23. Philipp Frank, Einstein, Sein Leben und seine Zeit (Munich: P. List, 1949; Brauschweig/Wiesbaden: F. Vieweg & Sohn, 1979 [with a 1942 foreword by Einstein]), 39, 44, trans. Martínez. A rough English translation appeared before the original German text was published: Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times (New York: Knopf, 1947; London: Jonathan Cape, 1948), 32, 34–35.
24. Desanka Trbuhović-Gjurić, U senci Alberta Ajnstajna (Krusevac: Bagdala, 1969), trans. Im Schatten Albert Einsteins, Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić, ed. Werner Zimmermann (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1993), 97.
25. Evan Harris Walker, “Mileva Marić's Relativistic Role,” Physics Today 44, no. 2 (February 1991): 123
26. Michele Zackheim, Einstein's Daughter (New York: Riverhead/Penguin Putnam, 1999), 19.
27. OPB Interactive for PBS Programming, “The Mileva Question,” www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/science/mquest.htm, accessed 4 April 2004; this webpage has since been revised and the quoted text removed.
28. Abram F. Joffe, Vstrechi s fizikami moi vospominaniia o zarubezhnykh fizikah (Moscow: Gosudarstvenoye Idatelstvo Fiziko-Matematitsheskoi Literatury, 1962); German trans., A. Joffe, Begegnungen mit Physikern (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1967), 88.
29. Abram F. Joffe, “Pamiati Alberta Einsteina,” Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk 57, no. 2 (1955): 187, trans. Martínez.
30. Walker, “Mileva Marić's,” 123.
31. Carl Seelig, Albert Einstein, Eine Dokumentarische Biographie (Zurich: Europa Ver., 1954), 29.
32. I thank Christian Wüthrich and Allen Esterson for confirming this fact.
33. Daniil Semenovich Danin, Neizbezhnost Strannogo Mira (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardia, Gosudarstvenaaja Biblioteka SSSR, 1962), 57.
34. Peter Michelmore, Einstein: Profile of the Man (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1962), 36, 45, vii.
35. Ibid., 36.
36. Krstić, “Mileva Einstein-Marić,” 94. Krstić dated this letter as being from “the very beginning of 1906.”
37. Letter from Marić to Savić, in Popović, In Albert's Shadow, 88. Popović dated this letter from December 1906, apparently following notes by Julka Savić, see Popović, In Albert's Shadow, xi. Martin Klein, A. Kox, and Robert Schulmann, who edited the Collected Papers also dated this letter from December 1906, owing to its contents, see Collected Papers, vol. 5, 45.
38. Marić to Savić, 3 September 1909, in Popović, In Albert's Shadow, 98.
39. Marić to Savić [Winter 1909/10], Einstein Archives, item 70–726, trans. Martínez.
40. Heinrich A. Medicus, “The Friendship among Three Singular Men: Einstein and His Swiss Friends Besso and Zangger,” Isis 85 (1994): 456–78, see p. 469.
41. For example, Medicus, “Friendship,” 470.
42. Gerald Holton, Einstein, History and Other Passions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 191.
43. Maurice Solovine to Carl Seelig, 29 April 1952, Archives and Private Collections, ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich, Hs 304:1007, p. 3, trans. Martínez.
CHAPTER 12. EINSTEIN AND THE CLOCK TOWERS OF BERN
1. For several examples, see Alberto Martínez, Kinematics: The Lost Origins of Einstein's Relativity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 298.
2. Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 3, 19, 33–34, 49, 94, 129, 149, 177.
3. Eric W. Tatham, “‘I'll Know What I Want When I See It’—Towards a Creative Assistant,” in People and Computers X: Proceedings of the HCI'95 Conference, ed. M. A. R. Kirby, A. J. Dix, and J. E. Finlay (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995), 270.
4. Steven Pinker, “His Brain Measured Up,” New York Times, 24 June 1999, A27.
5. Peter L. Galison, “Einstein's Clocks: The Place of Time,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 360, 375. See also William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 237: “During that intense talk with Besso, Einstein has seen the light…. The clock tower in Bern could tell Einstein what time it was, but only in Bern…. This meant that the time of every clock was a function of the distance between clock and clock-watcher, their relative motion, and the speed of light.”
