Einstein, and Einstein's Cousin, at Veblen House and Cottage

It was an honor and a joy to welcome a cousin of Einstein's, Karen Carlson, and her husband Don Johnson to Herrontown Woods on Jan. 15. Growing up in Illinois, Karen didn't find out that she was related to Einstein until she was 18. Her mother, whose escape from Nazi Germany in 1939 was sponsored by Einstein, had wanted to protect Karen from anti-semitism. Now retired, Karen and her husband have traveled to 14 countries to trace her family's history. She is on the advisory board for the Princeton Einstein Museum of Science. 

Elizabeth Romanaux, who leads the museum initiative, was the one who suggested Karen visit Herrontown Woods, given that Einstein was a close friend of Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen, and often came to visit. 

While in town, Karen gave several talks, including one at the Princeton Public Library entitled "How Albert Einstein Saved My Family and Why History Matters." To a full house, Karen told her story of growing up unaware of her her family's jewish heritage, and her mission in recent years to reconnect with relatives in her mother's native Ulm and elsewhere.

While we showed her and Don the Veblen House and Cottage grounds, there was a chance to also learn something of Don's life. When he was a child in Honduras, his mother moved to the U.S. in search of a better life. She found it in NY City, then arranged for Don and his two siblings to join her when he was 14. He later sang in rhythm and blues bands for awhile, and remembers reading books by Oswald Veblen's uncle Thorstein as part of his studies of sociology at UMass in Amherst. During that time, he went south to cover some of the race demonstrations in the 1960s, then pursued a career in journalism. Don first knew of Einstein not as a mathematician or physicist but as a folk hero in NY in the 1950s. He remembered the fascination people felt for Einstein's combination of genius and unassuming informality, captured thirty years prior in a description in the NY Times during Einstein's first visit to America in 1921. 

“A man in a faded gray raincoat and a flopping black hat that nearly concealed the gray hair that straggled over his ears stood on the boat deck of the steamship Rotterdam yesterday, timidly facing a battery of cameramen. In one hand he clutched a shiny briar pipe and with the other clung to a precious violin. He looked like an artist — a musician. He was.”

In 2018, a feature article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, The Power of Small Numbers, gave a similar description of Oswald Veblen's attire: 

Tall and lanky, he had the furtive vanity typical of a mathematician, dressing in handsome but deliberately shabby suits. One of his colleagues, Hermann Goldstine, recalled, “We always had a theory with Veblen that after he bought a new jacket and pants he would hire somebody to wear them for a few years so that they wouldn’t look new when he put them on.”

Karen and Don enjoyed our "Inside Out Museum" that tells the story of the Veblens' legacy on the outside walls of the house. 

Einstein had multiple reasons to visit Veblen House and Cottage. First was close professional ties. Oswald was the first faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein the second. Veblen designed the building, Old Fine Hall, where Einstein had his first office after moving to Princeton in 1933. Oswald Veblen's vision and tireless effort proved instrumental in Einstein's decision to move to Princeton. 

After Elizabeth Veblen died in 1974, long after Oswald and Einstein had passed away, a list of household items to be auctioned off included "trunks of Einstein" -- left in the attic of Veblen House for storage.

At the Veblens', Einstein would also have found an opportunity to speak his native German. The longtime caretaker, Max Latterman, was a German immigrant. 

Rebecca Martin tells the story of her ancestors once living in the Veblen Cottage, further into the woods from the House, and having Einstein come by.

"My grandmother lived in the farm cottage along with her parents and siblings during the 1930s. There's a story about Albert Einstein walking through the woods around the house and speaking to my great grandmother, who would feed him a sandwich and talk with him. She spoke German, so I'm guessing that if this story is true, he probably appreciated communicating with someone in his native language."

Veblen later used the Cottage as a study and getaway, and sometimes Einstein would join him. Both Karen and Don spoke of the peacefulness of the site, and Karen said it seemed the sort of place she could come to write her book. Given that Einstein's sponsorship saved the lives of her and her family, she is naming the book Einstein's Gift. 

We showed Karen and Don a chessboard, found in the Veblen Cottage back in the late 1960s and recently donated to the Friends of Herrontown Woods. It may well be a board used by Einstein and Veblen to play chess on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Herrontown Woods, long ago.

