Lindemann and Einstein: The Oxford Connexion

Abstract

Albert Einstein’s friendship with Oxford’s professor of experimental philosophy Frederick Lindemann resulted in three annual visits that he made to the university, beginning in 1931. The visits, each of about a month, helped to promote Lindemann’s ambitions for Oxford physics, then struggling for recognition in what was still predominantly an arts university. Einstein, in return, settled comfortably into college life in Christ Church, where he was housed, and was left free to pursue his mathematical and other interests. Among his activities, the three Rhodes Lectures (on recent developments in physics) that he delivered in 1931 and his Herbert Spencer and Deneke Lectures of 1933 were public highlights. But the personal friendships he established within Christ Church and in Oxford’s musical circles also mattered to him. When the menacing turn of events in Nazi Germany led Einstein to seek a new life at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in October 1933, Lindemann was instrumental in maintaining Christ Church’s invitation for him to return to Oxford for short annual stays through to 1936. In the event, Einstein never returned, and the funding allocated for his visits was used (at his request) to assist academic refugees, a number of whom left an enduring mark on science in Oxford.