My Friend,Albert Einstein

I was in awe of Einstein，and hesitated before approaching him about some ideas I had been working on. When I finally knocked on his door，a gentle voice said，“Come”—with a rising inflection that made the single word both a welcome and a question. I entered his office and found him seated at a table，calculating and smoking his pipe. Dressed in ill-fitting clothes，his hair characteristically awry，he smiled a warm welcome. His utter naturalness at once set me at ease.

Collaborating with Einstein was an unforgettable experience. In 1937，the Polish physicist Leopold Infeld and I asked if we could work with him. He was pleased with the proposal，since he had an idea about gravitation waiting to be worked out in detail. Thus we got to know not merely the man and the friend，but also the professional.

The intensity and depth of his concentration were fantastic. When battling a recalcitrant problem，he worried it as an animal worries its prey. Often，when we found ourselves up against a seemingly insuperable difficulty，he would stand up，put his pipe on the table，and say in his quaint English，“I will a little tink”(he could not pronounce“th”)。Then he would pace up and down，twirling a lock of his long，graying hair around his fore-finger.

A dreamy，faraway and yet inward look would come over his face. There was no appearance of concentration，no furrowing of the brow——only a placid inner communion. The minutes would pass，and then suddenly Einstein would stop pacing as his face relaxed into a gentle smile. He had found the solution to the problem. Sometimes it was so simple that Infeld and I could have kicked ourselves for not having thought of it. But the magic had been performed invisibly in the depths of Einstein‘s mind，by a process we could not fathom.