Einstein in Bohemia

by Michael D. Gordin

  26. A. Einstein, “Über das Relativitätsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen,” Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik 4 (1907): 411–462, reproduced in CPAE 2:47, on 465–466. For more context on this crucial paper, see Arthur I. Miller, “Albert Einstein’s 1907 Jahrbuch Paper: The First Step from SRT to GRT,” in Jean Eisenstaedt and A. J. Kox, eds., Studies in the History of General Relativity (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1992), 319–335. The equivalence principle still has a place in contemporary physics, but it is understood to apply only infinitesimally at each location, which was certainly not how Einstein initially understood it. On the nuances of Einstein’s conception, see John D. Norton, “What Was Einstein’s Principle of Equivalence?,” in Howard and Stachel, Einstein and the History, 5–47.

  27. In 1918, after he had successfully completed his general theory, Einstein wrote to Eötvös to thank him for his experimental work that had demonstrated the equivalence principle. Einstein to Roland von Eötvös, 31 January 1918, CPAE 8:450, on 624.

  28. Max von Laue to Einstein, 27 December 1907, CPAE 5:70, on 83.

  29. Einstein to Arnold Sommerfeld, 5 January 1908, CPAE 5:72, on 86.

  30. Max von Laue, Das Relativitätsprinzip (Braunschweig: Vieweg und Sohn, 1911), 187.

  31. Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel, “Theories of Gravitation in the Twilight of Classical Physics,” in Christoph Lehner, Jürgen Renn, and Matthias Schemmel, eds., Einstein and the Changing Worldviews of Physics (New York: Springer, 2012), 3–22; Frans Herbert van Lunteren, Framing Hypotheses: Conceptions of Gravity in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Ph.D. diss., University of Utrecht, 1991); Matthew R. Edwards, ed., Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage’s Theory of Gravitation (Montreal: Apeiron, 2002); and Scott Walter, “Breaking in the 4-Vectors: The Four-Dimensional Movement in Gravitation, 1905–1910,” in Renn, Genesis of General Relativity, 3:193–252.

  32. Shaul Katzir, “Poincaré’s Relativistic Theory of Gravitation,” in A. J. Kox and Jean Eisenstaedt, eds., The Universe of General Relativity (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2005), 15–37. See also the 1905 attempt to reconcile the Lorentz transformations and gravity in Richard Gans, “Gravitation und Elektromagnetismus,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 6, no. 23 (1905): 803–805.

  33. Albert Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” tr. Paul Arthur Schilpp, in Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1951 [1949]), 1:1–95, on 66. For historians’ explanations of the ostensible “delay,” see Abraham Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord …”: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 187–188; V. P. Vizgin, Reliativistskaia teoriia tiagoteniia: Istoki i formirovanie, 1900–1915 (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 121.

  34. Einstein to Jakob Laub, 10 August 1911, CPAE 5:275, on 309. See also the later letter of Einstein to Ehrenfest, [before 20 June 1912], CPAE 5:409, on 485.

  35. For secondary discussions of these papers, see Jiří Bičák, “Einstein’s Prague Articles on Gravitation,” in D. G. Blair and M. J. Buckingham, eds., The Fifth Marcel Grossmann Meeting on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation and Relativistic Field Theories: Proceedings of the Meeting Held at the University of Western Australia, 8–13 August 1988 (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), 1325–1333; idem, “Einstein’s Prague Ideas on Gravitation: The History and the Present,” in Trends in Physics, 1984: Proceedings of the 6th General Conference of the European Physical Society, August 1984, Prague, Czechoslovakia (Prague: Prometheus, 1985), 65–75; Editorial Comment, “Einstein on Gravitation and Relativity: The Static Field,” CPAE 3, on 122–127; Alexander S. Blum, Jürgen Renn, Donald C. Salisbury, Matthias Schemmel, and Kurt Sundermeyer, “1912: A Turning Point on Einstein’s Way to General Relativity,” Annalen der Physik 524, no 1. (2012): A11–A13; Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord …”, ch. 11; Vizgin, Reliativistskaia teoriia tiagoteniia; and Jagdish Mehra, Einstein, Hilbert, and the Theory of Gravitation: Historical Origins of General Relativity Theory (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974), 3–7.

  36. A. Einstein, “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper,” Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 891–921, reproduced in CPAE 2:23, on 277.

  37. Einstein to Willem Julius, 24 August 1911, CPAE 5:278, on 312–313.

  38. Albert Einstein, “Über den Einfluß der Schwerkraft auf die Ausbreitung des Lichtes,” Annalen der Physik 35 (1911): 898–908, reproduced in CPAE 3:23, on 494.

