THE STATUE (purely fictional)

When they planted me here in 1979, I felt great elation. There was shade all around provided by a grove of majestic elm and holly trees that spread branches all over the little cove where they placed me. The bronze of my body was shiny and my pose was inviting. Across the street, I could see the large imposing building of the National Academy of Science. In the distance I could see grass and the Greek Parthenon I came to know as the Lincoln Memorial. What a great space and so easily accessed that I was sure people would flock to me, young people, those whom I wished to inspire, the reason that I am here and the life that I represent.

But with time, I have come to realize that this was not to be. Oh, my inaugural was great and often I see old men and women – more men than women. They come in groups, stare at me, take pictures, sit on my lap. Some even show great respect. But I rarely see the young – they run by while jogging, others are brought here by their parents, and fidget endlessly when sitting on my lap while the photo is taken.

With time, I have come to realize that I inspire very few. For example, no one has taken the time to talk to me, to ask about my great discoveries, to suggest how to build upon them in order to understand the Universe. Instead, I sit here struggling with retrospect. I am proud of my great accomplishments that put me on par with, and maybe above, Isaac Newton, but there is a growing sense of shame for what I did to my dear Mileva (Mileva Maric) whose scientific career I effectively destroyed.

She was so exciting, so intelligent, the only woman in my class with studies in mathematics and physics. I pursued her from the start and she loved me unconditionally. Our families forbid it, but we eventually got married. I remember our picnics in the park and watching the trains go by. I remember her wondering about the relative movement of people on the train. That is when I told her that because our view of the movement of the people in the train was delayed by the finite speed of light, there would be a difference between seeing a flash originating in a part of the train close to us compared to a flash from a part far from us. The difference would be the extra time taken by the light to reach us. That is when she asked if time passing on the train would appear to us to be the same as time passing in the park. I immediately realized that this was the key. I remember how I loved her for her insight and her ability to relate mathematics to real physics problems. The time correction solved everything. She had given me the key to a problem I had been studying for fourteen years and to many problems I faced later.

Our discussions were enlightening and made my heart sing. I had found a soul-mate who not only understood me, but also challenged me. How I loved those moments of sharing new ideas, of sharing the excitement and the challenge of discovery, of competing to be the first to find the answer. But, then it ended too soon. Her pregnancy, the birth of our daughter and her quick death, and the birth and care of our first son totally changed her. They pulled her away from my work, and the great ideas we had formulated together. What was critically important to me for life on Earth, became just a game for her. I wrote up the Special Theory of Relativity and published it alone. Now, I realize that I should have given her credit for her ideas in that and many other papers. At the time, I thought that no one would pay attention to them if a woman’s name were among the authors, but now I realize that I was just a coward. After all Marie Curie was a well-respected chemist, … but not a physicist. Physicists were bigger snobs. Maybe I was right to leave her name out. My career had to come first … even if it meant that she had to abandon hers. But she hated me for that. We had one more boy and her bitterness drove me away and I left her for my dear Elsa (Lowenthal), my maternal first cousin who brought me to the US in time to escape Hitler.

I hate what I did, and, looking back, it showed in my work. My greatest achievement, my General Theory of Gravitation was purely mathematical and it failed to find the physical source of gravity or unification with the laws of electromagnetism. These are still unknown today. Maybe she could have helped.

But in the end, no children or young people come to see me for inspiration and guidance today. The search for the true origin of the universe has fallen to those who advance in incremental steps and believe that quantum mechanics is a physical prison [Author’s remark].