The Beginning of the Einstein Boom

At the end of 1919, the name “Albert Einstein” started to land in the pages of The Times on a repeat basis.

A “special cable” from London on Nov. 10 of that year, reporting on efforts by British scientists to measure an eclipse in Africa and South America, began a theme of stating that readers could hardly expect to understand the theory of general relativity. After declaring that Einstein’s theory had triumphed, the reporter stated, “Efforts made to put in words intelligible to the nonscientific public the Einstein theory … so far have not been very successful.” The article was also notable for offering some of the physicist’s biography to readers for the first time.

The next week, a report leading the paper’s business section imagined the lay reader asking, “Who is Einstein, and what is his theory, anyway?” A McGill University physicist, Dr. A.S. Eve, proceeded to walk readers though some basics of the theory over many column inches on two pages.

In December, a Times correspondent visited Einstein at home in Berlin, and the physicist spoke to the paper’s readers for the first time: “I am trying to talk as plainly as possible.” A clock’s chime ended the interview, and the reporter observed the irony that “old-fashioned time and space enforced their wonted absolute tyranny over him who had spoken so contemptuously of their existence.”