Hi, everyone! My name is Lauren Aung (she/her), and I’m from Austin, Texas. I plan on joining the Politics department and pursuing certificates in Journalism and Values and Public Life. I’m an editor for The Nassau Weekly and a host for the podcast Tigers in Translation. In my free time, I enjoy running and reading, and if you are ever in need of homemade cheesecake or raspberry thumbprint cookies, I’m your gal.
I am working this summer as a ProCES-Derian intern at the Historical Society of Princeton, a museum, research center, and public programming site that seeks to enhance Princeton’s historical literacy and community vitality.
My daily work involves curating, transcribing, and editing audio from their collection of 80 oral histories with Albert Einstein’s Princeton friends, neighbors, and colleagues. These oral histories, which were recorded in the 1970s and only recently digitized, span from the deeply personal— such as Einstein’s relationship with his bedridden sister Maja— to the political— for instance, his advice for those appearing before Joseph McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities Committee.
In my curation, I have organized 60 compelling audio selections into 10 different themes to construct a portrait of the man which captures his intricate character. Einstein was a singular genius who at times struggled with interpersonal relationships, a shy individual thrust into the spotlight of the 20th century’s most heated political issues, a jokester, a violinist, and a role model of kindness and humility.
This curation will feature as a digital interactive in the Historical Society of Princeton’s upcoming and permanent exhibit Einstein at Home. I hope that through the interactive, visitors come to understand the famed physicist as a person, someone who eats, works, and lives like any other. I also hope they come away, as I have from my internship experience, inspired by Einstein’s clarity of thought on life and science.
In the words of the man himself, “They may go to the moon, but they’ve got to know that they come from Mother Earth.”
