Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

has been the subject of or inspiration for many works of popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

.

On Einstein's 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951, UPI

United Press International

United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...

 photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade him to smile for the camera, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead. This photograph became one of the most popular ever taken of Einstein, often used in merchandise depicting him in a lighthearted sense. On June 19, 2009, the original photograph was sold at auction for $74,324, a record for an Einstein picture.

In 1999, leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever". "Einstein" has become a word used to describe someone extremely intelligent; the name is also applied sarcastically to someone who states the obvious or displays a lack of intelligence or insight ("Way to go, Einstein!").

Albert Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films and plays, such as Yahoo Serious

Yahoo Serious

Yahoo Serious , born Greg Pead , is an Australian film actor, director and score composer. He is best known for his 1988 comedy Young Einstein. He also created Reckless Kelly in 1993 and Mr. Accident in 2000...

's intentionally inaccurate biography of Einstein as a Tasmanian in the film Young Einstein

Young Einstein

Young Einstein is an Australian comedy film directed by and starring Yahoo Serious, released in 1988.-Plot:Albert Einstein, the son of an apple farmer in Tasmania in the early 1900s, splits a beer atom with a chisel in order to add bubbles to beer, discovers the theory of relativity and travels to...

, Jean-Claude Carrier's 2005 French novel, Einstein S'il Vous Plaît (Einstein If You Please), Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. He was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the...

's collection of short stories Einstein's Dreams, and Steve Martin

Steve Martin

Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

's comedic play Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a play written by Steve Martin in 1993. It features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin Agile in Montmartre, Paris...

. He was the subject of Philip Glass

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

's groundbreaking 1976 opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 Einstein on the Beach

Einstein on the Beach

Einstein on the Beach is an opera that premiered on July 25, 1976 at the Avignon Festival in France, scored and written by Philip Glass and designed and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson. It also contains writings by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M. Johnson and Lucinda Childs...

and his humorous side is the subject of Ed Metzger

Ed Metzger

Ed Metzger is an American actor and writer.Metzger is known for portrayals of famous men in history. He has portrayed Albert Einstein live on stage for over 30 years in his one-man show, Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian. He also portrayed Ernest Hemingway in his live on stage...

's one-man play Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian

Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian

Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian is a stage play that is the only show officially endorsed by The Einstein Family. A quote from Albert Einstein's first cousin said that the family "felt as though they were in the presence of their dear cousin Albert." The one-man show opened in 1978 written...

. An 'Einstein character' also appears in a major role in Nicolas Roeg's 1985 film:Insignificance

Insignificance (film)

Insignificance is a 1985 motion picture drama/comedy directed by Nicolas Roeg, produced by Jeremy Thomas and Alexander Stuart, and adapted by Terry Johnson from his play of the same name. The film is set in 1954, with most of the action taking place in a hotel room in New York City...

, based on Terry Johnson's London stage play. Set in New York in 1953, the film includes a scene in which 'The Professor' (played by Michael Emil) the character evidently representing Albert Einstein, discusses Relativity with 'The Actress'-a ‘Marilyn Monroe character’ (Theresa Russell

Theresa Russell

Theresa Russell is an American actress.-Biography:Russell was born Theresa Paup in San Diego, California, the daughter of Carole Platt and Jerry Russell Paup. She attended Burbank High School, but did not graduate. She married English film director Nicolas Roeg , in 1982...

). Einstein was portrayed by Walter Matthau

Walter Matthau

Walter Matthau was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears...

 in the 1994 romantic comedy I.Q.

I.Q. (film)

I.Q. is a 1994 American romantic comedy film directed by Fred Schepisi and starring Tim Robbins, Meg Ryan, and Walter Matthau. The original music score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith...

. In the film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, he was portrayed as a holographic personality called Dr. Know (voiced by Robin Williams

Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...

). He was also portrayed in the real-time strategy

Real-time strategy

Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

 game Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a real-time strategy computer game of the Command & Conquer franchise, produced by Westwood Studios and released by Virgin Interactive in...

. Most recently, he was the subject (along with Arthur Eddington) of the BBC Two

BBC Two

BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

 film Einstein and Eddington

Einstein and Eddington

Einstein and Eddington is a British single drama produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, in association with HBO. It featured David Tennant as British scientist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, and Andy Serkis as Albert Einstein...