  39. Einstein, “Über den Einfluß der Schwerkraft auf die Ausbreitung des Lichtes,” reproduced in CPAE 3:23, on 486.

  40. Ibid., 496. Later general relativity would double the size of this effect.

  41. It should be noted that the quantitative estimate of the amount of deflection in the static theory was different from the later full general theory’s accurate prediction measured by Eddington. On Eddington and his expedition, see especially Matthew Stanley, “ ‘An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War’: The 1919 Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer,” Isis 94, no. 1 (March 2003): 57–89; and idem, Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). On Eddington’s advance strategy to publicize the results, see Alistair Sponsel, “Constructing a ‘Revolution in Science’: The Campaign to Promote a Favourable Reception for the 1919 Solar Eclipse Experiments,” British Journal for the History of Science 35, no. 4 (2002): 439–467. On further American testing in the 1920s, which proved decisive, see Jeffrey Crelinstein, Einstein’s Jury: The Race to Test Relativity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). On the German-nationalist attempt to find a precursor to Einstein, see Stanley L. Jaki, “Johann Georg von Soldner and the Gravitational Bending of Light, with an English Translation of His Essay on It Published in 1801,” Foundations of Physics 8, nos. 11/12 (1978): 927–950. After Soldner’s long-forgotten paper came to light, fanatical Einstein nemesis and distinguished German experimentalist Philipp Lenard pushed for Soldner’s priority.

  42. Leo Wenzel Pollak to E. F. Freundlich, 24 August 1911, AEA 11–181.

  43. Einstein to Erwin Freundlich, 1 September 1911, CPAE 5:281, on 317.

  44. On the challenges of this measurement, see H. von Klüber, “The Determination of Einstein’s Light-Deflection in the Gravitational Field of the Sun,” Vistas in Astronomy 3, no. 1 (1960): 47–77.

  45. Einstein to Erwin Freundlich, 8 January 1912, CPAE 5:336, on 387.

  46. Max von Laue to Albert Einstein, 27 December [1911], CPAE 5:333, on 385.

  47. Einstein to Ernst Mach, 25 June 1913, CPAE 5:448, on 531.

  48. Erwin Freundlich, “Bedeckung des Sternes BD + 12°2138 durch den Mond während der totalen Sonnenfinsternis am 21. August 1914,” Astronomische Nachrichten 197 (1914): 335–336.

  49. Einstein’s foreword in Freundlich, Die Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie, 3rd. ed. (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1920), i.

  50. Klaus Hentschel, “Erwin Finlay Freundlich and Testing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 47, no. 2 (June 1994): 143–201; Klaus Hentschel, The Einstein Tower: An Intertexture of Dynamic Construction, Relativity Theory, and Astronomy, tr. Ann M. Hentschel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).

  51. Einstein to Hopf, [after 20 February 1912], CPAE 5:364, on 418.

  52. Einstein to Zangger, [before 29 February 1912], CPAE 5:366, on 420–421.

  53. Einstein to Zangger, 17 March [1912], CPAE 5:374a, in vol. 10, on 20.

  54. Einstein to Ehrenfest, [10 March 1912], CPAE 5:369, on 428.

  55. Einstein to Lorentz, 18 February 1912, CPAE 5:360, on 413.

  56. Einstein to Wilhelm Wien, 24 February [1912], CPAE 5:365, on 420.

  57. Einstein to Wien, 11 March 1912, CPAE 5:371, on 429.

  58. Einstein to Wien, 20 March [1912], CPAE 5:375, on 433.

  59. Einstein to Hopf, [after 20 February 1912], CPAE 5:364, on 418.

  60. Max Abraham, “Zur Theorie der Gravitation,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 13, no. 1 (1 January 1912): 1–4. See also
the appendix, published as idem, “Das Elementargesetz der Gravitation,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 13, no. 1 (1 January 1912): 4–5. On Abraham’s gravity theory, see the careful analysis in Jürgen Renn, “The Summit Almost Scaled: Max Abraham as a Pioneer of a Relativistic Theory of Gravitation,” in Renn, Genesis of General Relativity, 3:305–330. On Abraham’s context in Milan, see Barbara J. Reeves, “Einstein Politicized: The Early Reception of Relativity in Italy,” in Thomas F. Glick, ed., The Comparative Reception of Relativity (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987), 189–229.

  61. Einstein to Marian von Smoluchowski, 24 March [1912], CPAE 5:376, on 434. See also Einstein to Besso, 26 March [1912], CPAE 5:377, on 435.

