Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Inventory of the Hans Albert Einstein Papers, 1937-1972
MS 80/8
No online items
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: Hans Albert Einstein Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1937-1972
Collection number: MS 80/8
Creator:
Einstein, Hans Albert, 1904-1973
Extent: ca. 7 linear ft. (6 cartons)
Repository:
Water Resources Collections and Archives
Riverside, CA 92517-5900
Shelf location: This collection is stored off-campus at NRLF. Please contact the Water Resources Collections and Archives staff for access
to the materials.
Language:
English.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the Water Resources Collections and Archives. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Archives. Permission for publication is given on
behalf of the Water Resources Collections and Archives as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or
imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.
[Identification of item], Hans Albert Einstein Papers, MS 80/8, Water Resources Collections and Archives, University of California,
Riverside.
Professional and working papers by Einstein and others.
Hans Albert Einstein
1904-1973
Professor of Hydraulic Engineering, Emeritus
1904-1973
Professor of Hydraulic Engineering, Emeritus
Professor Hans Albert Einstein, an accomplished scholar, engineer, and teacher, was born on May 14, 1904 in Bern, Switzerland,
a year before his father, Albert H. Einstein, published the
Special Theory of Relativity. His mother, Mileva Maric, was from Serbia and was a physics student before her marriage. Professor Einstein received his elementary
school education in Zurich. In 1926 he received the Diploma in Civil Engineering, and in 1936 the Doctor of Technical Sciences,
both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
For four years following the receipt of his Diploma degree, he worked in Dortmund, Germany as a steel designer. During Professor
Einstein's graduate study he became deeply interested in the fundamental mechanics of the transportation of sediment by flowing
water. His doctoral thesis,
Bed Load Transport as a Probability Problem (1936), is the definitive work on sediment transportation as accepted by engineers and scientists throughout the world.
In 1927 he married Frieda Knecht of the University of Zurich, a teacher of German language and literature. One of their three
children, Bernard, is a physicist, and the second, Evelyn, took her degree in anthropology. A third child, Klaus, died as
a young boy shortly after the family came to the United States.
In 1938 Professor Einstein immigrated to the United States where he continued his research on the transport of sediment, first
at the U.S. Agricultural Experiment Station at Clemson, South Carolina (1938-1943), and later (1943-1947) at the U.S. Department
of Agriculture Cooperative Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. These years of research culminated in the classic
Department of Agriculture Technical Publication No. 1026,
The Bed-Load Function for Sediment Transportation in Open Channel Flows.
Professor Einstein joined the faculty of the University of California in 1947 as Associate Professor, and later became Professor
of Hydraulic Engineering. He possessed the rare combination of a highly competent research scientist, a fine practicing engineer,
and an excellent teacher in both the graduate and undergraduate areas of instruction. To recognize the many valuable contributions
of Professor Einstein in research and teaching, his many former students organized in his honor a symposium on sedimentation
on the Berkeley campus upon his retirement in 1970. The proceedings of this symposium resulted in the book,
Sedimentation, in 1971.
Professor Einstein's extracurricular activities were diverse and numerous. He loved sailing and music. No day was too rough
on San Francisco Bay to prevent him from heading out through the entrance of the Berkeley Yacht Harbor for a period of excitement
and relaxation on the Bay.
Professor Einstein was extremely generous with his time-whether in conferences with his many graduate students, teaching for
brief periods at foreign universities, or advising countries around the world on solutions to critical sedimentation problems.
On one such occasion in late June 1973, he was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, giving
lectures and participating in research when at lunch he suffered a heart attack from which he did not recover and died July
26, 1973. Early after his arrival at Woods Hole he expressed his admiration of the beauty and serenity of this small seaside
town-his family therefore chose the small cemetery overlooking the harbor as his final resting place.
Widowed in 1958 by the death of his first wife, Professor Einstein married Elizabeth Roboz, then a biochemist at Stanford
Medical School, and later Clinical Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
By students, friends, and colleagues, Hans Albert Einstein's name will be recalled with warmth throughout the world. He offered
encouragement and patient assistance to his students, and through his contacts with students, teachers, and engineers, he
had great influence on the scientific development of the hydraulics of sedimentation in foreign countries as well as in the
United States. As an example of the many letters received by the Department from former graduate students, one student observed,
The picture of his well built and smiling figure striding across the Hydraulic Laboratory still hovers in my mind and before
my eyes. We will always cherish those sweet memories.
Among Professor Einstein's numerous honors and awards were a Guggenheim Fellowship (1953), research awards from the American
Society of Civil Engineers (1959 and 1960), The Berkeley Citation from the University of California (1971), the Certificate
of Merit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1971), and a certificate of recognition for more than twenty years of devoted
and distinguished service to
Applied Mechanics Reviews by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1972).
J. W. Johnson
D. K. Todd
R. L. Wiegel
D. K. Todd
R. L. Wiegel
Sedimentation and deposition
Sediment transport
River engineering
Stream channelization -- Louisiana
Colusa Weir (Calif.)
Atchafalaya River (La.)
Old River (La.)
Bear River (Utah-Idaho)
Los Gatos Creek (Calif.) -- Channelization
Salinas River Project (Calif.)
Rio Grande
East Bay Municipal Utility District (Calif.)
Bed load