19. W. Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet—In Search of the Cosmic Man (Brookline, Mass.: BrandenPress, 1983), 132.
20. Esther Salaman, “A Talk with Einstein,” Listener 54 (1955): 370–71.
21. Einstein, as quoted by Ernst Gabor Strauss (his assistant from 1944 to 1948), in Strauss, “Assistant bei Albert Einstein,” in Carl Seelig, Helle Zeit—Dunkle Zeit (Zurich: Europa, 1956), 72.
22. Einstein to Oswald Veblen, 30 April 1930, Einstein Archives, item 17–284 (see also 23–152, 23–153); “Die Natur verbirgt ihr Geheimnis durch die Erhabenheit ihres Wesens, aber nicht durch List.”
23. Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 389.
24. Other writers also portray Einstein as believing in God. For example, Yehuda Elkana claims that one of Einstein's major quests was to understand how God thinks, that Einstein thought himself into God's mind, and that divine thoughts involve great intuitive leaps that help to find universal laws. Yehuda Elkana, “Einstein and God,” in Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Peter Galison, Gerald Holton, S. Schweber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 35–47.
25. Rabbi Jacob Singer (address, Temple Isaiah Israel, Chicago, 4 January 1931), quoted in Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 84.
26. Editorial, Osservatore Romano (ca. 1929–1931), in support of Boston's Cardinal O'Connell's critique of Einstein (1929); quoted in Peter Michelmore, Einstein: Profile of the Man (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1962), 139.
27. Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 96.
28. Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr. (U.S. Navy ensign), 28 September 1949, Einstein Archives, item 58–702 (see also 58–701, 58–703, 57–288), translation from Guy H. Raner and Lawrence S. Lerner, “Einstein's Belief's,” Nature 358 (9 July 1992): 102. Einstein claimed that he differed from a typical “freethinker,” who is mainly nourished by opposition to naïive superstition, whereas his own outlook was moved by a kind of humility, a consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to deeply understand the harmony of the universe; see Einstein to Beatrice F., 12 December 1952; Einstein Archives, item 59–794, quoted in Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 121.
29. Albert Einstein to M. Berkowitz, 25 October 1950, Einstein Archives, item 59–215, trans. Martínez.
30. Albert Einstein to Eric B. Gutkind, 3 January 1954, Einstein Archives, item 33–337 (and also 33–338 and 59–897), trans. Martínez. A scanned image of the letter is available at Bloomsbury Auctions, “303. Einstein (Albert, theoretical physicist, 1879–1955) Autograph Letter signed to Eric B. Gutkind,” http://www.bloomsburyauctions.com/detail/649/303.0, accessed 30 April 2009. I provide an original and very literal word for word translation. In 2009, online news media released small, blurry images of Einstein's letter, along with translations that are not very accurate; mistakes include omitted words, and the insertion of words such as “childish.” German versions of the letter, online, include defective re-translations from the English renditions. Moreover, some German transcriptions also include mistakes.
31. Dennis Overbye, “Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404,000,” New York Times, 17 May 2008.
CHAPTER 10. A MYTH ABOUT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
1. Albert Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. and trans. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston, Ill.: The Library of Living Philosophers/George Banta Publishing Company, 1949), 33.
2. Einstein, quoted in John Stachel, “Albert Einstein: The Man Beyond the Myth,” in Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’ (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2002), 11.
3. Placita Philosophorum [falsely attributed to Plutarch, actually by another writer, based on a work by Aetius, ca. 50 BCE, as noted by Theodoret], Peri tōn areskontōn philosophois physikōn dogmatōn [and falsely attributed to Qustā ibn Lūqā by Ibn al-Nadīm], in Hans Daiber, ed., Aetius Arabus: Die Vorsokratiker in Arabischer Überlieferung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980), 131, trans. Martínez.
4. Immanuel Kant, De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis, Dissertatio Pro Loco [1770], in Kant's Inaugural Dissertation and Early Writings on Space, trans. John Handyside (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1929), 56–57. See also Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernuft [1781], in Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 164–65.
