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- Albert Einstein in love with a Russian
spy? It sounds too far-fetched to be true. But nine letters have surfaced
written by Albert Einstein in 1945 and 1946 to Margarita Konenkova, who,
according to a book by a former Soviet spy master, was a Russian agent
whose official mission was to introduce Einstein to the Soviet vice consul
in New York.
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- Cold War scholars say it seems highly
unlikely that Einstein helped the Russians in building their own bomb.
"Einstein himself was not involved at the technical level...,"
says Gaddis Smith, a history professor at Yale University. "He was
sitting in his sweater and smoking his pipe and thinking deep mathematical
thoughts at Princeton."
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- The letters, sent by Einstein from his
home in Princeton, N.J., were consigned to Sotheby's auction house by a
member of Konenkova's family who has remained anonymous. The letters will
be sold on June 26 in New York, today's New York Times reports.
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- Einstein's letters reveal a sensitive
man who writes with humor, warmth and candor about his daily life and his
undying love. "Just recently I washed my head by myself, but not with
the greatest success; I am not as careful as you are," he writes on
Nov. 27, 1945. "But everything here reminds me of you: 'Almar's' shawl,
the dictionaries, the wonderful pipe that we thought was gone, and really
all the many little things in my hermit's cell; and also the lonely nest."
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- Paul Needham, who translated the letters
from German and is a consultant to Southeby's, says the letters are authentic.
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- "In all the years I spent at Sotheby's,
this is the most interesting discovery story I've ever encountered,"
says Needham. "They're very open and very different from Einstein's
other letters as they've survived. They reveal both deep emotion and very
accessible emotion -- the kind anybody who's ever been in love can identify
with."
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- Within the Einstein archive at Hebrew
University in Israel there is no trace of any letters from Konenkova to
Einstein, he says. Although the two met around 1935, it is unclear when
the affair began -- whether it was before or after the death of Einstein's
second wife, Elsa, in 1936. Konenkova was married to the noted Russian
sculptor Sergei Konenkov, who created the bronze bust of Einstein at the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, according to the Times.
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- At the time of the letters, Einstein
was 66 and Mrs. Konenkova was 51. There is no indication in the letters
that Einstein knew Mrs. Konenkova may have been a spy.
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- According to the book written by the
former spy, Konenkova's job was "to influence Oppenheimer and other
prominent American scientists whom she frequently met in Princeton."
Konenkova introduced Einstein to the Soviet vice consul, Pavel Mikhailov,
and Einstein refers to him in the letters.
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