An "Einstein's Begonia" Musical Debut

On the afternoon of September 7, the line of fans extended out the door as I smuggled the star of the show into the Princeton Public Library's community room for the debut of a musical called "Einstein's Begonia." I imagined outstretched hands clamoring for a piece of the coveted house plant that traced its lineage back to the begonia Einstein had left behind after he died in 1955. Fortunately, this most special of angelwing begonias made it to the stage unscathed, to pose ever so patiently while singer/songwriter Rebecca Pronsky led her 7 piece group through a progression of witty and moving songs about a leafy piece of Einstein's legacy. The Friends of Herrontown Woods had suggested the library host the show, and co-sponsored the event. 

How many musicals have a plant as the main character? And in this case, the plant isn't out to do damage, like in Little Shop of Horrors. Rather, this begonia is lonely, trying to understand where it came from and where it's going, now that the beloved man it thought of as a father is gone.

The musical began its life as a song cycle, ostensibly about a plant with provenance, yet the lyrics touch upon feelings deep within us. Behind a plant's facade of static green, Rebecca finds a dynamic world of growth and longing. In Am I You?, there's the deep desire to belong, to be a part of something greater than ourselves, to find one's true home. Sessile Vessel is a saucy number about just how dynamic a plant can be while stuck in the ground. Only a Plant first explores the downside of being stuck in a pot, then morphs into a rant about cooking and consumption from a plant's perspective. Particularly clever is another song's lyric, "everyone wants a piece of me," referring to the way cuttings of the stem are used to propagate this popular house plant.

As someone who works with plants, I've long felt that the plant world is the physical manifestation of our inner world. There's a point where we stop growing physically, and yet we continue to grow inside--spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. A tree does that for all to see, from the day it sprouts to the day it dies, each year extending its roots and branches, adding a new flush of leaves, building on what it was before.

Though the lyrics have a lot of word play and references to high intellect, the musical never loses its connection to gut feeling. The song Relativity embeds human emotion in the language of physics. Einstein's Constant becomes a song about the need we all have for stability and support as we seek to grow. In Hybrid, Einstein's Begonia finds through her origins a liberating way forward. 

The story of how Brooklyn-based Rebecca Pronsky and scriptwriter Alexis Roblan brought the show to Princeton is worth telling. Rebecca and I each separately learned of the existence of Einstein begonias in 2021. My first encounter with the plant and the lineage behind it came in an email from the Princeton Public Library's Kim Dorman. Since I blog about nature and Einstein-related history, she wondered if I might be able to track down an Einstein begonia for a friend of hers. Never having heard of an Einstein begonia, I began looking online to find out more. Turned out it was a thing. When Einstein died, he left behind an extraordinary legacy of course, but also an angelwing begonia that his secretary, Helen Dukas, proceeded to make cuttings of to give to friends, many of whom were mathematicians and physicists. Cuttings of the begonia then spread from home to home, office to office, in Princeton and beyond. Via the internet, I found a friend who had an Einstein begonia, Vicky Bergman, whose husband was a physicist. She gave me some cuttings to give to Kim’s friend. I posted about all of this on my blog, and started getting thousands of page views. One of the comments was from Rebecca, who said she was composing a musical about the plant.

Rebecca told me how she first encountered an Einstein begonia:

My story is actually that just after my father passed away, I went to visit his 90 year old cousins in Cranford, NJ and we were taking a walk in their garden when they pointed out a plant and said “and that’s Einstein’s Begonia.” They told me what they knew about it but I had so many more questions. Still I was immediately inspired to write from the point of view of the plant losing it’s “father,” since I was going through something similar and I had a lot of experience with plants. It was instantly clear to me that this would be my next project. I was looking for info on it to begin drafting the plot of the show and came upon your post, so that’s how I think we were initially connected!

To convert a song cycle into a full blown musical, Rebecca and Alexis wanted to learn as much as they could about the route the begonia took from Einstein's home out into the community. I was able to track down the origin story thanks to Norma Smith, whose husband also is a physicist, and Rebecca mapped out lineage. The Princeton Alumni Weekly took an interest and wrote an article about Norma, Rebecca, and the begonia. I guess you can say we recovered a story that might otherwise have been lost, and Rebecca has used it to create a new story. 

