One page, 8vo (276 x 220 mm), in German, horizontal creases, minor chips to top margin, two hole punches.

"I ALONE AM BUT A GRAIN-OF-DUST IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT"

Albert Einstein thanks President Herbert Hoover for his good wishes on the occasion of his 50th birthday, offering a humble self-assessment of his monumental achievements in theoretical physics: "I alone am but a grain-of-dust in the development of the human spirit." A remarkable self-assessment, written in response to President Hoover’s laudation of Einstein on the occasion of his 50th birthday. In acknowledging receipt of Hoover’s telegram: "I have read the telegram with which you have honored me, and I was both profoundly humbled and elated. Humbled, because no person, I least of all, is worthy of such an honor; elated, because this is proof of how highly the powers-that-be of this earth esteem intellectual values in our time. I know that I am just one of the many who are so happy to use their energy in the service of the understanding of the Sciences. Your testimony of recognition and congeniality shall refer to all of us equally; because I alone am but a grain-of-dust in the development of the human spirit."

AN EXCEEDINGLY RARE EINSTEIN LETTER WRITTEN TO A SITTING U.S. PRESIDENT: We are aware of only one other letter by Einstein written to a sitting U.S. President: the fateful 1939 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him about the German drive to produce an atomic bomb (Forbes Collection, Christie’s, 27 March 2002, Lot 161, $2,096,000).