Diaries written by Albert Einstein's last girlfriend and recently found, document Einstein's private life in the last months of his life
27.4.2004
From: New York Times, Haaretz, Walla News
Einstein and Pantova at Princeton in the 40s. Pantova's diary was discovered in February
Johanna Pantova was known at Princeton University as Albert Einstein's last girlfriend. They went to concerts together, sailed on his ship until the doctors forbade it and she even cut his hair herself. It has now been discovered that Pantova wrote a diary that documented the last period of Einstein's life.
In February, librarians at the Firestone Library at Princeton University found a 62-page manuscript by Pantova, a former curator of maps at the university's library. In the manuscript she recorded his thoughts, opinions and complaints.
The diaries mainly describe Einstein's routine life in the last year and a half of his life. "The secret to the general field theory is not there," said Donald S. Skemmer, Curator of Journals at Princeton. General field theory is the name that Einstein gave to his attempt to formulate a single equation that would explain all the forces of nature.
Einstein, who compares himself to an old, broken-down car, complained about his memory loss and the incessant parade of visitors that came to him. The visitors were so numerous that Einstein pretended to be sick sometimes, to avoid having to take pictures with the visitors.
Pantova described Einstein as having a great interest in news developments - he was suspicious of the head of the Democratic Party at the time, Adele Stevenson, and thought his speeches were "bloated". Einstein, who referred to himself as a political "revolutionary", was full of criticism of the nuclear arms race and the activities of the anti-communist senator, McCarthy.
Einstein was troubled by the treatment of his friend, Robert Oppenheimer, former head of the US nuclear program who was attacked for his leftist views. He was mostly concerned about Oppenheimer's insult to the accusations. "Oppenheimer is not a gypsy like me," he said, "I was born with the skin of an elephant, so no one can hurt me."
Einstein's colleagues thought, at this time, that his ideas were outdated and he knew it. In 1953, the focus of physics shifted from general relativity to nuclear physics. His studies on general field theory seemed irrelevant to his colleagues. "The physicists thought I was a mathematician and the mathematicians thought I was a physicist," he said.
The relationship between Einstein and Pantova lasted from the late 40s until Einstein's death in 1955. After Einstein's death Fantova sold his letters to her and poems he wrote to a man who donated them to the Firestone Library. The letters, mostly written during his vacations on Long Island, were never published.
Einstein's poems, many of which are included in Pantova's diary, include many of Einstein's jokes about himself. In one of the poems in which he referred to Pantova's absence, he wrote:
Exhausted from a long wait
To show you how strong she is
The thought of you will never fade away
In the attic of my mind
