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The memorial to Albert Einstein, situated in an elm
and holly grove in the southwest corner of The National Academies grounds,
was unveiled at the Academy's annual meeting on April 22, 1979, in honor
of the centennial of the great scientist's birth.
Einstein is depicted seated on a three-step bench of
Mount Airy (North Carolina) white granite. The bronze figure, weighing
approximately 4 tons, is 12 feet in height. Three caissons, totaling 135
tons, sunk in bedrock to a depth of 23 to 25 feet, support the monument.
In its left hand, the figure holds a paper with mathematical equations
summarizing three of Einstein's most important scientific contributions:
the photoelectric effect, the theory of general relativity, and the
equivalence of energy and matter. Three quotations from Einstein are
engraved on the bench where the figure is seated:
As long as I
have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where
civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law
prevail.
Joy and
amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just
form a faint notion ...
The right to
search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of
what one has recognized to be true.
The star map at
the statue's base--a 28-foot field of emerald pearl granite from Larvik,
Norway, is embedded with more than 2,700 metal studs representing the
planets, sun, moon, stars, and other celestial objects accurately
positioned by astronomers from the U.S. Naval Observatory as they were on
the dedication date.
The sculptor, Robert Berks, known for his portrait busts (John F. Kennedy
at Washington's Kennedy Center), based the work on a bust of Einstein he
sculpted from life in 1953. Landscape architect James A. Van Sweden
designed the monument landscaping. Einstein was elected a foreign
associate of the Academy in 1922 and became a member in 1942, two years
after he became a naturalized citizen.
-from
the website of The
National Academies
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