Four years after the end of World War One, Albert Einstein traveled to Paris at the invitation of physicist Paul Langevin to lecture on relativity, navigating lingering French hostility toward German scientists. The visit, though scientifically triumphant, was politically fraught, with some French academicians boycotting his appearance and nationalist newspapers attacking the visit.
The wounds of World War One were still raw in France in 1922, and Einstein, a German citizen (though he renounced German citizenship earlier and held Swiss papers too, and was a public pacifist), represented a complicated figure to invite. Paul Langevin, a French physicist and friend, pushed through the invitation despite significant institutional resistance.
Some members of the French Academy of Sciences refused to attend his lectures at the Collège de France in protest. Nationalist press painted the visit as an affront to French war dead. Yet the lecture halls filled with curious scientists, students, and members of the public eager to see the man who had upended Newtonian physics.
Einstein handled the tension diplomatically, emphasizing science's role in reconciling nations rather than dwelling on politics. The visit helped gradually rehabilitate the exchange of ideas between French and German scientific communities, still bitterly estranged by the war, and cemented Einstein's status as a truly international, rather than merely German, intellectual celebrity.
Key people: Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin