Authors: Walter Isaacson
Einstein (126 page)
41
. Mileva Marito Einstein, Mar. 17, 1918: “My state of health is now such that I can lie down quite well at home; although I can’t get up, I can very well occupy myself quite a considerable amount with the children, and this makes me very happy and contributes much to my well-being.” Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, May 8, 1918.
42
. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, May 8, 1918.
43
. Einstein to Max Born, after June 29, 1918; Einstein to Michele Besso, July 29, 1918.
44
. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, after June 4, 1918.
45
. Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, after June 19, 1918.
46
. Hans Albert Einstein to Einstein, ca. July 17, 1918; Einstein to Eduard Einstein, ca. July 17, 1918.
47
. Edgar Meyer to Einstein, Aug. 11, 1918; Einstein to Michele Besso, Aug. 20, 1918.
48
. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Aug. 16, 1918; Einstein to Michele Besso, Sept. 6, 1918; Fölsing, 424.
49
. Reiser, 140.
50
. Nathan and Norden, 24. See also Rowe and Schulmann.
51
. Born 2005, 145–147. My description relies on Born’s recollection, which accompanies Einstein’s references to the event in a letter to Born, Sept. 7, 1944. See also Bolles, 3–11; Seelig 1956a, 178; Fölsing, 423; Levenson, 198.
52
. Einstein, “On the Need for a National Assembly,” Nov. 13, 1918, CPAE 8: 14; Nathan and Norden, 25. Otto Nathan says that Einstein delivered these remarks to the student radicals at the university. There is no evidence of this, and Born does not mention it. The newspapers report it as a New Fatherland League speech later that day. See CPAE 8: 14 (German edition), footnote 2.
53
. Einstein to Max Born, Sept. 7, 1944.
54
. Einstein, Deposition in Divorce, Dec. 23, 1918, CPAE 8: 676.
55
. Einstein to Mileva Mari
28, 1919. Vetter was the president of Zurich University, and he responded to Einstein’s complaint about a guard being posted at the door of the lectures.
56
. Divorce Decree, Feb. 14, 1919, CPAE 9: 6.
57
. Overbye, 273–280.
58
. Einstein to Georg Nicolai, ca. Jan. 22 and Feb. 28, 1917; Georg Nicolai to Einstein, Feb. 26, 1917.
59
. Ilse Einstein to Georg Nicolai, May 22, 1918, CPAE 8: 545.
60
. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, July 12 and 17, 1919.
61
. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, July 28, 1919.
62
. “Professor Einstein Here,”
New York Times
, Apr. 3, 1921.
63
. “Pronounced Sense of Humor,”
New York Times
, Dec. 22, 1936.
64
. Fölsing, 429; Highfield and Carter, 196.
65
. Reiser, 127; Marianoff, 15, 174. Both of these authors married daughters of Elsa. Reiser’s real name was Rudolph Kayser.
66
. Elias Tobenkin, “How Einstein, Thinking in Terms of the Universe, Lives from Day to Day,”
New York Evening Post
, Mar. 26, 1921.
67
. Frank 1947, 219; Marianoff, 1; Fölsing, 428; Reiser, 193.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSE
1
. Overbye, 314; Einstein to Karl Schwarzschild, Jan. 9, 1916.
2
. Einstein, “On a Stationary System with Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses,”
Annals of Mathematics
, 1939.
3
. For a description of the history, math, and science of black holes, see Miller 2005; Thorne, 121–139.
4
. Freeman Dyson in Robinson, 8–9.
5
. Einstein to Karl Schwarzschild, Jan. 9, 1916.
6
. CPAE vol. 8 brings together all of the correspondence between Einstein and de Sitter, with a good commentary on the dispute. Michel Janssen (uncredited author), “The Einstein–De Sitter–Weyl–Klein debate,” CPAE 8a (German edition), p. 351.
7
. Einstein to Willem de Sitter, Feb. 2, 1917.
8
. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Feb. 4, 1917.
9
. Einstein, “Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity,” Feb. 8, 1917, CPAE 6: 43.
10
. Einstein 1916, chapter 31.
11
. Clark, 271.
12
. For a delightful fictional tale along these lines (so to speak), see Edwin Abbott’s
Flatland
, first published in 1880 and available in many paperback editions.
13
. Edward W. Kold, “The Greatest Discovery Einstein Didn’t Make,” in Brock-man, 205.
14
. Lawrence Krauss and Michael Turner, “A Cosmic Conundrum,”
Scientific American
(Sept. 2004): 71; Aczel 1999, 155; Overbye, 321. Einstein’s famous blunder quote is from Gamow, 1970, 44.
15
. Overbye, 327.
16
. Einstein 1916, chapter 22.
