How India missed being Einstein home

The Telegraph, Calcutta, Tuesday , January 3 , 2012

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 2: Seven years after fleeing Nazi Germany for Princeton in 1933, Albert Einstein took US citizenship. India can only rue what might have been.

Around 1937, the then fledgling Travancore University in Kerala had apparently invited the great physicist to become its first vice-chancellor for a monthly salary of Rs 6,000, a huge sum those days. Einstein had declined, saying he wanted to be at Princeton University, whose “liberal atmosphere” he had earlier praised.

It’s a regret that Travancore University, now renamed University of Kerala, would be nursing as it gears to celebrate its 75 years.

The platinum jubilee has breathed fresh life into the claim, which had gained currency after the late historian, A. Sreedhara Menon, authored the history of the university. Menon wrote that inviting Einstein was the idea of the Diwan (prime minister) of the princely state of Travancore, the scholarly C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar.

Another writer and historian M.G. Sashibhushan says: “An invitation to a genius like Einstein to a tiny state like Travancore is truly amazing, but CP was an astute administrator who would try to make impossible things possible.

But Sashibhushan added: “I have heard people mention CP’s public announcement about the proposal at the state council.... Unfortunately, the copy of the letter to Einstein is yet to be traced.”

Some historians, though, believe that CP had floated Einstein’s name only to pre-empt local academics from pulling strings and lobbying for the post. The university was born on November 1, 1937, with the Travancore prince as chancellor and CP as vice-chancellor.

CP, a politically controversial figure often attacked by nationalists and communists, later tried to bring many brilliant academics to the university but without much success. Among those who declined the pro-vice-chancellor’s post were Nobel-winning physicist C.V. Raman, philosopher S. Radhakrishnan (who later became India’s President) and physicist Meghnath Saha, Menon wrote.

“It was also said that CP once made a similar request to eminent biologist Julian Huxley, who too declined,” Sashibhushan said.

Einstein, who had no weakness for high office, declined Israel’s presidency in 1952. In Princeton, he developed a deep friendship with the great Austrian logician-mathematician Kurt Godel, a fellow immigrant with whom he took long walks discussing science and philosophy.

Perhaps it does not matter where Einstein lived, as a drawing by the US cartoonist Herblock after the scientist’s death in 1955 suggests. It shows planet Earth and simply says: “Albert Einstein lived here.”