What began as a librarian's email to me about Einstein begonias led four years later to a performance of Einstein's Begonia at the Princeton Public Library. Janie Hermann, curator of events at the library and in the photo below, coordinated all the aspects, from the sound system to managing the waitlist for the sold-out show.

EINSTEIN’S BEGONIA was named a semifinalist in the 2025 O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference. The performance at the library was a reading of a work in progress. The next step for Rebecca and Alexis is applying for musical theatre development and reading opportunities. A return to Princeton for PiDay has been discussed, but nothing confirmed as yet. In the meantime, read more about the show and listen to the songs here.

Photos by Inge Regan and Janie Hermann

How Sailing Helped Hatch Yerkes Observatory's 41" Telescope

Exploration of Veblen House history got me interested in the history of my father and his colleagues in physics and astronomy, which includes some Nobel Peace Prize winners and pioneering women:

There are two scientists named Albert that I know of who loved to sail. One was Albert Einstein, who discovered his now legendary love for sailing at the age of 18 in Switzerland, around the time he was hatching his revolutionary theories of the universe.

The other was my father, astronomer W. Albert Hiltner, whose love of sailing grew during his years at Yerkes Observatory, just up the hill from beautiful Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. Neither Albert was discouraged by an inability to swim, though my father at least wore a life jacket, and finally learned to swim at age 60. While my father took to racing sailboats later in life, Einstein actually savored the lulls, when he could pull out his notebook and jot down ideas, or, as described in one article, listen "to the gentle waves endlessly lapping against the side of the boat".

And there are two telescopes I know of that came into being through a mutual love of sailing. Thanks to retired astronomer Adolf Witt, we now know the story. The two telescopes are twins, separated at birth. One resides in the south dome at the world-famous Yerkes Observatory, known as the birthplace of astrophysics, the other at the University of Toledo in Ohio. 

The idea for their creation likely came when my father was visiting colleague John Turin to sail on Lake Erie. Both had gotten their PhD's at the University of Michigan, with my father going on to become director of Yerkes Observatory. John Turin became chair of physics and astronomy at UT. 

What made the two telescopes special was the material used to make the mirrors. Ordinary glass can expand or contract, depending on the temperature inside the observatory's dome. But Owens Illinois in Toledo came up with a glass-ceramic material called CERVIT that could be ground to a precise shape like regular glass, but would not warp as the temperature changed. This zero-expansion quality allowed the telescopes to capture more precise images in the heat of summer and cold of winter.

My father combined a passion for astronomical research with a drive to improve the instrumentation available for astronomers. This played out in the 1960s when he installed two new telescopes at Yerkes and updated the famous 40" refractor in the big dome. In the '60s and '70s, he worked to build new telescopes at Kitt Peak in Arizona and Cerro Tololo in northern Chile.

In the 1980s, after retiring from the University of Michigan, he became project manager at CalTech for the design of two 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes--twins that now live together in a building on top of Las Campanas in Chile. The 6.5 meters refers to the width of the mirror.

For astronomy afficionados, I include Adolf Witt's full telling of the story of the twin 41" reflecting telescopes below. Full disclosure: they are actually 40" reflectors, but are nicknamed 41" to avoid confusion with the famed 40" refracting telescope at Yerkes.

Googling physicists who love sailing brings up Einstein, of course, but also a Nobel Prize-winning physicist by the name of Anton Zeilinger. In an interview, he describes his love of sailing this way:

"It’s the answer to life, the universe and everything. You go there and you sail and you are happy and everything is fine. Sailing is very special. I was thinking about why sailing is so special for me. It’s probably because when you sail, you are completely occupied by that activity. Both your mind and your body. You have no time to worry about anything else. You are completely immersed in something. That’s it."

Total immersion--mental and physical--is certainly a big part of sailing's appeal. One is continuously responding to the wind, coordinating tiller and sail while keeping an eye on the weather and anticipating what's up ahead. What I love, too, is how sailing requires collaborating with nature, not seeking to dominate but instead accepting and working with what the elements offer on that day in that moment. Both sailing and observing required a keen awareness of the elements. Was it a good day to hike down to the lake for a sail? Would my father later head up to the observatory to observe that night? The answer was always above us, in the play of wind in the tops of the trees, or the clarity of the sky. At Yerkes in the 1950s and '60s, my father would catch the wind in a sail on Lake Geneva to move the boat forward, then stay up all night catching light in a telescope to move astronomy forward. He could not control the elements, but made the best of what wind and light came his way.

