- He received the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for his work in hydraulic engineering.
- The tragic loss of his son, Klaus Martin, was influenced by his bigoted medical beliefs.
- The American Society of Civil Engineers established the Hans Albert Einstein Award in 1988.
The first son of famous theoretical physicist Albert Einstein and Serbian mathematician Mileva Marić, Hans Albert Einstein (May 14, 1904 – July 26, 1973) was a Swiss-American engineer, educator, and pioneer in sediment dynamics. Hans Einstein spent the majority of his career as a professor of hydraulic engineering at Berkeley. He pioneered the ideas of bed load and wash load and devised techniques for using river data to determine sand wave resistance.
In 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) established the “Hans Albert Einstein Award” to honor Einstein’s status as a preeminent specialist in the area of hydraulic engineering. Scholars who have made major contributions to the fields of sedimentation, erosion management, and waterway development are recognized with this award.
The Beginnings of Hans Albert Einstein
Hans Albert Einstein was born in Bern, Switzerland on May 14th, 1904. Albert Einstein was employed at the Swiss Patent Office as a patent officer when Hans was born. Just like his brother Eduard, he was baptized as an Orthodox Christian.
Hans’ mother Mileva Maric separated from Einstein in 1919 after five years of severance beginning in 1914, when Einstein relocated to Berlin, Germany. The sons stayed with their mother in Switzerland, and their father, who moved to Berlin, often visited them.
Hans went to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, like both of his parents. Unlike his parents, he chose not to study theoretical science but engineering.
After finishing college in 1926 with a civil engineering diploma, he worked as a structural engineer on many bridge projects in Dortmund. This was from 1926 to 1930. His thesis, “Bed Load Transport as a Probability Problem,” published in 1936, is considered a seminal work in the field of sediment dynamics.
His thesis resulted in a mathematical model known as “Einstein’s Method” for calculating solid transport in rivers, widely used in hydrology and sedimentology. It was later modified by other hydraulicians and hydrologists.
His Academic Career
Albert Einstein, Hans’ father, fled Nazi Germany with his Jewish family in 1933 due to anti-Semitic abuse. In 1938, Hans moved from Switzerland to Greenville, South Carolina, after taking his father’s advice. In December 1938, he applied for American citizenship.
From 1938 until 1943, Hans did research on sediment dynamics for the United States Department of Agriculture. After starting at Caltech in 1942, he stayed there until 1943, the whole time working for the USDA agency.
In 1947, Hans became an associate professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He advanced to full professor status and finally left academia. However, Hans was a regular at hydraulic engineering conferences all around the globe because of his respected status as an expert in the area.
The Tragic Death of Klaus Martin Einstein
Amidst his wife’s concerns, Hans Albert immersed himself in “Christian Science,” a spiritual movement that had controversial consequences. It was a religious sect with metaphysical teachings and an ideology that forbade doctors to seek medical attention.
Several months after his arrival in America, his son, Klaus Martin Einstein, fell seriously ill and succumbed to diphtheria, an infectious disease. Hans could probably save his son’s life if it weren’t for the sect. The tragic death of his son led him to reconsider his bigoted stance on medicine.
Albert Einstein visited Hans at this time. They traveled together in the forests and discussed engineering issues and other various projects carried out in America.
The Intimate Sphere of Hans Albert Einstein
His Relationship with Einstein
His father Albert Einstein often referred to Hans in his letters using his traditional Hebrew nicknames “Hadi” and “Adi.” In turn, Hans called Einstein “Vadi” and sometimes “Papa.” Einstein called him “Budi” during his childhood.
“I have also considered many scientific plans during my pushing you around in your pram!” — Albert Einstein in a letter to his son Hans, June 1918.
Like his brother Eduard, Hans Albert suffered greatly from the separation of his parents, after which the sons lived with their mother. However, Einstein continued to visit him. For a long time, his relationship with Einstein was considered to be disturbed, but improved over time. Einstein and his son frequently engaged in sailing, especially in the Baltic Sea in the Kiel Fjord.
However, Albert Einstein’s obsessive hostility toward Hans’ association with Frieda Knecht separated them for a long time.
He stated the following to the New York Times in 1973 about his relationship with his father:
“Probably the only project he ever gave up on was me. He tried to give me advice, but he soon discovered that I was too stubborn and that he was just wasting his time.”
