A father-son pair of Forteans who thought they had discovered the universe’s secret unifying principle. An appropriate post for today, Pi day and Einstern’s birthday.
Frank S. Lonc was born 9 March 1884 in Berlin, Germany. He is difficult to find in official documents—probably because of his surname’s spelling, which is unusual and too-easily confused with Long. I do not know when he came to the United States, but it was likely after 1906. A later, brief biography by Thayer, based (presumably) on Lonc’s letters to him has Lonc still in Berlin then, beginning to study cosmology. According to Thayer, Lonc saw himself as in competition with Albert Einstein, who came to public attention in 1905 with four papers establishing the theory of relativity. He stands firmly in the tradition of outsider-science-as-folk-art outlined by Margaret Wertheim in her book “Physics on the Fringe.”
Lonc came to the U.S. sometime after that. It may have been 1908—there’s a man in the 1910 census, living in Baltimore, with Lonc’s name and who fits his description, except for being born in Bohemia rather than Berlin, who came over at that time. But it’s hard to say. At any rate, by September 1918, at which time he registered for World War I, Lonc was in Rochester, and married to a woman named Martha. (The man in Baltimore was married to someone named Anna—they may be different people, or Frank may have remarried in the interim.) He was working as an instrument maker at Bausch and Lomb. It would have been around this time that Martha gave birth to a son, Frank A. Lonc. The 1919 Rochester city directory has the two of them still there, though the name was “Lonce.” They were at 249 Michigan Avenue.
Frank S. Lonc was born 9 March 1884 in Berlin, Germany. He is difficult to find in official documents—probably because of his surname’s spelling, which is unusual and too-easily confused with Long. I do not know when he came to the United States, but it was likely after 1906. A later, brief biography by Thayer, based (presumably) on Lonc’s letters to him has Lonc still in Berlin then, beginning to study cosmology. According to Thayer, Lonc saw himself as in competition with Albert Einstein, who came to public attention in 1905 with four papers establishing the theory of relativity. He stands firmly in the tradition of outsider-science-as-folk-art outlined by Margaret Wertheim in her book “Physics on the Fringe.”
Lonc came to the U.S. sometime after that. It may have been 1908—there’s a man in the 1910 census, living in Baltimore, with Lonc’s name and who fits his description, except for being born in Bohemia rather than Berlin, who came over at that time. But it’s hard to say. At any rate, by September 1918, at which time he registered for World War I, Lonc was in Rochester, and married to a woman named Martha. (The man in Baltimore was married to someone named Anna—they may be different people, or Frank may have remarried in the interim.) He was working as an instrument maker at Bausch and Lomb. It would have been around this time that Martha gave birth to a son, Frank A. Lonc. The 1919 Rochester city directory has the two of them still there, though the name was “Lonce.” They were at 249 Michigan Avenue.