Esther "Polly" Salaman was a Russian-born Jewish writer and physicist.
12 Facts About Esther Salaman
1.
2.
Esther Salaman is best known for her memoir on Albert Einstein, her friend and teacher while studying at the University of Berlin.
3.
Esther Salaman succeeded in securing travel documents for her widowed mother and four siblings, and paid a team of Polish foresters to lead them to the Polish border in secret.
4.
Esther Salaman encouraged her writing after reading her article in the Frankfurter Zeitung recalling the murderous pogroms in Zhytomyr by Petliura's Cossacks during Orthodox Christmas of 1918.
5.
Esther Salaman provided her with a recommendation to pursue doctoral work at the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir Ernest Rutherford.
6.
Esther Salaman's scholarship, funded by Jewish philanthropist Redcliffe Salaman, was conditioned on her later going to Israel to teach.
7.
At the suggestion of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Esther Salaman began writing fiction for an English audience.
8.
Esther Salaman published her first novel, Two Silver Roubles, in 1932, only six years after arriving in England knowing only Yiddish, Russian, German, and Hebrew.
9.
From 1940, Myer and Esther Salaman shared a large home in Cambridge with their close friends Frances and Francis Cornford, along with their respective children.
10.
In 1948, Myer Esther Salaman was hired as Director of the Cancer Research Department at the London Hospital Medical College and the family moved to London.
11.
Esther Salaman published memoirs of Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac in Encounter in 1979 and 1986 respectively.
12.
Esther Salaman died on 9 November 1995 at the age of 95.