Einstein in Oxford

Abstract

Albert Einstein made three visits to Oxford between 1931 and 1933, staying for a month in the spring of each year. For our understanding of Einstein's work, the Rhodes Memorial Lectures that he delivered during his first visit are of special interest. They show him in a period of intense rethinking of his cosmological views in the light of Edwin Hubble's recent evidence in favour of an expanding universe, an idea that Einstein had hitherto opposed. The lectures, heavily mathematical and delivered in German, were challenging. Nevertheless, they were well received, and Frederick Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell) saw them as a springboard for a continuing association between Einstein and the University's Clarendon Laboratory. To that end, Lindemann persuaded his college, Christ Church, to invite Einstein for a month in 1932 and each of the four years that followed. The arrangement, part of Lindemann's plan to revitalize Oxford physics, was soon overtaken by political events in Germany and Einstein's emigration to Princeton in October 1933.