The interview with Anton Zeilinger also touches on randomness, which Zeilinger says is "a very nice feature of the universe." Funny, then, to find an old family photo with my father standing behind the stripped down remains of the C-Scow we sailed for many years, named "Random." Each spring, there'd be the wonderful smells of sanded cedar and varnish as the boat was prepped for another year, until the leaks and the rot made it better fit for one last journey to join the Homecoming bonfire.

One other thing about John Turin and sailing. After he died prematurely of an illness in 1973, his wife Sybil became a leader in helping women become part of the sailing world. As this Toledo Blade article describes,

If there is a glass ceiling in the business world, then there was a taut piece of canvas stretched across much of the sailing world. It kept women out of some clubs and made it difficult for them to take part in competitive racing in others.

 Sybil Turin helped change that. 

For anyone curious about Yerkes Observatory in the 1960s, wants to learn more about the twin 41" telescopes, or read about Sybil's breaking of barriers for women in sailing, click on "read more," below. 

Einstein, Veblen, and Einstein Begonias--Upcoming Events at the Library

The first week of September, 2025, the Friends of Herrontown Woods will be co-sponsoring two events at the Princeton Public Library related to Albert Einstein and Oswald Veblen. One is a talk entitled "How Oswald Veblen Quietly Created Einstein's Princeton." The other is a performance of songs from a new musical called "Einstein's Begonia." The presentation is on Thursday, Sept. 4 at 7pm and the musical is Sunday, Sept. 7 at 3pm. The two events are featured in an article in the Town Topics. 

"How Oswald Veblen Quietly Created Einstein's Princeton" -- Sept. 4, 7pm

This photo from 1921, found in the Veblen House after Elizabeth Veblen passed in 1974, captures the budding friendship between Einstein and Veblen as they walked on Princeton University campus, the day Einstein arrived to receive an honorary degree and deliver a week of lectures on his theory of relativity. 

Most if not all biographies of Einstein barely mention Oswald Veblen, and yet since 1905 Veblen--mathematician, visionary, humanitarian--had been working quietly, behind the scenes, to lift up American mathematics and scholarship generally. The features that drew Einstein to Princeton--its first rate math department, the new Institute for Advanced Study, the marvelous facilities at the original Fine Hall--were to a considerable extent shaped by Veblen's vision and efforts.

We're so fortunate to have historian Cindy Srnka assisting with this presentation. She discovered Veblen while doing research for the history/nature walks she leads at the Institute Woods for the Historical Society of Princeton. It was Veblen who persuaded the IAS to acquire the 700 acres of open space now known as the Institute Woods, back in the 1930s and 40s.

Einstein's Begonia -- a Musical

When Albert Einstein died in 1955, among the items he left behind, along with the theory of relativity and other great discoveries, was a beloved angel wing begonia. Einstein's secretary began making cuttings of the plant to distribute to Einstein's physics and math friends. 

The offspring of that one plant have since spread near and far. Prompted by Kim Dorman of the public library, I tracked one down and published my research and impressions in a couple blogposts that attracted considerable attention on the web. One day, Rebecca Pronsky contacted me. Not only did she have an Einstein begonia, she was also well along in writing a musical about it. How many musicals are written about a plant? 

She sent me recordings of the wonderful songs she had written for the musical, and I put her in touch with the Princeton Public Library to arrange a performance. That performance will be on Sept. 7, from 3-4:30. 

The Emanns and Einstein at the Cottage

There are many stories about the Veblen House and Cottage that have yet to be written up on this blog. Blame it on the sheer pleasure of pursuing history on the internet. We could call it "history bathing"--a form of immersion not unlike forest bathing. It also reminds me of fishing, in that one casts different "baits", e.g. Oswald Veblen or JP Whiton Stuart, into the richly stocked waters of the web, then starts landing lunker after lunker. The sheer joy of making connections and finding meaning in lives made more profound by time is enough to satisfy. To forge the catch into narrative for others to read has pleasure, too, but any attempt to overcome entropy involves effort.

