Newton, forgive me; you found just about the only way possible in your age for a man of highest reasoning and creative power.

—Albert Einstein

THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT afternoon in the rooms of the Royal Society would come as no surprise to Albert Einstein. He had just returned to Berlin from a relaxing two weeks with his colleagues and friends in Leiden, Holland: Ehrenfest, de Sitter, and Lorentz. While he was in Holland, the English results had been unofficially announced to a standing-room-only crowd of cheering students and professors at a meeting of the Dutch Royal Academy. Einstein was there, but the local newspapers had not been invited. Eddington had apparently sent a letter to astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung, at the Leiden Observatory, a couple of weeks before Dyson had submitted the results to the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee. Hertzsprung, known for his work on the life-cycle of stars, had shown the letter to Einstein. From Leiden that same night, October 23, Einstein wrote to Planck about hearing that the results for light deflection supported his prediction: “It was gracious destiny that I was allowed to witness this.” But he often told friends that he had no doubt what the deflection would be.

In Leiden, Einstein had been a guest of Ehrenfest and his family. He had almost not gone. That past summer his doctor limited his travel for fear Einstein would not find the proper foods, such as Zwieback or white bread, rice, and macaroni. Thus, his stomach condition would become more aggravated. Ehrenfest had assured him they would stick to the special diet. The visit was a great success. Surrounded by fellowship from his colleagues, Einstein ate the dietary foods his host had promised and enjoyed the well-heated rooms. Ehrenfest had sent him home with a thermos flask to warm the journey. The day after he arrived back in Berlin, Ehrenfest wrote him a letter. “Dear, dear Einstein. You have left waves of sympathy and friendship behind in this land, which will lap back and forth between us all, a long time from now.”

The visit had been a reprieve from the constant concern over his mother. It was obvious now that her illness was terminal. He had returned to Berlin to face reality. As the members of the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee were preparing for their meeting at Burlington House, in London, personal matters were not going well for the man behind the controversial theory. November 6 had dawned cold in Berlin, with gray-clouded skies and snowflakes falling over the city. As the taxis were arriving on Piccadilly, Einstein was penning a letter to the head of Berlin’s housing rentals. “A grave injustice is about to happen to me,” he wrote. His plan to relocate Pauline Einstein from the sanatorium in Switzerland to her own apartment in his building was now being thwarted by the building’s owner. The Einsteins had been promised the next available apartment. Now the owner was letting “a single gentleman” rent it and insisted that Pauline could move in with her son and his wife. “I emphasize, however, that as a university professor and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, I have such a tremendous bustle of activity in the flat (secretary, typewriter, incessant phoning, constant visitors) that the flat is absolutely unsuitable for a sick person.” He added that his two daughters—Elsa was their mother—were studying music and must practice for hours on end. Considering all this, it’s a wonder Albert ever got any work done.

Berlin was now feeling the crunch of new restrictions of a worker strike in the city. Heating with coal was again troublesome. His escalating battle with the landlord was foremost on Einstein’s mind on that Thursday in November. As Einstein wrote his letter pleading for the extra apartment, Eddington and Dyson were speaking to the gathered members at Burlington House. “At the current catastrophic rate of exchange,” Einstein told the head of housing, “the sick woman’s immigration is a vital issue for me. I cannot accommodate her elsewhere than in the building, because she relies entirely on our personal assistance.” His landlord, a German architect, could have no way of knowing that he was embroiled in battle over a rental unit with the man who had just rewritten Newton’s law of gravity. Despite Einstein’s wishes, the “single gentleman” ended up moving into the vacant apartment.

THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE

On November 7, the Times of London ran its first story about the meeting that had occurred at Burlington House the day before. The piece appeared in the sixth and last column on page twelve. In the page’s first column, which was headlined “The Glorious Dead,” King George V invited his subjects to honor the fallen during the upcoming first anniversary of the armistice. All trains in the country would stop running. When village church clocks struck 11:00 a.m., two minutes of silence would ensue in memory of the soldiers lost to war. The other news on page twelve was the usual fare: coal prices, bank rates, labor disputes, and the Bolsheviks acting up. A brief article in column four noted that in Berlin, the general strike was over, except for metal workers, news for which Einstein would be grateful. It would mean more coal for the upcoming winter. At the bottom of column six was the Entertainments Index: Tristan and Isolde was being performed at the Royal Opera House, and American war correspondent Lowell Thomas had been booked since that June at Albert Hall. His lecture and moving pictures would help make himself and Lawrence of Arabia famous. Bordering the paper’s spine and sitting atop the entertainment news was a three-tiered banner about the special meeting at Burlington House.¹

REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE.

