<p>Strange question, but I really need to know the answer. I used google and I didn't really find any site that helped.
Does anyone know any JHU history?
Thanks!</p>
<p>I don’t know if Einstein was ever on the Hopkins campus, but there is an interesting story about Hopkins and Einstein.</p>
<p>Sometime in the 1920s, Einstein met Goodnow, who was the president of JHU at the time, at a conference in Berlin. Goodnow wanted to bring him to Hopkins as a professor. He wanted to offer him $10,000, a considerable sum at the time, if he came for a year. Ames, the then-provost and future university president, thought that this was more than Einstein was worth and more than the university could afford. Besides, Ames wanted Gerhard Schroedinger for the job instead.</p>
<p>They wound up initially offering Schroedinger the position, but, for one reason or other, he didn’t accept. Goodnow then sent Einstein the offer of $10,000.</p>
<p>Einstein responded that he was honored by the offer but that he wasn’t feeling up to the journey to America at that point and that he had nothing to offer the University that would justify such a large paycheck.</p>
<p>Ames forwarded Einstein’s message to Goodnow saying “You offered him too much.”</p>
<p>Your question is phrased rather strangely, as if Einstein is still living.</p>
<p>“has Einstein ever visited”</p>
<p>Shouldn’t it be, “Did Einstein ever visit”</p>
<p>Correcting grammar without even an attempt at answering the question…</p>
<p>Oh ****, that sentence was a fragment, someone report me to the police. </p>
<p>To answer your question, I remember hearing something about Einstein having visited Hopkins from the rep who came to our school, but I’m not sure. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you need to know? Is it for a report?</p>
<p>Interesting story mnm619 … I never heard that before. Thanks for sharing. </p>
<p>As far as the initial question, I know of no stories about an Einstein visit to Hopkins. Sorry.</p>
<p>From The Johns Hopkins Newsletter, 2004.</p>
<p>Hopkins had sights set on Einstein
By Ishai Moorevillev</p>
<p>Published: Friday, November 19, 2004
Updated: Sunday, February 14, 2010 22:02</p>
<p>Photo-Einstein talks with Hideki Yukawa, 1949 Nobel Laureate in Physics and John A. Wheeler, a Hopkins alum. (Courtesy of the Johns Hopkins Archives)</p>
<p>"The year was 1927. America was rolling in money and the stock market crash was two years away. In Germany, Albert Einstein was emerging as the world’s leading physicist. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University President Frank Goodnow was making an all-out effort to recruit the Nobel laureate and most-recognized scientist of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned.</p>
<p>In January of 1927, the Board of Trustees granted President Goodnow full authority to bring Einstein to Hopkins using any means available. Einstein had won the Nobel Prize in 1921 and would have brought the Hopkins Physics department much greater recognition.
Goodnow was authorized to offer Einstein $10,000 for an academic year appointment or $5,000 for a semester. His full-year salary would have been equal to over $100,000 in today’s terms, quite a lot of money for a professor during that time.
Given that Johns Hopkins was modeled on the German university system, emphasizing graduate-level research, it looked like it would be a perfect match for Einstein.
After Goodnow exhausted various contacts to convince Einstein to come to America, he eventually went to visit Einstein in Berlin. At that time Germany had not yet fallen to the reign of Adolf Hitler, who would be elected chancellor in 1933.</p>
<p>The provost of Johns Hopkins at the time was Joseph Ames, a man who would succeed Goodnow as president of the University in 1929. While Goodnow tried to recruit Einstein, Ames was in the process of trying to recruit Gerhard Schršdinger, another famous German scientist, to come to the university. That attempt would also eventually fail.
In an undated postal telegraph from 1927, Ames gave Goodnow his unabashed opinion on the faculty recruits. It read as follows: “Einstein coming possible but uncertain . . . I really prefer Schršdinger. Do not think Einstein for one year worth $10,000. Money needed elsewhere badly.”
Upon his return to the United States, Goodnow sent a formal invitation to Einstein on July 12, outlining the salary offer and giving him the option of a semester or full-year stay. “On coming back to the United States I find in talking over with my friends that they were, as I supposed, very anxious to have you with us if possible next year or a part of it,” wrote Goodnow.</p>
<p>Einstein responded in a letter dated Sept. 7, 1927 (which now lies in the University’s archives), with a polite denial of Goodnow’s offer. He cited his poor health, as well as his inability to justify the high compensation that Hopkins had offered. Typed in German on his personal letterhead, the reply featured Einstein’s perfectly fashioned signature in script.