5. Henri Poincaré, La Science et l'Hypothèse (Paris: Flammarion, 1902), 111. See also Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science [1892], 2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900), sec. 13, p. 186: “there is no such thing as absolute time.” Both of these works were read by Einstein before 1905. Earlier, Johann Bernhard Stallo had also argued that there exists no absolute time, in J. B. Stallo, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1881/1882), 184–85.
6. Einstein, interview by R. S. Shankland, 4 February 1950, in Shankland, “Conversations with Albert Einstein,” American Journal of Physics 31 (1963): 48.
7. Albert Einstein, interview Max Wertheimer, 1916, in Wertheimer, Productive Thinking (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945), 169.
8. Albert Einstein, “Erinnerungen-Souvenirs,” Schweizerische Hochschulzeitung 28 Sonderheft (1955): 145–53; reprinted as “Autobiographische Skizze,” in Helle Zeit–Dunkle Zeit. In Memoriam Albert Einstein, ed. Carl Seelig (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1956), 10.
9. Einstein to Mileva Marić, 10? August 1899, in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1, The Early Years, 1879–1902, ed. John Stachel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 225.
10. Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” 8.
11. Hans Byland, “Aus Einsteins Jugendtagen,” Neue Bündner Zeitung, 7 February 1928.
12. Einstein [1916], quoted in Alexander Moszkowski, Einstein: Einblicke in seine Gedankenwelt. Gemeinverständliche Betrachtungen über die Relativitätstheorie und ein neues Weltsystem/Entwickelt in Gesprächen mit Einstein (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1921), 18.
13. Einstein, interview by David Reichinstein, in Reichinstein, Albert Einstein, sein Lebensbild und seine Weltanschaunng (Prague: Ernst Ganz, 1935), 23. See also Peter Michelmore, Einstein: Profile of the Man (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1962), 44.
14. Albert Einstein, “Wie ich die Relativitätstheorie entdeckte” (lecture, University of Kyoto, Japan, 1922), transcribed into Japanese by Jun Ishiwara, “Einstein Kyôzyu-Kôen-roku,” Kaizo 4, no. 22 (1923): 1–8; also as Einstein Kyôzyu-Kôen-roku (Tokyo: Kabushiki Kaisha, 1971), 82.
15. Einstein, interview by R. S. Shankland, 4 February 1950, in Shankland, “Conversations,” 48.
16. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, 24 April 1920, in Albert Einstein, Lettres à Maurice Solovine (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1956), 21.
17. In Newton's Principia of 1687, he had claimed: “Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration; relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.” Isaac Newton, Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica [1687], in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte in 1729, rev. Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946).
18. Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historisch-kritisch dargestellt (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1883); 2nd ed. (1889), trans. T. J. McCormack, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1893; rev. ed. 1942; repr., La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1960), 127.
19. Einstein to Carl Seelig, 8 April 1952, Albert Einstein Archives, item 39–018, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. (hereafter Einstein Archives).
20. Wertheimer, Productive Thinking, 174.
21. Anton R
eiser [Rudolf Kayser], Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait, with a preface by Albert Einstein (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1930), 68. Rudolf Kayser, Einstein's stepson-in-law, interviewed him for this biography, which he published under a pseudonym; Einstein described this book's details as accurate.
22. Rømer presented his discovery to the Académie Royale des Sciences on 7 December 1676 and it was described in: “Démonstration touchant le mouvement de la lumière trouvé par M. Römer de l'Académie Royale des Sciences,” Journal des Sçavans, de l'An M.DC.LXXVI. (Amsterdam: Pierre Le Grand, 1683), 267–70. Rømer noted that Io takes 42.5 hours to complete an orbit around Jupiter (the present value is 42.46 hours); and he stated “that for the distance of about 3000 leagues, such as is very nearly the size of the diameter of the Earth, light needs not one second of time” (268). In August 1676, when Earth was relatively close to Jupiter, observations were carried out from the Paris observatory to measure the time of reappearance of Jupiter's moon when eclipsed, and in early September, Rømer predicted to the Académie that in November Io would take an additional ten minutes to reappear. On November 9, astronomers confirmed his prediction.
