terrace of Prospect House in honor of Veblen. 

Most meaningful for me and for our nonprofit is the living legacy of Herrontown Woods, and the Veblen House that patiently awaits restoration. You can learn more about our work through our websites, and come take a walk at Herrontown Woods (600 Snowden Lane), as Einstein would when he came to visit the Veblens. 

HerrontownWoods.org

https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfHerrontownWoods

https://www.instagram.com/herrontown_friends/

Thanks to the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, for many of the above photos of the Veblens.

An "Einstein's Begonia" Musical Debut

On the afternoon of September 7, the line of fans extended out the door as I smuggled the star of the show into the Princeton Public Library's community room for the debut of a musical called "Einstein's Begonia." I imagined outstretched hands clamoring for a piece of the coveted house plant that traced its lineage back to the begonia Einstein had left behind after he died in 1955. Fortunately, this most special of angelwing begonias made it to the stage unscathed, to pose ever so patiently while singer/songwriter Rebecca Pronsky led her 7 piece group through a progression of witty and moving songs about a leafy piece of Einstein's legacy. The Friends of Herrontown Woods had suggested the library host the show, and co-sponsored the event. 

How many musicals have a plant as the main character? And in this case, the plant isn't out to do damage, like in Little Shop of Horrors. Rather, this begonia is lonely, trying to understand where it came from and where it's going, now that the beloved man it thought of as a father is gone.

The musical began its life as a song cycle, ostensibly about a plant with provenance, yet the lyrics touch upon feelings deep within us. Behind a plant's facade of static green, Rebecca finds a dynamic world of growth and longing. In Am I You?, there's the deep desire to belong, to be a part of something greater than ourselves, to find one's true home. Sessile Vessel is a saucy number about just how dynamic a plant can be while stuck in the ground. Only a Plant first explores the downside of being stuck in a pot, then morphs into a rant about cooking and consumption from a plant's perspective. Particularly clever is another song's lyric, "everyone wants a piece of me," referring to the way cuttings of the stem are used to propagate this popular house plant.

As someone who works with plants, I've long felt that the plant world is the physical manifestation of our inner world. There's a point where we stop growing physically, and yet we continue to grow inside--spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. A tree does that for all to see, from the day it sprouts to the day it dies, each year extending its roots and branches, adding a new flush of leaves, building on what it was before.

Though the lyrics have a lot of word play and references to high intellect, the musical never loses its connection to gut feeling. The song Relativity embeds human emotion in the language of physics. Einstein's Constant becomes a song about the need we all have for stability and support as we seek to grow. In Hybrid, Einstein's Begonia finds through her origins a liberating way forward. 

The story of how Brooklyn-based Rebecca Pronsky and scriptwriter Alexis Roblan brought the show to Princeton is worth telling. Rebecca and I each separately learned of the existence of Einstein begonias in 2021. My first encounter with the plant and the lineage behind it came in an email from the Princeton Public Library's Kim Dorman. Since I blog about nature and Einstein-related history, she wondered if I might be able to track down an Einstein begonia for a friend of hers. Never having heard of an Einstein begonia, I began looking online to find out more. Turned out it was a thing. When Einstein died, he left behind an extraordinary legacy of course, but also an angelwing begonia that his secretary, Helen Dukas, proceeded to make cuttings of to give to friends, many of whom were mathematicians and physicists. Cuttings of the begonia then spread from home to home, office to office, in Princeton and beyond. Via the internet, I found a friend who had an Einstein begonia, Vicky Bergman, whose husband was a physicist. She gave me some cuttings to give to Kim’s friend. I posted about all of this on my blog, and started getting thousands of page views. One of the comments was from Rebecca, who said she was composing a musical about the plant.

Rebecca told me how she first encountered an Einstein begonia:

My story is actually that just after my father passed away, I went to visit his 90 year old cousins in Cranford, NJ and we were taking a walk in their garden when they pointed out a plant and said “and that’s Einstein’s Begonia.” They told me what they knew about it but I had so many more questions. Still I was immediately inspired to write from the point of view of the plant losing it’s “father,” since I was going through something similar and I had a lot of experience with plants. It was instantly clear to me that this would be my next project. I was looking for info on it to begin drafting the plot of the show and came upon your post, so that’s how I think we were initially connected!

To convert a song cycle into a full blown musical, Rebecca and Alexis wanted to learn as much as they could about the route the begonia took from Einstein's home out into the community. I was able to track down the origin story thanks to Norma Smith, whose husband also is a physicist, and Rebecca mapped out lineage. The Princeton Alumni Weekly took an interest and wrote an article about Norma, Rebecca, and the begonia. I guess you can say we recovered a story that might otherwise have been lost, and Rebecca has used it to create a new story. 

What began as a librarian's email to me about Einstein begonias led four years later to a performance of Einstein's Begonia at the Princeton Public Library. Janie Hermann, curator of events at the library and in the photo below, coordinated all the aspects, from the sound system to managing the waitlist for the sold-out show.

EINSTEIN’S BEGONIA was named a semifinalist in the 2025 O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference. The performance at the library was a reading of a work in progress. The next step for Rebecca and Alexis is applying for musical theatre development and reading opportunities. A return to Princeton for PiDay has been discussed, but nothing confirmed as yet. In the meantime, read more about the show and listen to the songs here.

Photos by Inge Regan and Janie Hermann