A translation in the University’s archives made at the time of receipt of the letter reads as follows:
“To the President of Hopkins University, Baltimore:
I thank you for your friendly visit as well as for your genuinely magnanimous offer. In view of the many demanding procedures to which I would have to submit when traveling to America, I find myself, unfortunately, for health reasons unable to accept your invitation. Also the scientific results which I have achieved are too well known to the professional people so that I could not offer enough to justify, it seems to me, such a great financial offer.
With the assurance of my great respect, I am your devoted, A. Einstein.”
While few people realized the full extent of Einstein’s genius at the time, Johns Hopkins had failed to land the man behind the theory of relativity and other influential breakthroughs.
Ironically, Einstein did eventually moved to America in 1932, opting to stay after Hitler’s election in Germany.
Though he was again pursued by many universities, including the California Institute of Technology, he chose to make his home in Princeton, N.J., where he would spend the rest of his life as a professor affiliated with the Institute of Advanced Study. He died in 1955. Whether or not Hopkins ever sent him another offer is not known."</p>
<p>[Hopkins</a> had sights set on Einstein - Features - The Johns Hopkins News-Letter - Johns Hopkins University](<a href=“http://www.jhunewsletter.com/2.8146/hopkins-had-sights-set-on-einstein-1.1138639#.TrlyaBwSHpo]Hopkins”>http://www.jhunewsletter.com/2.8146/hopkins-had-sights-set-on-einstein-1.1138639#.TrlyaBwSHpo)</p>
<p>Thanks mnm619 and Giveherwingsmom! very interesting story indeed.
I was really just curious…I’m an Einstein fanatic…I visited his house in Princeton and never washed the glove that I was wearing when I touched his gate :’)
It would have just been extremely cool to sit in a spot or walk through a building that he once walked through…I’d feel empowered.</p>
<p>wahkimoocow, might I suggest the book “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson (Simon and Schuster, 2007) as an addition to your library on Einstein? I believe it is now out in paperback. My son is also very interested in Einstein and keeps his copy on his bedside table. It’s a long but fascinating read.</p>
<p>Isaacson does not mention the above report, but he speaks of recruitment attempts of Einstein by many universities: by Holland and Oxford and of course Cal Tech where in December 1931 Einstein spent two months as a visiting professor alongside of its re-known Professor Robert Millikan. Einstein was growing more enamored with the free thinking permitted American scientists, finding the European scientific community to be too restrictive and he was growing restless. Milliken was also friends with Abraham Flexner*, who was attempting to establish an American “scholarly haven” specifically for re-known scientists to allow them to be unfettered by the common day to day of immediate and more mundane time demands. This "Institute for Advanced Studies " would be located in New Jersey, near Princeton University where Einstein had already spent time. It would be financed through a $5 million dollar donation from two Bamberger siblings who fortunately sold their jewelry department store chain just before the 1929 great stock market crash. It was to Millikan that Flexner turned for suggestions of scientists to recruit.</p>
<p>Isaacson reports that Millikan insisted Flexner meet Einstein, something Millikan later is said to have expressed regret at doing, as based on the joint time spent together at Cal Tech with Einstein, Flexner eventually traveled to Europe and successfully recruited Einstein to join the Institute. This was after Einstein had recovered from a period of poor health, which is mentioned above.</p>
<p>I’ll leave you to find the pages in which Isaacson discusses what some think to possibly be Einstein’s greatest scientific blunder. It’s a wonderful book with pages earmarked by my son for reference in his own physics and math knowledge and thus generously shared with his mother. Good wishes to you in your scholarly endeavors and embrace that empowerment!</p>
<p>*Abraham Flexner was a noted American professional educator and author of the famed Flexner Report, published in 1910 by the Carnegie Foundation, which profoundly re-shaped American medical education. Flexner based his recommendations using the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as the ideal:</p>
<p>"Admission to a medical school should require, at minimum, a high school diploma and at least two years of college or university study, primarily devoted to basic science. When Flexner researched his report, only 16 out of 155 medical schools in the United States and Canada required applicants to have completed two or more years of university education (p 28). According to Hiatt and Stockton, by 1920 92% of U.S. medical schools required this of applicants.</p>
<p>The length of medical education be four years, and its content should be what the CME agreed to in 1905.</p>
<p>Proprietary medical schools should either close or be incorporated into existing universities. Medical schools should be part of a larger university, because a proper stand-alone medical school would have to charge too much in order to break even."</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/elibrary/Carnegie_Flexner_Report.pdf[/url]”>Page not found | Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; (see page 12 and elsewhere for reference to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine).</p>