Many people helped out when I was first trying to figure out whether this was a feasible project and how one actually goes about writing a trade book, among them Amanda Petrusich, Kim Phillips-Fein, Brian Keating, and Ken Alder. Many parts of this story were tried out in front of audiences for One Day University across the country—thanks for their attention and to Steven Schragis for making those events happen. I am deeply grateful to Susanne Wofford and NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study for providing the time and resources for me to do this work. I would never have written this without the lively conversations with and interdisciplinary atmosphere created by my colleagues, or the tireless work of my research assistants Jacob Ford, Elizabeth Luxenberg, Melody Xu, and Rachel Stern.
Finally, my gratitude to everyone who made the book physically possible. Without my agent Jeff Shreve’s confidence in the project none of this would have happened—huge thanks to him and everyone else at the Science Factory. Thanks to my editors Daniel Crewe and Stephen Morrow for whipping the manuscript into shape, and to Connor Brown, Madeline Newquist, and everyone else at Viking and Dutton for their heroic efforts in getting this on the shelves in time for the 2019 centenary. One of the core themes of this book is the challenges, difficulty, and rewards inherent in the publication of ideas, which makes me especially appreciative of what it took for this to come into being. Thank you, everyone.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
“pale face and long hair”: Alice Calaprice, ed., The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 58.
“one of the greatest”: Ibid., 301.
“disturbs fundamentally”: The Manchester Guardian, June 10, 1921, quoted in Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: World Publishing, 1971), 271–72.
It did not last: Clark, Life and Times, 272.
CHAPTER 1
“What a paradise this land is”: Samuel Clemens to William Dean Howells, May 4, 1878, in Samuel L. Clemens and William D. Howells, Mark Twain–Howells Letters: The Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and William D. Howells, 1872–1910, ed. Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1960).
“his face would turn completely yellow”: Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987–2006), hereafter CPAE, volume 1, “Albert Einstein—A Biographical Sketch by Maja Winteler-Einstein (Excerpt),” xviii.
Hermann read Schiller and Heine: Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 36.
“I believe altogether that love”: Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein (New York: Penguin, 1997), 26. Alice Calaprice, ed., The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 27.
He threw a chair: CPAE volume 1, “Albert Einstein—A Biographical Sketch by Maja Winteler-Einstein (Excerpt),” xix.
“Your mere presence here undermines”: Calaprice, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, 281.
A favorite entertainment: CPAE volume 1, “Albert Einstein—A Biographical Sketch by Maja Winteler-Einstein (Excerpt),” xix.
“sacred little geometry book”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 23.
“could be proved with such certainty”: Quoted in Ibid.
“the fetters of the merely personal”: Quoted in Ibid., 24. Lorraine Daston, “A Short History of Einstein’s Paradise Beyond the Personal,” in Einstein for the 21st Century, ed. Peter Galison Gerald Holton, and Silvan Schweber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
He also admitted: CPAE volume 1, document 22, “My plans for the future,” 16.
Einstein levered his diagnosis: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 29–30.
One of those instructors: Lewis Pyenson, The Young Einstein: The Advent of Relativity (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1985), 81.
Einstein would read the notes: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 57.
“I would rather not speculate”: Ibid., 53.
“You are a smart boy”: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 44.
“roaring, booming, friendly”: Alice Calaprice, ed., The New Quotable Einstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 302.
He tried to count the number: A. Vibert Douglas, The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (London: Thomas Nelson, 1956), 2.
“some of the greatest astronomers”: 20 June 1898. A. S. Eddington, “A total eclipse of the sun,” O.11.22/13, Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, University of Cambridge. Courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge.
“indiscriminately bruised the shins”: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 30.
“With this one friend”: Ibid., 7.
He originally started smoking: Ibid., 33; Eddington’s Notebook, Add. Ms. a. 48, Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
“His short skull seems unusually broad”: Calaprice, Ultimate Quotable Einstein, 278.
“acted on women as a magnet”: Ibid., 302.
Discouraged but not defeated: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 68.
Einstein sent a steady stream: CPAE volume 1, document 136, “Einstein to Mileva Marić, 8? February 1902,” 192.
She suffered an attack of scarlet fever: Abraham Pais, Einstein Lived Here (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 13.
They had to wake the landlord: Ibid., 11.
“It enforced many-sided thinking”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 102.
He was marked unfit: CPAE volume 1, document 91, “Military Service Book, 13 March 1901,” 158.
“An ancient, exquisitely cozy city”: CPAE volume 1, document 134, “Einstein to Mileva Marić, 4 February 1902,” 191.
“stamp out vermin”: John Norton, “How Hume and Mach Helped Einstein Find Special Relativity,” in Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science, eds. Mary Domski and Michael Dickson (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 374.
This sparked several weeks: Ibid., 367.