  62. Max Abraham, “Relativität und Gravitation: Erwiderung auf eine Bemerkung des Hrn. A. Einstein,” Annalen der Physik 38 (1912): 1056–1058, on 1056.

  63. A. Einstein, “Lichtgeschwindigkeit und Statik des Gravitationfeldes,” Annalen der Physik 38 (1912): 355–369, reproduced in CPAE 4:3, on 130. Nonetheless in 1912 another physicist treated Abraham’s and Einstein’s theories as essentially equivalent: Jun Ishiwara, “Zur Theorie der Gravitation,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 13 (1912): 1189–1193.

  64. A. Einstein, “Zur Theorie des statischen Gravitationsfeldes,” Annalen der Physik 38 (1912): 443–458, reproduced in CPAE 4:4, on 159. See the thorough discussion of his reasoning in Einstein to Ehrenfest, [before 20 June 1912], CPAE 5:409, on 485; as well as the analysis in Vizgin, Reliativistskaia teoriia tiagoteniia, 179.

  65. Max Abraham, “Nochmals Relativität und Gravitation: Bemerkungen zu A. Einsteins Wiederung,” Annalen der Physik 39 (1912): 444–448.

  66. Einstein to Jakob Laub, 16 March 1910, CPAE 5:199, on 231. Einstein continued the following year to polemicize with him at arm’s length through Laub: Einstein to Jakob Laub, 10 August 1911, CPAE 5:275, on 308–309.

  67. Einstein to Zangger, [27 January 1912], CPAE 5:344, on 395.

  68. Einstein to Besso, 26 March [1912], CPAE 5:377, on 436–437. “Untenable (unhaltbar)” was a favorite phrase when it came to Abraham’s work. See also Einstein to Ehrenfest, 12 February [19]12, CPAE 5:357, on 408.

  69. Jürgen Renn, “Classical Physics in Disarray: The Emergence of the Riddle of Gravitation,” in Renn, Genesis of General Relativity, 1:21–80.

  70. Einstein to Alfred Kleiner, 3 April 1912, CPAE 5:382, on 447–448.

  71. A. Einstein, “Relativität und Gravitation: Erwiderung auf eine Bemerkung von M. Abraham,” Annalen der Physik 38 (1912): 1059–1064, reproduced in CPAE 4:8, on 181.

  72. Ibid., 184.

  73. Ibid., 185.

  74. A. Einstein, “Bemerkung zu Abrahams vorangehender Auseinandersetzung ‘Nochmals Relativität und Gravitation,’ ” Annalen der Physik 39 (1912): 704, reproduced in CPAE 4:9, on 190.

  75. Abraham, “Eine neue Gravitationstheorie,” 208. In a later essay, he suggested that gravitational waves would be longitudinal. Idem, “Die neue Mechanik,” Scientia 15 (1914): 8–27, on 22. See also idem, “Das Gravitationsfeld,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 13, no. 17 (1 September 1912): 793–797.

  76. Einstein to Sommerfeld, 29 October [1912], CPAE 5:421, on 505. See also the passing reference to Abraham in A. Einstein, “Zum gegenwärtigen Stande des Gravitationsproblems,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 14 (1913) 1249–1262, reproduced in CPAE 4:17, on 488.

  77. Max Abraham, “Neuere Gravitationstheorien,” Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik 11 (1914): 470–520, on 510.

  78. Abraham, “Die neue Mechanik,” 26.

  79. Einstein to Besso, [after 1 January 1914], CPAE 5:499, on 588.

  80. Theodor von Kármán to Einstein, 22 February 1922, CPAE 13:61, on 149.

  81. Einstein to Erwin Freundlich, [mid-August 1913], CPAE 5:468, on 550.

  82. Eva Isaksson, “Der finnische Physiker Gunnar Nordström und sein Beitrag zur Entstehung der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie Albert Einsteins,” NTM-Schriftenreihe für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 22, no. 1 (1985): 29–52; John D. Norton, “Einstein, Nordström and the Early Demise of Scalar, Lorentz-Covariant Theories of Gravitation,” Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 45 (1992): 17–94; idem, “Einstein and Nordström: Some Lesser-Known Thought Experiments in Gravitation,” in John Earman, Michel Janssen, and John D. Norton, eds., The Attraction of Gravitation: New Studies in the History of General Relativity (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1993), 3–29.

  83. Gunnar Nordström, “Relativitätsprinzip und Gravitation,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 13 (1912): 1126–1129; A. Einstein, “Zum gegenwärtigen Stande des Gravitationsproblems,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 14 (1913): 1249–1262, reproduced in CPAE 4:17, on 492.