23. Henri Poincaré, “La mesure du temps,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 6 (January 1898): 1–13; reissued in Poincaré, Foundations of Science, trans. G. B. Halsted (New York: Science, 1913), 232; words omitted, ellipses added.
24. [Armand] H. Fizeau, “Sur une Expérience Relative à la Vitesse de Propagation de la Lumière,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris 29 (1849): 90–92. The length of the double path was 1.7266 × 106 centimeters. The average of twenty-eight observations gave Fizeau a transit time of 5.5 × 10-5 second, so the speed seemed to be 3.14 × 1010 cm per second (195,111 miles per second).
25. For a history of the efforts to ascertain any dependence of the speed of light on its source, see Alberto A. Martínez, “Ritz, Einstein, and the Emission Hypothesis,” Physics in Perspective 6, no. 1 (2004): 4–28.
26. Einstein, “Wie ich die Relativitätstheorie entdeckte,” 80, trans. Fumihide Kanaya and A. Martínez.
27. Poincaré, La Science, 111. Carl Seelig, Albert Einstein und die Schweiz (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1952), 63.
28. A. Einstein to André Metz, 27 November 1924, Einstein Archives, item 18–255.
29. A. Einstein, Über die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1917); Einstein, Relativity, trans. R. W. Lawson (New York: P. Smith/H. Holt and Co., 1931), 23, italics in the original.
30. A. Einstein, “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper,” Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 891–921; italics in the original.
31. I've dated Einstein's reading of Hume to March 1905 because in that month his friend Maurice Solovine skipped an appointment with Einstein to read Hume together in order to attend a Bohemian string quartet: “Freitag, 17 März, abends punkt 8 Uhr: Konzert gegeben von berühmten Böhmischen Streichquartett,” Der Bund, Eidgenössisches Zentralblatt 56 Jahrgang, Nr. 119 (Saturday, 11 March 1905), 4. For Einstein on Hume, see Einstein to Moritz Schlick, 14 December 1915, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 8 The Berlin Years: Correspondence, 1914–1918, pt. A, ed. Robert Schulmann, A. J. Kox, Michel Janssen, and József Illy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 220; Einstein, Lettres à Maurice Solovine, x.
32. Solovine, Lettres à Maurice Solovine, viii; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London: John Noon, 1739), bk. 1, secs. 2–6, pp. 73–94.
33. Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” 13. Einstein concluded that human perceptions involve expectations and habits and therefore cannot alone lead to laws of nature; some additional component is necessary. Albert Einstein, “Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1944); reprinted in Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954), 22.
34. For example, N. David Mermin, Space and Time in Special Relativity (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Haveland Press, 1968), 1, 4, 19.
35. For example, see Henri Arzeliès, Relativistic Kinematics (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1966); Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1963).
36. Jakob Ehrat to Carl Seelig, 20 April 1952, Einstein Archives, item 71–212.
37. Einstein, Über die Spezielle, 17–18. Einstein there noted that he formulated this account of the theory of relativity in the sequence and connections in which it actually originated—a claim that was confirmed by the psychologist Wertheimer when he interviewed Einstein to understand his creative process in Productive Thinking, 176.
38. Example adapted from Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, Evolution of Physics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938), 178–79.
CHAPTER 11. THE CULT OF THE QUIET WIFE
1. Melsa Films Pty., Ltd., Einstein's Wife, produced in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Oregon Public Broadcasting in the United States, aired 2003. The present chapter is an expanded version of the article: A. Martínez, “Handling Evidence in History: The Case of Einstein's Wife,” School Science Review 86, no. 316 (March 2005): 49–56.
2. OPB Interactive for PBS Programming, “Einstein's Wife,” http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/index.htm, last modified 4 March 2008. Thanks to the dedicated critical efforts of Allen Esterson to point out and correct inaccuracies in the PBS documentary, its website has been revised (see Andrea Gabor, “Editor's Note,” http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/editor_note.htm, 24 September 2007). Still, certain problems remain; see Allen Esterson, “Articles on Mileva Marić and Sigmund Freud,” www.esterson.org, accessed 10 December 2007.
