The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time (3 page)

Jesus’ mission was one of tolerance and peace. Whether or not he was divine must of course be viewed as a matter of faith. Jews and Muslims believe that no man can be divine. Only God is God. The Pauline assertion that Jesus was the Messiah and the later declaration by the Nicene Council in the fourth century that he was godly have divided Jews, Christians, and Muslims from much common ground.

Jesus most likely saw himself a part of a long line of Jewish prophets, teachers, and holy men. He surely would have found comfort in the transformation of so many disparate peoples the world over into monotheistic observers daily seeking the guidance of what are essentially Judaic visions and insights.

T
he most influential person of modern times was the German-born physicist Albert Einstein. Moses, the lawgiver, defined the Jewish people and, in essence, established civilization. Jesus of Nazareth exposed countless millions to a faith beyond themselves. At the dawn of the first technological century, Einstein revealed the inexhaustible power of matter. His famous equation,
E = mc
²
,
became synonymous with the concept that energy and mass are equivalent. His theories, expressed in elegant formulas and eloquent prose, are highly complex, and were, when first uttered, wholly revolutionary and controversial.
Unlike the ideas of Sir Isaac Newton, which are relatively easy to understand, Einstein’s theories are very difficult. Einstein felt, however, that any student who had been through basic physics could understand his special theory of relativity.

His life is forever linked with three of the defining events of the twentieth century—the eruption of Nazi hate and terror, the rise of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, and the development of nuclear weapons and power. The juxtaposition of mankind’s most destructive and most creative tendencies made the 1900s and much of Einstein’s life a period of torment and exaltation, blackest night and blinding light. Einstein is important not only for his scientific accomplishments (and he did alter accepted norms), but also for his involvement in the dynamic social events of his time.

Einstein was born in the small town of Ulm in Bavaria. His father was an unsuccessful owner of an electrochemical concern. The family moved frequently during Einstein’s youth to accommodate his father’s repeated attempts to improve business. The young Einstein was apparently slow to talk. He attributed his failure to mature as the prime reason behind a wholly original view of the world. Albert had a secular education, attending Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich and developing a lifelong repugnance for rigid, Teutonic authority and inflexible thinking. For him, militarism had no place in a free community of ideas.

After his family moved to Italy, Einstein followed. Repulsed by the increase of German nationalism, he renounced his citizenship. A stateless person, Einstein moved to Switzerland, eager to study at the famed Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. Rejected on his first application (the headmaster acknowledged his superiority in mathematics and science, but noted decided weakness in other subjects), Einstein, the most brilliant person after Newton, spent a year in preparatory school in a small Swiss village. Only in 1896 was he accepted at the institute. After graduation in 1900, Einstein, having become a Swiss citizen and unable to secure a teaching post at the institute, accepted a post as a patent clerk in Berne.

His work in the patent office as a civil servant provided free time to pursue his research. His coworkers marveled how Einstein in one hour could accomplish as much as the average worker in a full day. In 1905, Einstein had published in the
Annalen der Physik,
a prominent scientific journal of the day, three extraordinary papers. The first quantified the so-called Brownian motion of molecules (affecting the future of scientific methods of measurement). The second paper concerned the “photo-electric effect,” which was to lay the theoretical foundation for the later invention of television. His third subject, a “special theory of relativity,” would change the way we view the world.

Einstein postulated that physical laws do not change when observers move in relation to one another. His conception of the relativity of motion proved that space and time are not absolute, but are affected by the relationships of movement and mass.

His first paper on relativity did not contain his famous equation.
E = mc2
appeared, almost as an afterthought, in a supplementary paper Einstein submitted the summer after the special relativity theory first appeared. After altering conventional explanations of the physical world, Einstein took the next logical (for him) step. He examined the differences between mass at rest and mass in motion, and the consequences of transforming matter into pure energy. Forty years before Hiroshima, Einstein had revealed the core of energy beneath all material bodies.

Einstein at blackboard.

Einstein did not, like Bohr, Fermi, Szilard, Oppenheimer, and Teller, involve himself directly in researching nuclear fission. Their work and that of others just “proved his point.”

Einstein’s first theory had changed the way the world was viewed and also displayed how little mankind knew. Picasso’s cubism, Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness writing, and Schoenberg’s atomization of harmony and melody occurred at about the same time, paralleling aesthetically Einstein’s radiant discovery.

