Given that he was widely celebrated as one of the great scientists of his era, it seems surprising that Philipp Lenard so begrudged the recognition accorded the contributions of his contemporaries. However, this was his character. Toward the end of his career, Lenard kept a Faelschungs-Buch, a cataloging of what he believed were the ideas stolen from him by his colleagues. A handwritten note found within the covers of the book states,
They who could have understood my works most easily have obviously never appreciated [what I have done]. This was astonishing to me; however, I understood it soon enough by their and their students’ statements in their publications. They aggressively tried as much to conceal me as to tacitly rob me! How do they come to behave like that? . . . They probably have all been that way, these “colleagues.” Thus they could not be delighted by my works, their methods and results; but they were anxious for their pleasant positions, and so a counter fight seemed to be the best for them in the first place! So they behaved in any case.
Despite the stilted, archaic style of writing, Lenard’s disappointment, even anger, over the behavior of his fellow academics is palpable. He appears to have given up on them. He is writing for posterity.
The here preserved publications show it. I have preserved them and continue to do so, because they are tangible proof of a behavior (which one probably has to have at hand) which seemed so alien to me that I even sometimes had to (being forgetful) consider as incredible. . . . There are some publications, which only followed the recent widely employed trend to bypass me. One, even a pupil of mine, deceived me from behind, because he deemed it beneficial for himself. . . . That they have been able to behave in the way they did, these poor minds owe to the Jewish influence, which became effective just in time and by which their petty-minded thinking became as strong, as they could ever wish for.
On the occasion of his Nobel Lecture, he felt it necessary to give voice to his resentment over the acclaim Roentgen enjoyed for his discovery. One can only imagine the embarrassed response of his audience: Philipp Lenard, the great scientist, a Nobel laureate, denigrating the contributions of another Nobel Prize recipient in an effort to bolster his own legacy.
Lenard’s behavior toward Roentgen and, later, Einstein would follow him through history. Indeed, instead of being remembered for the genius of his science, his legacy is his misbegotten racial theories and how they negatively impacted the future of German science. His modern-day Nobel biography notes, “Some of his discoveries were great ones and others were very important, but he claimed for them more than their true value. Although he was given many honours . . . he believed that he was disregarded and this probably explains why he attacked other physicists in many countries.”
Chapter 8
Einstein versus the
Small Popes in Uppsala
Seventeen years following Lenard’s Nobel Lecture, on the afternoon of July 11, 1923, Albert Einstein looked out from the elevated podium fronting Jubileum Hall, prepared to deliver his own Nobel Lecture. The newly finished building was an architectural marvel, completely walled in glass, and one of the focal points of Gothenburg’s Liseberg Congress Center, which, along with the neighboring amusement park, had been constructed to celebrate the city’s three hundredth anniversary. For the next hour, those fortunate or persistent enough to have gotten a ticket forsook the park’s funicular and slides to listen to the 1921 Nobel laureate for physics.
The day was an unusually hot one for central Sweden, hot enough that Einstein’s neck must have prickled under his stiff, white collar. The freshly lacquered benches on which the audience sat stuck to the trousers of their expensive wool suits. Even so, roughly one thousand scientists, dignitaries, and guests sat mesmerized through the roughly hour-long presentation. Among them was Sweden’s King Gustav V, who occupied a special chair in the central aisle separating the left and right sections.
Beyond the unseasonable warmth, there were several interesting oddities about the circumstances of Einstein’s celebratory lecture. First, Einstein had known about his being awarded the Nobel Prize for nearly a year, but only now was he getting around to delivering his lecture. Second, the award Einstein received was the 1921 Nobel Prize for physics, a year already fogged by distant memory. Stalemated discussions among the Nobel physics committee members over who should be the recipient of the 1921 physics award resulted in the prize being held in reserve until a decision was made during the committee’s usual deliberations held in 1922. Third, Einstein’s host in Gothenburg, Svante Arrhenius, had on several occasions in his capacity as a member of the Nobel physics committee assessed Einstein’s dossier as unworthy of a Nobel Prize. Arrhenius had arranged for Einstein’s lecture to be the sole event of a special plenary session of the meeting of the Nordic Assembly of Naturalists. Finally, the topic of Einstein’s lecture, entitled “Fundamental Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity,” was unrelated to the scientific contribution for which Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Indeed, the official announcement of Einstein’s prize went out of its way to disavow any consideration of relativity in the Swedish Academy’s decision to reward Einstein’s work. The cover letter that had accompanied his Nobel certificate specifically noted that he was being recognized for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect “without taking into account the value which will be accorded your relativity and gravitation theories after these are confirmed in the future.”
Einstein received word that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in October 1922, while his steamer was chugging toward a lecture tour in Japan. He had accepted the Japanese invitation to allow time for things to cool off back home in Berlin, where his friend Walther Rathenau recently had been assassinated and he had received death threats. Perhaps because he resented how long it had taken the Nobel assembly to recognize his contributions and because the members of the assembly appeared to be going out of their way to ignore his most important work, Einstein refused the invitation to backtrack to Sweden for the December 10 Nobel ceremony and dinner. He even stopped to lecture in Jerusalem and Spain on his way back to Berlin. Einstein’s absence spoke volumes. However, just as the prophet Elijah seats himself in an unfilled chair for the Jewish Passover Seder, the spirit of the seer of theoretical physics inhabited the Nobel stage.