17
. There is a wonderful reprint now available in paperback of Eddington’s classic book first published in 1920: Arthur Eddington,
Space, Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge Science Classics, 1995). Page 141 describes the Principe expedition. See also an award-winning article: Matthew Stanley, “An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War: 1919 Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer,”
Isis
94 (2003): 57–89. A comprehensive account of all the tests is in Crelinsten.
18
. Douglas, 40; Aczel 1999, 121–137; Clark, 285–287; Fölsing, 436–437; Over-bye, 354–359.
19
. Douglas, 40.
20
. Einstein to Pauline Einstein, Sept. 5, 1919; Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Sept. 12, 1919.
21
. Einstein to Pauline Einstein, Sept. 27, 1919; Bolles, 53.
22
. Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider,
Reality and Scientific Truth: Discussions with Einstein, von Laue, and Planck
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980), 74. She reports mistakenly that the telegram was from Eddington when it was from Lorentz. Einstein’s remark is famous, and is translated in many ways. The German sentence, as recorded by Rosenthal-Schnieder, is “Da könnt’ mir halt der Liebe Gott leid tun, die Theorie stimmt doch.”
23
. Max Planck to Einstein, Oct. 4, 1919; Einstein to Max Planck, Oct. 23, 1919.
24
. Zurich Physics Colloquium to Einstein, Oct. 11, 1919.
25
. Einstein to Zurich Physics Colloquium, Oct. 16, 1919.
26
. Alfred North Whitehead,
Science and the Modern World
(1925; New York: Free Press, 1997), 13. See also pp. 29 and 113.
27
.
The Times
of London, Nov. 7, 1919; Pais 1982, 307; Fölsing, 443; Clark, 289.
28
.
The Times
of London, Nov. 7, 1919.
29
. Einstein 1949b, 31. Purchase of violin is in Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Dec. 10, 1919.
30
. Douglas, 41; Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,
Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 117. (David Hilbert certainly would have been a third, though there were, of course, many others.) Chandrasekhar, who later worked with Eddington, told Jeremy Bernstein he heard this directly from Eddington; Bernstein 1973, 192.
CHAPTER TWELVE: FAME
1
. Clark, 309. For a good overview, see David Rowe, “Einstein’s Rise to Fame,” Perimeter Institute, Oct. 15, 2005, www.mediasite.com.
2
. “Fabric of the Universe,”
The Times
of London, editorial, Nov. 7, 1919.
3
.
New York Times
, Nov. 9, 1919.
4
. Brian 1996, 100, from Meyer Berger,
The Story of the New York Times
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951), 251–252.
5
.
New York Times
, Nov. 9, 1919.
6
. The
New York Times
deserves praise, of course, for taking the theory seriously.
7
. “Einstein Expounds His New Theory,”
New York Times
, Dec. 3, 1919.
8
. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Dec. 15, 1919.
9
. Einstein to Marcel Grossmann, Sept. 12, 1920. Einstein went on to make the point to Grossmann that the issue, amid rising nationalism and antiSemitism, had become politicized: “Their conviction is determined by what political party they belong to.”
10
. Leopold Infeld, “To Albert Einstein on His 75th Birthday,” in Goldsmith et al., 24.
11
.
New York Times
, Dec. 4 and 21, 1919.
12
.
The Times
of London, Nov. 28, 1919.
13
. Paul Ehrenfest to Einstein, Nov. 24, 1919; Maja Einstein to Einstein, Dec. 10, 1919.
14
. Einstein to Max Born, Dec. 8, 1919; Einstein to Ludwig Hopf, Feb. 2, 1920.
15
. C. P. Snow, “On Einstein,” in
The Variety of Men
(New York: Scribner’s, 1966), 108.
16
. Freeman J. Dyson, “Wise Man,”
New York Review of Books
, Oct. 20, 2005.
17
. Clark, 296.
18
. Born 2005, 41.
19
. Hedwig Born to Einstein, Oct. 7, 1920.
20
. Max Born to Einstein, Oct. 13, 1920.
21
. Max Born to Einstein, Oct. 28, 1920.
22
. Einstein to Max Born, Oct. 26, 1920. Einstein wrote to Maurice Solovine, when the book actually appeared a few months later, that Moszkowski was “abominable” and “wretched” and that “he committed a forgery” by using some of Einstein’s letters in an unauthorized way to imply that Einstein had written an introduction to the book. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Mar. 8 and 19, 1921. He was also dismayed when he heard that Hans Albert had bought it, and said, “I was unable to prevent its publication, and it has caused me a lot of grief ”; Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, June 18, 1921. See also Highfield and Carter, 199.
23
. Brian 1996, 114–116; Moszkowski, 22–58.
24
. Born 2005, 41.
25
. Frank 1947, 171–174.
