Page 105 – LIFE

After Hiroshima: Portraits of Survivors

November 6, 2020March 20, 2014 by

On July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age was born when a device with an explosive “yield” roughly equal to 20 kilotons of TNT was detonated in the desert of southeastern New Mexico. The explosion was so inconceivably violent, so fearsome, that one witness to the event, the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, famously claimed that a line from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, ran unbidden through his head: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Less than a month later, American forces dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands of men, women and children in an instant; condemning thousands more to slow, agonizing deaths from burns and radiation sickness in the months and years to come; and, in the eyes of most historians, both Western and Asian, hastening the surrender of the Japanese and bringing about the end of the Second World War.

Here, LIFE.com presents a selection of photographs, most of which were never published in LIFE magazine, taken in Hiroshima after the war ended. In the landscape of a ruined city, and on the scarred skin and misshapen limbs of Japanese who survived the world’s first nuclear attack, photographer Carl Mydans discovered the legacy part nightmare, part surprising, wishful dream of those world-changing explosions.

As LIFE put it to the magazine’s readers in September 1947:

On August 6, two years to the day and the minute after the first atomic bomb devastated their city, the people of Hiroshima, Japan, gathered to mourn but, more surprising, to celebrate as well. A startled world read that Hiroshima, proclaiming itself the new world mecca for peace, had held a carnival. The people planted camphor tree, which is a symbol for long life, and they prayed, too. But then they paraded through the streets, listened to speeches and had fun. Hiroshima seemed to have risen from the dead. The people were putting their city back on the map. The spirit was that of a U.S. boom town in the late 1800s. Their motto: Look at us and forego war.

The only civilian correspondent covering the ceremonies, LIFE’s Carl Mydans, questioned the people and took pictures. He found that Hiroshima had made tremendous strides in recovery. A population reduced from 250,000 to 175,000 in one blinding flash had slowly grown back to 210,000. Of 60,000 houses destroyed 23,000 have been rebuilt. Stores with Western names have opened shop. There is a drive on to get tourist trade and a movement to package and export bits of fused rubble to the rest of the world.

The booster spirit of resurgent Hiroshima would warm the heart of any Rotarian. The imponderables in the phenomenon might baffle a philosopher. It was easy for cynical “experts” to note the traditional Japanese love of novelty, their commercialism and their ability to be led, either for good or evil. But then, no atomic bombs have fallen on the “experts.” Like other men who have watched postwar Hiroshima, Lieut. Colonel Thomas Cloward, chief of American Military Government stationed there, could only say, “We don’t know what is the truly motivating force. All we know is that something’s happened to these people. They want peace, and they want to play a part in that peace.”

Hiroshima, Japan 1947

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947, Atomic Bomb survivor

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947, Atomic Bomb survivors

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947, Atomic Bomb survivor

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947 peace festival

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1949, atomic bomb survivor

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima’s children patiently wait their turn for a complete and detailed physical examination in ABCC’s [Atom Bomb Casualty Commission] temporary laboratory clinic.

Carl Mydans (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1949, atomic bomb survivor

Carl Mydans (LIFE Picture Collection)

Hiroshima Japan 1947

Carl Mydans (LIFE Picture Collection)

Paris in 1963: Children at a Puppet Show, and More

December 17, 2019March 20, 2014 by

Forget the fabled rudeness of the Parisians. Forget the crowds of tourists who flock to the City of Light in the summer, making the city’s winding streets, echoing stone churches and public gardens all but unbearable. Forget that everything, everything, is more expensive in Paris than it has any right to be. Forget that entire neighborhoods sometimes smell, suddenly and inexplicably, of rotting garbage and then, as suddenly and as inexplicably, the stench vanishes. Forget that everybody smokes, everywhere, at all times, no matter what. Forget all of the worst aspects of the French capital and its denizens, and instead dwell for a moment on the Paris of everyone’s dreams.

