Interview with curator Michael M. Shara

Q: WHAT CHALLENGES DO WE FACE IN PRESENTING EINSTEIN TO THE PUBLIC?

The exhibition itself is really in two major parts. There certainly is Einstein's physics. We want to explain General Relativity, Special Relativity, the core of the great contributions that he made to physics. Of course, that's a challenge.

The other part of the exhibition, the other half, is Einstein the man. There is this funny notion of him as an iconic, long-white-haired genius whose theories were Incomprehensible to the public, who was a lousy student as a kid, who is the father of the atomic bomb, and who lived in an ivory tower all of his life. And that's at least as untrue as many of the misconceptions about his physics.

In particular, he was highly engaged in the politics and social issues of the day. He had many ties with many famous people around the world and he used his influence where he could for things that were really very good. There are many facets of his life that I think are hardly known by the public and it's our challenge to make people aware of all of this.

Q: TIME MAGAZINE CHOSE EINSTEIN AS "PERSON OF THE CENTURY." DO YOU AGREE WITH THAT ASSESSMENT?

Absolutely. To my mind it was a no-brainer. I would have been very disappointed had they chosen anyone else. The fact of the matter is that, yes, he was the most influential scientist of the century, probably of all time.

Take a look at the Earth in 1900 and the Earth in 2000. There were more changes in that century than in the previous 2,000 years in terms of technological advances, expansion of our ability to travel and to communicate across vast distances, the computer revolution, our increased understanding of the universe, and practically every one of those is traceable back to Einstein, including the biological revolution. We are a different race of people than we were a century ago, utterly and completely different, because of Einstein.

Q: CAN YOU SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT A UNIFIED "THEORY OF EVERYTHING," WHICH SEEMS LIKE A HOLY GRAIL?

It certainly is. Einstein believed in his heart that there must be a simple, beautiful--and beautiful is a technical term, in some sense, in physics--a beautiful theory that explains everything, from which all the complexity of the universe can be derived. And he failed. He did not succeed. He spent the last 30 or 35 years of his life in pursuit of this Holy Grail, and he absolutely did not succeed.

Since his death, the theories of the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism have been unified into a single theory. And that's a tremendous accomplishment, which has won several Nobel Prizes for the people who did it. The grandfather of this, or I should say the godfather of all of this, is Einstein. It was Einstein's vision that there must be a unified theory that led to the creation of this partially unified theory.

But nobody has yet succeeded in unifying these theories with gravity. Now there must be a super-theory, something above quantum theory and gravitational theory and electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces which will succeed in unifying them all, but nobody's there yet.

Q: HOW DID EINSTEIN COME TO BE SUCH A CELEBRITY? HOW MUCH OF IT WAS DUE TO HIS PERSONALITY?

Once General Relativity had been demonstrated in 1919, he became as well known throughout the world as Madonna is today. He was one of the pop stars of the world, he was the pop star of the world at the time. That continued up until his death and, even a half-century later, he remains this almost religious, iconic figure.

His public persona was largely humble. He certainly never put on airs. He was truly disinterested in money. It was utterly irrelevant as far as he was concerned. The search for knowledge, the search for a fundamental understanding of the universe is what drove him. That was his raison d'etre. That having been said, he spent a significant fraction of the second half of his life in the public eye doing very public things. And he was willing to use his celebrity status to advance causes that he felt were important.

Q: IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT'S THE MOST EXCITING OBJECT IN THE SHOW?

We have several original E=m[c.sup.2]s in his own handwriting. I held some of them in my own hands, in my own gloved hands, you're not allowed to touch them of course for conservation purposes. So those to me are extraordinary. We have a 72-page original manuscript describing all of Special Relativity. We have letters to and from his wives, children, mistresses. And we have the offer of the Presidency of the State of Israel from Abba Eban as well as Einstein's letter graciously but regretfully declining that offer.

So I don't think there's any one object or letter I can point out as being outstanding, but the collection of objects is truly extraordinary. Nothing like this has ever been on exhibit anywhere before, anywhere in the world.

Q: WHAT TWO OR THREE IDEAS DO YOU HOPE PEOPLE WILL TAKE AWAY FROM THE SHOW?