1929年，德国诗人George Sylvester Viereck在美国访问了他的著名老乡爱因斯坦，10月26日在The Saturday Evening Post（周刊，1971年后改为双月刊）发表了What life means to Einstein?，文章记录了两人的对话，谈了相对论、量子论。也谈了老爱的快乐生活……

诗人问他，谁的工作最突出？老爱说，单说个人是不公平的。不过，他还是说，在德国，Schrödinger和Heisenberg二位的工作特别重要。小薛发现了所有生命（all life）都以波的形式运动的数学公式，小海呢，是一个极好的数学家，定义了新的数学量。当然，还有老Planck，量子论的典范（exponent）。

Edington是不是你的理论的最佳解说者呢？老爱说，他是大数学家，最大贡献在于他自己的星体结构的发现。

美国有谁的工作能与那几位媲美吗？老爱的回答很人文：在美国，个人融合在众人中间，美国要开始领头了，美国学者坚韧而灵动，他们为科学无私奉献，他们并不拜金，同学的兴趣在于探索——正是他们对无限小和无限大的艰艰辛探索，才取得天文学的成就。

In American, morethan anywhere else, the individual is lost in the achievements of the many. America is beginning to be the world leader in scientific investigation. American scholarship in both patient and inspiring. The Americans show an unselfish devotion to science, which is the very opposite of the conventional European view of your countrymen. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americana themselves. It is not true that the dollar is an American fetish. The American student is not interested indollars, not even in success of such, but in his task, the object of the search.It is his painstaking application to the study of the infinitely little and the infinitely large which accounts for his success in astronomy.