Einstein's 30 hours in Cuba
by
José Altshuler
Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations
with whose manners and customs he was acquainted
·Homer, ODYSSEY
When the world famous author of the theory of relativity
set foot on Cuban soil in the morning of Friday, December 19, 1930, he mentioned that he wished to purchase
a summer hat, since it looked like it would be a hot day.
His Cuban hosts took him immediately to the most
fashionable store in Havana — El Encanto — where the
store owners presented the illustrious visitor the best
panama hat they had. In exchange they only asked him
to pose for a portrait in the establishment's photo studio. After the photo was taken Professor Albert Einstein,
Nobel laureate for physics of 1921, started to follow the
plan his hosts had set for the first day of his visit to
Havana.
2
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Photo taken in Havana, December 19, 1930
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
3
News on Einstein’s visit
in a Cuban newspaper.
Pomp and circumstance
First on the agenda was a courtesy visit to the Cuban
State Department (the Foreign Office) followed by a
solemn ceremony in his honor at the Academy of
Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Havana,
offered jointly by that institution and the Geographical
Society of Cuba. It began at eleven o'clock in the
morning. The Secretary of Health and Welfare, who
was also president of the Academy at the time, said a
few words of welcome and praise. Einstein briefly
thanked him, "extolling the work of the Cuban people,
in whom he already glimpsed the essence of great and
marvelous destinies," according to a journalist's account.
The distinguished visitor was asked to write a few
words in the so called Golden Book of the Geographic
Society and he wrote:
The first truly universal society was the society of researchers. May the coming generation establish a political and economic society which will insure us against
catastrophes.
4
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
Einstein writes in the Golden Book of the Cuban
Geographical Society.
What exactly did he mean by this? We don't know
for certain but we can well imagine, as at that time the
world was going through a tremendous economic crisis,
and the unemployed numbered millions, even in the
most industrialized countries. "Hitler is living upon
Germany's empty stomach," Einstein had declared a few
days earlier in New York.
The scheduled activities continued as planned. At
one o'clock in the afternoon, after he and his wife Elsa
had been honored by the Jewish community in Havana, Einstein and his companions attended a banquet offered in his honor by the president of the
Academy at the roof garden of the Plaza Hotel. After
the banquet, Einstein was taken on a tour of the city,
since he had expressed the wish to "get to know Havana and the Cuban countryside as much as possible
in the few hours which the itinerary allowed."
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
5
December 19, 1930: Einstein thanks his Cuban hosts at the main hall
of the Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Havana,
whose premises now belong to the "Carlos J. Finlay" National Museum
of the History of Sciences.
The visitors were taken to the exclusive Country
Club and Havana Yacht Club, and later to the nearby
town of Santiago de las Vegas, so they could admire "the
scenery of the Cuban countryside, in all its lush greenery despite the season," and also visit the local waterworks, the Mazorra asylum for the mentally ill, the Curtiss aviation field, and the Industrial Technical School
which had been recently inaugurated. As one might
have expected, no visit was planned to the University of
Havana, which had just been closed indefinitely by decree, for it had become the most glaring center of the
popular rebellion then going on against the current dictator, Gerardo Machado.
The last event of the day in which the celebrated
physicist participated was a reception held in his honor
by the Cuban Society of Engineers. It began at five in
the afternoon with a speech by the Society's president,
to which the honored guest responded by stating his
gratitude for the attentions received, which had allowed
6
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
At the Cuban Society of Engineers.
him to become acquainted with the most picturesque landscapes, and wished the nation a prosperous future.
After the speeches, a "splendid buffet" was
served. Einstein then signed the visitors' book and a
virtual avalanche of requests for autographs fell upon
him from some two hundred people present at the
reception. The audience comprised not only engineers, but also "other invited intellectuals" whose
names — however — were not included in the account published in the Society's journal "due to lack
of space and to avoid regrettable omissions." The author of the account chose not to mention the less
than formal way in which the reception ended when
the guest, undoubtedly worn out by so many attentions, suddenly left the place, hurriedly got into a
waiting car, and went off with his companions toward
the pier to board his ship.
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
7
Einstein in Havana, as seen by cartoonists Román (on the
left, with Einstein’s autograph) and Massaguer.