6. Dennis Overbye, Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance (New York: Penguin, 2000), 132.
7. Arthur I. Miller, Einstein, Picasso (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 247, 5.
8. Peter L. Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 101, 104, 105, 122, 125–26, 128, 136, 140.
9. Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography, trans. Ewald Osers (New York: Viking/Penguin, 1997), 179; Fölsing, Albert Einstein: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993).
10. Galison, Einstein's Clocks, 254.
11. Josef Sauter, statement delivered at the Conference 50 Jahre Relativitätstheorie, Bern, 1955; reprinted in Max Flückiger, Albert Einstein in Bern (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1974), 156.
12. William R. Everdell, “It's About Time. It's About Space,” review of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, by Peter Galison, New York Times, 17 August 2003, 10.
13. Alberto A. Martínez, “Material History and Imaginary Clocks: Poincaré, Einstein, and Galison on Simultaneity,” Physics in Perspective 6, no. 2 (June 2004): 31–48.
14. Alexander Moszkowski, Einstein, Einblicke in seine Gedankenwelt: gemeinverständliche Betrachtungen über die Relativitätstheorie und ein neues Weltsystem, entwickelt aus Gesprächen mit Einstein (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1921), 227, trans. Martínez.
15. Albert Einstein, “Erinnerungen-Souvenirs,” Schweizerische Hochschulzeitung 28 Sonderheft (1955), 145–53; reprinted as “Autobiographische Skizze,” Helle Zeit–Dunkle Zeit. In memoriam Albert Einstein, ed. Carl Seelig (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1956), 12.
16. Franz Paul Habicht to Melania Serbu, 26 October 1943, Albert Einstein Archives, item 39–275, p. 2, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center of Boston University, Boston, Mass., trans. Martínez.
17. Sauter, statement to 50 Jahre Relativitätstheorie; reprinted in Flückiger, Albert Einstein in Bern, 154. Anton Reiser [Rudolf Kayser], Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait, with a preface by Albert Einstein (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1930), 65.
18. Walter Isaacson, Einstein, His Life and Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 126, 582; Isaacson misunderstood me as having claimed in my “Material History” that the steeple clock in Muri had not been synchronized with the Bern clocks; but actually I had merely noted that the steeple clock at Muri was not connected electrically to the clocks in Bern, still they were in the same time zone.
19. For example, Patricia Fara, Science: A Four Thousand Year History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 248; Richard Staley, Einstein's Generation: The Origins of the Relativity Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 68. Fara and Staley are historians. See also Richard Panek, The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 72.
20. Thibault Damour, Si Einstein M'Était Conté (Paris: le Cherche Midi, 2005), 15, 16, trans. Martínez. See also Damour, Once upon Einstein, trans. Eric Novak (Wellesley, Mass.: A. K. Peters, Ltd., 2006), 5.
21. Ann Banfield, “Remembrance and Tense Past,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel, ed. Morag Shiac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 55.
22. Hans C. Ohanian, Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 89, 87.
23. Max Jammer, Concepts of Simultaneity: From Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 122.
24. Walter C. Mih, The Fascinating Life and Theory of Albert Einstein, with a foreword by Bernard Einstein (Commack, N.Y.: Kroshka Books/Nova Science Publishers, 2000), 69.
25. Steven L. Winter, A Clearing in the Forest: Law, Life, and Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 36. See also Melody Gra
ulich and Paul Crumbley, The Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005), 1; Brian K. Pinaire, The Constitution of Electoral Speech Law: The Supreme Court and Freedom of Expression in Campaigns and Elections (Stanford Law Books, 2008), 287.
26. Michio Kaku, Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 62.
27. George Will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation (New York: Random House/Three Rivers Press, 2009), 358.
28. G. M. P. Swann, Putting Econometrics in Its Place: A New Direction in Applied Economics (Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006), 195; Len Kurzawa, The Fundamental Force: How the Universe Works (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishing, 2009), 7; Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil, Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 2009), 199; Annette Moser-Wellman, The Five Faces of Genius: Creative Thinking Styles to Succeed at Work (New York: Penguin, 2002), 23. For a somewhat similar, brief tale, see also Gregory Mone, “What If Einstein Had Been a Better Violinist,” Popular Science 266, no. 6 (June 2005): 74.
