Einstein: The Spy Who Loved Me

A Russian spy, a master scientist, and romance amid World War II. It sounds more like James Bond than Albert Einstein.

But experts say nine love letters that have just surfaced detail an affair between Einstein and a possible Russian spy, whose mission was to introduce the famed physicist to the Soviet Vice Consul in New York. The letters are dated 1945 and 1946.

Purportedly written by Einstein to Margarita Konenkova, the letters were consigned by a relative of Konenkova to Sotheby's, The New York Times reported in Monday's editions. They will be auctioned June 26 in New York.

The letters, which are written in German, are being sold by a relative of Konenkova who wishes to remain anonymous, the Times reported. A photo of Einstein and Konenkova, autographed in German by Einstein, will also be sold.

No letters from Konenkova to Einstein have been found, said Sotheby's consultant Paul Needham.

The two met in 1935, but it's unclear when the supposed affair began, and whether it was before or after Einstein's second wife died in 1936, Needham said. Konenkova was married to the noted sculptor Sergei Konenkov. She was 51 at the time, and Einstein was 66.

There is no indication in the letters whether Einstein knew that his lover may have been a spy.

The letters do, however, reveal a poetic side to Einstein, who wrote the theory of relativity.

"Just recently I washed my head by myself, but not with the greatest success; I am not as careful as you are," he wrote from his home in Princeton, N.J. on Nov. 27, 1945. "But everything here reminds me of you."

Needham told the Times that it was highly unlikely that Einstein was involved, inadvertently or otherwise, with Russia's efforts to build an atomic bomb, because he was only peripherally involved in U.S. efforts to do so at the time.