Einstein

by Philipp Frank

  From a physician he obtained a certificate stating that because of a nervous breakdown it was necessary for him to leave school for six months to stay with his parents in Italy, where he could recuperate. He also obtained a statement from his mathematics teacher affirming that his extraordinary knowledge of mathematics qualified him for admission to an advanced institution for the study of such subjects. His departure from the gymnasium was ultimately much easier than he had anticipated. One day his teacher summoned him and told him that it would be desirable if he were to leave the school. Astonished at the turn of events, young Einstein asked what offense he was guilty of. The teacher replied: “Your presence in the class destroys the respect of the students.” Evidently Einstein’s inner aversion to the constant drill had somehow manifested itself in his behavior toward his teachers and fellow students.

  On arriving at Milan he told his father that he wanted to renounce his German citizenship. His father, however, kept his own, so that the situation was rather unusual. Also, since Einstein could not acquire any other citizenship immediately, he became stateless. Simultaneously he renounced his legal adherence to the Jewish religious community.

  The first period of his stay in Italy was an ecstasy of joy. He was enraptured by the works of art in the churches and in the art galleries, and he listened to the music that resounded in every corner of this country, and to the melodic voices of its inhabitants. He hiked through the Apennines to Genoa. He observed with delight the natural grace of the people, who performed the most ordinary acts and said the simplest things with a taste and delicacy that to young Einstein appeared in marked contrast to the prevalent demeanor in Germany. There he had seen human beings turned into spiritually broken but mechanically obedient automatons with all the naturalness driven out of them; here he found people whose behavior was not so much determined by artificial, externally imposed rules, but was rather in consonance with their natural impulses. To him their actions appeared more in accord with the laws of nature than with those of any human authority.

  This paradisal state of delight, however, could exist only as long as Einstein was able to forget completely — as he did for a while — the urgent demands that the practical necessities of life made upon him. The need for a practical occupation was particularly urgent since his father was again unsuccessful in Italy. Neither in Milan nor in Pavia did his electrical shop succeed. Despite his optimism and happy outlook on life, he was compelled to tell Albert: “I can no longer support you. You will have to take up some profession as soon as possible.” The pressure that had hardly been released appeared to have returned. Had his departure from the gymnasium been a disastrous step? How could he return to the regular path leading to a profession?

  Einstein’s childhood experience with the magnetic compass had aroused his curiosity in the mysterious laws of nature, and his experience with the geometry book had developed in him a passionate love for everything that is comprehensible in terms of mathematics and a feeling that there was an element in the world that was completely comprehensible to human beings. Theoretical physics was the field that attracted him and to which he wanted to devote his life. He wanted to study this subject because it deals with the question: how can immeasurably complicated occurrences observed in nature be reduced to simple mathematical formulæ?

  With his interest in the pure sciences of physics and mathematics and the training required for a more practical profession, together with the fact that his father was engaged in a technical occupation, it seemed best that young Einstein should study the technological sciences. Furthermore, since he lacked a diploma from a gymnasium but had an excellent knowledge of mathematics, he believed that he could more easily obtain admission to a technical institution than to a regular university.

  6. Student at Zurich

  At that time the most famous technical school in central Europe outside of Germany was the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. Einstein went there and took the entrance examination. He showed that his knowledge of mathematics was far ahead of that of most of the other candidates, but his knowledge of modern languages and the descriptive natural sciences (zoology and botany) was inadequate, and he was not admitted. Now the blow had fallen. What he had feared ever since leaving Munich had come to pass and it looked as though he would be unable to continue in the direction he had planned.

  The director of the Polytechnic, however, had been impressed by Einstein’s knowledge of mathematics and advised him to obtain the required diploma in a Swiss school, the excellent, progressively conducted cantonal school in the small city of Aarau. This prospect did not appeal very much to Einstein, who feared that he would again become an inmate of a regimented institution like the gymnasium in Munich.

  Einstein went to Aarau with considerable misgiving and apprehension, but he was pleasantly surprised. The cantonal school was conducted in a very different spirit from that of the Munich gymnasium. There was no militaristic drilling, and the teaching was aimed at training the students to think and work independently. The teachers were always available to the students for friendly discussions or counsel. The students were not required to remain in the same room all the time, and there were separate rooms containing instruments, specimens, and accessories for every subject. For physics and chemistry there were apparatuses with which the student could experiment. For zoology there were a small museum and microscopes for observing minute organisms, and for geography there were maps and pictures of foreign countries.

  Abraham Rupert Einstein and Helen Einstein, grandparents of the scientist (Illustration Credit 1.1)

  Einstein as a child (Illustration Credit 1.2)

  Einstein and his sister Maja (Illustration Credit 1.3)

  Here Einstein lost his aversion to school. He became more friendly with his fellow students. In Aarau he lived with a teacher of the school who had a son and a daughter with whom Einstein made trips to the mountains. He also had an opportunity to discuss problems of public life in detail with people who, in accordance with the Swiss tradition, were greatly interested in such affairs. He became acquainted with a point of view different from that which he had been accustomed to in Germany.