3. Einstein to Marić, letters of 4 April 1901 and 27 March 1901, respectively, in Albert Einstein, Mileva Marić, The Love Letters, ed. Jürgen Renn and Robert Schulmann, trans. Shawn Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 41, 39.
4. Einstein to Mileva Marić, 27 March 1901, in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1, The Early Years, 1879–1902, ed. John Stachel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 282, trans. Martínez.
5. Einstein to Marić, 28? September 1899, Collected Papers, vol. 1, 233.
6. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, 25 April 1912, in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 5, The Swiss Years: Correspondence, 1902–1914, ed. Martin Klein, Anne Kox, Robert Schulmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 450; Einstein to C. O. Hines, February 1952, Einstein Archives, item 12–251; Einstein, interview by R. S. Shankland, 4 February 1950, in Shankland, “Conversations with Albert Einstein,” American Journal of Physics 31 (1963): 49.
7. Einstein to Mario Viscardini, April 1922, Einstein Archives, item 25–301; Einstein to Ehrenfest, June 1912, in Collected Papers, vol. 5, doc. 409, p. 485; Einstein to Albert P. Rippenbeim (draft), 1952, Einstein Archives, item 20–046.
8. Albert Einstein, “Wie ich die Relativitätstheorie entdeckte” (lecture, University of Kyoto, Japan, 1922), transcribed into Japanese by Jun Ishiwara, “Einstein Kyôzyu-Kôen-roku,” Kaizo 4, no. 22 (1923): 1–8; also as Einstein Kyôzyu-Kôen-roku (Tokyo: Kabushiki Kaisha, 1971), 82
9. On the “ten years” of reflection: Einstein, interview, 4 February 1950, in Shankland, “Conversations,” 48; and Einstein, Albert Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. and trans. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston, Ill.: The Library of Living Philosophers/George Banta Publishing Company, 1949), 53. On “my life for over seven years,” see Albert Einstein, interview by R. S. Shankland, 24 October 1952, in Shankland, “Conversations,” 56; for “after seven years,” see Einstein to Erika Oppenheimer, 13 September 1932, quoted in Collected Papers, vol. 2, The Swiss Years: Writings 1900–1909, ed. John Stachel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 261–62.
10. Albert Einstein, “Erinnerungen-Souvenirs,” Schweizerische Hochschulzeitung 28 Sonderheft (1955), 145–53, 146; reprinted as “Autobiographische Skiz
ze,” Helle Zeit–Dunkle Zeit. In memoriam Albert Einstein, ed. Carl Seelig (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1956), 10; see also Anton Reiser [Rudolf Kayser], Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait, preface by Albert Einstein (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1930), 49.
11. See, for example, Einstein to Marić, 19 December 1901; in Collected Papers, vol. 1, 328.
12. Louis Kollros to Carl Seelig, 26 February 1952, 1, Archives and Private Collections, ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich, Hs 304:740.
13. Helene Savić to her mother, Ida, 14 July 1900, in Milan Popović, ed., In Albert's Shadow: The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein's First Wife (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 60.
14. Marić to Savić, Spring 1901, in Popović, In Albert's Shadow, 76.
15. Marić to Savić, Fall 1901, in Popović, In Albert's Shadow, 76–78. For more on Marić, see John Stachel, “Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić: A Collaboration that Failed to Develop, in Stachel, Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’ (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2002), 39–55.
16. Marić to Savić [Nov.–Dec. 1901] in Popović, In Albert's Shadow, 79.
17. Dord Krstić, “Mileva Einstein-Marić,” in Elizabeth Roboz Einstein, Hans Albert Einstein: Reminiscences of His Life and Our Life Together (Iowa City: Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, 1991), 98.
18. Ibid., 85.
19. Marić to Savić, 20 December 1900, in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: English Translation, vol. 1, trans. Anna Beck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 156.
20. Marić to Savić [Nov.-Dec. 1901], Collected Papers, English, 183–84.
21. Dennis Overbye, Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance (New York: Penguin, 2000), 110.
22. Maurice Solovine and Albert Einstein, Lettres à Maurice Solovine (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1956), xii, trans. Martínez.
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