Picture the book stalls, the fishermen and the artists with their easels along the Seine. Picture lovers walking the winding streets, drunk on one other, oblivious to everyone and everything but each other. Picture Sacré Cœur and Montmartre, the flower peddlers and the Champs-Elysees, the mansard roofs and the zinc bars, Sainte-Chapelle and the Marais. Picture the Paris, in other words, that inspired Hemingway to remark (according to his friend, the writer and raconteur A.E. Hotchner), “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Of all the pictures made of that Paris — the Paris of the last century, when the city was still largely depicted in beautiful black and white — perhaps none is more famous than Alfred Eisenstaedt’s unforgettable shot of kids at a Parisian puppet show, “Saint George and the Dragon,” at an outdoor theater in 1963. Capturing the thrill, the shock, the shared triumph-over-evil that the children feel at the very moment when St. George slays the mythical beast, Eisenstaedt’s picture feels as fresh as when it was made, more than 50 years ago. Here, the picture tells us, is an innocence that can remind even the most jaded of what it was once like to believe, to really believe, in the stories that unfold before our eyes onstage, or onscreen.

The master photographer himself, meanwhile, said of this very picture: “It took a long time to get the angle I liked. But the best picture is the one I took at the climax of the action. It carries all the excitement of the children screaming, ‘The dragon is slain!’ Very often this sort of thing is only a momentary vision. My brain does not register, only my eyes and finger react. Click.”

Here, LIFE.com celebrates Paris in the spring through the lens of Eisenstaedt’s iconic puppet-show picture—as well as a number of photographs of Parisians and their city that he made around the same time, but that never ran in LIFE magazine.

Children watched the story of “Saint George and the Dragon” at an outdoor puppet theater in Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisians at a sidewalk cafe, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A woman sat with her pet cheetah while having tea at a Bois de Boulogne cafe, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

People enjoyed an afternoon on the banks of the Seine River, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisian rooftop scene, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisians enjoyed an amusement park ride, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A low angle of the Eiffel Tower, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Young Parisians enjoyed an impromptu outdoor concert on the banks of the Seine, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisian beatniks hung out on bank of the Seine, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Paris street scene, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Parisian girl dressed for her first communion, accompanied by family members, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

French children played on toy horse and buggy vehicles, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A little boy on merry-go-round at the Tuileries Gardens, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Children at play, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisian children rode a merry-go-round in a playground, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisians, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisians played boule, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A young Parisian woman, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This street performer drew a crowd, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Parisian vendor, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A man examined stamps at stamp market on Avenue Matignon, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Street artists at work, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Montmartre sidewalk artist and monkey entertained tourists in the Place du Terte near Sacre Coeur, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A woman taxi driver shared the front seat with her pet dog, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Children, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Children duelists on the Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An elderly woman walked along that street while a bride and groom strode behind, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Paris street scene, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Little girl, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Children, Paris, 1963

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An amphibious car crossed the Seine, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Louvre, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ballerinas at the Paris Opera, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A young Parisian woman at a discotheque, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Young Parisians danced at a discotheque, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A couple embraced at Golfe Drouot dance hall, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A woman under a streetlight in Montmartre at night, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cat in the street, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Wonderful World of Witches: Portraits of English Pagans, 1964

August 11, 2021March 17, 2014 by

Fifty years ago, in the fall of 1964, LIFE magazine published what must have felt to the venerable weekly’s long-time readers like a strikingly weird feature. Titled “Real Witches at Work,” the piece included photographs of modern-day British pagans doctors, housewives, nurses, teachers celebrating their ancient rites, dancing around fires and generally behaving like perfectly normal, faithful worshippers of the sun, the moon and Mother Nature have been acting for thousands of years.

Today, when magic, the supernatural and the occult are central elements of some of pop culture’s most familiar franchises (see Potter, Harry), and Wiccans are more likely to be found serving on the local school board or city council than practicing their beliefs in secret for fear of being “found out,” the shock has been tempered for many. But in the early 1960s, the notion of grown men and women getting naked in order to practice their religion would likely have blown a goodly number of puritanical minds.

Mrs. Ray Bon, a British housewife and the pagan high priestess in the story, offered a nicely reasoned defense in that long-ago issue of LIFE: “It seems obvious to me that people can be just as immoral with their clothes on as with them off.”

