There is nothing comparable in the period of the Second International to the intense interest of brilliant natural scientists in Marxism in the 1930s.
Scientists brought up in Eastern Europe like Marie Sklodkowska-Curie, and perhaps those trained or working in the Swiss universities, heavily colonised by the radical eastern intelligentsia, were clearly cognisant of Marx and debates about Marxism. The young Einstein, who as is known married a Yugoslav fellow-student from Zürich, was therefore in touch with this milieu.
Eric Hobsbawm
1917 - 2012