Phillip Forman

• 1. Introduction

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  Phillip Forman swore in Albert Einstein as a United States citizen in 1940. That moment, quiet and bureaucratic on its surface, placed a federal judge from Trenton, New Jersey at the center of one of the most celebrated naturalizations in American history. Forman would later perform the same ceremony for the mathematician Kurt Godel. Two towering minds, one judge. How did a boy from Trenton end up in that room, and what else defined a career that stretched across more than two decades on the federal bench?

• 2. From Trenton to the Bar

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  Forman was born in New York City on the 30th of November 1895, but it was Trenton, New Jersey that shaped him. He served in the United States Navy from 1917 to 1919, his military years overlapping with the First World War. He earned his Bachelor of Laws from the Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1919, the same year he hung out his shingle in Trenton as a private practitioner. That private practice lasted until 1932, though it was interrupted by a stretch of public service. From 1923 to 1928 he worked as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, then stepped up to the top job as United States Attorney for the same district, serving until 1932. Those years in the prosecutor's office put Forman in front of federal courts regularly, and they positioned him for what came next.

• 3. A District Court Appointment

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  President Herbert Hoover nominated Forman on the 11th of June 1932, to fill a seat on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. The seat had been vacated by Judge William Nelson Runyon. The United States Senate confirmed Forman twelve days later, on the 23rd of June 1932, and he received his commission two days after that. He went on to serve as Chief Judge of that court from 1951 to 1959, and he sat on the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1957 to 1959. His district court service formally ended on the 20th of September 1959, not through retirement but through elevation to a higher bench.

• 4. Notable Grants of Citizenship

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  In 1940, Forman presided over the naturalization of Albert Einstein, granting the German-born physicist American citizenship. Einstein had fled Europe and settled in the United States, and it fell to Forman to administer the oath. Forman also served the same ceremonial role for Kurt Godel, the Austrian-born mathematician whose work on incompleteness transformed the foundations of logic. The source does not record the date of Godel's ceremony, but placing these two figures before the same New Jersey judge is a striking thread in Forman's biography that no appointment letter or confirmation vote can match.

• 5. The Third Circuit

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  President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated Forman on the 9th of February 1959, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The vacancy had been created by Judge Albert Branson Maris. The Senate confirmed Forman on the 9th of September 1959, and he received his commission the following day. He assumed senior status on the 31st of March 1961, a designation that allowed him to carry a reduced caseload while remaining an active member of the federal judiciary. His wife throughout his long career was the former Pearl Karlberg. Forman died at a hospital in Trenton on the 17th of August 1978, at the age of 82.