29. Daniel Simonis, Sarah Johnstone, Nicola Williams, Lonely Planet: Switzerland, 5th ed. (Oakland, Calif.: Lonely Planet, 2006), 182. See also The Cities Book: A Journey Through the Best Cities in the World (Lonely Planet, 2009), 87.
30. James Trefil and Robert Hazen, The Sciences: An Integrated Approach, 5th ed. (Wiley, 2006), 143; Stanislaw D. Głazek and Seymour B. Sarason, Productive Learning: Science, Art, and Einstein's Relativity in Educational Reform (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 2007), 152.
31. Lucjan Piela, Ideas of Quantum Chemistry (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007), 94.
CHAPTER 13: THE SECRET OF EINSTEIN'S CREATIVITY?
1. Jeremy Gray, “Finding the Time. The Scientific Struggle to Bring the World's Clocks into Line,” Nature 424 (2003): 880.
2. Arthur I. Miller, Einstein, Picasso (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
3. Besso to Einstein, October to 8 December 1947, in Albert Einstein and Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903–1955, German transcriptions with French translations, notes, and introduction by Pierre Speziali (Paris: Hermann, 1972), 386.
4. Einstein to Besso, 1952, in Correspondance, 391.
5. John Stachel, “‘What Song the Syrens Sang’: How Did Einstein Discover Special Relativity?” Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’ (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2002), 157–69; see p. 166.
6. For example, John Rigden has claimed that the young Einstein wanted to read God's thoughts, and that to him the problem of relative motion was “clearly part of God's thoughts,” and that “in 1905, Einstein had a direct line to God's thoughts.” John Rigden, Einstein 1905: The Standard of Genius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 7–8, 150.
7. For example, W. Gordin, “The Philosophy of Relativity,” Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 19 (September 1926): 517–24; see p. 520.
8. Stachel was alluding to these lines: “What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he rid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.” Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia: Urne-Buriall (London: Hen Brome, 1658), reprinted in Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Alexander Young (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1831), 221.
9. Einstein, quoted in James Franck to Carl Seelig, 16 July 1952, Archives and Private Collections, ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich, Hs 304:637, trans. Martínez.
10. Maja Winteler-Einstein, manuscript, “Albert Einstein-Beitrag für sein Lebensbild” [1924], in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: English Translation, vol. 1, trans. Anna Beck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), xviii.
11. The statement about Einstein at age five is according to Antonina Vallentin, who interviewed Einstein: Antonina Vallentin, Le Drame d'Albert Einstein (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1954), 15.
12. Maja Winteler-Einstein, in Collected Papers, English, vol. 1, p. xviii.
13. “As an infant he had started to talk so late that his parents had been in some alarm about the possibility of an abnormality in their child. At the age of eight or nine years, Einstein presented the picture of a shy, hesitating, unsociable boy, who passed on his way alone, dreaming to himself, and going to and from school without feeling the need of a comrade.” Alexander Moszkowski, Einstein, Einblicke in seine Gedankenwelt [1921], trans. Henry L. Brose, Conversations with Einstein (New York: Horizon Press, 1970), 222.
14. Hans Albert Einstein, interviewed by Bela Kornitzer, in “Einstein Is My Father,” Ladies' Home Journal 68, no. 4 (April 1951): 47, 134, 136, 139, 141, 255–56, quotation on p. 134.
15. Jean Piaget, Le Développement de la Notion de Temps Chez l'Enfant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946), trans. Martínez.
16. “Einstein employait avec prédilection la méthode génétique dans l'examen des notions fondamentales. Il se servait pour les éclaircir de ce qu'il a pu observer chez les enfants.” Maurice Solovine and Albert Einstein, Lettres à Maurice Solovine (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1956), viii–ix, trans. Martínez.
