RADICAL MINDS THE CALIFORNIA MEETING OF ALBERT EINSTEIN AND UPTON SINCLAIR.

Byline: Anthony Arthur Special to the Daily News

In November 1930, shortly before he arrived in Pasadena for the first of his three stints as Caltech's most distinguished visiting professor, Albert Einstein received a warm though cautionary letter of welcome from Southern California's most politely obstreperous social critic, Upton Sinclair.

``I am considered a very dangerous person,'' Sinclair warned, tongue only partly in cheek. But if Einstein wanted ``a quiet garden to come to and be let alone in, we will provide it. You had better bring your fiddle along, and we will play duets if you don't mind my being out of tune occasionally.''

Einstein took Sinclair up on his offer, appearing on his doorstep on Sunset Avenue in Pasadena one day the following February. Just six months apart in age (Sinclair was 52 when they met, Einstein 51), the two men had achieved their initial fame at almost the same time: Einstein in 1905 with his first publication of the relativity theory, Sinclair in 1906 with his sensational novel about the Chicago meatpacking industry, ``The Jungle.'' Both had used their fame to advance the cause of socialism - to the distress of Robert Millikan, the president of Caltech, who thought Einstein was politically naive and was being ``exploited'' by various people, some of them ``the Charlie Chaplin type'' and some ``the Upton Sinclair type'' - especially the latter.

As Millikan's comment on Chaplin suggests, Einstein and the Hollywood community were mutually star-struck, and Sinclair had his own connections with the film world. He was particularly close to Chaplin, who had treated him to private ``Little Tramp'' performances in his studio dressing room and who was greatly amused one day when Sinclair asked him if he really believed in the profit system. It was in part through Sinclair that Einstein attended a showing of the comedian's new film, ``City Lights,'' on Jan. 30, 1931. (The Skirball Cultural Center's current Einstein exhibition highlights a stunning photograph of the physicist and Chaplin together at the premiere).

Like many at the time, Sinclair and Einstein also shared an interest in spiritualism, on one occasion participating - or trying to participate - in a seance at Sinclair's house. According to Helen Dukas, Einstein's secretary, who was with him, they were warned by Sinclair before the seance that ``we shouldn't be afraid if suddenly the piano starts to play and flowers come from above. I was frightened to death. It was a really scary atmosphere. And, oh my gosh, suddenly the doorbell rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin.'' It was only a telegram, but the medium ``went into catalepsy and made mumbling noises,'' and the seance ended in failure. Sinclair said ``hostile forces'' had ruined the experiment.

Also unsuccessful, Sinclair ruefully admitted, was his plan to play violin duets with Einstein, whose skill was far beyond his own. Einstein ``played as he lived, quietly and serenely, with the precision of his mathematical formulas. I had labored earnestly at the violin myself, but too late; when he invited me to play, I knew better than to accept. I told him I would write books for him, and he called that a fair division of labor. He knew, of course, that I couldn't understand his books.''

In 1934, after Sinclair lost his bid to become California governor, Einstein sent him a consoling letter, which included an instructive parable - his son had once borrowed his shaving razor, Einstein said, and tried to chop wood with it. Perhaps taking Einstein's cue to use his talents to better effect, Sinclair largely withdrew from public life. Instead, beginning with a novel called ``World's End'' in 1940, he launched a new career as a historical novelist, eventually writing a series of 11 books about the wars of the 20th century. In the seventh of those novels, ``A World to Win'' (1946), he offers a touching tribute to Einstein - and a revealing instance of how a novelist projects his own character into his work.

Lanny Budd, Sinclair's hero, is a Walter Mitty-like projection of Sinclair himself: 20 years younger, a multilingual amateur musician, world traveler and bon vivant, handsome, rich, debonair - and on a first- name basis (as Sinclair indeed was) with the rich and famous. The privileged world in which he moves thinks Lanny is merely a playboy, but he is in fact the perfect spy, a secret agent for President Roosevelt.

Early in the war, in his most challenging mission, Lanny is assigned to go behind enemy lines to bring out a German scientist needed at Los Alamos. Time is short: Lanny has to brush up on his mastery of nuclear physics in a few weeks in order to pass as an esteemed colleague of the man he must save (yes, he can do this). The great Einstein himself takes Lanny on as his very apt pupil. Lanny is as smitten with Einstein as Sinclair had been, describing him as ``the kindest, gentlest, sweetest of men,'' and as an ``elderly Jewish cherub ... one of the most delightful human beings he had yet had the fortune to meet.'' Einstein takes a liking to Lanny, as naturally everyone does. For relaxation, teacher and student play Mozart piano and violin duets.

In correspondence after ``A World to Win'' appeared, in the spring of 1946, Einstein thanked Sinclair warmly for his ``inspiring book,'' in which he had learned ``remarkable things about my inspiring evangelical existence.'' The reality was not ``quite so romantic,'' Einstein said. But he added, in a later note, that he felt Sinclair's Lanny Budd novels would ``contribute to the development of sound judgment about the political forces in our time,'' and praised Sinclair's ``courageous and unselfish fight for reason and human decency.''

In the years that followed, Sinclair and Einstein parted ways politically. Although Sinclair continued to regard Einstein as ``a beloved brother,'' he failed to persuade the scientist that the Soviet Union was now a ``deadly and treacherous foe.'' Einstein, for his part, failed in his effort to explain ``the red shift'' to Sinclair, who, at 75, decided he had to leave astrophysics ``to better educated generations.''

By the time Einstein died, in 1956, Lanny Budd's adventures had also concluded. But Sinclair survived - he would not die until 1968, at the age of 90 - to write a touching farewell in Saturday Review to the great scientist and humanitarian, with whom he had shared ``as lovely a friendship as anyone could have in this world.'' He could ``get along very well without knowing about the red shift,'' Sinclair said. But he would dearly love to know ``what has become of the great and beloved mind of Albert Einstein, and whether it waits somewhere in the spirit world, to put an arm around my shoulder and say, 'Copernicus, this is my friend Upton Sinclair.' ''

EINSTEIN

Where: Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Thursday; through May 29.

Tickets: $8 to $12. [phone], www.skirball.org.

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(1 -- 2) Author Upton Sinclair, shown delivering a radio address during his 1934 campaign for governor of California, counted himself among Albert Einstein's friends when the physicist came to Caltech.