No meeting of minds on Einstein exhibition

A long-planned Shanghai museum exhibition on the life of Albert Einstein has been shelved after Chinese officials infuriated organisers by insisting it was merged with an unlikely bedfellow: Confucius.

Shanghai was an auspicious place for Einstein – it was during a visit to the city that he is said to have first learnt that he had officially won the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics.

But 90 years later, his Shanghai fans have been left disappointed after organisers of the Swiss government-funded exhibition Albert Einstein (1879-1955), which consists of more than 200 objects, confirmed that the exhibition would not go ahead.

Jakob Messerli, director of the Historical Museum Bern, which owns the exhibition, said the Confucius exhibition Shanghai had wanted to add was "at least as large" as the Einstein component. The exhibition has already visited Beijing and Guangdong.