Comment by KKKKkkkk1
9 years ago
It was traditional belief that Einstein's assistant did nothing. The only requirement for him was to be a Jewish exile from Nazi Germany.
Einstein's assistant Kemeny ended up designing the BASIC language and being one of the founding fathers of computer science. His assistant Rosen ended up being president of Ben Gurion Univesity and co-founding the Israeli Academy of Sciences. Based on their accomplishments, seems to me like their religion was not the only requirement made of them.
If you read it closely, it seems like fluency in advanced mathematics and significantly above-average IQ were implicit criteria. At least that was my takeaway.
I think "Jewish" in this case refers to whatever racial criteria Germany was using to choose people to exterminate, not religion.
I think the context is they did nothing as assistants.