Sailing is not the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of the great theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, but like so many of us, the Nobel Prize winner had a passion for the water. At the age of 18, unable to swim, Einstein learned to sail on Lake Zurich in Switzerland, while simultaneously working on early papers that would eventually lead him to develop his theory of relativity.
Einstein had little technical knowledge, yet he was passionate about sailing and appreciated the reflective time it provided. As a young man, the German-born physicist sailed primarily on instinct without any formal training. His landlady’s daughter Suzanne Markwalder served as crew and she remarked that whenever the wind died, Einstein would take out his notebook to write. “But as soon as there was a breath of wind,” she said, “he was ready to start sailing again.”
In 1929, when he turned 50, wealthy friends presented Einstein with a birthday present, a custom-designed, 23-foot, single-cabin coastal cruiser named Tümmler (porpoise). He sailed Tümmler from his house in Caputh, Germany, until the Nazis took power in 1933 and Einstein fled to America. The Nazis seized the boat and sold her. After the war, Einstein tried to find her, but she was lost.
In the U.S., Einstein purchased a 17-foot dinghy and named it Tinef, which means “junk” or “poorly made” in Yiddish. Einstein refused to incorporate outboard power on the boat. (The physicist never even learned to drive a car.) As a result, he had to be rescued multiple times, including on one occasion during which he almost drowned. Eventually, Tinef was wrecked against a rock while he was sailing in Saranac Lake, New York.
According to Swiss biographer, Carl Seelig, who wrote Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography, the scientist loved sailing because of the solace it provided. When away from the rigorous mathematics he used in his work, Einstein enjoyed the chaos of the ocean and wind. He recognized his natural gravitation to the sea stating, “Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster.”
This story was originally published in the June 2024 issue.
