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  50. Norton 2006a, 3, 43: “Another oversimplification pays too much attention to the one part of Einstein’s paper that especially fascinates us now: his ingenious use of light signals and clocks to mount his conceptual analysis of simultaneity. This approach gives far too much importance to notions that entered briefly only at the end of years of investigation . . . They are not necessary to special relativity or to the relativity of simultaneity.” See also Alberto Martinez, “Material History and Imaginary Clocks,”Physics in Perspective 6 (2004): 224–240; Alberto Martinez, “Railways and the Roots of Relativity,”Physics World ,Nov. 2003; Norton 2004. For a good assessment, which gives more credit to Galison’s research and insights, see Dyson. Also see Miller 2001.

  51. Einstein interview, Bucky, 28; Einstein 1956, 12.

  52. Moszkowski, 227.

  53. Overbye, 135.

  54. Miller 1984, 109, 114. Miller 1981, chapter 3, explains the influence of Faraday’s experiments with rotating magnets on Einstein’s special theory.

  55. Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Annalen der Physik 17 (Sept. 26, 1905). There are many available editions. For a web version, see www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/. Useful annotated versions include Stachel 1998; Stephen Hawking, ed., Selections from the Principle of Relativity (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002); Richard Muller, ed., Centennial Edition of The Theory of Relativity (San Francisco: Arion Press, 2005).

  56. Einstein, unused addendum to 1916 book Relativity, CPAE 6: 44a.

  57. Einstein 1916.

  58. Bernstein 2006, 71.

  59. This example is lucidly described in Miller 1999, 82–83; Panek, 31–32.

  60. James Hartle, lecture at the Aspen Center for Physics, June 29, 2005; British National Measurement Laboratory, report on time dilation experiments, spring 2005, www.npl.co.uk/publications/metromnia/issue18/.

  61. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, undated, in Solovine, 33, 35.

  62. Krauss, 35–47.

  63. Seelig 1956a, 28. For a full mathematical description of the special theory, see Taylor and Wheeler 1992.

  64. Pais, 1982, 151, citing Hermann Minkowski, “Space and Time,” lecture at the University of Cologne, Sept. 21, 1908.

  65. Clark, 159–60.

  66. Thorne, 79. This is also explained well in Miller 2001, 200: “Neither Lorentz, Poincaré, nor any other physicist was willing to grant Lorentz’s local time any physical reality . . . Only Einstein was willing to go beyond appearances.” See also Miller 2001, 240: “Einstein inferred a meaning Poincaré did not. His thought experiment enabled him to interpret the mathematical formalism as a new theory of space and time, whereas for Poincaré it was a generalized version of Lorentz’s electron theory.” Miller has also explored this topic in “Scientific Creativity: A Comparative Study of Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein,” Creativity Research Journal 5 (1992): 385.

  67. Arthur Miller e-mail to the author, Aug. 1, 2005.

  68. Hoffmann 1972, 78. Prince Louis de Broglie, the quantum theorist who theorized that particles could behave as waves, said of Poincaré in 1954, “Yet Poincaré did not take the decisive step; he left to Einstein the glory of grasping all the consequences of the principle of relativity.” See Schilpp, 112; Galison, 304.

  69. Dyson.

  70. Miller 1981, 162.

  71. Holton 1973, 178; Pais 1982, 166; Galison, 304; Miller 1981. All four authors have done important work on Poincaré and the credit he deserves, from which some of this section is drawn. I am grateful to Prof. Miller for a copy of his paper “Why Did Poincaré Not Formulate Special Relativity in 1905?” and for helping to edit this section.

  72. Miller 1984, 37–38; Henri Poincaré lecture, May 4, 1912, University of London, cited in Miller 1984, 37; Pais 1982, 21, 163–168. Pais writes: “In all his life, Poincaré never understood the basis of special relativity . . . It is apparent that Poincaré either never understood or else never accepted the Theory of Relativity.” See also Galison, 242 and passim.

