Helen Dukas

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Helen Dukas (born October 17, 1896 in Freiburg im Breisgau as Helene Dukas ; † February 10, 1982 in Princeton ) was the secretary and estate administrator of Albert Einstein and his biographer.

Life

Dukas was a Jew of German descent. Her father Leopold Dukas was a businessman in Sulzburg and her mother Hannchen Liebmann came from Hechingen . She attended the secondary school for girls in Freiburg until 1911, but after her mother's death she was forced to give up training and take care of the family (she had six siblings). In 1919 her father died and she started working as a kindergarten teacher. In 1921 she went to Munich as a teacher and in 1923 to Berlin , where she was a secretary at a publishing house. In April 1928, through the mediation of Einstein's wife Elsa (who knew the Dukas family and was also from Hechingen), she became Albert Einstein's private secretary, which she remained until Einstein's death in 1955. She went with him to the United States in 1933 and became a US citizen in 1940 (at the same time as Einstein and his stepdaughter Margot). Dukas never married. After the death of Einstein's wife Elsa in 1936, she also became Einstein's housekeeper.

In 1950 she was appointed executor and administrator of the will by Albert Einstein and Otto Nathan . She organized and ordered his written estate, which later came to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem , and took care of the publication of the collected works. From 1955 she lived in Einstein's house on Mercer Street with his stepdaughter Margot. Until her death in 1982 from a ruptured stomach ulcer, she regularly went to a small office in the Institute for Advanced Study, where she worked on the order of Einstein's estate. She made numerous transcripts, collected Einstein documents and commented on the estate.

Dukas has been described as intelligent and reserved. She was extremely loyal to Einstein, whom she addressed in public and even after his death as a professor. Since she tried very hard to keep everything possibly publicly harmful from her private life under lock and key, she also referred to Einstein as his Cerberus .

She wrote a biography of Einstein with Banesh Hoffmann and a book with memories of Einstein.

Fonts

  • Banesh Hoffmann, Helen Dukas Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel , Viking Press 1979
    • German edition Albert Einstein. Creator and rebel , Dietikon-Zürich, Belser 1976
  • Hoffmann, Dukas Albert Einstein, the human side: New glimpses from his archives , Princeton University Press 1979

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alice Calaprice, Daniel Kennefick, Robert Schulmann: Einstein Encyclopedia , Princeton University Press 2015, p. 11
personal data
SURNAME Dukas, Helen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Einstein biographer and estate administrator
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1982
Place of death Princeton, New Jersey