A lively voyage
Einstein had declined the official invitation to stay at the
Nacional Hotel, the most luxurious of the Cuban capital,
which was to be inaugurated in a few days. He wanted
to spend the night on the steamship that brought him to
Cuba, the Belgenland. He had done the same during his
earlier five-day stopover in New York, December 11 to 16.
On that occasion, just after the ship's arrival, fifty
reporters and as many photographers showed up, with the
idea of interviewing him. He noted afterwards in his diary:
"The reporters asked particularly inane questions to which
I replied with cheap jokes that were received with enthusiasm." More than anywhere else, autograph seekers
hounded him. Faced with the impossibility of eluding
them, Elsa devised a way for them to contribute to a humanitarian cause by suggesting that "the doctor will be
very happy" if every letter requesting an autograph was
accompanied with "say, three dollars for the Berlin poor."
8
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
On board steamship Belgenland: on Einstein’s left, his scientific collaborator Walther Mayer and his secretary Helen Dukas; on Einstein’s
right, his wife Elsa and a friend.
In addition to his wife and a friend of the family,
the celebrated scientist was accompanied on that trip by
his secretary, Helen Dukas, and the Austrian mathematician, Walther Mayer. The latter had been closely collaborating with Einstein for nearly two years on what at
that point had become an obsession for him to establish
a unified field theory capable of linking electromagnetic
phenomena with the gravitational attraction between
bodies, since the general theory of relativity applied only
to gravitation.
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
9
Looking for evidence in the heavens
Einstein and his companions had boarded the ship at
the Belgian port of Antwerp on December 2, in order to
reach San Diego, California, via the Panama Canal, and
then travel by highway to the neighboring city of Pasadena, where they arrived with the new year. They had
been invited by the director of the California Institute of
Technology, Robert Millikan, the Nobel laureate for
physics of 1923 for his important experiments, one of
which allowed the formula for the photoelectric effect,
obtained by Einstein in 1905, to be fully confirmed. Significantly, another guest was Albert Michelson, winner
of the 1907 Nobel prize for physics, whose experiments
on the propagation of light were closely tied to the special theory of relativity formulated by Einstein also in
1905, when he was barely twenty six years old.
For the renowned scientist, the visit to Pasadena
held a special attraction, as it would give him the opportunity to visit the nearby Mount Wilson observatory,
whose exceptional potentialities could be useful for "undertaking certain research which should provide new
findings to confirm my general theory of Relativity
[since] I believe that Mount Wilson's powerful instrumentation will allow me to obtain unquestionable astrophysical proofs." This is what Einstein stated on the
deck of his ship in an interview with a journalist from
the Cuban magazine Bohemia. But what seems today
the kind of proof Einstein was seeking was obtained
much later, when a certain celestial object (the binary
pulsar PSR1913+16) was discovered in 1974, and four
years were spent performing delicate radiotelescopic
measurements on it. Einstein, however, could not enjoy
this finding, since he had died more than twenty years
earlier, in 1955.
10
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
The other reality
We still have to account for Einstein's last hours in Cuba,
after he spent the night of December 19 on his ship.
The next morning, the director of the National Observatory and his wife came for him and his companions
to take them around the city. They felt surprised by the
distinguished guest's insistence on touring "the poorest
neighborhoods; since after having visited the parks, the
clubs, the residences of the wealthy, now they were determined to see the other side." The journal Revista de la
Sociedad Geográfica de Cuba, reported that Einstein
entered "the most wretched homes, and the untidy
yards of the solares [very humble Cuban tenement
houses]." The group also went "to the Mercado Único [the
main market in Havana], to the most modest stores on
Monte Avenue, and to the typical neighborhoods of Cuban destitution, called by their inhabitants such strange
names as Pan con Timba ['Bread and Guava Paste'] and
Llega y Pon ['Come and Flop']."
Einstein said farewell to his guides, and thanked
them for their kindness in complying with his unusual
demands. At one o'clock in the afternoon, the Belgenland weighed anchor and headed for the Panama
Canal, after having remained some thirty hours in the
port of Havana. Behind lay neocolonial Cuba. "Luxurious clubs side by side with naked poverty mainly affecting the colored people," Einstein wrote in his diary that
Saturday, December 20, 1930.
EINSTEIN’S 30 HOURS IN CUBA
Memorial plaque on the facade of the "Carlos J. Finlay" National
Museum of the History of Sciences.
Postage stamps in commemoration of the 75th anniversary
of Einstein’s visit to Cuba.
11