That Einstein. He really got around. It seems just about everywhere I’ve visited, he was there first, among them Prague, Singapore, and Williams Bay, a small community only 15 minutes from Lake Geneva. No, not that Lake Geneva on the border of Switzerland and France, but the Lake Geneva of Wisconsin.
Here’s how Albert Einstein, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and world traveler, made his way to tiny Williams Bay. When he came to America for the first time, he asked to see only two places. The first was Niagara Falls, understandable on his part for its sheer power and beauty, and the other was Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, often touted as the birthplace of astrophysics.
Once you’ve seen the observatory, you’ll understand why Einstein wanted to see it. Founded by the University of Chicago in 1897 and built in an imposing gothic Romanesque style with domes, brick and terra cotta, Yerkes Observatory is the Taj Mahal of observatories. It’s quite the out-of-this-world experience to follow in Einstein’s footsteps to see the largest refracting telescope in the world that’s used for astronomical research. I felt much like a dwarf star standing next to it and its 40-inch lens. It just seems so unreal that such advanced technology existed then to build such a massive state-of-the art facility and telescope the size of a small rocket.
