London, 1930, autumn, night. The great and the good were gathering in their natural habitat, the Savoy Hotel. The grand ballroom was a sea of formal evening wear: white ties, tails, and elegant gowns. Baron Rothschild hosted the event, a charity dinner to benefit the tide of Eastern European Jewish refugees, already at risk from an increasingly hostile Germany. George Bernard Shaw was the master of ceremonies, although he had argued beforehand that he was insufficiently distinguished to introduce the night’s guest of honor. That duty, Shaw said, should rightly go to Britain’s prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, but the P.M. was unavailable. In any event, the playwright gave a brilliant performance, the best brief explanation on record of why that night’s honoree remains the modern archetype of genius.
“Ptolemy,” Shaw said, “made a universe which lasted two thousand years. Newton made a universe which lasted for three hundred years. Einstein has made a universe, which I suppose you want me to say will never stop, but I don’t know how long it will last.”
Einstein laughed out loud, and the audience laughed with him. As was so often the case, Shaw’s wit had captured an essential truth. The latter two in his litany of greats had created scientific accounts that encompassed the entire cosmos. And Einstein himself was, Shaw concluded, “the greatest of our contemporaries.”
In response, Einstein tried to turn back the hype, gently chiding Shaw for praising his “mythical namesake, who makes life so difficult for me.” (Years later Einstein wrote that “the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.”)
