Papers, 1880s–1966, 1 ft. Emigre professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, 1921–53. Born in Warsaw of well-to-do Jewish parents, he was raised mostly in Minsk. He spent his student days in Moscow, ca. 1901–1905, where he received his master's degree in 1909. He became assistant professor of physics at Moscow University that same year. From 1910 Epstein studied and taught abroad (Munich, Zurich, and Leyden) until emigrating to the U.S. in 1921. Personal correspondence, photographs, 11 tape recordings (untranscribed), and holograph reminiscences. In the recollections he talks about his mother, Sara Lurie Epstein, an intellectual who knew Fedor Dostoevskii [Dostoevsky/Dostoyevskii/Dostoyevsky] in St. Petersburg (Dostoevski! mentions her in his Diary of a Writer for March 1877). She had correspondence with the novelist that was apparently destroyed after her death in 1897. Other family members noted in Epstein's correspondence include his sister, Hedwig Lurie Epstein, and three cousins (Sadi and Vera Lurie Mase, and Rashel Lurie). Because his major work was done in Germany and America, Epstein's papers are not primarily concerned with Russia, especially after 1910. For the 1930s, however, there is some information about the plight of European (and Soviet?) Jews. Qualified scholars only. Finding aid available: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6z09p7b4/
