Einstein and the Dance of Siva (fwd)

[rsinclai at nsf.gov]

Dr D Smith wrote:
>From indology-request at liverpool.ac.uk Wed Jan  4 13:55 EST 1995

Hindu Timeline 5 under the heading of 1955 says that Einstein "declared
Lord Siva Nataraja best metaphor for the workings of the universe." A
search through relevant books here at Lancaster has failed to find the
source for this statement. Can anyone help?
David Smith
Dept of Religious Studies
Lancaster University
UK
 ***********
Dr. Smith -- I am having to depend on my memory, since references are not
at hand to me at present. I have never heard of Einstein making such a
statement. That in itself proves very little, and I urge you to contact his
current biographers to see if they can identify such a phrase. I would be
surprised if such a metaphor had not found its way into a biography (or at
least into the hands of his biographers) because by Einstein's last years
everything he said was noted carefully.

I wonder, however, if a certain confusion has not crept in here. Robert
Oppenheimer* was among other things a student of Sanskrit. There is a story
that as he witnessed the first nuclear test explosion (July 1945; New
Mexico) the phrase flashed into his mind "I am Siva, the destroyer of
worlds." You can find the reference in any biography of Oppenheimer, or any
account of the "Trinity" test. [What is never made clear in any of the
accounts of that moment that I've read is how other people knew
Oppenheimer's thoughts. He must have told people later, which would have
given him the chance to re-write history for maximum drama.] I wonder if
the Oppenheimer story didn't get transferred to Einstein? I withdraw my
hypothesis if you can find independent confirmation of Einstein having
declared the above. [But even then Einstein could have gotten the image
from Oppenheimer; E. was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
NJ from 1933 until he died; O. was the Director of the Institute from about
1948 until his own death in the early '60's. O. was a great admirer of E.,
and I'm sure they spoke often; it would be likely that O.'s thought would
have been mentioned.

*A noted theoretical physicist, and the Director of the Los Alamos
Laboratory where the first U. S. nuclear weapons were realized in 1942-45.




Rolf M. Sinclair
Division of Physics
National Science Foundation
(Temporarily at McMurdo Station, en route to South Pole)