So Now You Know

When Grace Cathedral in San Francisco was being completed in the mid 1960s, Einstein was chosen to represent Natural Science in a twelve-window nave clerestory series called Human Endeavor. Designed in 1963 by Gabriel Loire of Chartres, France, the window is made of inch-thick faceted glass, chipped on the inner edges to create a jewel-like effect, and set in cement, like a translucent mosaic. Nearly a thousand pieces of glass make up the eight-paneled window. Located in the sixth bay of the north nave clerestory, over sixty feet above the floor, the window was installed in 1964. The window was given by Major Clarence Gould in memory of his wife Lottie, and by a portion of the legacy of Russell S. Springer.

The window shows a caped Einstein gazing upward, surrounded by electron orbitals and nuclear particle paths. At the top, the tail burn of a rocket blasts past the cratered lunar surface, expressing Einstein’s impact on astronomy and cosmology, and the new space frontier of the 1960s. At upper center, in red, is a portion of the Lorentz transformation, the square root of v/c, reconciling the fixed speed of light with differing inertial frames. At bottom left is an idealized helium atom, reminding us of Einstein’s groundbreaking insights on nuclear physics, and his serious concerns about the misuse of atomic power.