Albert Einstein in Prague

Commemorative plaque (from 1998 by Zdeněk Kolářský), commemorating Einstein’s stay in Prague.

There is the inscription: Here, in the salon of mrs. Berta Fabnta, Albert Einstein, professor at Prague University in 1911 to 1912, founder of the theory of relativity, Nobel Prize winner, played the violin and met his friends, famous writers Max Brod and Franz Kafka.

On the monument is, besides Einstaina, his famous equation, the Charles Bridge (one of the main dominant of Prague) or the violin, whose part at the same time looks like an integral.

Einstein about his stay in Prague: Special theory originated in Bern. There were also the beginnings of the general theory of relativity. But I became clearer in Prague and Zurich. I finished it in Berlin. … In the quiet rooms of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Prague, I discovered that from the principle of equivalence the deviation of the light rays near the Sun is observable.

In 1912 Einstein began to talk about time as the fourth dimension.

Einstein’s stay in Prague is also linked to film I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen (1969, Czech: Zabil jsem Einsteina, pánové). It is Czechoslovak science fiction comedy film directed by Oldřich Lipský. The main heroes are living in the future during the Nuclear War and decided to change it using the time machine. They traveled to Prague in 1911 and they are influenced Albert Einstein to take the place of physics into music in the hope that they will stop the war in their time. In the film, a character uses a device which as been likened to a selfie stick, several decades before its invention.