We were sitting and talking in a noisy lecture hall, waiting for John Kemeny to appear on stage to present a public lecture on the Philosophy of Science. All of a sudden, an entrance door at the back of the auditorium opened, and Albert Einstein made his entrance. The many people who had been chatting with one another suddenly grew silent and Einstein descended within his personal cone of silence. It must have been a great burden for him to be so respected by everyone.
One day as Pat Smith and I emerged from Lahiere's French Restaurant, we chanced to see Einstein with his secretary going into the Garden Theater, which the Princeton students affectionately called The Pit. You might well wonder what great film masterpiece would draw Einstein into the Pit.
Incidentally, my roommate was Patrick J. Smith, who has for a long long time been editor of Opera News. It was he who introduced me not only to the New York Metropolitan Opera but also to the pleasures of French cuisine.
Soon after I arrived as a Freshman at Princeton, John Wheeler invited me to sit in on his graduate course on the general theory of relativity. He often presented important visitors to the graduate students in that class. As a result I met, among other personalities, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Then, one day, Prof. Wheeler indicated that the class would visit Einstein at his home on Mercer Street. Because I had attended Wheeler's classes religiously, I was invited as well, even though I was a mere Sophomore at the time.
At Einstein's dining table, Wheeler sat at one end while Einstein sat at the other. We students sat along both sides of the table, while Einstein and Wheeler spoke with one another. Finally, each student was given an opportunity to ask one question of Einstein. Since I was something of an interloper, I let all the graduate students ask their questions while I pondered what question I might ask. When my turn came, I asked him what he thought of the rival steady state theory proposed by Bondi et al.
Einstein must have liked my question, for later, as we were standing around getting ready to leave, I felt a tug at my shoulder, and Einstein revealed that he had been thinking more about my question. His key point was that he did not believe in contrived hypotheses such as the steady state hypothesis, but rather he believed in differential equations.
His was a very profound observation, which I would fully appreciate only later in life. At the time I was most impressed with the fact that he would take the time to think about the question of a very gangly teenager.