Albert Einstein Memorial

The Albert Einstein Memorial is a monumental bronze statue by sculptor Robert Berks, depicting Albert Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. It is located in central Washington, D.C., United States, in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences at 2101 Constitution Avenue N.W., near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Two replicas exist at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The memorial, situated in an elm and holly grove in the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences, was unveiled at the Academy's annual meeting, April 22, 1979, in honor of the centennial of Einstein's birth. At the dedication ceremony, physicist John Archibald Wheeler described the statue as "a monument to the man who united space and time into space-time...a remembrance of the man who taught us...that the universe does not go on from everlasting to everlasting, but begins with a bang." The memorial is a popular spot for tourists visiting the national mall to pose for pictures. The statue depicts Einstein seated in casual repose on a three-step bench of Mount Airy (North Carolina) white granite. The bronze figure weighs approximately 4 tons and is 12 feet (3.7 m) in height. The monument is supported by three caissons, totaling 135 tons, sunk in bedrock to a depth of 23 to 25 feet (7.0 to 7.6 m). It was cast at Modern Art Foundry, Astoria Queens, NY. The sculptor, Robert Berks, known for his portrait busts and statues (John F. Kennedy at the Kennedy Center, Mary McLeod Bethune in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C), based the work on a bust of Einstein he sculpted from life in 1953 at Einstein's Princeton home. Landscape architect James A. Van Sweden designed the monument landscaping. Einstein was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 1922, the year after he won the Nobel Prize in physics, and became a member of the Academy in 1942, two years after he became a naturalized American citizen. Berks created two replicas of his 1979 monument. One of the replicas can presently be viewed in the academy garden of the Israel Academy

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