Governor Herbert H. Lehman has accepted the honorary chairmanship jointly with Felix M. Warburg for the dinner to be given in honor of Professor Albert Einstein at the Hotel Commodore on March 15th, it was announced by Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, President of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, under whose auspices the dinner will be given.
Dr. Einstein, who was a member of the first Board of Governors of the Hebrew University and chairman of its first Academic Council, will make his only public appearance in New York at the dinner in his honor, Mr. Stroock said. Dr. Einstein will arrive in New York on the morning of March 15 and will depart for Europe on the S. S. Deutschland directly after the dinner, which it is expected, more than a thousand of his friends and admirers will attend.
Mr. Stroock stated that Professor Einstein had planned his return trip to Europe via New York in order to be present at the dinner. The participating organizations which will benefit by the dinner, in addition to the Hebrew University, include the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee. The Physicians’ Committee, whose chairman is Dr. Nathan Ratnoff, director of the Beth Israel Hospital, contributes to the support of the departments of Hygiene and Microbiology of the Hebrew University.
Sol M. Stroock, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary and former president of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City, has been appointed Chairman of the committee, Dr. Rosenbach announced.
Maurice Wertheim, banker and member of the Board of Managers of the Theatre Guild, has accepted the post of treasurer. Mr. Wertheim has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University since its opening in 1925.
In accepting the chairmanship, Mr. Stroock announced that the dinner tendered to Professor Einstein, which will commemorate his fifty-fourth birthday, on March 14th, provides an opportunity for his friends to pay tribute not only to the place Dr. Einstein holds in the scientific world but to his wide and extensive interest in cultural matters.
The dinner to Dr. Einstein will also celebrate the eighth anniversary of the Hebrew University, formally opened on April 1, 1925, by the late Lord Balfour.
“It is especially gratifying to the Friends of the Hebrew University, which represents perhaps the greatest cultural achievement of the Jewish people,” said Mr. Stroock, “to have as its distinguished guest, a man whose name is affixed to the Institute of Physics and Mathematics. It is a pleasure to record that this institution has already, in the seven years that it has been in existence, commanded the attention of such great scientific institutions as the Royal Society of England, and the Health Commission of the League of Nations.”
The original manuscript of the Theory of Relativity which Dr. Einstein himself presented to the Hebrew University, is counted among the most precious possessions in the rare manuscript division of the Jewish National and Hebrew University Library, according to Dr. Rosenbach.
“In welcoming Dr. Einstein to our midst”, said Mr. Stroock, “we not only do honor to a great scientist and philosopher, but use this means of spreading word of the activities of the Hebrew University, which, in the brief years of its existence, has already acted as a bridge between the East and the West, and whose facilities — the best of its kind in the Near East — are at
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