NEW THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.

NEWTONIAN IDEAS OVERTHROWN.

The article relayed the pertinent information. A large number of astronomers and physicists had attended a meeting on the previous afternoon to hear the results of the May 29 eclipse expeditions. Dyson’s details of the expeditions were recounted. Sir Joseph J. Thomson—well known to the British public, he was referred to only by his position in the society—was given the most eye-catching quotes. “Even the President of the Royal Society, in stating that he had just listened to ‘One of the most momentous, if not the most momentous, pronouncements of human thought,’ had to confess that no one had yet succeeded in stating in clear language what the theory of Einstein really was.” Despite that third test, the redshift still uncertain, “our conceptions of the fabric of the universe must be fundamentally altered.” Lodge was then mentioned as having earlier in the year predicted no deflection or, if any, Newton’s value. The paper reported that after Thomson’s praise, Lodge had gotten up and left the meeting.

It wasn’t as if this page twelve news article would catch the British public off guard. Newsboys wouldn’t be crying out, “Revolution in Science!” and waving papers at passersby. Readers had been aware of the interest in this eclipse beforehand. Since that January, the Times had run a few articles that mentioned the expeditions leaving, then, eclipse day, the cabled telegrams back to Greenwich, and the forthcoming results, quoting Dyson and, once, Crommelin. But the ball had started to roll. The next day’s Times carried a second article, also on page twelve, column four. The headlines were still somewhat restrained:

The Revolution in Science

Einstein vs. Newton

Views of Eminent Physicists

Einstein, who was then forty years old, was referred to in this second article as a “Swiss Jew, 45 years of age,” and a man of “liberal tendencies” who did not sign the German manifesto during the war. He had been a topic of discussion in the House of Commons after the editorial ran the day before. Arriving at an RAS lecture, Sir Joseph Larmor, the Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, had been “besieged by inquiries as to whether Newton had been cast down and Cambridge done in.” Davidson was quoted in the interview. While he was certain the results proved Einstein’s 1.7 arc over Newton’s 0.87, he cautioned that the third test of Einstein’s theory, the redshift, was still waiting to be proven. “The latter has been carefully tested by Dr. St. John at Mount Wilson in the United States,” Davidson said, “but so far without success.”

A letter to the editor from Lodge ran below Davidson’s comments, with the heading “The Ether of Space. Sir Oliver Lodge’s Caution.” He had abruptly left the meeting, as reported by the Times the day before, because of a “long-standing engagement and a 6 o’clock train.” He also corrected the previous day’s assessment of his views. He had not predicted that if light had weight, it would be the Newtonian value; he had only hoped, and it had been rash of him. Before congratulating Professor Einstein and the eclipse observers, he ended with a word of restraint. “I would issue a caution against a strengthening of great and complicated generalizations concerning space and time on the strength of the splendid result: I trust that it may be accounted for, with reasonable simplicity, in terms of the ether of space.”

THE AMERICANS DISCOVER ALBERT EINSTEIN

Getting Einstein’s revolutionary ideas past an inflexible old guard would be maddening. And it would seem near impossible to interest the average layperson in them. So how did a juggernaut of acclaim for a German physicist unknown to the public get started in the first place? Page twelve of the Times wasn’t the level of reportage that would titillate the popular masses and send them out into the streets in celebration. True, the president of the Royal Society said that it was the “most remarkable” discovery since the predicted existence of Neptune. But what Neptune meant to the average person is questionable.

