Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

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Following World War II, Einstein became even more outspoken. Besides campaigning for a ban on nuclear weaponry, he denounced McCarthyism and pleaded for an end to bigotry and racism. Coming as they did at the height of the cold war, the haloed professor's pronouncements seemed well meaning if naive; Life magazine listed Einstein as one of this country's 50 prominent "dupes and fellow travelers." Says Cassidy: "He had a straight moral sense that others could not always see, even other moral people." Harvard physicist and historian Gerald Holton adds, "If Einstein's ideas are really naive, the world is really in pretty bad shape." Rather it seems to him that Einstein's humane and democratic instincts are "an ideal political model for the 21st century," embodying the very best of this century as well as our highest hopes for the next. What more could we ask of a man to personify the past 100 years?