In Response to: Einstein at Princeton

This is an excerpt from Spook McClintock, Fritz Crisler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Kiski Kids, the comprehensive account I have written of the Princeton football teams that in 1933, ’34, and ’35 scored 25 wins, lost just one game, and won two national championships. Its availability in e-book and paperback formats is imminent.

“[I]n the Thirties the Princeton campus — students, faculty, administrators, and other employees — was not only more close-knit than, for better or worse, it is today but also much more interested in and supportive of Tiger football.

“In October 1933, for example, Albert Einstein arrived in the U.S. to take up a position that he held until his death in 1955 at the Institute for Advanced Study, which was established in Princeton with financial support from Newark retailer Louis Bamberger and his sister Caroline Bamberger Fuld as a center for theoretical research and as a haven for Jewish scientists fleeing the Nazis. For six years from its opening that year, it was housed in Fine Hall, home to Princeton’s mathematics department.

“According to Kiski Kids Kid Bob Kopf ’66, “Walking alone across the Princeton campus in the 1930s, my father encountered Albert Einstein. To Dad’s astonishment, Einstein stopped him, indicated that he knew my father was on the football team, and asked about the prospects for the autumn clashes. Dad had a brief, yet highly pleasant, interaction with the brightest man on the planet.”

Tom Benghauser ’66
Denver, Colo.