Einstein’s Greetings

I had not known that Theodore von Laue had been at Princeton. There is an anecdote in the wonderful and rather unknown chronicle of Einstein’s science by his former assistant, Cornelius Lanczos, The Einstein Decade 1905-1915 (p. 23). I quote it all: 

“It was a rare privilege to be on ‘Du’ terms with Einstein, but one of these privileged persons was Max von Laue, the eminent German physicist. Von Laue received a Nobel prize for his ingenious idea of employing a natural crystal for the analysis of X-rays, thus demonstrating both their wave nature and the correctness of the molecular picture of a crystal as a regular lattice arrangements of atoms or molecules.” [Just this method was employed by Watson and Crick to determine the structure of DNA.] 

“Laue was a man of absolute integrity, who behaved most wonderfully when so many colleagues failed during the emergency created by the Nazi era. He refused to accept a position abroad, because his own life was not endangered and he did not want to take away the opportunity for somebody who might need it more than himself. Thus, he preferred to stay in Germany and do the utmost possible (often with disappointing results) for those colleagues who came into difficulties. Einstein was tremendously impressed with the unbending honesty of his friend. Years after the Second World War an eminent physicist from Germany visited him in Princeton. As he was about to leave, he asked Einstein, whether he wanted to send greetings to his old friends in Germany. ‘Grüssen sie Laue,’ was Einstein’s answer: Greetings to Laue. ‘Yes,’ said the visitor, ‘I shall be happy to convey these greetings. But you know very well, Professor Einstein, that you have many other friends in Germany. Einstein pondered for a moment, then he repeated: ‘Grüssen sie Laue.’”