Still, I feel remiss to discover that it has been almost nine years since an email came out of the blue from a woman named Rebecca Martin. She was researching her ancestors, one of whom she had discovered had rented the cottage from 1933 to 1937. 

"My grandmother," she explained,  "lived in the farm house along with her parents and siblings during the 1930s. There's a story about Albert Einstein walking through the woods around the house and speaking to my great grandmother, who would feed him a sandwich and talk with him. She spoke German, so I'm guessing that if this story is true, he probably appreciated communicating with someone in his native language."

She later told me that her grandparents' names were Harry C. Emann and Claire M. Emann. The farmhouse she refers to is what we now call the Veblen Cottage. Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen bought the farmhouse and farm in 1936, apparently from the bank. According to Rebecca's timeline, the Emanns moved out the following year.

Reading Rebecca's email more closely, I realize that it was the great grandmother, not the grandmother Claire, who spoke in German with Einstein. The assumption has always been that the Veblens bought the cottage and farm, and would then have their friend Einstein come out to visit. But if Einstein's friendship with the great grandmother preceded the Veblens' purchase of the property, might it have been Einstein who told the Veblens about the place, which back then was out in the country, far off on the other side of town from where the Veblens lived on Battle Road? And might the great grandmother also have known Max Latterman, who by then was likely working for the Whiton-Stuarts next door, tending to their many horses? Max, too, was a German immigrant, who would continue caring for the property, and the farmhouse as well, after the Veblens bought the Whiton-Stuart's house and land in 1941. 

What we have, then, is the apparent connection between three German immigrants--Einstein, Claire Emann's mother, and Max Latterman--that may have influenced the beginnings of what is now Herrontown Woods. 

Toss the grandmother Clair's name into the waters of the internet and "Find a Grave" tells you her full name was Claire Magdelina McClure Emann, and that she was born October 23, 1906 and is buried in Fountain Lawn Memorial Park in Ewing. A 1998 article in Town Topics tells a bit about her life and family:

Claire Emann, 82, of Longwood, Fla., formerly of Princeton, died December 19 in a nursing home in Longwood Born in Trenton, she lived in Princeton most of her life before moving to Longwood 10 years ago. She was employed by Educational Testing Service, retiring as a supervisor after 20 years of service. Wife of the late Harry Emann, she is survived by three sons. William of Kingston, Walter of Princeton and John Emann of Flemington; two daughters. Ruth Rowley of Longwood, Fla , and Marion Martin of Orlando. Fla.; 19 grandchildren and 17 greatgrandchildren.

The Historical Society of Princeton's staff did some helpful research, finding the Emanns living (apparently renting) on Herrontown Road in 1936. We had hoped a historical address would be found, but the address was "RD" for Rural Delivery. 

Rebecca wrote to me in 2014 about how she feels about the farmhouse her ancestors called home: "It would indeed be a shame to lose it. I was able to visit that house in the spring ten years ago. It was boarded up and falling apart even then. It's too bad more people aren't interested in preserving it."

Well, nine years of persistence later, we do have more people interested in preserving it. FOHW's architects have carefully measured the cottage and with a structural engineer are developing designs for stabilizing it. We've been keeping the structure dry with tarps. Architectural drawings are helping us consider options for repurposing the farmhouse, whose farm so many years later is now a forest.

The Origin Story of the Einstein Begonia

An unexpected vein of Veblen-related research began with an email from a friend at the Princeton Public Library asking me to assist in finding a descendent of Einstein's begonia. Einstein had a begonia he was fond of, and after he died his secretary gave cuttings to physicist friends in Princeton. With a little help from the internet, I was able to learn the story of how cuttings from Einstein's begonia have lived on long after his passing in 1955. A friend also gave me some cuttings, two of which I passed on to people involved in creating an Einstein museum in Princeton. 

I thought I was done with my work until a Canadian film director named Charlie Tyrell contacted me. He's making a movie called "Show Me the Past is Real," exploring "the emotional power that objects have over us personally and collectively," and would like to find the actual plant--the "mother plant"--that Einstein himself owned. (One of the creative and moving documentaries that Charlie has done, by the way, is called Broken Orchestra, about a citizen movement to get Philadelphia to restore funding for music in the schools. Watching it is eleven minutes well spent.)