Ray Bone, high priestess of the London witch coven, raised a sword and asked ‘Mighty Ones of the East’ to protect the ritual circle in which they gathered near Chipping Norton. Witches behind her held up knives.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

In a thousand-year-old rite, the witches danced around a bonfire within a prehistoric Rollright stone circle in Oxfordshire.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

At climax of the dance they leapt over the fire, honoring the sun as the source of life.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

Beneath cabalistic symbols, nude witches raised ritual knives to invoke their gods at a meeting. The witches claimed that their nudity represented the putting aside of worldly things.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

English pagan, 1964.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

A witchcraft initiation ceremony, England, 1964.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

High priestess Artemis stirred a salt and water mixture which was used to ‘purify’ the sacred circle in all witchcraft rites. On the table were an incense burner, cord and a statue of a goddess. At right is an herb chest containing incense.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

Items in an English ruin, 1964.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

A witch studied in a museum, England, 1964.

Terence Spencer / Getty Images

The story “Real Witches at Work” as it appeared in LIFE magazine, November 13, 1964.

LIFE Magazine

Mount Vesuvius: Photos From the Volcano’s Last Great Eruption, 1944

January 17, 2020March 16, 2014 by

The most storied volcano on earth, Italy’s Mount Vesuvius looms above the Gulf of Naples like an unpredictable god. The story of the mountain’s 79 AD eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, burying those two ancient towns in scalding rock and ash, has been depicted so many times in art and literature that it has assumed the feel of myth.

Vesuvius has in fact erupted dozens of times in the centuries since Pompeii and Herculaneum were nearly erased from history, sometimes killing thousands (as in 1631), at other times destroying homes and even whole villages but leaving no one dead in its wake. The last major eruption happened 70 years ago, in the midst of World War II, and was photographed by the great British photographer and Magnum founding member, George Rodger.

As LIFE noted to its readers in the April 17, 1944, issue of the magazine, the eruption “has compounded the complexities of fighting a war and of merely existing in southern Italy. Beginning on March 18 and still continuing, the eruption has given the Allied Military Government several thousand more refugees to look after and brightened the night horizon as far north as Anzio beachhead.”

But LIFE also quoted the director of the Mt. Vesuvius Observatory, Professor Giuseppe Imbo, who offered a refreshingly sanguine take on the Neapolitan people’s relationship with the great, unpredictable volcano in their midst:

“A marvelous thing, my Vesuvius,” the professor enthused. “It covers land with precious ash that makes the earth fertile and grapes grow, and wine. That’s why, after every eruption, people rebuild their homes on the slopes of the volcano. That is why they call the slopes of Vesuvius the compania felix—the happy land.”

Troops watched the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Italy, 1944.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Troops in a bell tower during the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Priest and children during the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Civilians moved furniture during the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

People watched the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Children, Italy, 1944.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nighttime eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 1944.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Refugees made their way through dust during the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

People made their way through ash and dust during the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Street scene, 1944, at time of Mt. Vesuvius’ last major eruption.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Italy.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Scene in nearby town during the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

George Rodger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Right Stuff: When America Met the Mercury Astronauts

September 14, 2020March 15, 2014 by

America’s first venture into space was a feat of scientific ingenuity and also one of human daring. It is no wonder that, in the early days of the Space Race, the men who piloted those mighty rocketships were accorded a dose of stardom, even before they ascended toward the stars.

No other publication covered the early days of the Space Race with as much unfettered access to the astronauts and their families as LIFE, and in its Sept. 14, 1959, issue the editors featured the “fly boys” selected for Project Mercury in a major cover story. Thus did American begin its fascination with the men knows as the Mercury 7: Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Donald Slayton, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Scott Carpenter.

LIFE’s coverage of the Mercury 7 plays a central role in The Right Stuff, a new television series based on the Tom Wolfe novel. (The book was also the basis for a 1983 movie of the same name), This eight-episode series about America’s first astronauts debuts on Disney+ on October 9.

In the original magazine story, LIFE’s editors announced, “We begin this week to report the personal side of a story which we know will live on in history as long as there are men to record it. It is the story of the Astronauts the supremely dramatic story of man’s first efforts to leave his native Earth.”

In the introduction to the multi-part feature itself, meanwhile, the momentous nature of the task ahead was discussed in tones that ranged from the near-poetic to the downright blunt:

Some fine early morning before another summer has come, one man chosen from the calmly intent seven … will embark on the greatest adventure man has ever dared to take. Dressed in an all-covering suit to protect him from explosive changes in pressure, strapped into a form-fitting couch to cushion him against the crushing forces of acceleration, surrounded in his tiny chamber by all manner of instruments designed to bring him safely home, he will catapult upward at the head of a rocket for more than 100 miles and then plunge down into the Atlantic Ocean. If he survives, he will be come the heroic symbol of a historic triumph; he will be the first American, perhaps the first man, to be rocketed into the dark stillness of space. If he does not survive, one of his six remaining comrades will go next.