Interestingly, the New York Times might have played the biggest role in making Einstein famous.² The managing editor of the paper was Ohio-born Carr Van Anda, who had left the New York Sun fifteen years earlier for the more successful Times. A science enthusiast, Van Anda had studied astronomy, math, and physics at Ohio University before becoming a journalist. A modern editor, he brought coverage of science to a readership he knew was waiting and would be interested. A progressive idea was not written up as entertainment on Van Anda’s watch, as was often the case with other newspapers of the day, if they carried science articles at all. Over the past year, he had followed with keen interest the editorials from England about the expeditions. Van Anda was already famous for scooping his competition with headlines declaring that the RMS Titanic had sunk off the coast of Newfoundland, while others were reporting only that it had struck an iceberg.³

As with most turn-of-the-century newspapers, Van Anda never hired specialists to cover meetings such as the one at Burlington House. The London bureau for the New York Times gave the assignment to Henry Charles Crouch, who was mostly their golf reporter. Not a member of the Royal Society or the RAS, Crouch would not have been invited to the meeting. From the London news report on November 7, Crouch quickly pulled parts of the article verbatim, identifying Thomson by name for the American reader and quoting his testimonial that what was confirmed at the meeting was “one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—of achievements in the history of human thought.” Crouch then added new direct comments from Crommelin, the comet expert who had been to Sobral.⁴ The entire story was wrapped snuggly around an enormous ad for Oppenheim Collins & Company, the New York clothing store on 34th Street that specialized in women’s garments. Next to the four-tier eclipse headlines that included words such as “Epochmaking,” and “One of the Greatest of Human Achievements” were fur coats for sale, mink and muskrat, with collars and cuffs made of “Australian opossum or taupe nutria.” Van Anda quickly copyrighted the story and cabled congratulations to Crouch in London.

The next day, on November 10, the managing editor stepped up the pace. The science story on page seventeen might have been far from the front page, but the six-tier headlines towering above it were eye-catching.⁵ One of the headlines, A BOOK FOR 12 WISE MEN, was supposedly in reference to what Einstein had said to a publisher when he presented them with his “last important work.” He had warned them that only twelve men in the world would understand it, “but they [the publisher] took the risk.” This notion of a dozen geniuses would plague him for years to come in questions from the press and the public. It would be the headwaters of a river of invented quotations and fictional “facts.”⁶

For this second story in the New York Times, Crouch had apparently spoken to, or telephoned, W. J. S. Lockyer, director of the observatory begun by his famous father, Sir Norman Lockyer. The younger Lockyer, known for his interests in aeronautics and photography as well as astronomy, was asked what the 1919 expeditionary results really meant. “The discoveries, while very important, did not, however, affect anything on this Earth,” Lockyer was quoted as saying. “They do not personally concern ordinary human beings; only astronomers are affected.” Some cynics were by now proposing that starlight bending was just a scientific version of the underwater coin, which was not lying on the spot where it appeared to be. Therefore, wasn’t this Einstein stuff just old news?

But the New York Times headlines and reports had become more tantalizing. Lights were askew. Scientists were agog. Stars were deceptive. Space was warped. Light had weight. And somewhere wandering the planet, twelve lonely geniuses were reading and understanding the general theory. An important addition was that Americans were now given a snippet biography of the man behind the theory. Albert Einstein was “a Swiss citizen of around fifty years of age.” But even more importantly, he had resisted signing the 1914 “Manifesto to the Civilized World,” unlike ninety-three of Germany’s other leading scientists, artists, and scholars. German born perhaps, but he was not the enemy, at least for readers who could see beyond their still-fresh hatred of the country whose war machine had killed their fathers, brothers, and sons.

As other American newspapers followed suit with the New York Times, the headlines eventually calmed down. By November 16, the paper’s banners were almost consoling: “Don’t Worry Over New Light Theory—Physicists Agree That It Can Be Disregarded for Practical Purposes.” Readers were reassured that the “intellectual panic” undergone by British men of science was over. The blame seemed now to rest on the more restrained English. They were “slowly recovering as they realize that the sun still rises—apparently—in the east and will continue to do so for some time to come.” This would be comforting news for the public.⁷

