Dear TIME-Reader:

IN a woods near Saratoga Springs, Playwright Thornton Wilder sat composing a eulogy to the late Thomas Mann. As he wrote, a small balding man, quiet and sharp-eyed as a young deer, moved among the trees, observing and pausing to focus his Leica. The click of the shutter among the bird sounds and leaf rustles was inaudible. Later Wilder wrote in the photographer's memento book: "To Alfred Eisenstaedt--not only a master photographer but a presence so tactful and soothing that I found myself working --really working--and working extra well while he went about his task."

Playwright Wilder was one of 13 U.S. intellectuals photographed by Eisenstaedt for this week's cover story on Jacques Barzun and American intellectuals, written by Education Editor Bruce Barton Jr. In pursuit of intellectuals, "Eisie," who has been a LIFE photographer since the first experimental, pre-publication issues, traveled up and down the U.S. from

Philosopher Sidney Hook's Brooklyn rooftop to the Pacific rocks at La Jolla, where he perched Physicist George Gamow. It was the second time this year that we borrowed Eisie from LIFE. His gallery of distinguished businessmen appeared in the Man-of-the-Year issue (TIME, Jan. 2).

For a quarter of a century, Eisie, a German G.I. in World War1 and postwar button-and-belt salesman in Berlin, has photographed the great and near-great of the world. "I love to take pictures of people," he says. "The important thing about photography is not clicking the shutter but clicking with the subject."

The inscriptions in his growing collection of memento books show that he has clicked very well with most of his subjects, who praise his skill and tact. But the last two intellectuals whom he photographed gave him a surprise. At the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (posing for Eisie for the sixth time) wrote in the memento book a quotation in Greek from Pindar's Third Pythian Ode: "Dear Soul, do not pursue with too much zeal immortal life, but first exhaust the practical mechanics of living." Next day, at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin North in Wisconsin, the controversial architect took one look at Oppenheimer's inscription, snorted and wrote: "Take the science of life in your stride as the mechanics of the affair. Art and religion are the essences of being. Cultivate them -- they are the payoff."

Last week, to illustrate this letter, Eisie tackled his most difficult subject -- himself. "I'm afraid of the camera," he confessed. "I know how I should be photographed -- low and slightly from the left, but when I took my own picture for you," he grinned sheepishly, "I just forgot to do it that way."

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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