Evelyn Einstein

Evelyn Einstein (28 March 1941 – 13 April 2011) was the adopted daughter of Hans Albert Einstein, the son of Albert Einstein.

Biography

Einstein was born in Chicago; after her birth she was adopted by Hans Albert Einstein. She obtained a Master's degree in Medieval literature at University of California, Berkeley. She was married to Grover Krantz for 13 years. She then worked briefly as an animal control officer, as a cult deprogrammer and as a Berkeley, California reserve police officer.

As an 18-year-old college student in 1960 Evelyn was the only person with a recognized name among the dozens of people arrested in San Francisco at a peaceful protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Evelyn claimed that she was impoverished after her divorce, and she said that she slept in cars and scrounged for discarded food and described herself as a dumpster-diver and had been homeless for three months.

Evelyn told CNN she was outraged she had not received a dime out of the millions of dollars earned annually from her grandfather's likeness, with all profits going to Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While Albert Einstein bequeathed the literary rights for the more than 75,000 papers and other items in his estate, Evelyn asked "What does a bobblehead have to do with a literary estate?" adding "It's hard for me to believe they would treat the family the way they have, which has been abysmally."

In the later years of her life she stated she was told she was an illegitimate daughter of Albert Einstein and a ballet dancer. There is no objective documentation supporting this claim. In 1996 she joined a family suit with the trustee in charge of a collection of correspondence between Albert and Mileva Einstein, a suit that was settled privately. Weeks before her death, Allen P. Wilkinson began to write her memoirs.

Publications

• With Marfe Ferguson Delano: Genius: A Photobiography of Albert Einstein. National Geographic Children's Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7922-9544-7.
• Introduction of: Alice Calaprice (editor); Robert Schulmann (contributor). Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters to and from Children. Prometheus Books, 2002. ISBN 978-1591020158