  After one year at the cantonal school Einstein obtained his diploma and was thereupon admitted to the Polytechnic School in Zurich without further examination. In the meantime, however, he had abandoned the plan of taking up a practical profession. His stay at Aarau had shown him that a position as a teacher of physics and mathematics at an advanced school would permit him to pursue his favorite studies and at the same time enable him to make a modest living. The Polytechnic had a department for training teachers in physical and mathematical subjects, and Einstein now turned to this pursuit.

  During the year at the cantonal school Einstein had become certain that the actual object of his interest was physics and not pure mathematics as he had sometimes believed while still in Munich. His aim was to discover the simplest rules by which to comprehend natural laws. Unfortunately, at that time it was just this teaching of physics that was rather outdated and pedantic at the Polytechnic. The students were merely taught the physical principles that had stood the test of technical applications and been accepted in all the textbooks. There was little if any objective approach to natural phenomena, or logical discussion of the simple comprehensive principles underlying them.

  Even though the lectures on physics were not marked by any profundity of thought, they did stimulate Einstein to read the works of the great investigators in this field. Just about this time, at the end of the nineteenth century, the development of physical science had reached a turning-point. The theories of this period had been written in stimulating form by the outstanding scientists. Einstein devoured these classics of theoretical physics, the works of Helmholtz, Kirchoff, Boltzmann, Maxwell, and Hertz. Day and night Einstein buried himself in these books, from which he learned the art of erecting a mathematical framework on which to build up the structure of physics.

  The teaching of math
ematics was on a much higher level. Among the instructors was Hermann Minkowski, a Russian by birth, who, although still a young man, was already regarded as one of the most original mathematicians of his time. He was not a very good lecturer, however, and Einstein was not much interested in his classes. It was just at this time that Einstein lost interest in pure mathematics. He believed that the most primitive mathematical principles would be adequate to formulate the fundamental laws of physics, the task that he had set for himself. Not until later did it become clear to him that the very opposite was the case: that for a mathematical formulation of his idea concepts derived from a very highly developed type of mathematics were required. And it was Minkowski, whose mathematical lectures Einstein found so uninteresting, who put forth ideas for a mathematical formulation of Einstein’s theories that provided the germ for all future developments in the field.

  At this period the Polytechnic enjoyed a great international reputation and had a large number of students from foreign countries. Among them were many from eastern and southeastern Europe who could not or would not study in their native countries for political reasons, and hence Zurich became a place where future revolutions were nurtured. One of these with whom Einstein became acquainted was Friedrich Adler, from Austria. He was a thin, pale, blond young man who like other students from the east united within himself an intense devotion to his studies and a fanatical faith in the revolutionary development of society. He was the son of Viktor Adler, a leading Social Democrat politician of Vienna, who tried to keep his son out of politics by sending him to study physics at Zurich.

  Another of Einstein’s acquaintances was Mileva Maritsch, a young woman from Hungary. Her mother tongue, however, was Serbian and she professed the Greek Orthodox religion. She belonged to that group of her people who lived in considerable numbers in southeastern Hungary and always carried on a violent struggle against the Magyar domination. Like many of the women students from eastern Europe, she paid attention only to her work and had few opportunities to attract the attention of men. She and Einstein found a common interest in their passion for the study of the great physicists, and they spent a great deal of time together. For Einstein it had always been pleasant to think in society, or, better perhaps, to become aware of his thoughts by putting them into words. Even though Mileva Maritsch was extremely taciturn and rather unresponsive, Einstein in his zeal for his studies hardly noticed this.

  This student period at Zurich, which was so important for Einstein’s mental development, was not such an easy time for him with regard to practical living. His father’s financial situation was so difficult that he could not contribute anything to his son’s support. Einstein received one hundred Swiss francs monthly from a wealthy relative, but he had to put aside twenty of these every month to accumulate the fee necessary for the acquisition of Swiss citizenship, which he hoped to obtain soon after graduation. He did not experience any real material hardships, but on the other hand he could not afford any luxuries.

  7. Official of a Patent Office

  Einstein completed his studies just at the turn of the century and now faced the necessity of seeking a position. When a young man with extraordinary interest and ability in science has completed the regular course of study at a university or technical academy, it is important and generally desirable for him to obtain further training to become an independent investigator by acting as assistant to a professor at a university. In this way he learns the methods both of teaching and of making scientific investigations by working under an experienced person. Since this appeared to be the appropriate path for him, Einstein applied for such a position. It became evident, however, that the same professors who had praised his scientific interest and talent so highly had no intention whatever of taking him on as an assistant. Nor did he receive any direct explanation of this refusal.

  With no possibility of a teaching position at the Polytechnic, the only alternative was to look for one in a secondary school. Here again, despite excellent letters of recommendation from his professors, he was unsuccessful. The only thing he obtained was a temporary position in a technical vocational school at Winterthur, and after a few months he was again unemployed.

