Albert Einstein, the beloved genius of the twentieth century, was not who he seemed—at least for most of his life!
A shocking new interview has revealed the real Einstein died in 1934 in a freak accident in Princeton, New Jersey. Francine Clarke, who was twelve at the time, witnessed the tragedy.
“He was visiting my father, who was a dean and a friend of his,” says Clarke, now 93. “They went hiking and I tagged along. Einstein decided to climb to the top of a tree. Next thing I knew, he was falling. ‘Newton,’ he said, and then he hit the ground, and then he wasn’t moving.”
The most famous brain in the world had been silenced. Einstein was dead.
Clarke’s father, realizing the enormity of what had just happened, ran home for help. “He assembled a team of men who he knew he could trust to stay silent,” she said. “They brought Einstein’s body back. We were all in shock.”
EVEN MORE SHOCKING
What occurred next was even more shocking. “One of the men—a biology professor—started talking about how we couldn’t lose Einstein, how it would hurt the whole world. And one of the other men said ‘Well, you look like him. Why don’t you just be him?’ The room went dead silent.”
What Clarke didn’t know at the time was that the other man had sometimes dressed at Einstein at parties. “His party costumes were amateurish, but now he had access to Einstein’s actual clothes,” Clarke said. “My dad and the others went to a wiggery and got hair made that looked just like Einstein’s. They even hired a dialect coach to teach the man to sound like Einstein.”
The next day, “Einstein” went out in public in Princeton—and no one noticed the difference.
“They made me swear to silence,” Clarke said. “I knew this news could shake the world. But now I’m almost a hundred years old. The truth needs to be told.”
COULD PRETEND BETTER THAN ANYONE
The biology professor, who Clarke refuses to name, was reluctant at first to dress as the big-brained icon, but as time passed he grew more comfortable with the deception.
“For a month or so, he maintained his own identity and his Einstein costume, but at some point, he decided he felt happier as Einstein, and so he faked his own death. My dad and the others still had Einstein’s body somewhere, and they had a funeral for that body.”
The second Einstein then took over Einstein’s identity entirely, teaching from lecture notes the great man had left behind, holding forth on matters of public policy, and even posing for some of the most famous Einstein images.
“The well-known tongue-out photo was his,” Clarke said. That was years later, in 1951, and he had pretty much disappeared inside the performance by then.”
Every once in awhile, the replacement Einstein would drop his guard. “Maybe once a year he would be at my house with my dad or someone else who knew, and he would marvel at the whole situation,” Clarke said. “He would also do these very funny routines about how everything was relative. You know: ‘This roast beef is delicious, but of course that’s relative…This coffee is hot, but that’s relative.’ I don’t think he ever really understood Einstein’s theories, but he could pretend better than anyone.”
