A 1950s Office in Princeton

I happened to be looking at Twitter when a tweet from Larry Ferlazzo appeared linking to a LIFE photograph of an office in Princeton.
It was a photograph taken by Ralph Morse of Albert Einstein’s office. (There are other photographs taken on the day.)
The article with the photograph observed:

The empty chair by the formula-filled blackboard looked as if the scholar who usually sat in it had merely stepped away, perhaps to gaze reflectively at the meadow which rolls past the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. But the chair would not again be filled. Last week the entire world went into mourning for the greatest scientific thinker of his age … For 50 years the world had been heaping honors on him, but Einstein remained indifferent to worldly glory. Dressing in baggy old clothes, he shut himself away in lonely contemplation of the massive intellectual problems he alone could solve. But he emerged to champion the ideals he cherished: justice, freedom, peace. 

I have not reproduced the photograph here but I hope if you find it you too will ponder if the person from the office “had merely stepped away, perhaps to gaze reflectively at the meadow”  whilst in “lonely contemplation“.

 

2 COMMENTS

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here