  73. Einstein to Mileva Mari, Mar. 27, 1901.

  74. Michelmore, 45.

  75. Overbye, 139; Highfield and Carter, 114; Einstein and Mileva Mari to Conrad Habicht, July 20, 1905.

  76. Overbye, 140; Trbuhovic-Gjuric, 92–93; Zackheim, 62.

  77. The issue of whether Mari’s name was in any way ever on a manuscript of the special theory is a knotted one, but it turns out that the single source for such reports, a late Russian physicist, never actually said precisely that, and there is no other evidence at all to support the contention. For an explanation, see John Stachel’s appendix to the introduction of Einstein’s Miraculous Year, centennial reissue edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), lv.

  78. “The Relative Importance of Einstein’s Wife,”The Economist , Feb. 24, 1990; Evan H. Walker, “Did Einstein Espouse His Spouse’s Ideas?”, Physics Today , Feb. 1989; Ellen Goodman, “Out from the Shadows of Great Men,”Boston Globe , Mar. 15, 1990;Einstein’s Wife , PBS, 2003, www.pbs.org/opb/einsteins wife/index.htm; Holton 2000, 191; Robert Schulmann and Gerald Holton, “Einstein’s Wife,” letter to the New York Times Book Review, Oct. 8, 1995; Highfield and Carter, 108–114; Svenka Savi, “The Road to Mileva Mari-Einstein,” www.zenskestudie.edu.yu/wgsact/e-library/e-lib0027.html#_ftn1; Christopher Bjerknes, Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist , home.com cast.net/~xtxinc/CIPD.htm; Alberto Martínez, “Arguing about Einstein’s Wife,”Physics World , Apr. 2004, physicsweb.org/articles/world/17/4/2/1; Alberto Martínez, “Handling Evidence in History: The Case of Einstein’s Wife,”School Science Review , Mar. 2005, 51–52; Zackheim, 20; Andrea Gabor, Einstein’s Wife: Work and Marriage in the Lives of Five Great Twentieth-Century Women (New York: Viking, 1995); John Stachel, “Albert Einstein and Mileva Mari: A Collaboration That Failed to Develop,” in H. Prycior et al., eds., Creative Couples in Science (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 207–219; Stachel 2002a, 25–37.

  79. Michelmore, 45.

  80. Holton 2000, 191.

  81. Einstein to Conrad Habicht, June 30–Sept. 22, 1905 (almost certainly in early September, after returning from vacation and getting to work on the E=mc 2paper).

  82. Einstein, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content?,”Annalen der Physik 18 (1905), received Sept. 27, 1905, CPAE 2: 24.

  83. For an insightful look at the background and ramifications of Einstein’s equation, see Bodanis. Bodanis also has a useful website that includes further details: davidbodanis.com/books/emc2/notes/relativity/sigdev/index.html. The calculation about the mass of a raisin is in Wolfson, 156.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE HAPPIEST THOUGHT

  1. Maja Einstein, xxi.

  2. Fölsing, 202; Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 42.

  3. More precisely, the definition that Richard Feynman uses in his Lectures on Physics (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1989), 19-1 is, “Action in physics has a precise meaning. It is the time average of the kinetic energy of a particle minus the potential energy. The principle of least action then states that a particle will travel along the path that minimizes the difference between its kinetic and potential energies.”

  4. Fölsing, 203; Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Apr. 27, 1906; Einstein tribute to Planck, 1913, CPAE 2: 267.

  5. Max Planck to Einstein, July 6, 1907; Hoffmann 1972, 83.

  6. Max Laue to Einstein, June 2, 1906.

  7. Hoffmann 1972, 84; Seelig 1956a, 78; Fölsing, 212.

  8. Arnold Sommerfeld to Hendrik Lorentz, Dec. 26, 1907, in Diana Kormos Buchwald, “The First Solvay Conference,” in Einstein in Context (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 64. Sommerfeld is referring to the German physicist Emil Cohn, an expert in electrodynamics.

  9. Jakob Laub to Einstein, Mar. 1, 1908.

  10. Swiss Patent Office to Einstein, Mar. 13, 1906.

  11. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi, Dec. 1906.

