'Albert Einstein Font' Lets You Write Like Physics Genius

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Albert Einstein at the Blackboard
Albert Einstein at the blackboard. (Image credit: NASA)

Few people can hope to achieve the feats of genius Albert Einstein, but now, there may at least be a way to write like the famous physicist, thanks to a font styled after his handwriting.

The "Albert Einstein Font," which is based on hundreds of letters written by Einstein himself, lets you "write like a genius," its creators say. The project is being launched to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Through the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, the project has already raised more than $7,000 of its $15,000 goal. [Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds]

Einstein is best known for achievements such as general relativity (his theory of gravitation) and special relativity (his theory on the relationship between space and time). But the famous physicist also had impressive handwriting.

"Einstein's equations were beautiful, so it makes sense that their presentation should be as well," said Phil Marshall, an astrophysicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California, according to the Kickstarter site.

The project is a collaboration between typographer Harald Geisler and former dancer Liz Waterhouse. In 2009, Waterhouse was looking at words printed in a handwriting-style font on a napkin in Frankfurt, Germany, when she asked Geisler if he could design such a font. Later, they decided to develop fonts based on the penmanship of innovative thinkers, according to the project's Kickstarter page.

Geisler spent six months poring over letters from the Einstein Archives before developing a prototype, which he created by tracing the handwriting with a digital pen. The Einstein Estate has since granted approval for Geisler to develop the font.

In real handwriting, letters aren't always written the same way. To make the Einstein font seem more natural, Geisler created several variations of each letter, which can be combined with other letters in different ways.

Geisler previously produced a font based on Sigmund Freud's handwriting.

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Tanya Lewis
Tanya Lewis
Staff Writer
Tanya was a staff writer for Live Science from 2013 to 2015, covering a wide array of topics, ranging from neuroscience to robotics to strange/cute animals. She received a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering from Brown University. She has previously written for Science News, Wired, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the radio show Big Picture Science and other places. Tanya has lived on a tropical island, witnessed volcanic eruptions and flown in zero gravity (without losing her lunch!). To find out what her latest project is, you can visit her website.