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History behind Einsteins love of his pipe.

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crazyhog

crazyhog

Starting to Get Obsessed
May 18, 2015
229
26
Hi, not sure if this has ever been posted before,but if not, it's an interesting article.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-albert-einstein-genius-theory-relativity-loved-pipe-180954991/

 
brian64

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,636
14,755
“I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs,” Einstein was once quoted as saying in 1950.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-albert-einstein-genius-theory-relativity-loved-pipe-180954991/
Click to expand...
Well, those were primitive times, so we'll have to excuse his silly notion.
If only he had a forum like this one, he would have been enlightened to his denial, and learned that it's only about the nicotine...all the rest is just imagination.
But then he was also quoted as saying, "Imagination is more important than knowledge".
Hmm...I'll have to ponder that over my next bowl...

 
brian64

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,636
14,755
I think the esteemed scientist would have acknowledged ... it's the nicotine.
Click to expand...
Yes, my point exactly.
If only he had known that, he could have just smoked cigarettes instead of wasting all of that time fooling around with his pipes and pipe tobacco.
Now in my case, it's in everyone's best interest that I waste as much time as possible, because, well, I'm no Einstein.
But if only he had more time, just imagine the problems he might have solved. He may have even come up with a solution to all of the nuclear waste we're accumulating.

 
mau1

mau1

Lifer
Jan 5, 2018
1,124
837
Ontario, Canada
How do you know he wasn't formulating all his brilliant theories while smoking his pipe?! That may have been critical to his thinking process!

 
mikethompson

mikethompson

Lifer
Jun 26, 2016
11,334
23,490
Near Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Now that is a well-loved pipe!
einsteinpipebigweb.jpg


 
F

frozenchurchwarden

Lifer
Mar 1, 2014
3,647
4,917
I think the esteemed scientist would have acknowledged ... it's the nicotine.
Click to expand...
You get Nicotine from Vulcanite?
“He enjoyed smoking,” Sherman says. “But at one point his doctor told him to give it up, so he did. But he didn’t give up on the pipes themselves and he would fairly often stick an empty one in his mouth and just chew on it.
Click to expand...

 
didimauw

didimauw

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 28, 2013
9,964
31,881
34
Burlington WI
Yes. Just like a friend of mine would bum cigarettes from me, and immediately rip the filter off. "The filter is what kills ya"

 
brian64

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,636
14,755
The sad consequences of his doctor's misguided demand that he give up pipe tobacco.
This story told by his grandson:
Einstein, eccentric genius, smoked butts picked up off street
His two prized possessions were his violin and his pipe, and his reliance on the latter "bordered on dependency". When forbidden from smoking by his doctor he would sneak out and collect cigarette "dog-ends" from the street to fill his pipe.

"It's a rather sad anecdote," said Peter Smith, the author of the biography Einstein.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/1502358/Einstein-eccentric-genius-smoked-butts-picked-up-off-street.html
Click to expand...

 
brian64

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,636
14,755
I loved this part of the article lol:
In the letter, filed away and forgotten for seven years, the grandson recalled receiving a baffling three-hour lecture from Einstein on the mathematical properties of soap bubbles. He was aged eight at the time. The lecture was delivered while the two were alone on a becalmed sailing boat. Einstein, his grandson recalled, deliberately went out sailing when there was no wind because he felt it was more challenging.
"While at Knollwood [in America] my grandfather and I frequently went sailing together," Mr Einstein told Françoise Wolff, a Belgian documentary maker, in the letter.
"He usually said very little to me during those outings but on one particular afternoon, one on which there was practically no wind, he became talkative.
"He liked the calm and claimed that calm was the highest challenge to the sailor. We went no further than about a kilometre in the three hours we were out. My grandfather talked continuously about soap bubbles, and of course in mathematical terms. I did not understand a word of what he said."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/1502358/Einstein-eccentric-genius-smoked-butts-picked-up-off-street.html
Click to expand...

 
brian64

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,636
14,755
It is true. You can tell who really knows how to sail a boat when the winds are light.
Click to expand...
Yeah that does make sense.
But what struck me about that excerpt is, can you imagine being an 8 year old, out on a calmly floating boat with Einstein...just the two of you...while he pontificates on the mathematical properties of soap bubbles? :rofl:
I'm sure the kid was never the same after that.

 
elbert

elbert

Part of the Furniture Now
Mar 10, 2015
604
28
Bertrand Russell had a similarly humorous anecdote. When he was a teen his family entertained his grandfather, William Ewart Gladstone. After dinner it was custom for the men to retire to a withdrawing room or study for drinks, smoke, and conversation. But as the boy was the only male of the family present, it fell to him to sit with the grand old lion of Parliament. After sitting for some time in silence, Gladstone sipped his drink and said to young Bertrand;
"This is excellent Port they have given me, but why have they given it me in a Claret glass?"

 
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