  12. Einstein, “A New Electrostatic M
ethod for the Measurement of Small Quantities of Electricity,” Feb. 13, 1908, CPAE 2: 48; Overbye, 156.

  13. Einstein to Paul and/or Conrad Habicht, Aug. 16, Sept. 2, 1907, Mar. 17, June, July 4, Oct. 12, Oct. 22, 1908, Jan. 18, Apr. 15, Apr. 28, Sept. 3, Nov. 5, Dec. 17, 1909; Overbye, 156–158.

  14. Einstein, “On the Inertia of Energy Required by the Relativity Principle,” May 14, 1907, CPAE 2: 45; Einstein to Johannes Stark, Sept. 25, 1907.

  15. Einstein to Bern Canton Education Department, June 17, 1907, CPAE 5: 46; Fölsing, 228.

  16. Einstein 1922c.

  17. Einstein, “Fundamental Ideas and Methods of Relativity Theory,” 1920, unpublished draft of a paper for Nature magazine, CPAE 7: 31. The phrase he used was “glücklichste Gedanke meines Lebens.”

  18. “Einstein Expounds His New Theory,”New York Times , Dec. 3, 1919.

  19. Bernstein 1996a, 10, makes the point that Newton’s thought experiments involving a falling apple and Einstein’s involving an elevator “were liberating insights that revealed unexpected depths in commonplace experiences.”

  20. Einstein 1916, chapter 20.

  21. Einstein, “The Fundaments of Theoretical Physics,”Science , May 24, 1940, in Einstein 1954, 329. See also Sartori, 255.

  22. Einstein first used the phrase in a paper he wrote for the Annalen der Physik in Feb. 1912, “The Speed of Light and the Statics of the Gravitational Field,” CPAE 4: 3.

  23. Janssen 2002.

  24. The gravitational field would have to be static and homogeneous and the acceleration would have to be uniform and rectilinear.

  25. Einstein, “On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn from It,” Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität and Elektronik, Dec. 4, 1907, CPAE 2: 47; Einstein to Willem Julius, Aug. 24, 1911.

  26. Einstein to Marcel Grossmann, Jan. 3, 1908.

  27. Einstein to the Zurich Council of Education, Jan. 20, 1908; Fölsing, 236.

  28. Einstein to Paul Gruner, Feb. 11, 1908; Alfred Kleiner to Einstein, Feb. 8, 1908.

  29. Flückiger, 117–121; Fölsing, 238; Maja Einstein, xxi.

  30. Alfred Kleiner to Einstein, Feb. 8, 1908.

  31. Friedrich Adler to Viktor Adler, June 19, 1908; Rudolph Ardelt, Friedrich Adler (Vienna: österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1984), 165–194; Seelig 1956a, 95; Fölsing, 247; Overbye, 161.

  32. Frank 1947, 75; Einstein to Michele Besso, Apr. 29, 1917.

  33. Einstein to Jakob Laub, May 19, 1909; Reiser, 72.

  34. Friedrich Adler to Viktor Adler, July 1, 1908; Einstein to Jakob Laub, July 30, 1908.

  35. Einstein to Jakob Laub, May 19, 1909.

  36. Alfred Kleiner, report to the faculty, Mar. 4, 1909; Seelig 1956a, 166; Pais 1982, 185; Fölsing, 249.

  37. Alfred Kleiner, report to faculty, Mar. 4, 1909.

  38. Einstein to Jakob Laub, May 19, 1909.

  39. Einstein, verse in the album of Anna Schmid, Aug. 1899, CPAE 1: 49.

  40. Einstein to Anna Meyer-Schmid, May 12, 1909.

  41. Mileva Mari to Georg Meyer, May 23, 1909; Einstein to Georg Meyer, June 7, 1909; Einstein to Erika Schaerer-Meyer, July 27, 1951; Highfield and Carter, 125; Overbye, 164.

  42. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi, late 1909, Sept. 3, 1909, in Popovi, 26–27.