Had he been present in Stockholm that evening, he would have heard Professor Arrhenius declare at the outset of his introduction, “There is no physicist living today whose name has become so widely known as that of Albert Einstein.” Arrhenius cited the theory of relativity and its philosophical ramifications as the main reason for Einstein’s renown. Next, he gave due attention to Einstein’s 1905 paper on Brownian motion, which he noted had given rise to the burgeoning field of colloid chemistry. Finally, he addressed the reason the physics committee had chosen Einstein to receive the prize: Einstein’s discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. In a feat of linguistic gymnastics, the committee had recommended Einstein—and the full Nobel assembly had approved him—not for the photoelectric effect itself, which Philipp Lenard showed to be the result of ultraviolet light striking a metal surface; and not for the finding that the energy of the electrons emitted was related to the frequency of the incident light; Lenard had described this as well. Einstein was being honored specifically for his law employing Planck’s constant, which explicitly defined the relationship between the wavelength of the incident light and the energy released.
In the law of the photoelectric effect, Einstein had drawn together two important lines of inquiry in early-twentieth-century physics: quantum theory and photodynamics. Citing American Robert Millikan’s elegant experimental proof of Einstein’s theoretical triumph, Arrhenius concluded his introduction by noting, “Einstein’s law has become the basis of quantitative photochemistry in the same way as Faraday’s law is the basis of electrochemistry.”
At the same time as Einstein was out to sea, Philipp Lenard was attending the 1922 meeting of the German Society of Natural Scientis
ts and Physicians, the same society that had hosted his 1920 debate with Einstein. His face must have registered shock at the announcement made during an interlude in the scientific sessions. After all, he was the 1905 laureate. It is likely that he’d had some interchanges with certain physics committee members wherein there had been agreement that Einstein’s theoretical ravings were inappropriate for Nobel Prize consideration. He had heard that committee member Allvar Gullstrand had privately told a mathematician friend that “Einstein must never receive a Prize even if the whole world demands it.” Surely, the announcement had been in error. The awarding of a prize to Einstein was unacceptable, if only because it cheapened his own distinction.
Although he must have realized that any attempt to reverse the decision was hopeless, Lenard nonetheless whipped off a four-page letter to the Swedish Academy, datelined Heidelberg, January 23, 1923.
Highly esteemed sirs,
As a member of your academy and previous recipient of the Nobel Prize, I believe I should communicate the following thoughts regarding the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Mr. Einstein. It would seem a mistake to me to remain silent toward you as the relevant center. Experts in the field would consider this mistake to weigh even more heavily as they know that this award had vividly occupied me for a long time.
Lenard acknowledged that the Prize had rightly not been given for Einstein’s well-known theories of gravitation or relativity but for “less contentious thoughts.” He also conceded that Einstein’s law of the photoelectric effect had been “at least partially verified.” Still, he continued,
I can, however, not appreciate the communication of thoughts without empiric testing—of thoughts that could just as well be right or wrong, of sheer hypotheses, as achievements of the natural sciences, even less so as there was no discovery or progress whatsoever, for which this prize originally had been meant . . . what could render these thoughts valuable would be their diligent examination based on empirical testing.
The last complaint ignored the work of Robert Millikan, cited by Professor Arrhenius in his Nobel introduction of Einstein, which anyone conversant in the field would find odd. Citing Einstein’s 1905 article in Annalen der Physik, “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” in which Einstein laid out his law, Lenard wrote,
[E]xperts in the fields and persons acquainted with the historical facts know that there is nothing new which is proven in this work and there is nothing proven which is new, either. In fact, they know that there is nothing new at all in it other than the assumption that the energy quanta of Mr. Planck are not so much energy elements but rather light quanta. . . . The hypothesis [of Einstein] is based on (1) Mr. Planck’s observation of energy elements in 1901 . . . as well as (2) my own work on the nature of the photoelectric effect performed in 1899-1902 and a unique property of this effect observed at that time . . . (3) Stoke’s rule, which had been known for longer, and (4) my discovery based on detailed studies of phosphorescence in 1904 that the induction of phosphorescence also constitutes a photoelectric effect.
Lenard concluded, “Mr. Einstein’s work does not contain more than a summary of these previous works with a few hypothetical additions.” Copying a page from his Nobel Lecture’s dismissal of Roentgen’s contributions to the discovery of X-rays as trivial, Lenard noted that “with the methods developed by myself, [Einstein] was able to demonstrate that Planck’s energy quanta, in fact, play a role in the transformation of light energy—which was to be expected, as these elements mean something in reality . . . [Einstein’s 1905] publication of a specific hypothesis had been unnecessary, as it had been clear from Planck’s work that the role of energy elements had to follow this rule.”
