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Few may be aware of Einstein’s 30 hours in Cuba, just as the world was plummeting into the Great Depression. He was received by the most illustrious academics of his day, leaving the entry above in the Golden Book of the Geographic Society of Cuba. He spoke before what was then the Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Havana—precursor of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. The chair he occupied still sits in the Academy’s great hall.
But as his words indicate, he hoped that society would follow the steps of researchers, coming together in truly universal fashion to protect humanity from catastrophes—perhaps of its own making. Science in the public interest was no stranger to Albert Einstein, who also insisted upon visiting the city’s poorest neighborhoods during his brief stay in Havana. In 1930, it was the capital of a country that had gone from being the “ripe fruit” destined to fall into the lap of the United States to being brie y occupied by the US military, all the while an economic appendage of its neighbor to the north. Over the decades, and despite tumultuous relations between the United States and Cuba—exacerbated after the Cuban revolution by US regimechange programs and a draconian embargo—experts in the sciences, public health and medicine from the two countries have managed to form alliances for the bene t of both their peoples.