  43. Seelig 1956a, 92; Dukas and Hoffmann, 5–7.

  44. Einstein to Arnold Sommerfeld, Jan. 14, 1908. I am grateful to Douglas Stone of Yale, who helped me with Einstein’s early work on the quanta.

  45. Einstein lecture in Salzburg, “On the Development of Our Views Concerning the Nature and Constitution of Radiation,” Sept. 21, 1909, CPAE 2: 60; Schilpp, 154; Armin Hermann, The Genesis of the Quantum Theory (Cam-bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 66–69.

  46. Einstein to Arnold Sommerfeld, July 1910. As Einstein’s friend Banesh Hoffmann quipped in The Strange Story of the Quantum (New York: Dover, 1959), “They could but make the best of it, and went around with woebegone faces sadly complaining that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they must look upon light as a wave; on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, as a particle. On Sundays they simply prayed.”

  47. Discussion following Sept. 21, 1909, lecture in Salzburg, CPAE 2: 61.

  48. Einstein to Jakob Laub, Nov. 4 and 11, 1910.

  49. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, May 20, 1912.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: THE WANDERING PROFESSOR

  1. The best and original work about Duhem’s influence on Einstein is by Don Howard. See Howard 1990a, 2004.

  2. Friedrich Adler to Viktor Adler, Oct. 28, 1909, in Fölsing, 258.

  3. Seelig 1956a, 97.

  4. Seelig 1956a, 113.

  5. Seelig 1956a, 99–104; Brian 1996, 76.

  6. Seelig 1956a, 102; Einstein to Arnold Sommerfeld, Jan. 19, 1909.

  7. Overbye, 185; Miller 2001, 229–231.

  8. Hans Albert Einstein interview, Gazette and Daily (York, Pa.), Sept. 20, 1948; Seelig 1956a, 104; Highfield and Carter, 129.

  9. Einstein to Pauline Einstein, Apr. 28, 1910.

  10. Student petition, University of Zurich, June 23, 1910, CPAE 5: 210.

  11. Repeated in lecture by Max Planck, Columbia University, spring 1909; Pais 1982, 192; Fölsing, 271.

  12. Einstein to Jakob Laub, Aug. 27, Oct. 11, 1910; Count Karl von Stürgkh to Einstein, Jan. 13, 1911; Frank 1947, 98–101; Clark, 172–176; Fölsing, 271–273; Pais 1982, 192.

  13. Frank 1947, 104. Frank has the visit occuring in 1913, but in fact it occurred in Sept. 1910 when Einstein was in Vienna for his official interview about the Prague professorship. See notes in CPAE 5 (German version), p. 625.

  14. Einstein to Hendrik Lorentz, Jan. 27, 1911.

  15. Einstein to Jakob Laub, May 19, 1909.

  16. Einstein to Hendrik Lorentz, Feb. 15, 1911.

  17. Pais 1982, 8; Brian 1996, 78; Klein 1970a, 303. The Ehrenfest description is from a draft of his eulogy for Lorentz.

  18. Einstein, “Address at the Grave of Lorentz” (1928), in Einstein 1954, 73; Einstein, “Message for Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Lorentz” (1953), in Einstein 1954, 73. See also Bucky, 114.

  19. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi, Jan. 1911, in Popovi, 30; Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Apr. 7, 1911.

  20. Frank 1947, 98.

  21. Max Brod, The Redemption of Tycho Brahe (New York: Knopf, 1928); Seelig 1956a, 121; Clark, 179; Highfield and Carter, 138.

  22. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Jan. 26, Feb. 12, 1912.

  23. Einstein, “Paul Ehrenfest: In Memoriam,” written in 1934 for a Leiden almanac and reprinted in Einstein 1950a, 132.

  24. Klein 1970a, 175–178; Seelig 1956a, 125; Fölsing, 294; Clark, 194; Brian 1996, 83; Highfield and Carter, 142.

  25. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Mar. 10, 1912; Einstein to Alfred Kleiner, Apr. 3, 1912; Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, Apr. 25, 1912. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Mar. 17, 1912: “I would like to see him my successor here. But his fanatical atheism makes that impossible.” Zangger’s letter was part of material released in 2006 and is published as CPAE 5: 374a in a supplement to vol. 10.

