A selection of rare and intimate letters from Albert Einstein on everything from God to his son's geometry studies and a little toy steam engine were auctioned Thursday for more than $420,000, far exceeding pre-sale estimates.
The 27 Einstein letters were in both English and German and written longhand and on a typewriter.
At the Profiles in History auction, they brought in a total of $420,625, including $62,500 paid for Einstein's letter to his son discussing the connection between his theory of relativity and the atomic bomb.
In one letter, Einstein urged one of his sons to get more serious about geometry. In another, he consoled a friend who recently discovered her husband's infidelity. In still another, to an uncle on his 70th birthday, Einstein recalled how the toy steam engine the uncle gave him years ago had prompted a lifelong interest in science.
"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one," he wrote to a man who corresponded with him on the subject twice in the 1940s. "You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. ... I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."
