(417) ABRAHAM FLEXNER & ALBERT EINSTEIN

Abraham Flexner, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, spent the early part of his career exposing fraudulent medical schools. Throughout the United States, there were a lot of medical schools who did nothing except collect tuition and issue medical doctorates. On many occasions, he would visit a school and find there were no classes in session, no scheduling, and virtually no one on the staff. These schools were, indeed, diploma mills. He gained a modicum of fame in the legitimate medical community because he exposed the fraud that was prevalent in the medical-school community. I am sorry that all that has disappeared because I would like to buy a medical degree.

Someplace along the line, a family that had a huge retail department store sold out and approached Flexner about establishing a medical school on the East Coast. Flexner did his homework and advised the family that there were already enough fine medical schools on the East Coast, and he suggested setting up the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. This Institute did not confer doctorates–instead, it offered the great thinkers of the day a place where they could come and, at their leisure, think, discuss, and study the great theoretical ideas of the 20th Century. The first person hired by Abraham Flexner was Albert Einstein, who was an outspoken critic of the War.


Although he loved the city of Princeton, Einstein was amused by the local society and, in a letter, described Princeton as a, “quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods strutting on stiff legs.” As an advocate of peace, he openly criticized Germany. Flexner believed that Einstein’s statements could set off an anti-Semitic wave in the United States. In order to protect the Institute from adverse publicity, he had the annoying habit of opening Einstein’s mail and turning down invitations to speak without Einstein’s knowledge. One such denial was shipped to President Roosevelt. When Einstein found that he had rejected an opportunity to meet with Roosevelt, he called Eleanor Roosevelt and communicated his willingness to visit with the President. That caused another invitation to be sent, and he visited the White House on January 24, 1934.

There was a group of nutcases known as the Woman Patriotic Corporation, who were strong advocates of war. They falsely accused Einstein of attending the World Anti-War Congress in Amsterdam in 1932. Einstein was not in attendance, but, as usual, the lie got legs, and J. Edgar Hoover put a letter from the Woman Patriotic Corporation in Einstein’s file and labeled him an extreme radical. As a result, Einstein was excluded from the Manhattan Project. It is unknown whether he would have participated had he been invited. Since he was excluded from the Manhattan Project, Albert Einstein went to work at $25 per day as a consultant to the United States Navy Bureau of Ordinance. He worked on ideas for detonating torpedoes more effectively.

After the Special Theory of Relativity was published, he threw away the original copy. However, to raise money for war bonds, he hand-wrote another copy, which was purchased by an insurance company and donated to the Library of Congress. At an auction, the insurance company paid $6.5 million for the hand-written copy of the Special Theory of Relativity.

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Respectfully submitted,
Donald M. Heavrin,
An observer in the Garden of Life