Albert Einstein’s very cool leather jacket sold at auction today for £110,500 ($144,424). The coat came complete with the pungent odor of the scientist’s pipe. Also on the block were Einstein’s pocket watch and toy blocks from his childhood. From Christie’s:
‘The jacket first appears in a number of photographs of Einstein, taken at the height of his fame in the mid-1930s,’ (said Christie’s specialist Thomas Venning). A shot from 1935 shows the scientist wearing it upon his arrival for a holiday in the Bahamas — ‘improbably paired,’ adds Venning, ‘with a rather natty wing collar’…
Over several years, the jacket aged visibly. ‘Einstein wore it all the time — a fact mentioned in the memoirs of fellow scientist Leopold Infeld, who worked with him at Princeton. Infeld explained that Einstein tried to keep material restrictions to a minimum. Long hair reduced the need for a barber and, he wrote, “one leather jacket solved the coat problem for years.”’
“5 minutes with… Einstein’s leather jacket” (Christie’s)