EINSTEIN ON HIS THEORY: A HOUSE WITH TWO STORIES

Many astronomers and physicists remained unconvinced of the measurement results from the 1919 eclipse expeditions that supported Einstein’s new law of gravity. Some, like Lodge, were too deeply rooted in the physics of the past. But others, such as Campbell, were uncomfortable with the large probable errors that came with the Sobral-Príncipe measurements. Yet Campbell was cautious at the time, saying only that the British results were “especially interesting.” Rather than jumping the gun, he would wait “with great interest” for the published details from England. He was also waiting for Curtis’s computations for his own 1918 Goldendale results. While pressured by the American astronomer Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, one of Einstein’s most ardent detractors and another ether enthusiast, to use the Lick plates to refute the British results, Campbell didn’t succumb. See was well known for his arrogance and carelessness in his own work and disliked for his pettiness and collegiate infighting. The 1918 Goldendale eclipse results, it appears, were never published.⁸

Many British scientists were also skeptical of the measurement results on the grounds that Dyson and Eddington had not adhered closely enough to the canonical rules of the scientific method. But Thomson, Dyson, and Eddington were forces to be reckoned with. Their voices that day at Burlington House held much sway in academia and in the press. There were few astrophysicists and mathematicians as accomplished as Eddington. Other scientists who believed that the measurements were too shaky to fully establish Einstein’s law of gravity but whose own skills in astronomy were modest may not have been in the best position to argue with the crème de la crème. And these elite scientists rested easy with the announcements. One thing was definite. Einstein’s fame outside scientific circles had begun to explode.

When the Times of London asked if Einstein would expound on his theory, he did so on November 28, first by thanking the British astronomers and then commenting on the war that had separated them. “After the lamentable breach in the former international relations existing among men of science,” Einstein wrote, “it is with joy and gratefulness that I accept this opportunity of communication with English astronomers and physicists.” He commended them on their accomplishment during wartime. In discussing the different theories that exist in physics, he explained that his was a theory of principle: “To understand it, the principles on which it rests must be grasped. But before stating these it is necessary to point out that the theory of relativity is like a house with two separate stories, the special relativity theory and the general theory of relativity.” This was an assigned task that Einstein obviously enjoyed.

There were three principals his theory rested on, he said. Two were already shown “to have received strong experimental confirmation.” If the last one, the redshift, failed, then the premise would collapse. Editors would be scratching their heads and sighing for many newspaper articles to come. Then he finished with his Einsteinian sense of humor. “A final comment,” he noted. “The description of me and my circumstances in The Times shows an amusing feat of imagination on the part of the writer. By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!” He apparently did not mind that one paper had aged him five years, the other ten. His droll personality had been shown to the world.

In the same issue, the Times replied to his joke, which would be well received by the public: “We concede him this little jest. But we note that, in accordance with the general tenor of his theory, Dr. Einstein does not supply any absolute description of himself.” The German physicist and the world press would get along just fine.

Newspaper ink continued to flow. There was a new high priest, a scientific messiah on the stage. A savior had arrived to unriddle the universe, someone smart enough to solve the eternal mystery unfolding overhead. Perhaps it was an amalgam of things that turned Albert Einstein into a celebrity seemingly overnight: the end of a long and painful war, the tantalizing words in the press, the brilliant men of science paying such homage, and the devilish sense of humor his own persona had finally revealed. But it may have been more primitive than all of those combined. Maybe it was the human need to find an explanation of the great unknown, another missing piece of the puzzle, just as the people who lived thousands of years ago longed for an answer behind the Law of the Sunrise.

EINSTEIN’S PERSONAL WAR: BLOOD RELATIONS

The fanfare was speeding up for Einstein. He was on his way to becoming an international star, his name spoken with ease in nonscientific circles, given the public’s new fascination with his warped universe. Photographs of him began to appear in the newspaper stories. As the public came to know him more, they would not be seeing the wild white hair and the rumpled clothing of his later years. In the autumn of 1919, Einstein was still dapper, his dark hair barely showing traces of gray and just beginning to suggest that it may later grow into an unruly tumbleweed. After the meeting at Burlington House and as his celebrity grew, his private world was filled with a pressing sadness. In his letters to friends, it’s obvious that he was struggling to maintain his rigorous work schedule as he dealt with his mother’s arrival in Berlin and her impending death. Because the study where he worked in his and Elsa’s apartment had to be made ready for Pauline, her trip from Switzerland was delayed.