, featuring David Tennant

David Tennant

David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...

 as Eddington and Andy Serkis

Andy Serkis

Andrew Clement G. "Andy" Serkis is an English actor, director and author. He is popularly known for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he earned several award nominations, including the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Two Towers...

 as Einstein, and detailing Einstein's development of his theories and Eddington's attempts to prove them. A holographic representation of Einstein, played by Jim Norton

Jim Norton (actor)

Jim Norton is an Irish character actor.-Performances:Jim Norton has been acting for over forty years in theatre, television, and movies, and frequently plays clergymen, most notably Bishop Brennan in the sitcom Father Ted, as well as in The Sweeney , Peak Practice , Sunset Heights , A Love Divided...

 appeared in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...

.

Einstein is a favorite model for depictions of mad scientist

Mad scientist

A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...

s and absent-minded professor

Absent-minded professor

The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose focus on academic matters leads them to ignore or forget their surroundings....

s; his expressive face and distinctive hairstyle have been widely copied and exaggerated. The Star Wars

Star Wars

Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

character Yoda

Yoda

Yoda is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe, appearing in the second and third original films, as well as all three prequel trilogy films. A renowned Jedi master, Yoda made his first on-screen appearance in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where he is responsible for...

's eyes were modeled after Einstein's. Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine's Frederic Golden wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist's dream come true."

Albert Einstein is one of the celebrities immortalized on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A verse of James Taylor

James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....

's song Secret O' Life mentions Einstein and his special theory of relativity. Kerry Livgren of the progressive rock band Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

 stated that he wrote the song “Portrait (He Knew)” about Einstein. Mariah Carey's eleventh studio album is entitled E=MC² after Einstein's celebrated equation. Greek singer Giorgos Lembesis has released a song titled "Einstein" in which he states that he always admired Albert Einstein, but now he needs his help in his relationship problems.

Some sources claim that Einstein was left-handed, but several photographs show him using his right hand to hold pens or chalk. There is no evidence of Einstein being originally left-handed, thus it is very likely that he was right-handed.

In the 1984 comedy film Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters is a 1984 American science fiction comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The film stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, and Rick Moranis and follows three eccentric parapsychologists in New York City, who start a...

 Peter Venkman says "Einstein did best as a patent clerk" in order to convince his coworker not to worry to much about his reputation and studies in Universities.

In the movie Back to the Future

Back to the Future

Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...

, the character of Dr. Emmett Brown, portrayed as a brilliant scientist, time traveler and inventor, has a dog called "Einstein", named after Doc Brown's favorite scientist. in the Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...

 episode Meltdown, he is one of the last good waxdroids on waxworld, where he argues with Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

 over the solution involving triangles.

In the 1989 cult classic science fiction TV series Alien Nation, one the Tenctonese

Tenctonese

The Tenctonese, also known as Newcomers, are a humanoid species in the Alien Nation, television series and earlier film, as well as the later Alien Nation telefilm series. They are from the planet Tencton, though references to numerous slave colonies throughout the series and telemovies indicate...

 people was given the name Albert Einstein. The character is the janitor at the LAPD precinct that the main characters Matthew Sikes and George Francisco work at.

Licensing

Einstein bequeathed his estate, as well as the use of his image (see personality rights

Personality rights

"Personality rights" is a common or casual reference to the proper term of art "Right of Publicity". The Right of Publicity can be defined simply as the right of an individual to control the commercial use of his or her name, image, likeness or other unequivocal aspects of one's identity...

), to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

, which from the mid-1980s has sponsored the Einstein Papers Project

Einstein Papers Project

The Einstein Papers Project was established in 1986 to assemble, preserve, translate, and publish papers selected from the literary estate of Albert Einstein and from other collections .Sponsored by the Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since its inception, the...

 with the Princeton University Press

Princeton University Press

-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...

 (see the Einstein Page from PUP). Einstein actively supported the university during his life and this support continues with the royalties

Royalties

Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

 received from licensing activities. GreenLight

Greenlight

To green-light a project is to give permission or a go ahead to move forward with a project. In the context of the movie and TV businesses, to green-light something is to formally approve its production finance, thereby allowing the project to move forward from the development phase to...

 licences the commercial use of the name "Albert Einstein" and associated imagery and likenesses of Einstein, as agent for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As head licensee the corporation can control commercial usage of Einstein's name and theoretically ensure compliance with certain standards (e.g., when Einstein's name is used as a trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

, the ™ symbol must be used).