COMMUNING WITH A GENIUS: As manager of the social media accounts for Albert Einstein, Benyamin Cohen has to mind-meld with the world’s most popular deceased celebrity. (Photo by Shoshi Benstein)

By Anne Levin

Benyamin Cohen is not a scientist. He is not a scholar. But several times a day, he posts an anecdote, quotation, or little-known fact about Albert Einstein on social media.

As official manager of the Einstein Facebook and other accounts, Cohen — news director at The Forward newspaper and the author of the book The Einstein Effect — is the keeper of trivia and more about the world’s most famous physicist. He is also “the digital avatar of Einstein,” he writes in the book. “Teenagers in India message me for help with their science homework, physicists in Florida email me the findings of their latest research, and producers at PBS call and ask if I’ll promote a new Einstein documentary.”

Cohen will be on hand at this year’s Pi Day celebration on Saturday, March 15, speaking at Princeton Public Library at 4 p.m. after serving as a judge at the annual pie-eating and Einstein lookalike contests earlier in the day.

“Einstein is the most popular dead celebrity on social media,” Cohen said this week. “He has 20 million followers. I’m extremely active with his accounts. When I began learning a lot about him, I started finding out how he was still so relevant, more than 70 years after his death.”

Princeton’s annual Pi Day marks Einstein’s birthday, March 14, and 3.14, the numeric equivalent of pi. In addition to the pie-eating and Einstein lookalike contests, events include an Einstein pub crawl, Dinky train rides with Einstein, an open archive presented by the Historical Society of Princeton and Princeton Public Library, Einstein Story Time, a Hands-on Einstein Exploration Station, the Pi Recitation contest, and more.

Cohen, who is 49, lives in West Virginia with his wife, three dogs, a cat, “and a flock of chickens known as the Co-Hens,” according to his website. He has found that Einstein’s virtual fingerprints are all over today’s technology.

“My favorite example is GPS,” he said. “It all works because of the theory of relativity. It’s the underlying mathematical equation that makes GPS work. Think about that the next time you get an Amazon delivery to your house. The pizza delivery guy found your house because of Einstein.”

Einstein’s work “lives on in the form of iPhone cameras and burglar alarms, remote controls, supermarket scanners, laser eye surgery, and in the space program,” Cohen writes in the book. “Driverless cars, DVD players, weather forecasting, and even the search for aliens — it’s all thanks to theories hatched by Einstein.”

Yet the genius scientist, who lived in Princeton from 1933 until his death in 1955 and was a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, was the classic absent-minded professor. He regularly misplaced his keys. He got lost. And his physical appearance was not a priority.

“Once a year, I post a photo of Einstein at the beach,” said Cohen. “He’s dressed very schlubby — wearing shorts and his wife’s sandals. He totally didn’t care. He would sometimes walk around in his bathrobe. He was the Jewish Hugh Hefner. He was very down to earth. In Princeton, kids would walk up to him on the street and ask him to help them with their homework, and he would.”

It was in 2017 that Cohen was approached by the Einstein estate, which is based at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, about managing the scientist’s social media pages. The son of a rabbi, Cohen had written a book called My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, a memoir about spending 52 weeks going to 52 different churches, and how the experience made him a better Jew. The Einstein Effect was published in 2023.

“I started streaming together all of these thoughts and things I was discovering with the social media sites,” said Cohen. “That’s how the book came together.”

An important part of the book is the section on Einstein the humanitarian. “He created the International Rescue Committee. He was very interested in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons,” Cohen said. “He was also involved in the civil rights movement. When Marian Anderson performed in Princeton and wasn’t welcome to stay at the Nassau Inn, he had her stay at his home on Mercer Street. They became lifelong friends.”

Cohen has since taken on the management of social media for two additional deceased celebrities: Robert Oppenheimer and Maya Angelou. He also edits the newsletter for The Forward every morning at 5 a.m. He is currently trying out ideas for a third book.

Einstein, and his popularity, continue to fascinate him.

“He was the first modern-day celebrity. And he played into it,” said Cohen. “There are so many biographies of him. I’m not a historian. I’m not a scientist. I was trying to write a book for people like me, the average Joe.”

For a full schedule of Pi Day activities, visit princetontourcompany.com/tours/pi-day.