Soros Series: The Einstein Language: Finding and Losing Gloro

Speaker: Michael Gordin

Max Talmey was one of the most persistent artificers of “model languages” in the early twentieth century, fashioning his final creation, “Gloro”, in part to enable better comprehension of Albert Einstein’s physics. The linkages between Einstein and Talmey illuminate surprising aspects of the revolutions in physics and interlinguistics.

Michael D. Gordin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, where he specializes in the history of modern science. He has published extensively on the history of Russian and Soviet science, and the history of nuclear weapons. His most recent book is Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done before and after Global English (2015).