He declared that an analysis: Peter Galison, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 253.
“our work on relative motion”: Pais, Einstein Lived Here, 8.
“our theory of molecular forces”: CPAE volume 1, document 101, “Einstein to Mileva Marić, 15 April 1901,” 166; CPAE volume 1, document 127, “Einstein to Mileva Marić, 12 December 1901,” 185.
“sense of duty and deliberateness”: John Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck as Spokesman for German Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 35.
It is sometimes said: Ibid., 28.
Those who read the paper: Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 404–6.
“absolute, invariant features”: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 150.
Einstein actually never liked: Warwick, Masters of Theory, 406.
CHAPTER 2
In all, he spent: A. Vibert Douglas, The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (London: Thomas Nelson, 1956), 15.
When he was taken: Eddington’s Notebook, Add. Ms. a. 48, Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
Eddington became known: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 24.
He didn’t care much: Ibid., 18.
“I believe I sewed him”: Ibid., 34.
The Nobel Prize winners: Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography (New York: Viking, 1997), 132.
“I admire that man”: Ibid., 216.
Works of genius: Ibid., 203.
“highly suspicious”: John Stachel, “The First Two Acts,” in The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 2, ed. Jürgen Renn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 84.
“the happiest thought of my life”: CPAE volume 7, document 31, “Ideas and Methods,” 136.
I was sitting: Jürgen Renn, “Classical Phy
sics in Disarray,” in Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 1, ed. Jürgen Renn, n.d., 63.
“of the exact same nature”: Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel, eds., The Genesis of General Relativity, Volume 1, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 494.
It had been known: CPAE volume 5, document 69, “Einstein to Conrad Habicht, December 24, 1907,” 47.
“So now I am”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 246–51.
Despite his father’s efforts: Ibid., 241.
His grooming habits: Ibid., 262.
He liked to joke: Ibid., 273.
These were tasks: Ibid., 294–95.
“I consider myself”: CPAE volume 5, document 389, “Einstein to Elsa Einstein, 30 April 1912,” 292.
Participation in international: Roy M. MacLeod, “The Chemists Go to War: The Mobilization of Civilian Chemists and the British War Effort, 1914–1918,” Annals of Science 50 (1993): 457.
“meant more than”: Martin J. Klein, Paul Ehrenfest, Volume I: The Making of a Theoretical Physicist (New York: Elsevier Science, 1970), 303.
“Lorentz is a marvel”: CPAE volume 5, document 305, “Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, 15 November 1911,” 222.
“fatherly kindness”: CPAE volume 5, document 360, “Einstein to Hendrik A. Lorentz, 18 February 1912,” 262–63.
“the strangest thing”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 154.
“One has every right”: Alice Calaprice, ed., The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 281.
“the barking of a seal”: Ibid., 294.
“Henceforward space”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 243.
“Since the mathematicians”: Ibid., 245.
“It is greatly”: Ibid., 308.
“One thing can”: CPAE volume 5, document 281, “Einstein to Erwin Freundlich, 1 September 1911,” 201–2.
He saw no: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 309.
“complete unselfishness”: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 19.
“scientific maturity”: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 39.
“mummy”: Eddington’s Notebook, Add. Ms. a. 48, Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
The trains: Pang, Empire and the Sun, 130–31.
There was intense: Eddington, “Report on an expedition to Passa Quatro, Brazil,” MNRAS 73 (1912), 386–90.
“The scene was like fairyland”: Eddington’s Notebook, Add. Ms. a. 48, Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
He was known: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 98.
“Schwarzschild & five mad Englishmen”: 5 August 1913, Eddington to Sarah Ann Eddington, EDDN A 3/1. Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
“His interest in women”: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 30.
“not universally beloved”: Ibid., 90.
He would meet: Ibid., 109.
Fear of growing: Catherine Rollet, “The Home and Family Life,” in Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919: A Cultural History, vol. 2, eds. Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 316.
The arms race: John H. Morrow Jr., The Great War: An Imperial History (New York: Routledge, 2014), 24.
When Kaiser Wilhelm: Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Allen Lane, 2012), 181.
Nonetheless the system: Morrow, The Great War, 27.
“Do you know who”: Clark, The Sleepwalkers, 54.
CHAPTER 3
“In a certain sense”: John Norton, “‘Nature Is the Realisation of the Simplest Conceivable Mathematical Ideas’: Einstein and the Canon of Mathematical Simplicity,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 31, no. 2 (2000): 137.
“If you want”: Albert Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” in Ideas and Opinions, ed. Sonja Bargmann (New York: Wings Books, 1954), 270.
And electromagnetism: Hendrik Lorentz, “Considerations on Gravitation,” in The Genesis of General Relativity vol. 3, ed. Jürgen Renn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 113.
In particular, Abraham: Jürgen Renn, “The Summit Almost Scaled,” in Ibid., 310.