  26. Dirk van Delft, “Albert Einstein in Leiden,”Physics Today , Apr. 2006, 57.

  27. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Nov. 7, 1911.

  28. An invitation from Ernest Solvay, June 9, 1911, CPAE 5: 269; Einstein to Michele Besso, Sept. 11, Oct. 21, 1911.

  29. Einstein, “On the Present State of the Problem of Specific Heats,” Nov. 3, 1911, CPAE 3: 26; the quote about “really exist in nature” appears on p. 421 of the English translation of vol. 3.

  30. Discussion following Einstein lecture, Nov. 3, 1911, CPAE 3: 27.

  31. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Nov. 7 and 15, 1911.

  32. Einstein to Michele Besso, Dec. 26, 1911.

  33. Bernstein 1996b, 125.

  34. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Nov. 7, 1911.

  35. Einstein to Marie Curie, Nov. 23, 1911. (This letter is included at the beginning of CPAE vol. 8, not vol. 5, where it would have fit chronologically had this letter been available when that volume
was published.)

  36. Mileva Mari to Einstein, Oct. 4, 1911.

  37. Overbye, 201. Einstein’s quote is from a letter to Carl Seelig, May 5, 1952.

  38. Reiser, 126.

  39. Highfield and Carter, 145.

  40. Einstein to Elsa Einstein Löwenthal, Apr. 30, 1912; regarding her keeping the letters, CPAE 5: 389 (German edition), footnote 12.

  41. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, Apr. 30, 1912; Einstein “scratch notebook,” CPAE 3 (German edition), appendix A; CPAE 5: 389 (German edition), footnote 4.

  42. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, May 7 and 12, 1912.

  43. Einstein to Michele Besso, May 13, 1911; Einstein to Hans Tanner, Apr. 24, 1911; Einstein to Alfred and Clara Stern, Mar. 17, 1912.

  44. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi, Dec. 1912, in Popovi, 106.

  45. Willem Julius to Einstein, Sept. 17, 1911; Einstein to Willem Julius, Sept. 22, 1911.

  46. Heinrich Zangger to Ludwig Forrer, Oct. 9, 1911; CPAE 5: 291 (German edition), footnote 2; CPAE 5: 305 (German edition), footnote 2.

  47. Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, Nov. 15, 1911.

  48. Einstein to Willem Julius, Nov. 16, 1911.

  49. Marie Curie, letter of recommendation, Nov. 17, 1911; Seelig 1956a, 134; Fölsing, 291; CPAE 5: 308 (German edition), footnote 3.

  50. Henri Poincaré, letter of recommendation, Nov. 1911; Seelig 1956a, 135; Galison, 300; Fölsing, 291; CPAE 5: 308 (German edition), footnote 3.

  51. Einstein to Alfred and Clara Stern, Feb. 2, 1912.

  52. Articles appeared in Vienna’s weekly paper Montags-Revue on July 29, 1912, and Prague’s Prager Tagblatt on May 26 and Aug. 5, 1912. CPAE 5: 414 (German edition), footnotes 2, 3, 11; Einstein statement, Aug. 3, 1912.

  53. Einstein to Ludwig Hopf, June 12, 1912.

  54. Overbye, 234, 243; Highfield and Carter, 153; Seelig 1956a, 112.

  55. In a letter from Einstein to Elsa Einstein, July 30, 1914, he recalls how she kidded him for including his new address in the May 7, 1912, letter in which he declared they must quit corresponding.

  56. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, ca. Mar. 14, 1913.

  57. Einstein to Elsa Einstein, Mar. 23, 1913.

  58. Seelig 1956a, 244; Levenson, 2; CPAE 5: 451 (German edition), footnote 2; Clark, 213; Overbye, 248; Fölsing, 329. The editors of the collected papers use the white handkerchief, based on a letter by Nernst’s daughter, while other accounts use the red rose, based on the account that Seelig was given.