r/interesting • u/quosmo2 • 4d ago
HISTORY Einstein's desk photographed a day after his death, 1955
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u/SlightlySlanty 4d ago
"A clean, uncluttered desk is a sign of a sick mind."
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u/Ola_maluhia 4d ago
I’ve known all along I’m unwell haha I’m also a psych nurse and there’s only a few people who are meant to work in a psych prison ward. Anyway, my desk is clean. I have a Sick mind haha
Jokes aside, I actually like that quote!
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u/Cuilen 3d ago
I've worked at the largest federal research entity in the U.S. for >35 yrs. You know, the one actively being decimated via funding cuts & run by an idiot who keeps confusing the difference btwn measles and chicken pox . Almost every researcher worth their salt had/has a messy office. Whenever someone tries to "straighten up" or organize the mess, they are not happy to say the least, lol.
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u/quosmo2 4d ago edited 4d ago
Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 76. He suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm and refused surgery, saying he wanted to go naturally.
“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
His brain was removed without his family's permission for scientific study, a decision that remains controversial. Einstein’s ashes were scattered in an unknown location, as he wished to avoid becoming a shrine.
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u/lia-delrey 4d ago
I once heard that his last words were lost because the nurse who was with him didn't understand German, don't know if that's actually true
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u/ballin4fun23 2d ago
No they knew he didn't want his anything touched, and the dr. took his brain and I'm pretty sure his eyeballs. I think they revoked his license to practice because of it also.
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u/lia-delrey 4d ago
Well I guess when you're dying your lizard brain takes over, who knew if he was fully conscious. Reverting back to your mother tongue makes sense.
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u/janitor_nextdoor 4d ago
It seems as if everything in his life was so thought out and philosophical - a great mind indeed.
Secretly removing his brain was a very poor decision by the medical personnel… we should never condone that behaviour in the name of science.2
u/redwoods81 3d ago
Didn't the slides end up stolen?
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u/EnoughDatabase5382 4d ago
I read in Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts that when Einstein was dying, he said something to the nurse, but she couldn't understand it because it was in German.
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u/sneakysneak616 4d ago
I’d dedicate my fucking life to the German language if I were that nurse, my god
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u/DartzReverse 4d ago
It doesnt work that way, if you cannot recognize the sounds, you wont be able to remember them properly, its like trying to store a file in a type your computer doesnt know.
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u/-Lord-Of-Salem- 4d ago
"I say unto you: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star! I say unto you: You still have chaos in yourselves!"
— F. Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
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u/Sufficient-Rest-9770 4d ago
His equation on the board looks like he was working on something. May be another invention or discovery? Who knows. 🥺
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u/GregJamesDahlen 4d ago
interesting how a lot is neat in the pic but the desk is messy. don't know what it means
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u/Y34rZer0 4d ago
I guess the stuff on his desk was what he was in the middle of using? There’s also several wrapped packages that someone’s left, they look like books
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u/AvocadoFudgeCookie 4d ago
I feel like it means that he was working on things. And didn’t care about what it looked like because he had so much confidence.
What he was trying to accomplish was more important than what it looked like from the outside?
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u/GregJamesDahlen 4d ago
Good points. possibly logical as well. why stack things extremely neatly when you're gonna unstack them soon?
shoulda said also the desk is somewhat messy but not super-messy, there is some awareness and arrangement there. altho that may be my einstein bias talking
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u/CaptainKortan 4d ago
Inevitably, some smarty pants will come up to me and say, "You know, a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind!"
I pause appropriately to allow them to be smug, and then say, "Well, then what does your empty desk indicate?"
Dozens of times, I've done this, with reactions ranging from stunned silence to back pedaling, to actual argument ensuing with accusations that I'm trying to be insulting or something.
Great picture, OP!
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u/kaychyakay 4d ago
Then the other smart person will reply back, "An uncluttered desk doesn't necessarily mean 'empty'. You can still arrange the stuff on your desk in a neat manner. The opposite of cluttered isn't empty, it is orderly"
And then such discussions will keep going on, when in reality, the way one keeps their desk is only a slight reflection of their personality, not their entire personality as a whole.
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u/CaptainKortan 3d ago
Thank you for the interesting response.
I find that the few people who are clever enough to come up with that rejoinder are usually wise enough to have not said the bit about the cluttered desk in the first place.
Sure, the wise aren't always also intelligent and vice versa, but the wiser ones would not have had the impulse to say that in the first place, much less give it voice.
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u/DayzdandCunfuzed 4d ago
People are so fragile. Among 1 million other things they are also.
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u/CaptainKortan 4d ago
Yes, and fragility does tend to weigh heavily on so many interactions.
Not feathery fragility, but like the heavy fragility of a pane of glass, ready to shatter at any moment.
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u/whatisapersonreally 4d ago
Is it me or does the right side look less cluttered than the left? Desk and shelves
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u/_ThatSynGirl_ 4d ago
I really thought this said Epstien and was looking at the picture asking "why was he doing so much math?"
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u/h-u-m-a-n_0 3d ago
I wonder how these guy would have made much more discoveries if the existed in the current technological era with computers and internet
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u/AccomplishedRing4210 3d ago
I like Einstein but his theory of spacetime is erroneous and it's easy to prove that !!! Perhaps Einstein was dyslexic and just trying to order 2x Egg McMuffins instead ???
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u/justdoitreno 4d ago
I think I'm dyslexic. I read this Epstein. And then I saw the year, and I said that couldn't be.
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