The search for the "mother plant" led me back to my friend Vicki who had supplied me with cuttings, to see if she knew the progression of owners through whom her plants had come. She said she'd contact her source. 

For a long time, I heard nothing, and then came an email out of the blue from Norma Smith. 

Dear Steve,

My husband and I were walking in the Herrontown Woods near the Veblen house and met you last year, I believe. 

My husband AJStewart Smith (83) is a retired professor from the physics department at Princeton University. I was and remain friends with many of the retired physics faculty members and their spouses. The story of the Einstein begonia is as follows: 

Mrs. Joan (pronounced Joann) Treiman, the wife of Sam Treiman, a theorist who was a young physics faculty member when Einstein was alive, got a cutting of the Einstein begonia from Einstein’s secretary, Helen Dukas. Joan Treiman gave a cutting to another faculty member’s wife, Eunice Wilkinson. Eunice Wilkinson gave me a cutting and I and my husband (a true gardener) thought the plant was so special that we made many cuttings and started to give cuttings to people who seemed as enthusiastic about the plant as we were. I gave the cutting to Vicky Bergman who was in my aerobics group at the Senior Center, and somewhere over the years we heard even the horticultural department at the university started to call it the “Einstein Begonia”! Joan Treiman died in 2013 at age 87 and I am quite sure she no longer had the plant when she died. Eunice Wilkinson now lives in a retirement center in Boulder, Colorado and no longer has a plant to my knowledge. 

We were thrilled to hear what you are doing re Oswald Veblen’s home and the land he donated. My parents were immigrants from Norway and I knew Veblen had Norwegian ancestry so was always interested in stories about him. His uncle Thorstein Veblen had a summer hut on Washington Island, in Door County, Wisconsin; our daughter-in-law’s family lives in Door County and our son and family have a home there so we have made several trips to Washington Island and have read stories about Thorstein’s presence on the island, interesting to look up on google if you don’t already know about them. 

Good luck with the wonderful work you are undertaking. 

Best wishes, Norma Smith

It was astonishing to hear the whole lineage laid out. Historical research usually involves piecing together bits and pieces from multiple sources over time. Another friend's source for Einstein begonias, Martha Otis, contacted me with essentially the same news: the "motherplant is long gone - only cuttings from cuttings from cuttings etc on and on exist." 

Thanks to Vicki, Teresa, Martha, and especially Norma for helping trace the lineage of the Einstein begonia back to Einstein himself. 

Related Posts: 

Einstein's Begonia

The Musical Tale of Einstein's Begonia--a Princeton Debut

Einstein's Begonia

A very nice little horticultural adventure began for me this past winter when I received a surprise email with an inquiring title: "Einstein's begonia?" The email was from my friend Kim Dorman who works at the Princeton Public Library. It was part flattery, part mystery, part challenge, like the beginning of a Mission Impossible episode. "Of all the people I know," it began, "you would be the most likely to have an answer to this question." Kim's sister's godmother was seeking a descendent of Einstein's begonia, and had also put word out to the Mercer County master gardeners and both garden clubs in Princeton.

A google search yielded an engaging and informative article by "Jeni", a Williams and Mary student at the time. She tells the story of Newton's apple tree, which still exists, and Einstein's begonia, which also lives on thanks to a proliferation of cuttings that took place after Einstein passed. According to Jeni, "Cuttings from the begonias raised by Einstein had been given as gifts before, mainly to physics or mathematics faculty at Princeton University or at the Institute for Advanced Study, but now they are also being circulated among a group residing in Princeton outside of the faculty."

A photo in the post showed a begonia owned by Jeni's grandparents, one of whom I happened to have served with on the Princeton Environmental Commission some years back. I contacted her, and she gladly shared cuttings of the begonia, describing them as "prolific." And so it is that Einstein's begonia traveled a multi-generational pathway to a new owner. 

Vicki's gift of cuttings was generous in number, and being an intrigued middleman, I kept a couple to see if I could get them to root. Online instructions suggested using a narrow container that could be filled with a minimum of water, the better to concentrate rooting compounds the plant naturally exudes. I chose a narrow glass, stuck the stems in, and waited. Weeks went by with no apparent action on the plants' part. The danger was that the stems would begin to rot. If you think about it, all a root has to do is lose one "o" and it turns into rot. The situation was clearly precarious, and I was worried not only for my own non root-budding begonias but also those I had passed along to Marianne, Kim's sister's godmother. As a precaution, I put one in perlite, to see if it would root that way.