Einstein’s letters to Ehrenfest reveal a longing for family, for home and hearth—for peace—as fame swirled around him. Two days after the November 6 meeting in London, he wrote of the “untroubled time” he had spent in Leiden with Ehrenfest and his wife, a Russian-born mathematician who collaborated with her husband on his work, and their four children. “Never have I taken part in such a vivacious home setting before; it simply comes from two independent persons not being bound together by compromises!” Perhaps he had once hoped he would find this same partnership with Mileva Marić. “How proud I will be to have a little Ph.D. for a sweetheart,” he had once written her. In his letter to Ehrenfest, he described the two Ehrenfest girls, one leaning toward scholastics and the other artistic, the older boy a “blue Tomcat,” and the younger, born just a year earlier, as “patient little Crawlikins.” He hadn’t seen his own two sons in over a year, although he was getting on better with their mother. More months would pass before a visit with Hans Albert and Eduard was possible. He was now famous, but in his letters, he seemed to envy Ehrenfest’s perfect life.⁹

Einstein kept up with his manuscripts, papers, and correspondence. Eddington, his second loyal devotee after Freundlich, wrote to him for the first time in early December. He assured the physicist that “all England has been talking of your theory” and that “it was the best thing that could have happened for scientific relations between England and Germany.” Eddington was busy writing and lecturing on general relativity. He predicted that “although popular interest will die down there is no mistaking the genuine enthusiasm in scientific circles.” He also felt remorse for Freundlich: “Although it seems unfair that Freundlich, who was first in the field, should not have the satisfaction of accomplishing the experimental test of your theory.” Freundlich wasn’t the only one standing in that line. Perrine and Campbell were at the head of it.

Before Einstein could answer Eddington’s letter, he heard from Freundlich, who asked his mentor again for those eternally necessary dollars: “Please forgive me for reminding you to prepare an application that I receive a cost-of-living bonus like the gentlemen at the other Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. As you know, it is impossible to live today off the amount that I am receiving at the present time, and I am steadily getting in worse straits, despite all my wife’s industry in trying to cope with the deficit.” Freundlich, who thought that Einstein could arrange this increase without burdening the institute’s science fund, had been carrying out calculations on globular star clusters. He would visit Einstein in a few days and show him the work. He asked to be excused for the printing paper on which his letter was written. It was thin and bleeding ink.

A few days later, Einstein replied to Eddington, congratulating him. He again mentioned the third test. “With regard to science, I would like to make the following comment. I am convinced that the displacement of the spectrum lines towards the red is an absolutely necessary consequence of the theory of relativity. If it were proved that this effect does not exist in nature, then the whole theory would have to be abandoned.” Of the loyal Freundlich, he was pleased that Eddington had expressed consideration. “He is very eager,” Einstein wrote, “but has been unable so far, owing to objective as well as personal difficulties, to contribute very much to the testing of the theory.” This comment was perhaps unkind. Had Freundlich not been done in by war in 1914, he would have later been done in by clouds. Neither were in his control. A lack of funding had prevented him from joining the British on the 1919 expeditions. And he was still petitioning for money, this time so he and his wife might enjoy a better life. His “objective” could hardly be questioned.¹⁰

The requests from journalists for an interview had become constant, most of them ludicrous attempts to explain to readers what his theory meant. In relying on his sense of humor to sustain him, he referred to this dalliance with the press as the emperor having no clothes. It was during this media pressure that Einstein was faced with perhaps the biggest “test” of his lifetime. It was a far greater challenge than anything his principles or calculations might present. He carried through with preparations for his mother to arrive. Pauline would travel from Lucerne by ambulance, a cold two-day journey. With her would be her doctor; her nurse, who would remain in Berlin; and Maja, her daughter. Three days after Christmas, she was helped up to her famous son’s study and made as comfortable as possible. His letters to close friends spoke of her horrendous pain, the morphine, and her gradual acceptance that the end was near. Yet at the same time, she was still fighting to live. Albert did what he knew best to do. He continued working, even keeping up with his lectures at the local college.

Two months later, when Freundlich wrote yet again for his budget, which was now months late, he could have no way of knowing it was probably the same day Pauline Einstein was buried. She died on February 20, 1920, at the age of sixty-two. Albert wrote to his friend Heinrich Zangger a week later. “We are all completely exhausted merely from being with her; you feel in your bones what blood relations mean!” Pauline had been a strong influence in her son’s life, strong enough to denounce his love for a woman she called “that Miss Marić.” “Mama threw herself on the bed and cried like a baby,” he had written to his beloved Dollie, in what must now seem a lifetime ago.

