Born in Berlin, Valentine Bargmann (1908–1989) is the son of Russian-Jewish parents. He studies physics in Berlin, after emigrating receives his doctorate in 1936 at the University of Zurich and subsequently goes to the United States. From 1937 to 1946 he is an employee at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, afterwards professor for mathematics at Princeton University. In 1988, he receives the Max Planck Medal from the German Physical Society. Bargmann is Einstein’s assistant from 1937 to 1938 and works with him on problems about the unified field theory. During World War II he works with other scientists, including John von Neumann on shock waves and after the war with Eugene Wigner on relativistic wave equations.