After the publication of the paper on special relativity, Einstein taught briefly at the universities in Zurich and Prague, returning to teach at the Polytechnic Institute in 1912. On the recommendation of the distinguished German physicist Max Planck, Einstein was named professor at the Prussian Academy in Berlin. While remaining a Swiss, Einstein resumed his German citizenship (he would renounce it again when the Nazis seized power). During the First World War, he was one of only a few notable pacifists in a jingoistic Germany. Amid the fires of death and trench warfare, Einstein announced in 1916 his general theory of relativity. This theory applied relativity to all movement, uniform and irregular. He noted the relationships of gravitational fields with large masses. Applying non-Euclidean geometry to concepts of four-dimensional space, Einstein was the first to note that the light of the heavens was “bent” by the gravity of the sun.

When his theory of the “curvature of light” was proven by scientists observing a solar eclipse in 1919, Einstein became world-famous almost overnight. Although his modest temperament was ill suited for fame, Einstein used his notoriety for worthwhile goals. A celebrated symbol of a new scientific age after the ravages of world war, Einstein preached for peace on behalf of the League of Nations, urged the use of science to benefit, not destroy, mankind, and on the urging of Chaim Weizmann, ardently supported Zionist goals.

During the 1920s, while the importance of his scientific activities diminished, Einstein’s celebrity grew. He encouraged other younger scientists to discover practical applications of his theories. His public debates with Niels Bohr raised the awareness of what was again, albeit only for a short time before the Nazis, an international scientific community.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, Einstein resigned his professorship in Berlin and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He never returned to Germany, and became an American citizen.

Recognizing the German nuclear threat and encouraged by Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a now-famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt noting the need for intensive atomic research. Einstein’s letter is widely credited with inspiring America’s secret development of the atomic bomb, which led, of course, to the end of the war with Japan and the modern age. Einstein later voiced his opposition to the use of the bomb. During the 1950s he also vigorously opposed the totalitarian tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, advising scientists not to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Before he died in 1955, Einstein was hard at work on a “unified field theory.” He had hoped to explain in one thought the interplay of gravity and electro-magnetic theory. His work on a unified theory has been continued by scientists such as Stephen Hawking and others.

More than any other scientist, Einstein ushered in our science-driven world. No other person so represents the power and importance of scientific accomplishment. Although nations still remain obsessed with grabbing as much power as possible, their peoples consider scientific progress the swiftest route to their own material well-being. Einstein’s great influence lies not only in his path breaking theories, but also in his spiritual example. He reportedly noted that God does not play dice. There must be a purpose under Heaven. Future generations will do well to remember Einstein’s warning that scientists should not lose their souls in a coldly logical quest, but serve the interests of humanity.

I
n any list of the most influential Jews of not only recent history but of all time, Sigmund Freud must rank near the top. Freud was (in Paul Johnson’s words in
A History of the Jews)
“the greatest of all Jewish innovators.” There is much truth to Johnson’s characterization. Freud’s colleague and personal propagandist Ernest Jones (in his three-volume biography of the Viennese psychoanalyst) also noted the huge influence the founder of psychoanalysis had on many fields. To name but a few, Jones identified Freud’s impact on clinical psychiatry, biology, anthropology, sociology, religion, the occult, art, literature, psychology, education, and criminology. There are few figures in history that have had so wide (and controversial) an effect.

Freud is commonly known as the father of psychoanalytic theory and practice. He was not the first psychologist, yet he is the first person people discuss when they think about the diseases of the mind. Many of his theories were attacked when first introduced, and many are still disputed, others derided as imaginative but useless. Freud’s importance rests securely, however, in the quality of his thought, not just for the provocative nature of many of his theories. His ideas changed the way people think about the unconscious. Before him, most people thought hysteria was caused by demons.

Because of Freud, people are now more understanding about mental illness. Prior to his discoveries, the mentally ill were thrown into insane asylums without hope of recovery. Despite lingering prejudice (and fear), many recognize psychological disorders today as simply another sickness, curable through therapy. Selecting the correct method of therapy has stirred the greatest controversy. Many scientists have questioned the medical basis of Freud’s theories. They are uncomfortable both with his psychoanalytic methods (which often take a long time to work) and with Freud’s basic assumptions. Still, his ideas continue to work their influence.

Freud was born in the town of Freiberg, Moravia, then a district of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His earliest memories were of a prosperous home. When Sigmund was four years old, however, his father lost his wool merchant business and the family moved to Vienna and into a period of great poverty. Freud would never forget the feelings of privation he suffered in his youth.