Of Tensors and a Hearing Aid and Many Other Things: Einstein’s Collaborators

Abstract All of Einstein’s major papers are his alone. However, over the years he had a remarkably large number, more than thirty, of co-workers. Einstein did not like crowds, never cared for teaching classes, and did not create a school. But he loved to talk physics, as was illustrated in such delightful ways during the session of the Einstein symposium in Princeton devoted to ‘working with Einstein’ [Wl]. The four men who reminisced on that occasion had all worked with him during the 1930s and 1940s. Their respective collaborative efforts all dealt with general relativity and unified field theory, Einstein’s exclusive interests during that period. All of them were men much younger than Einstein who had come to him in the formative stages of their development.