“As a young man, my fondest dream was to become a geographer. However, while working in the Customs Office, I thought deeply about the matter and concluded that it was far too difficult a subject. With some reluctance, I then turned to physics as an alternative.” — Albert Einstein (unpublished letters)
As with so many urban legends, Einstein did not say the above; indeed he never worked in a Custom’s Office. Actually, it was a joke on the part of Duane Marble, a Geography faculty member at New York State University, who, a few decades ago, posted the quotation on his office door in response to the cold reception the Physics faculty, who worked in the same building, gave him. It was finally debunked in 1997 in a series of columns in GIS World written by Jerry Dobson. The following are abstracts from Dobson’s article on the subject (Dobson, J. E. 1997. “No, Einstein Didn’t Say Geography is Harder Than Physics!” GIS World, Vol. 14 10, No. 5, p. 30):
“Let’s be honest. We geographers are a bit credulous about this quote because of ‘physics envy.’ Physics has enjoyed a status and recognition that our discipline hasn’t experienced since the early Renaissance…Duane Marble (was) a pioneer of the GIS (geographic information systems) revolution. During his days as a graduate student and a young faculty member, Marble worked closely with Michael Dacey, who had read a lot of physics literature and concluded that the problems addressed by physicists, geographers, and astronomers were differentiated more by scale than by difficulty.
When New York State University in Buffalo built its Amherst campus, the physics department was favored with a lavish, four-storey building, while the geography department languished in rented, temporary space. When the geography department finally moved, it was to the top floors of the physics building. Marble’s office and the GIS Lab were in a spot where geography staff daily confronted the displaced and disgruntled physicists. Recalling Dacey’s conclusions, Marble composed the ‘Einstein’ statement as a practical joke and posted it in view of the former tenants. ‘Customs Office,’ rather than the Patent Office, was a deliberate clue, as was the citation (his remaining copy says ‘very unpublished letters’)” – (source).
