Einstein: In His Own Voice

Listen to this selected archival audio of Albert Einstein from his public speeches and interviews from 1930-1950.

Track List

1. Albert Einstein on Jewish Community (1930, in German) Albert Einstein speaks at the Joint British Committee ORT-OZE dinner in London to a room of his contemporaries, including Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, on the importance of moral traditions for the Jewish people.

2. Speech at the Royal Albert Hall, London (Oct. 3, 1933) Einstein lauds other great thinkers of the Western canon while speaking at a mass rally for the Refugee Assistance Fund for academics who were persecuted under the Nazis.

3. I'm an American (Jun. 22, 1940) At the time of this speech, the United States had not yet joined WWII, though Europe was engulfed. Einstein reflects on the responsibilities of science and democratic freedom in wartime.

4. The Common Language of Science (Oct. 2, 1941) "If language is to lead at all to understanding, there must be rules concerning the relations between the science on the one hand, and on the other hand there must be a stable correspondence between science and impressions." This reading was broadcast by the BBC.

5. The Post-War World (Dec. 10, 1945) Responding to the presentation of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics (awarded to Wolfgang Pauli), Einstein links the achievements of Alfred Nobel to the inventors of the atomic bomb deployed in Hiroshima that summer.

6. On E=mc2 (1947) This is an excerpt of Atomic Physics — an educational film series.

7. On Gandhi (1950) "We should strive to do things in his spirit, not to use violence..."