The astronauts are all in their 30s. All are military pilots with experience in engineering and in testing new airplanes. One member of the NASA board which chose them called the Astronauts “premium individuals picked for an unconventional task.” In less clinical terms they are the best of a very good lot, a bright, balanced, splendidly conditioned first team, willing eager, in fact to undertake an assignment most men would find unthinkable.

The seven were introduced to America on April 9, 1959. Here, LIFE.com offers a gallery of photos taken in the early days of Project Mercury. The pictures were made by long-time LIFE photographer Ralph Morse—a man who spent so much time with the Mercury Seven (and, ultimately, with the Gemini and Apollo crews, as well) that John Glenn himself fondly dubbed Morse “the eighth astronaut.”

Project Mercury astronauts at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia: (top, left to right) Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper; (bottom left to right) Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn trained in a mock-up of the planned NASA space capsule, 1959.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1959.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Astronaut Donald “Deke” Slayton in an “orbital attitude simulator” training device, 1959. In 1975, at 51 years old, Maj. Slayton became the oldest person to fly into space (until his Mercury colleague John Glenn flew aboard the Discovery space shuttle at age 77 in 1998) when he served as the docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom strapped into a centrifuge during a simulated space flight, 1959. Lieutenant Col. Grissom was killed, along with fellow astronauts Roger Chaffee and Ed White, in a launch pad fire while training for the Apollo 1 mission in January 1967.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Air Force medical officer Dr. William Douglas gave a physiology lesson to Project Mercury astronaut Walter Schirra, 1959. Schirra was the only person to fly in all three of the earliest space programs—Mercury, Gemini and Apollo—and eventually logged more than 295 hours in space.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter flew in an F-100F supersonic jet fighter while training in weightlessness (note the floating golf ball).

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury Project astronaut Alan Shepard checked the fit of his individually molded couch, used for training as well as during flight.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Project Mercury astronauts posed in new pressure suits at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base, 1960.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Day Albert Einstein Died: A Photographer’s Story

January 17, 2020March 14, 2014 by

When Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955, of heart failure at age 76, his funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one photographer managed to capture the events of that extraordinary day: LIFE magazine’s Ralph Morse.

Armed with his camera and a case of scotch to open doors and loosen tongues, Morse compiled a quietly intense record of a the passing of a 20th-century icon and a man whose genius expanded our understanding of the workings of the universe. But aside from one now-famous image of Einstein’s office, exactly as he left it, taken hours after his death the pictures Morse took that day were never published. At the request of Einstein’s son, who asked that the family’s privacy be respected while they mourned, LIFE’s editors chose not to run the full story, and for more than five decades Morse’s photographs lay in the magazine’s archives, forgotten.

The story of how Morse got the pictures, meanwhile, provides a lesson in tenacity, and thinking on one’s feet.

After getting a call that April morning from a LIFE editor telling him Einstein had died, Morse grabbed his cameras and drove the 90 miles from his house in northern New Jersey to Princeton.

“Einstein died at the Princeton Hospital,” said Morse in an interview with LIFE.com not long before his death in 2014. “So I headed there first. But it was chaos journalists, photographers, onlookers. So I headed over to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies. On the way, I stopped and bought a case of scotch. I knew people might be reluctant to talk, but most people are happy to accept a bottle of booze, instead of money, in exchange for their help. So I get to the building, find the superintendent, give him a fifth of scotch and like that, he opens up the office.”

Early in the afternoon, Einstein’s body was moved for a short time from the hospital to a funeral home in Princeton. The simple casket containing the corpse, post-autopsy, only stayed at the funeral home for an hour or so. Morse made his way there, and soon saw two men loading a casket into a hearse. For all Morse knew, Einstein’s burial was imminent. Hoping to scope out a spot near the grave, he quickly drove to the Princeton Cemetery.

