TALK OF THE TOWN: 兀 equal E = mc2

My annual acknowledgement Atlanta's most overlooked attraction.

Einstein Statue And Buzz GT
Photo credit: Jeff Slate

While the bright students at Georgia Tech run a 5K (3.1 miles) on campus to celebrate Pi Day (3.14) another reason to celebrate March 14 is that other bright fella, Albert Einstein, was born this day on Pi Day in Ulm, Germany in 1879. And where best to celebrate Big Al's birthday without leaving Atlanta or even running? None other than at the lovely midtown campus in Atlanta and home of everyone's favorite Yellow Jacket — Buzz.

Quite remarkable how Tech landed sculptor Robert Berks' 3rd and last artistic masterpiece of the Space-Time Man considering the genius never set foot in Georgia.

Fascinating story of how Atlanta businessman Jim Barksdale and other civic leaders convinced Dorothy Berks, the widow of the famed sculptor, through sheer determination and energy, that her husband's 3,000 pound sculpture of the bored 1902 patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland belonged at the prestigious engineering and computer science school in Atlanta. So off, 113 years later, Albert flew not on a beam of light but on a plane from Berks studio in Orient, New York to Atlanta.

At the dedication of the monument in 2015, Mrs. Berks read aloud something her husband wrote years ago:

"Through common shared experiences we reaffirm that mankind can communicate down through the ages. Through art, we can study and learn, without words, the most revelatory facets of the human mind."


The remaining two bronze sculptures of Einstein are in Washington, D.C. at the National Academy of Science and in Israel at its Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Most appropriate and even more remarkable Atlanta, GA has the 3rd.

Since I did not see on Facebook any notation of Einstein's birthday, so I'll say a Glorious Happy Birthday Al and Pi Day to All