Science and Art

“After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.” —Albert Einstein

A remark made by Einstein in 1923 and recalled by Archibald Henderson. Henderson was a mathematician from the University of North Carolina who in 1920 became interested in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Within two years he was writing articles about it. He spent 1923-24 on sabbatical, studying at Cambridge and the University of Berlin where he came to know Einstein personally. Henderson published The Triumph of Relativity and other books on relativity. His defense of relativity in debates was so skilled that Einstein himself commented that it left little room for refutation.