LOOKING AFTER THE IMAGE OF A LEGEND

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Looking after the image of a legend

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The use of Albert Einstein’s name and image are tightly controlled. Peter Gwynne explores who owns the rights to the Einstein brand and how it is protected.

The name of Albert Einstein and the image of a moustached old man with wild hair are recognized the world over. Such is the universal appeal of the quintessential scientific genius that Einstein's image is used to sell almost anything, from T-shirts and coffee mugs to postcards and physics magazines. This will certainly be the case in 2005, as the physics community celebrates the 100th anniversary of Einstein's annus mirabilis, the year in which he published his groundbreaking papers on special relativity, Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect. However, all this activity will be carefully monitored. For the past 22 years the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) has owned the rights to most of Einstein's words, images and personal papers. And since 1985 a US firm, the Roger Richman Agency, has acted as the exclusive licensing agent for the university.