  It was now 1901. Einstein was twenty-one and had become a Swiss citizen. Through a newspaper he found that a gymnasium teacher in Schaffhausen, who maintained a boarding-house for students, was looking for a tutor for two boys. Einstein applied for the job and was hired. Thus he came to this small city on the Rhine whose famous waterfalls resounded throughout the vicinity and where numerous tourists stopped to see the natural phenomenon, which received three stars in the Baedeker.

  Einstein was not dissatisfied with his work. He enjoyed molding the minds of young people and trying to find better pedagogical methods than those he had been accustomed to in school. But he soon noticed that other teachers spoiled the good seed he sowed, and he asked that the teaching of the two boys be left completely in his hands. One can well imagine that the gymnasium teacher who conducted the boarding-house regarded this request as a rebellion against his authority. He felt there was an atmosphere of revolt and discharged Einstein. By this action Einstein now realized that it was not only the students but teachers as well who were crushed and made pliable by the mechanical treadmill of the ordinary school.

  Einstein was again in a difficulty. All his efforts to find a teaching position failed despite the fact that he held a diploma from the Polytechnic and Swiss citizenship papers. He himself could not quite understand the reason for his failure. It may have been that he was not regarded as a genuine Swiss. With his recent citizenship, he was what the genuine Swiss patriots called a “paper Swiss.” The fact that he was of Jewish ancestry caused additional difficulty in being accepted as a true Swiss.

  In the midst of this dark period there appeared a bright light. A fellow student of Einstein’s at the Polytechnic, Marcel Grossmann, introduced him to a man named Haller, the director of the patent office in Bern. He was a very broad-minded, intelligent man who knew that in every profession it is more important to have someone capable of independent thinking than a person trained in a particular routine. After a long interview he was convinced that although Einstein had no previous experience with technical inventions, he was a suitable person for a position in the patent office, and gave him a job.

  In many respects Einstein’s removal to Bern was an important turning-point in his life. He now had a position with a fixed annual salary of about three thousand francs, a sum that at that time enabled him to live quite comfortably. He was able to spend his leisure hours, of which he had many, in scientific investigation. He was in a position to think of marriage and of having a family.

  Soon after his arrival in Bern, Einstein married Mileva Maritsch, his fellow student at the Polytechnic. She was somewhat older than he. Despite her Greek Orthodox background she was a free-thinker and progressive in her ideas, like most of the Serbian students. By nature she was reserved, and did not possess to any great degree the ability to get into intimate and pleasant contact with her environment. Einstein’s very different personality, as manifested in the naturalness of his bearing and the interesting character of his conversation, often made her uneasy. There was something blunt and stern about her character. For Einstein life with her was not always a source of peace and happiness. When he wanted to discuss with her his ideas, which came to him in great abundance, her response was so slight that he was often unable to decide whether or not she was interested. At first, however, he had the pleasure of living his own life with his family. Two sons were born in rapid succession, and the elder was named Albert after his father. Einstein was very happy with his children. He liked to occupy himself with them, to tell them what went on in his mind; and he observed their reactions with great interest and pleasure.

  Einstein’s work at the patent office was by no means uninteresting. His job was to make a preliminary examination of the reported inventions. Most inventors are dilettantes, and many professionals are
likewise unable to express their thoughts clearly. It was the function of the patent office to provide legal protection for inventions and inventors, and there had to be clearly formulated statements explaining the essential feature of each invention. Einstein had to put the applications for patents, which were frequently vaguely written, into a clearly defined form. He had to be able, above all, to pick out the basic ideas of the inventions from the descriptions. This was frequently not easy and it gave Einstein an opportunity to study thoroughly many ideas that appeared new and interesting. Perhaps it was this work that developed his unusual faculty of immediately grasping the chief consequence of every hypothesis presented, a faculty that has aroused admiration in so many people who have had an opportunity to observe him in scientific discussion.

  This occupation with inventions also kept awake in Einstein an interest in the construction of scientific apparatus. There still exists an apparatus for measuring small electrical charges that he invented at this time. Such work was for him a kind of recreation from his abstract theoretical investigation in much the same way as chess and detective stories serve to relax other scientists. Quite a few mathematicians find amusement in the solution of chess problems and not in some sport or in the movies, and it may well be that a mathematical mind finds the best relaxation by occupying itself with problems that are not to be taken seriously but still require a modicum of logical thinking. Einstein does not like chess or detective stories, but he does like to think up all sorts of technical instruments and to discuss them with friends. Thus even today he is often in the company of his friend Dr. Bucky of New York, a well-known physician and specialist in the construction of X-ray machines, and together they have devised a mechanism for regulating automatically the exposure time of a photographic film depending on the illumination on it. Einstein’s interest in such inventions depends not on its practical utility but on getting at the trick of the thing.