THE QUEST GOES ON: THE NEXT ECLIPSE

Einstein’s theory of general relativity did not “triumph” as the first write-up in the New York Times proclaimed. It was not proven right by the results of the two expeditions. Nor was Newton proven wrong. It’s just that Newton’s law of gravity could not describe certain phenomena. Einstein’s law, two hundred years later, was more sophisticated. It is not the job of science to prove things. Instead, science is interested in a theory’s probability in the face of existing evidence. And yet, with the help of the press, this idea that the theory had been “proven” by the 1919 eclipse expeditions would go into cement for years yet to come. The world often desires the story that has a definite ending. But Einstein had put forth such an astonishing concept of the universe that scientists continued to do the job of science: they strove to determine its accuracy.¹¹

Foremost among those who had worked diligently and under great hardships to verify light deflection were skeptics like Charles Perrine, William Campbell, Sir Frank Dyson, and H. D. Curtis, to name some who left their opinions behind. The discussion was not over in November 1919, not as far as many astronomers and physicists were concerned. As Dyson and his four expeditioners had recommended, observations should be done at the total eclipse coming on September 21, 1922. The path of totality would begin at sunrise in Ethiopia, move over Italian Somaliland, and cross nineteen hundred miles of Indian Ocean to reach the Maldives. From there it would swoop southeast to plunge Christmas Island into darkness at noon. Cutting a track through the center of Australia, it would pass through New South Wales to end at sundown in the waters of the Pacific. Many expeditions from around the world got ready.

Campbell, whose sleep had been disturbed for years over the “Einstein problem,” was at the vanguard. He would not repeat the mistakes of 1914 or 1918. He had the most accurate weather reports and a most impressive collection of instruments, including his forty-foot telescope and two new cameras. He would view the eclipse at a sheep ranch called Wallal Downs, on the west coast of Australia, where totality would be five minutes and nineteen seconds. His expeditionary plans were complicated and yet precisely detailed. Robert Trumpler would travel months ahead to Tahiti, with what equipment he needed to take the comparison plates. Campbell would later ship the remaining instruments from San Francisco. Trumpler landed on the tiny island in French Polynesia on April 11. Nine weeks later, after obtaining the plates, he transported the equipment he had to Sydney, where it joined the remaining half of the Lick paraphernalia, forty tons in all. From there, Trumpler and the expensive telescopes and cameras sailed to Freemantle on the west coast, to wait for Campbell to arrive. Obviously aware of the historic implications behind a successful observation during this eclipse, a photographer would accompany the team. Campbell was now fifty-seven years old.

Of the thirteen expeditionary teams in Australia for the 1922 eclipse, as many as eight would test for light deflection according to Einstein’s prediction. Campbell left California on July 18 of that year, with his loyal companion, Elizabeth. They would travel nearly twenty-three thousands miles for this eclipse. From Sydney, they took a train across the country with other teams from Canada, England, and Australia, stopping in several cities for formal engagements before reaching Perth. From there they caught the SS Charon on to Broome, an eight-day journey. The eighty-ton schooner Gwendolyn, a naval vessel compliments of the government of Western Australia and towed by a smaller steamer, carried them on to the beach near Wallal Downs. It was a cramped journey, with many team members crowded onto the deck, until the Gwendolyn finally anchored three miles from Eighty Mile Beach. After breakfast on August 30, Campbell and his team, which now numbered thirty-five and included sailors and aboriginal workers, lowered the baskets with delicate apparatuses from the schooner down into a gasoline launch and a lifeboat. Next came crates of heavy equipment. With the twenty-six-foot tide subsided and the sea calm, the launch towed the lifeboat across open water to land on Australia’s western shore. They would unload in this manner for three days. Campbell himself waded in three feet of water holding in a basket above his head the delicate apparatuses. Dozens of donkeys then pulled the wagons through the dust, heat, and millions of sheep blowflies to Campbell’s viewing station at Wallal Downs, a telegraph station and a sheep ranch in the middle of nowhere. Once the camp was set up among the wattle trees, he christened the mess tent Café Einstein. On September 1, he cabled home to Mount Hamilton that he and Elizabeth had arrived safely.¹²

