Einstein, Albert. (1879 - 1955)
Original 1931 Spurr Photograph
Striking original gelatin silver photograph by E. Willard Spurr, signed and dated by the photographer lower left Feb. 1931 in black ink with his copyright notice. The print itself measures 14 x 17 inches and is in very fine condition.In the winter of 1931, Einstein was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and this was signed during his six-week visit to the school. He was attracted by the research being done there, particularly at the Mount Wilson observatory - which housed the world's largest telescope at the time - and the theoretical processing of its astronomical discoveries. "The work of your wonderful observatory," Einstein said, had "led to a dynamic concept of the spatial structure of the universe, for which [Richard Chace] Tolman's work has provided an original and exceedingly clear theoretical expression." (Einstein, as quoted in Albrecht Folsing's Albert Einstein: A Biography, p. 638) During his time in Pasadena, Einstein attended various lectures in astronomy and astrophysics and himself delivered a lecture on his Unified Field Theory, which he had been working on since 1915. He would emigrate permanently to the United States in 1933.
The photographer, Ervin Willard Spurr, was born in 1869 New York and grew up in Iowa, where he established his reputation as a photographer, before moving his studio to Pasadena. Our photograph was obtained from a private CA collector who acquired it directly from the estate of the photographer's son, Melbourne Irving Spurr (1888 - 1964). A smaller portrait made at the same sitting as this one is in the Science Photo Library at the U.S. Library of Congress. (10954)
Unsigned Photo Science & Technology