Having presented his case, Lenard then asked the key rhetorical questions, ones that echoed his long-term gripes about theoretical physics more generally: “Where is the scientific achievement in Mr. Einstein’s publication? Is the uttering of thoughts that do not even need a mathematical work to create them, that create such dismal contradictions . . . really a deed of science? Or does it become one by the superfluous addition of mathematical equations?”
Lenard believed that he grasped the situation. The Nobel Prize given Einstein for his law of the photoelectric effect was “nothing more than a subterfuge that was taken to avoid too great a disgrace” by recognizing his relativity theory. He closed with the following:
I deeply and utterly regret that the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Committee have not summoned enough clear German spirit to evade a fraud like this. My regret is all the deeper as the public attention that is rightfully stirred by the granting of a Nobel Prize will lead to a further acceptance of these fraudulent theories. To do my part against this, I wish that my concerns be publicly known. May—after all the history of science—this erroneous notion not be further nourished, that the striving for human recognition and the lack of reverence for still undiscovered truths be an indicator of scientific spirit.
To the Academy and the Committees
Yours faithfully,
P. Lenard
The press caught wind of Lenard’s letter. The conservative Swedish newspaper, Nya Dagligt Allehande, gave vent to Lenard’s views, including his charge that Einstein was nothing more than a “publicity-seeking Jew.” The rival Svenska Dagbladet condemned the explicit racism and ran an article on Lenard’s anti-Einstein connections to the 1920 Working Society of German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science. In an ironic turnaround, an article published in Svenska Dagbladet chided Lenard for his failure to use “clear Germanic intellect.”
Lenard’s indignation was to be expected. Despite a clamor from scientists around the world, the traditionalists on the physics committee had prevented Einstein from receiving a Nobel Prize for a dozen years. His recognition for the law of the photoelectric effect came only after the deaths of two conservative physics committee members and the appointment to the committee of a politically savvy new member who was much more inclined toward—and knowledgeable about—the theoretical physics typified by Einstein’s work. The Academy’s resistance to Einstein made it look silly in the eyes of both scientists and the general public. Things had reached such a state that by the time Einstein received his Nobel Prize, the Nobel assembly more needed Einstein’s acceptance of the prize to salvage its leaky reputation than Einstein required the Academy’s benediction of his work.
Einstein had first been nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics in 1910. However, the same battle that raged in Germany between the old science of experimental physics and the new theoretical physics also consumed the attentions of Swedish scientists. Three of the five members of the Nobel physics committee were drawn from among the strongly conservative, experimental physicists of Uppsala University, an ancient and renowned seat of learning located in nearby Stockholm. Sometimes referred to as the “Small Popes in Uppsala” for the power they wielded and their certainty in their own views, Professors Per Gustaf David Granqvist, Allvar Gullstrand, and Clas Bernhard Hasselberg, often with the complicity of committee members Svante Arrhenius and Vilhelm Carlheim-Gyllensköld, managed to quash any award to Albert Einstein. During 1910–1922, the only Nobel Prizes awarded to theoretical physicists were the 1914 award to Max von Laue for his work on X-ray diffraction by crystals, and the 1918 award to Max Planck for quantum theory.
Nominations for Einstein came as regularly as the ticking of the clock in the Bern City Hall tower that had helped inspire his theory of relativity. Except for 1911 and 1915, he received nominations every year between 1910, when only a single German nominator submitted his name, and 1922, when seventeen esteemed scientists from around the world nominated him for the prize. His combined total of sixty-three nominations for 1910–1922 was far more than any other candidate ever received.
However, Einstein’s candidacy presented several unique problems. An initial hurdle was that some committee members held that the theory of relativity was not actually physics at all, but that
it fell into the realm of the theory of knowledge, or epistemology. Another was the argument that the theory of relativity had too little relevance to the real world of the senses. His critics on the committee adopted Philipp Lenard’s argument that the theory did not conform to common sense. It was unclear how Einstein’s theories stacked up against the importance of other contenders’ work and whether, in accordance with Alfred Nobel’s will, Einstein’s theories actually benefited mankind.
However, the main objection of relativity naysayers was that the theory of relativity had insufficient empirical support. Although the theory had shown itself accurate in a small number of circumstances, it lacked proof of more general applicability.
In 1910, when the physics committee considered seventeen nominees, Einstein’s name was put forward for the first time by the winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald, to whom Einstein had unsuccessfully applied for a job in 1905, when he had just received his doctoral degree. He and Ostwald had recently become personally acquainted during the granting of honorary degrees to both men in Geneva. Ostwald cited the far-reaching consequences of Einstein’s theory of relativity as his rationale for nominating the young physicist, then only thirty-one years of age. “With this new principle’s help,” the committee acknowledged, “A number of previously difficult to understand phenomena obtain a simple interpretation. . . . Einstein has pointed to a whole lot of phenomena against which the principle may be tested. This is an indication of its radical significance.” However, in concluding that there was insufficient empirical evidence to support Einstein’s theory, the committee decided that “it is justified to wait for the result of such tests in some important cases before the principle is accepted and especially before it is rewarded with a Nobel Prize.”
The Man Who Stalked Einstein Page 11
