In the recent past, Raab helped to discover and tell a story that had been lost to time, a story of scientific knowledge, discovery, advancement, scholarship, and, finally, of loss and tragedy. This story, told in small part in Nathan’s book, The Hunt for History, comes after the discovery of a remarkable and unpublished archive in the rural Midwest. It is based on an extensive collection of scientific photographs, voluminous scientific notes and correspondence, many books and first print scientific pamphlets, including by Einstein.
Since that time, the Science History Institute, based in Philadelphia and France, has set to work researching the archive and has compiled remarkable scholarship on the material, which allows us to better see the fruits of the labor of discovery. We encourage you to learn more about the work they are doing and to watch the below video, produced by them to help tell the story of many whose lives would otherwise be lost to time.
As it notes on its site: “The burning of books by Jewish authors had been underway since 1933. Bredig’s former colleague Albert Einstein was among the first Jewish thinkers to have his works set ablaze publicly. Einstein immigrated to the United States and was followed by many other Jewish intellectuals. Bredig refused to leave Germany, but he wasn’t oblivious to the perilousness of his position. He hurried to locate a haven for his “opera omnia,” as he had dubbed his library.”