“That’s what happens”: Quoted in Norton, “Nature Is the Realisation of the Simplest Conceivable Mathematical Ideas,” 143.
“a stately beast”: Quoted in John D. Norton, “Einstein, Nordström, and the Early Demise of Scalar, Lorentz Covariant Theories of Gravitation,” in Renn, Genesis vol. 3, 422.
his theory was robust: Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel, “Introduction,” in Ibid., 13–14.
“Every step”: Einstein 1907 (Vol. 2, Doc. 47), “Einstein to Michele Besso, 1912,” cited in CPAE volume 4, “Introduction,” xv.
“Those who”: John Stachel, “The First Two Acts,” in The Genesis of General Relativity vol. 1, ed. Jürgen Renn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 99.
“Grossmann, you must”: Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 212.
“Never in my life”: Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography (New York: Viking, 1997), 315.
He thanked Grossmann: Thomas Levenson, Einstein in Berlin (New York: Bantam Books, 2003), 105.
Einstein’s notebook: See Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel, eds., The Genesis of General Relativity, Volume 1, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), for a page-by-page commentary on the notebook.
“much too feeble”: Jürgen Renn and Tilman Sauer, “Pathways out of Classical Physics,” in The Genesis of General Relativity Volume 1, ed. Jürgen Renn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 113–312, 263.
“the theory refutes”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 317.
“more in the nature”: Ibid.
Not reassuring: Michel Janssen and Jürgen Renn, “Einstein Was No Lone Genius,” Nature 527, no. 7578 (November 2015): 298–300.
The cigar-puffing: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 324.
“You understand”: Ibid., 325.
Patronage of the sciences: Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 4–5.
The salary would be: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 328.
Many of the donors: Jeffrey Johnson, The Kaiser’s Chemists (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 89–90.
The flower: Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 1–2.
The famous physiologist: Hubert Goenner and Giuseppe Castagnetti, “Albert Einstein as Pacifist and Democrat During World War I,” Science in Context 9, no. 4 (1996): 329–30.
“indulge wholly”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 330–31.
But the major reason: CPAE volume 8, document 94, “Einstein to Heinrich Zangger, 7 July 1915,” 109–110.
They stayed in Haber’s house: Fritz Stern, Einstein’s German World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 64.
He said he was only willing: CPAE volume 8, document 23, “Einstein to Mileva Einstein-Marić, 18 July 1914,” 33.
She must cease: CPAE volume 8, document 22, “Memorandum to Mileva Einstein-Marić, with Comments, 18 July 1914,” 32–33.
Einstein, crying: Stern, Einstein’s German World, 65.
He wrote a note: CPAE volume 8, document 26, “Einstein to Elsa Einstein, 26 July 1914,” 35.
He decided that: CPAE volume 8, document 27, “Einstein to Elsa Einstein, after 26 July 1914,” 36.
“You get so much”: CPAE volume 8, document 6, “Einstein to Adolf Hurwitz and Family, 4 May 1914,” 13.
“sheer amount”: CPAE volume 10 (cited as volume 8), document 16a, “Einstein to Zangger, 27 June 1914,” 11.
“a certain discipline”: Levenson, Einst
ein in Berlin, 31.
Nonetheless, Planck: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 335.
“as much respect”: CPAE volume 10 (cited as volume 8), document 16a, “Einstein to Zangger, 27 June 1914,” 12.
no less than a complete reworking: Albert Einstein, “Principles of Theoretical Physics,” in Ideas and Opinions, ed. Sonja Bargmann (New York: Wings Books, 1954), 222–23.
With Planck’s help: Klaus Hentschel, The Einstein Tower (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 22.
The Academy covered: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 356.
“celebrate the system”: “The British Association in Australia,” Science 39, no. 1015 (June 12, 1914): 864–65.
At one astronomical meeting: A. Vibert Douglas, The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (London: Thomas Nelson, 1956), 121–22.
Eddington’s letters home: Ibid., 90.
Eddington delivered: Ibid., 91.
Bystanders recall: Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Allen Lane, 2012), 374.
The Austrian authorities: Ibid., 388.
Ironically, Franz Ferdinand: Ibid., 393–95.
Germany advised: Ibid., 417.
“the most insolent document”: Ibid., 456.
The reply arrived: Ibid., 463.
Germany sent spies: Ibid., 524.
“honourable expectation”: Ibid., 540.
“sort of a grunt”: Ibid., 541.
“destroy civilization”: John Morrow, The Great War: An Imperial History (New York: Routledge, 2014), 30.
He was taken to Odessa: Hentschel, The Einstein Tower, 22.
The chemist William Herdman: The Observatory 479 (October 1914): 397.
“fine prize”: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 91–92.
This was a real possibility: The Observatory 485 (March 1915): 155.
“quite negligible”: Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 16–18.
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