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Einstein Up in Smoke

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Abstract

Albert Einstein's biographers have not explained why he developed the abdominal aortic aneurysm that led to his death. Early conjectures proposed that it was caused by syphilis, without accurate evidence. The present article gives evidence to the contrary, and argues that the principal cause of Einstein’s death was smoking.

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References

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  2. Clarence Streit, “Einstein Evolving Yet Another Theory,” The New York Times, July 27, 1930.

  3. “Dr. Einstein Consults California Physicists,” The New York Times, January 4, 1931.

  4. Peter Plesch and János Plesch, “Some Reminiscences of Albert Einstein,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 49 (1995), 320.

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  10. Brian, Einstein: A Life (ref. 5), 265.

  11. Quoted in Leonard Lyons, “Einstein Has Pipes, but Won’t Smoke,” The Austin Statesman, September 9, 1947, 4.

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  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid., 328n15.

  17. Jamie Sayen, Einstein in America (New York: Crown, 1985), 222.

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  21. Quoted in Pais, Subtle is the Lord (ref. 5), 477.

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  35. J. T. Powell, P. Worrell, S. T. MacSweeney, P. J. Franks, and R. M. Greenhaigh, “Smoking as a Risk Factor for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 800 (1996), 246–8, on 247.

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  38. Albert Einstein, letter to John Cranston, May 16, 1951, reprinted in Albert Einstein, Einstein on Peace, ed. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 556.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Prof. Alberto A. Martínez and Prof. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare for helpful suggestions and encouragement in writing this article.

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  1. Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, 128 Inner Campus Dr., B7000, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    John Lisle

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Correspondence to John Lisle.

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John Lisle is a graduate student in the history department of the University of Texas at Austin.

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Lisle, J. Einstein Up in Smoke. Phys. Perspect. 17, 354–360 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-015-0171-y

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