Dyson, listening to advice from Arthur Hinks, who had done so well in advising Eddington about the clouds on Príncipe, would send Harold Spencer Jones to Christmas Island, a speck in the Indian Ocean one thousand miles from Australia’s west coast. Weather reports predicted habitual clouds, so Campbell had invited the Greenwich team to Wallal Downs, with his own crew. They chose instead the island. Also going to Christmas for his second attempt to photograph the stars for light deflection was Freundlich. The German astronomer was now in league with a Dutch expedition. The Christmas Island teams were met with such severe storms that they were trapped aboard ship for ten days as the sea surged and churned around them. The dark clouds and rain would not abate enough for clear skies on eclipse day. None of the Christmas Island teams would be successful.

Charles Davidson might have gone to Cordilla Downs with an Australian team. The man from whom Dyson had learned so much about astronomical instruments, the man he often asked, “Davidson, got a match?” was invited by the observatory in Adelaide. Had he accepted, Davidson would have crossed parched land where fifty thousand sheep ran free, Australia’s economy riding on their backs. The Adelaide team had good chances of success. It had been generously loaned valuable equipment from Campbell and Curtis, who was by then director of the Allegheny Observatory. With no camel wagons available, the team members would ride pack camels, loading and unloading the animals daily for the dusty three-week journey. But Davidson, the man who, in the warm hours of a Brazilian night, had developed what is now the famous photograph Crommelin had captured of the eclipsed sun over Sobral, stayed behind in Greenwich. The Christmas Island plans had already been cemented. Davidson would wait for a future eclipse.

In this attempt to learn more about the universe that perpetually challenged them, these astronomers, like others before them and others yet to come, sought out the path of totality. Beckoned by mystery, beckoned by the astounding idea of a brilliant man whom most would never meet, beckoned by starlight, they went. They crossed oceans. They traveled the planet, not knowing in 1922 that the earth was not one of eight, as was then believed, but one of several thousand confirmed planets orbiting their own suns. And there may be a million more planets waiting to be discovered. This is the nature of science.

EINSTEIN’S BABY: THE ANSWER

Eclipse day was scorching hot. The aboriginal workers placed branches around the instruments to cool them, poured sand to hold down the fine dust, and sprinkled water on the ground around the site. Campbell, thanks to his superlative instrumentation and skilled team, would be gloriously successful. Compared with the few stars photographed at Príncipe and Sobral, he would capture hundreds. The pressure was now intense since many astronomers around the world, as well as the press, were waiting for the results. A month before he returned from Australia, Campbell was sent a letter from astronomer Samuel Mitchell, a respected expert on eclipses—Mitchell’s first expedition had been to the US state of Georgia for the 1900 eclipse—with interesting news. “When I saw Dyson last, he said that he would not be in the least surprised if the 1922 photographs did not confirm the Einstein effect. He thought that possibly they in England had stressed Einstein a little too much.” And Dyson was far from alone. Ever cautious, Campbell announced the preliminary results several months later. He first sent a cable to Berlin, to Einstein, who had already embarked on his visit to Japan and Israel: “EINSTEIN DEFLECTION… BETWEEN ONE POINT FIFTY NINE AND ONE POINT EIGHTY SIX SECONDS ARC.” Next, he cabled Dyson at the Royal Observatory. After the same brief details, he ended with “WE NOT REPEAT EINSTEIN TEST NEXT ECLIPSE.”

Eddington, ever the lover of light verse, remarked, “I think it was the Bellman in ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ who laid down the rule ‘when I say it three times, it is right.’ The stars have now said it three times to three separate expeditions, and I am convinced their answer is right.”

Einstein had never doubted any of these findings. From these exciting years in his life and onward, he would be sought after for an interview or a photograph, a smile or a funny face, a paper or a lecture, to the very end of his days. Many men admired him, and many women daydreamed about him. He had calculated this, too.

He once wrote to a friend that “the world is a strange madhouse.”

12

THE SEARCH FOR ACCURACY