Albert Einstein Society
The Albert Einstein Society was started on 28 June 1977 by Dr. Max Flückiger in Bern, Switzerland. It is based in Einstein House in Bern, where Einstein developed his theory of relativity in his famous Annus Mirabilis papers. The house opened as a museum on 14 March 1979 to mark Einstein’s 100th birthday.
Flückiger, who was not a physicist, wrote a biography of Einstein focusing on his years in Bern (published in 1974). The society has a scientific board of trustees, including president Philippe Jetzer, Matthias Blau, Camille Bonvin, Christoph Greub, Mikko Laine, and Hans-Rudolf Ott. The board proposes the winners of the Einstein Medal, which honors people who have made outstanding contributions to science related to Einstein’s work.
The society runs Einstein House as a museum, holds public lectures, and publishes a newsletter called Olympia. It also helped rename a street in Bern to honor Einstein.
Since 2009, the society has worked with the University of Bern to present the Albert Einstein Lectures, an annual series with three lectures in one week by a single speaker. Recent speakers include Susan R. Wolf (2024) on human selves, Maryna Viazovska (2023) on sphere packings, and Didier Queloz (2022) on exoplanets.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:34 (CET).