“I drive out to the cemetery to try and find where Einstein is going to be buried,” Morse remembered. “But there must have been two dozen graves being dug that day! I see a group of guys digging a grave, offer them a bottle, ask them if they know anything. One of them says, ‘He’s being cremated in about twenty minutes. In Trenton!’ So I give them the rest of the scotch, hop in my car, and get to Trenton and the crematorium just before Einstein’s friends and family show up.”

“I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was from,” Morse said of his time spent photographing the events of the day. “I was the only photographer there, and it was sort of a given that if there was one photographer on the scene, chances were good he was from LIFE.”

At one point early in the day, Einstein’s son Hans asked Morse for his name a seemingly insignificant, friendly inquiry that would prove, within a few hours, to have significant ramifications.

“As the day was winding down, I was pretty excited,” Morse recalled, “because I knew I was the only fellow with these pictures. This was big news! Einstein was a huge public figure, world famous, and we had this story cold.” He headed to Manhattan, and the LIFE offices, certain he’d be feted for his colossal scoop.

“I get to New York with the film, and there are signs all over the place in the office: ‘Ralph, see Ed!’ Ed Thompson was LIFE’s managing editor. A great journalist. Ed says, ‘Ralph, I hear you have one hell of an exclusive.’ I say, ‘Yeah, I think I do.’ And he says, ‘Well, we’re not going to run it.’ I was stunned. Turns out Einstein’s son, Hans, called while I was on the road to New York, and asked that we not run the story, that we respect the family’s privacy. So Ed decided to kill the story. You can’t run a magazine without an editor to make those decisions, and Ed had made his. So I thought, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and went on to my next assignment. I figured the pictures would never see the light of day, and forgot all about them.”

Here, LIFE presents a selection of photographs from that day pictures that capture the scene on a spring morning in New Jersey, when Ralph Morse found himself racing around an Ivy League town trying to find out what became of the late, great Albert Einstein. . . .

Finally: The stranger-than-fiction tale of Einstein’s brain which Dr. Thomas Harvey controversially removed during the autopsy, carefully sliced into sections, and then kept for years for research purposes and the intrigues long-associated with the famous organ are too convoluted to go into here. However, on the day that Einstein died, Ralph Morse was able to take a few quick photographs of Dr. Harvey at the hospital. Morse said he’s certain that is not Einstein’s brain under Dr. Harvey’s knife in the picture that ends this gallery.

Then, after a pause, Morse said: “You know, it was a long, long time ago. I don’t remember every detail. So, whatever he’s cutting there. . . .” His words hang in the air.

Then, mischievously, Morse laughed.

A photo of Albert Einstein’s office – just as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist left it – taken mere hours after Einstein died, Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Albert Einstein’s papers, pipe, ashtray and other personal belongings in his Princeton office, April 18, 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Albert Einstein’s casket was moved for a short time from the Princeton Hospital to a funeral home, Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

From left: Unidentified woman; Albert Einstein’s son, Hans Albert (in light suit); unidentified woman; Einstein’s longtime secretary, Helen Dukas (in light coat); and friend Dr. Gustav Bucky (partially hidden behind Dukas) arriving at the Ewing Crematorium, Trenton, New Jersey, April 18, 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mourners walked into the service for Albert Einstein, passing the hearse that carried his casket from Princeton, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Friends and family made their way to their cars after the funeral service for Albert Einstein, Trenton, April 1955. The ceremony was brief: Einstein’s friend Otton Nathan, an economist at Princeton and co-executor of the Einstein estate, read some lines by the great German poet, Goethe. Immediately after the service, Einstein’s remains were cremated.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An unidentified man held a car door open for Albert Einstein’s secretary, Helen Dukas, following Einstein’s cremation, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Family and friends returned to Einstein’s home at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, where he lived for 20 years, after his funeral, April 18, 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Thomas Harvey (1912 – 2007) was the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Einstein at Princeton Hospital in 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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After Hiroshima: Portraits of Survivors

Paris in 1963: Children at a Puppet Show, and More

The Wonderful World of Witches: Portraits of English Pagans, 1964

Mount Vesuvius: Photos From the Volcano’s Last Great Eruption, 1944

The Right Stuff: When America Met the Mercury Astronauts

The Day Albert Einstein Died: A Photographer’s Story

A Healing Return: Marlene Dietrich Goes Back to Germany, 1960

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