The table Albert Einstein left before he died.

The photo was taken on April 18, 1955. The day Einstein died, just hours after his death, by LIFE magazine photographer Ralph Morse.

The photographer is telling: “Einstein died at the Princeton Hospital, so I headed there first. But it was chaos journalists, photographers, onlookers. So I headed over to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies. On the way, I stopped and bought a case of scotch.

I knew people might be reluctant to talk, but most people are happy to accept a bottle of booze, instead of money, in exchange for their help. So I get to the building, find the superintendent, give him a fifth of scotch and like that, he opens up the office.”

Early in the afternoon, Einstein’s body was moved for a short time from the hospital to a funeral home in Princeton.

“I drive out to the cemetery to try and find where Einstein is going to be buried, but there must have been two dozen graves being dug that day!

I see a group of guys digging a grave, offer them a bottle, ask them if they know anything. One of them says, ‘He’s being cremated in about twenty minutes. In Trenton!’ So I give them the rest of the scotch, hop in my car, and get to Trenton and

the crematorium just before Einstein’s friends and family show up. I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was from, I was the only photographer there, and it was sort of a given that if there was one photographer on the scene, chances were good he was from LIFE.”

Ralph Morse died in 2014 and this interview happened just before his death...

Source: http://life.com 

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