One of Einstein’s pieces of advice for Hans to give up studying solid transport phenomena in rivers and focus on quantum physics, as it was a less complicated subject than river sedimentology. In 1955, Hans Albert traveled from San Francisco to his dying father to say his last farewell.
Siblings
There was a sibling to Hans Albert Einstein named Eduard Einstein, who was born in 1910 and passed away in 1965. Lieserl Einstein, his sister, was born in or around 1902, and she was unknown to the world for 85 years. She may have died soon after birth or been adopted.
Marriages
Elisa Frieda Knecht
Hans Albert Einstein tied the knot with Elisa Frieda Knecht in 1927. Albert Einstein was adamantly opposed to the union of his son and Frieda. Einstein never accepted his daughter-in-law throughout his life because she was of short stature and older than his son, and he considered her to be genetically burdened. This was similar to Einstein’s mother Pauline and Rudolf who once deeply opposed his marriage to Mileva but Einstein married her anyway.
Frieda Knecht passed away in 1958. She passed away after fainting during a concert she and Hans were attending in Berkeley in October 1958. Hans Albert did not want to be married again after the loss of Freida, but he also couldn’t bear a lonely life.
Elizabeth Roboz
In June of 1959, he tied the knot for a second time, this time to Elizabeth Roboz. She was a biochemist and neuroscientist known for purifying and characterizing myelin basic protein (MBP).
They did not have any children together, although Hans had two survived children from his first marriage. When Hans died on July 26, 1973, and Roboz wrote a biography of him, Hans Albert Einstein: Reminiscences of his Life and our Life Together in 1991.
After the marriage, Roboz asserted that she had been informed of her status as Albert Einstein’s illegitimate daughter. She even pursued legal avenues to seek financial support from the Einstein estate. The “illegitimate daughter” story is reminiscent of the case of Evelyn Einstein.
Children
With Frieda, Hans Albert Einstein had four children:
- Bernhard Caesar Einstein (1930-2008) attended Caltech and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology before passing away. He majored in engineering in college.
- Klaus Martin Einstein who lived from 1932 to 1939, passed away at an early age due to diphtheria.
- David Einstein was born in the fall of 1939, around October or November, but he did not live beyond the age of a month.
- Evelyn Einstein: She was adopted by Hans and Frieda Einstein shortly after she was born in 1941, and she passed away in 2011. She claimed herself to be the daughter of Albert Einstein. She earned a Master of Arts in Literature from Berkeley.
Anecdotes
Hans Albert Einstein took pleasure in many things. He enjoyed sailing so much that he often took friends, family, and coworkers out on trips around San Francisco Bay. Taking friends and family sailing was a tradition of Albert Einstein, as she took her adoptive daughter Ilse Einstein on many trips. In addition, Hans loved music and was a skilled flutist and pianist.
He was featured in the 2017 American television series Genius. His life and his unconventional relationship with his father are reflected in this 10-part series.
His Death
On July 26, 1973, Hans Einstein felt badly during a symposium at Woods Hall in Massachusetts and collapsed. He died of heart failure and was also buried in Massachusetts.
Publications
His publications include:
- “Sediment Transportation in Open Channels”
- “Hydraulics of Rough Boundaries”
- “Composite Roughness of Open Channels”
- “Resistance in Channels”
- “Can the Rate of Bed Load Transport Be Estimated from the Wash Load Function of Bed Material?”
- “Transport of Highly Non-Uniform Sands”
- “Turbulent Boundary Layers on Smooth Walls”
The Einstein-Chien method, a dynamic bed sediment modeling approach, was developed by Hans in collaboration with the Chinese hydraulic and sediment specialist Ning Chien. This method is widely used in the field of hydraulic engineering today because of Hans’ and Chien’s joint efforts.
Praise and Commendation
- Hans Albert Einstein received the highly regarded Guggenheim Fellowship (grants that have been awarded annually since 1925) in 1953 for his work on the subject.
- The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recognized his outstanding contributions to the field of hydraulic engineering by awarding him two prestigious prizes in 1959 and 1960: the Hydraulic Research Award and the Stevens Award (the Reengineering Forum award).
- In 1972, his students published “Sedimentation: Symposium to Honor Professor H.A. Einstein” in recognition of his work in hydraulic engineering.
- To honor those who have made significant strides in the fields of erosion management, sedimentation, and canal development, the American Society of Civil Engineers created the “Hans Albert Einstein Award” in 1988.
