Congress leader Shashi Tharoor faced embarrassment after he tweeted a picture referring to a letter of rejection from the University of Bern to scientist Albert Einstein for his unsuccessful doctoral application and ineligibility for the position of associate professor at the university.
For all those smarting from rejection: those in power today (&in a position to judge you) will not necessarily be proven right tomorrow. And their judgement of you might look downright silly…. pic.twitter.com/jiDzjbaRyt
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) June 11, 2018
With the picture, Tharoor wrote: For all those smarting from rejection: For all those smarting from rejection: those in power today (&in a position to judge you) will not necessarily be proven right tomorrow. And their judgement of you might look downright silly….
FACT CHECK
The truth is that the picture of the letter posted by Tharoor is Fake.
Einstein’s initial application for a doctorate at the University of Bern (he had previously been awarded a PhD by the University of Zürich in 1905) was indeed rejected as insufficient in 1907, and it was not until the following year that he completed a new dissertation that resulted in his being awarded a doctorate by the University of Bern and given a position as a lecturer at that school, the picture posted by Tharoor depicts a modern creation and not an actual letter sent to Einstein in 1907.
A US-based fact-checking website also claims that, the University of Bern is located in Switzerland where the predominant language was German which would not have sent the German-speaking Einstein, who published his academic work in German, a letter written in English. (Even today, Switzerland boasts four official languages, none of them English.)