17. James Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race, Methods and Processes [1895], 3rd ed. (1906; repr., New York: Augustus Kelley, 1968), 5
18. “Kann es schon bald seine Augen nach etwas hinwenden? Jetzt kannst Beobachtungen machen. Ich möcht auch einmal selber ein Lieserl machen, es muß doch zu interessant sein! Es kann gewiß schon weinen, aber lachen lernt es erst viel später. Darin liegt eine tiefe Wahrheit.” Einstein to Marić, Tuesday [4 February 1902], in John Stachel, ed., The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1, The Early Years, 1879–1902 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 332, trans. Martínez.
19. Marić to Einstein [after 20 October 1897], Collected Papers, vol. 1, 34.
20. Einstein, “Ernst Mach,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 17 (April 1916): 101–4.
21. Ernst Mach, Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (Jena: G. Fischer, 1886), reprinted as Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations, trans. C. M. Williams (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1897), 156.
22. Ibid., 156; see also 161, 170.
23. Hermann von Helmholtz, “Origin and Significance of Geometrical Axioms” (lecture, Docenten Werein, Heidelberg, 1870), trans. and reprinted in David Cahan, ed., Hermann von Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 228–29, 245.
24. Hermann von Helmholtz, “On the Facts in Perception” (speech, Commemoration Celebration of the Frederick Wilhelm University of Berlin, 3 August 1878), also in Cahan, Hermann von Helmholtz, 354–58.
25. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872), 211–12.
26. Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena [1851], selections reissued in Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims, trans. T. Bailey Saunders (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995), 96 (back pagination). Spinoza used the expression “sub specie aeternitatis” repeatedly in his Ethics, a book that Einstein also read before 1905 and greatly admired. See Benedicti de Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata [1677], in Spinoza, Opera, vol. 1, ed. Carolus Hermannus Bruder (Lopsiae: Bernh. Tauchnitz, 1843), 185, 403–10. Einstein used the expression “sub specie aeterni” in Einstein, Geometrie und Erfahrung (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1921), 8.
27. Anton Reiser [Rudolf Kayser], Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait, with a preface by Albert Einstein (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1930), 40.
28. Schopenhauer, Wisdom of Life, 96–97.
29. Moszkowski, Conversations with Einstein, 96. See also Albert Einstein, “H. A. Lorentz, Creator and Personality,” Mein Weltbild (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1953); reprinted in Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown Pub., 1954), 73–76.
30. Peter Michelmore, Einstein: Profile of the Man (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1962), 44.
31. Albert Einstein, “Autobiographische Skizze,” Helle Zeit–Dunkl
e Zeit. In memoriam Albert Einstein, ed. Carl Seelig (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1956), 10.
32. Einstein to Solovine, 3 April 1953, in Lettres à Maurice, 125, trans. Martínez.
33. For an example of Einstein's interest in how children learn, see Max Talmey, The Relativity Theory Simplified; And the Formative Period of Its Inventor (New York: Falcon Press/Darwin Press, 1932), 176.
34. Alfred Russel Wallace, “Review,” Quarterly Journal of Science (January 1873), quoted in Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, vol. 3 (London: J. Murray, 1887), 172: “the restless curiosity of the child to know the ‘what for?’ the ‘why?’ and the ‘how?’ of everything” seems “never to have abated its force.”
35. Einstein, quoted in Moszkowski, Conversations with Einstein, 69.
EUGENICS AND THE MYTH OF EQUALITY
1. Iamblichi, De Vita Pythagorica [ca. 300 CE], reprinted as Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, ed. and trans. John Dillon and Jackson Hershbell (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), chap. 17.
2. E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Giving the Derivation, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions and Words that Have a Tale to Tell, rev. ed. (London: Cassell and Company, 1900), 831.
3. There are mistaken claims about FitzRoy's death; some say that “he shot himself,” e.g., Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 33. His death, however, was described in a contemporary account, “Vice-Admiral FitzRoy,” Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review 18, no. 218 (January–June, 1865) (London: John Henry and James Parker, 1865), 789. It read: “The family, finding that he remained longer than usual, knocked several times at the door, but receiving no answer, the door was at length broken down, when the Admiral was found weltering in his blood, having cut his throat…. the coroner's jury returned a verdict to the effect that [the] deceased destroyed himself while in an unsound state of mind.”
4. Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869).
5. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1871), 111. See also Darwin to Francis Galton, 23 December [1869 or 1870], in Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1903), 41.
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