It turned out that time brought roots rather than rot, regardless of the medium. I potted them up, kept them well lit but out of direct sun, and then one day, I noticed a flower emerging. Just a few leaves, and already a flower! I would have been impressed if the flower stayed that size, but instead what looked like one flower began to grow into many, 

until it had become a lovely spread. Clearly, Einstein was onto something. I like to think that this begonia's opulence and long-lasting blooms are reflective of Einstein's generosity of spirit, as well as the abundance of hair he grew in later years.

Another post that came up in an internet search, "Albert Einstein and Plants," offers some more background and claims, perhaps half correctly, that Einstein's begonia is "a Begonia ‘Lucerna‘; apparently a hybrid of Begonia teuscheri and Begonia coccinea."

A little more digging reveals that this plant is as international as Einstein himself. 

The Angel Wing Begonia, named for the shape of its leaves, was created by Eva Kenworthy Gray in 1926 when she hybridized a begonia from Lucerne, Switzerland and one from Brazil. Born in Missouri in 1863, Eva received a university education in an era when that was rare. It's not clear whether she went to University of Missouri, which began admitting women on a very limited basis in 1868, or perhaps the University of Iowa, Oswald Veblen's alma mater, which was coeducational from the get go in 1848. In any case, her considerable contributions to horticulture and begonias in particular happened after she became an immigrant of sorts, moving from the midwest to California, where she became hooked on begonias in 1920, after being given a couple cuttings. 

This is a recurring theme, in my life and in the lives of many people I know--the stimulus and serendipity of intranational migration, where skills and values learned in one place find new application and relevance when transported to another region of the country. Some of the values and motivations that made Oswald Veblen so impactful in Princeton can be traced not only to a youth spent in the midwest but extend back, as described in George Dyson's book Turings Cathedral, to the circumstances and culture his grandparents experienced in Norway. 

For info on the Angel-wing Begonia and its care and feeding, the Chicago Botanic Garden offers a lovely account. The plaster cast of Einstein's face in the first photo of this post, by the way, was given to us by Lavonne Heydel, who is a volunteer gardener at Drumthwacket, Morven, and most recently at Herrontown Woods. It had been part of an "Einstein garden" she and her offspring had for awhile. For the meantime, the plaster likeness now has a new home in a different sort of Einstein garden, among the begonias on my windowsill.

Update, Dec. 16, 2021: Vicki's advice on how to get begonias to bloom:

• They love sun. Mine bloom pretty much all summer when I have them outside on the south-facing side of the house.
• They also bloom in the winter when I have them in our downstairs bathroom tub with a west-facing window.
• I feed them occasionally, and outdoors they get watered when it rains. Indoors I water once a week or so.
• I think mine took a year or two to settle in before blooming. Keep caring

Related posts:

The Origin Story of Einstein Begonias

The Musical Tale of Einstein's Begonia--a Princeton Debut

What Einstein, Veblen, and Cicadas Have in Common

In this collage of Princeton Alumni magazines, Oswald Veblen finds himself framed by two miraculous companions: Albert Einstein and the Miracicada that currently has Princeton all abuzz. What do they have in common other than being miraculous? They have both spent time at Herrontown Woods. Veblen and Einstein were the first two professors at the Institute for Advanced Study, and remained good friends. The Miracicadas were singing in 1936 when Veblen bought what we now call the Veblen Cottage--an 1875 farmstead that became Veblen's study, often visited by Einstein and other friends. That purchase, which later became the core of Herrontown Woods, can be considered a starting point for the Princeton open space movement. By that measure, the movement to preserve open space reached five cicada generations old this year. Though the cicadas only come out of the ground once every 17 years, Veblen may have considered them friends as well, and as a mathematician surely took an interest in the primeness of their periodicity.

Update: In a letter to the Princeton Alumni Magazine about this, I noted that the author of the PAW's article on cicadas, Elyse Graham, was also the author of the PAW's past articles about Veblen, Adventures in Fine Hall and The Power of Small Numbers.