  84. Cornelia and Gunnar Nordström to Einstein, 31 January 1918, CPAE 8:452, on 626; see also Einstein to Max Born, 24 June 1918, in Albert Einstein, Hedwig Born, and Max Born, Briefwechsel, 1916–1955 (Frankfurt: Edition Erbrich, 1982 [1969]), 24; and Einstein to Gunnar Nordström, [28 May 1916], CPAE 8:222a, in vol. 15 on 23.

  85. Einstein to Ehrenfest, [23 August 1915], CPAE 8:112, on 165.

  86. Gustav Jaumann, “Theorie der Gravitation,” Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse, Abt. IIa 121 (1912): 95–182. Gravity is also treated as a subset of his more general continuum physics in idem, “Geschlossenes System physikalischer und chemischer Differentialgesetze,” Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse, Abt. IIa 120 (1911): 385–530, sec. XV. Peter Havas, in a rare mention in the secondary literature, calls this a “serious attempt at a (scalar) field theory fitting in his general continuum theory.” Havas, “Einstein, Relativity and Gravitation Research in Vienna Before 1938,” in Hubert Goenner, Jürgen Renn, Jim Ritter, and Tilman Sauer, eds., The Expanding Worlds of General Relativity (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1999), 161–206, on 173.

  87. Gustav Jaumann, “Feststellung einer Priorität in der Gravitationstheorie,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 15 (1914): 159–160, on 160.

  88. Abraham, “Neurere Gravitationstheorien,” 484n.

  89. E. Lohr, “Gustav Jaumann,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 26, no. 4 (15 February 1925): 189–198, on 196.

  90. A. Einstein and M. Grossmann, Entwurf einer verallgemeinerten Relativitätstheorie und einer Theorie der Gravitation (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), reproduced in CPAE 4:13, on 306.

  91. Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord …”, 210–212.

  92. Jeroen Van Dongen, Einstein’s Unification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Michel Janssen, “ ‘No Success Like Failure …’: Einstein’s Quest for General Relativity, 1902–1920,” in Janssen and Christoph Lehner, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Einstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 167–227.

  93. Einstein to Willem Julius, 24 August 1911, CPAE 5:278, on 312. For the original inquiry, see Julius to Einstein, 20 August 1911, CPAE 5:277, on 311.

  94. Einstein to Zangger, 20 September 1911, CPAE 5:286, on 324–325. For the second approach, see Julius to Einstein, 17 September [1911], CPAE 5:284, on 323.

  95. Einstein to Julius, 15 November 1911, CPAE 5:304, on 347. For more of the context of Einstein’s negotiation with Dutch universities in this period, see Maria Rooseboom, “Albert Einstein und die niederländischen Universitäten,” Janus 47 (1958): 198–201.

  96. Einstein to Julius, 22 November 1911, CPAE 5:288, on 327.

  97. Heinrich Zangger to Ludwig Forrer, 9 October 1911, CPAE 5:291, on 332.

  98. Robert Gnehm to Einstein, 8 December 1911, CPAE 5:317, on 365; Marcel Grossmann to Einstein, 12 December 1911, CPAE 5:321, on 368. The offer came in Robert Gnehm to Einstein, 23 January 1912, CPAE 5:342, on 393.

  99. Marie Curie to Pierre Weiss (Swiss Federal Board of Education), 17 November 1911, AEDA 09-C17, Box 9, Folder “C-Misc.”

  CHAPTER 3: ANTI-PRAGUE

  1. Max Brod, “Der Wert der Reiseeindrücke [1911],” in Brod, Über die Schönheit häßlicher Bilder: Essays zu Kunst und Ästhetik (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2014), 2
45–246.

  2. For details on the bridge, see Kateřina Bečková, Prague: The City and Its River, tr. Derek Paton and Marzia Paton (Prague: Karolinum, 2016), 10A–E; Marek Nekula, “The Divided City: Prague’s Public Space and Franz Kafka’s Readings of Prague,” in Nekula, Ingrid Fleischmann, and Albrecht Greule, eds., Franz Kafka im sprachnationalen Kontext seiner Zeit: Sprache und nationale Identität in öffentlichen Institutionen der böhmischen Länder (Köln: Böhlau, 2007), 87–108, on 101–102.

  3. For his biography, see Joseph Frederick Zacek, Palacký: The Historian as Scholar and Nationalist (The Hague: Mouton, 1970). On his role in 1848 and beyond, see Stanley Z. Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969).

  4. Hermann Münch, Böhmische Tragödie: Das Schicksal Mitteleuropas im Lichte der tschechischen Frage (Braunschweig: Georg Westermann, 1949), 452; Paul Vyšný, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs, 1898–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 19.