Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore Signed Photograph.

EINSTEIN, Albert; Rabindranath Tagore.

Item Number: 137922

Sepia-toned photograph of the historic meeting between Nobel laureates Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore on July 14, 1930, signed by both in addition to photographer Martin Vos. The photograph is signed by Einstein above his image, “Albert Einstein 1931”, and by Tagore in the upper right corner, “Rabindranath Tagore” and by Vos in the lower right corner, “Martin Vos N.Y.” Vos captured this striking image of the two great philosophers at their meeting on July 14, 1930 at Einstein’s residence near Berlin, the first of several meetings that year in which they discussed and attempted to answer the most fundamental questions of human existence. The initial meeting between the two celebrities caused a media sensation, and the text of their brilliant dialogue first appeared in the New York Times on August 10, 1930, with the headline “Einstein and Tagore Plumb the Truth: Scientist and Poet Exchange Thoughts on the Possibility Of Its Existence Without Relation to Humanity” and a photograph captioned, “A Mathematician and a Mystic meet in Manhattan.” Regarded as one of the most intellectually riveting conversations in history, the content of the dialogue was also later published in an appendix to Tagore‘s Religion of Man of 1931. Tagore said of the conversation, “Einstein is an excellent interrogator. We talked long and earnestly about my ‘religion of man.’ He punctuated my thoughts with terse remarks of his own, and by hiss questions I could measure the trend of his own thinking. He seemed to me a man who valued human relationship and he showed toward me a real interest and understanding.” The conversation, first published in the New York Times began, “[Tagore]: You have been busy, hunting down with mathematics, the two ancient entities, time and space, while I have been lecturing in this country on the eternal world of man, the universe of reality. [Einstein]: Do you believe in the divine isolated from the world? [Tagore]: Not isolated. The infinite personality of man comprehends the universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the truth of the universe is human truth. [Einstein]: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe – the world as a unity dependent on humanity, and the world as reality independent of the human factor. [Tagore]: When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty. [Einstein]: This is a purely human conception of the universe. [Tagore]: The world is a human world – the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. Therefore, the world apart from us does not exist; it is a relative world, depending for its reality upon our consciousness. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it truth, the standard of the eternal man whose experiences are made possible through our experiences.” In near fine condition. Triple matted and framed. The entire piece measures 24.25 inches by 22.25 inches.

Einstein's revolutionary development of the theory of relativity in the early 1920s coincided with the 'Golden Age' of science in India, with Indian physicist Sir C.V. Raman being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light and Indian astrophysicist Meghnad Saha swiftly gaining international fame for his work on stellar radiation. Early translations of Einstein’s papers on relativity were being circulated in India as early as 1919 and, in 1924, Einstein invited pioneering  Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose to collaborated with him in the development of the Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon. Einstein's longest and best-known relationship with an Indian figure, however, was with Rabindranath Tagore. Fellow Nobel Laureates, the two great minds were curious about each other’s perspectives, and their deep respect for one another garnered several intellectually-riveting discussions addressing the fundamental questions of human existence.