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Einstein's War

Page 44

by Matthew Stanley


  “The English and Belgians”: CPAE volume 12, document 87, “From Fritz Haber to Einstein, 9 March 1921,” 70.

  “It even has to be said”: CPAE volume 12, document 88, “Einstein to Fritz Haber, 9 March 1921,” 71.

  “enemy countries”: RAS Papers 2, Council Minutes, volume 11, 14 February 1919; 9 April 1920; 11 February 1921.

  Planck tried to get: John Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck as Spokesman for German Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 89.

  He did what he could: RAS Letters 1919, Arthur Eddington to Andrew Crommelin, 28 December; RAS Letters 1921, Arthur Eddington to W. H. Wesley, 30 January.

  Einstein pitched in: CPAE volume 14 (cited as volume 7), document 36a, “An Exchange of Scientific Literature, between 24 March and 4 April 1920,” 3; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 4 April 1920; CPAE volume 10, document 26, “Einstein to Lorentz, 22 May 1920,” 169.

  an excellent target: Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 246–50.

  “a Jew with liberal international views”: CPAE volume 7, document 45, “My Response. On the Anti-Relativity Company,”197.

  “mass suggestion”: Rowe, “Einstein’s Allies and Enemies,” 217.

  Einstein actually sneaked in: Ibid., 227; Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 460–62.

  “This world is a strange madhouse”: CPAE volume 10, document 148, “Einstein to Grossmann, 12 September 1920,” 271.

  The attacks on Prof. Einstein: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 464.

  “The role I play”: CPAE volume 10, document 148, “Einstein to Marcel Grossmann, 12 September 1920,” 271.

  Flippantly, he compared: Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 250.

  He had little interest: CPAE volume 7, document 57, “How I Became a Zionist,” 234; CPAE volume 10, document 238, “Einstein to Jewish Community of Berlin, 22 December 1920,” 338.

  “I believe that this undertaking”: CPAE volume 9, document 207, “Einstein to Michele Besso, 12 December 1919,” 178.

  “One feels in one’s bones”: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 303.

  The postwar collapse of the German mark: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 475.

  She needled him: CPAE volume 10, document 10, “Elsa Einstein to Einstein, 9 May 1920,” 157.

  “Admiration for the scientist”: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 479–85.

  I hope to show my interest: Eddington to Strömgren. November 1919, quoted in Hertzsprung-Kapteyn, “J. C. Kapteyn,” Space Science Reviews 64 (1993): 81.

  He tried to participate: A. S. Eddington, “Das Strahlungsgleichgewicht der Sterne,” Zeitschrift für Physik 7 (1921): 531. It is not clear who translated the article.

  “This paper is intended”: August 1921, Manuscript of “Radiative Equilibrium of the Stars,” EDDN C1/2, Eddington Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.

  A month later it was: RAS Papers 2, Council Minutes, volume 11, 14 November 1919; 12 December 1919.

  “the award of the Gold Medal”: RAS Papers 2, Council Minutes, volume 11, 9 January 1920.

  There was a strong implied: R. J. Tayler, ed., History of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1987), 20.

  I am sorry to say: Eddington to Einstein, January 21, 1920, AEA ALS 9-264.

  I find it difficult: Ludlam to Einstein, January 23, 1920, AEA ALS 9-266.

  “tragicomical”: CPAE volume 9, document 293, “Einstein to Arthur S. Eddington, 2 February 1920,” 245.

  The war had just ended: S. Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 115.

  “by his eloquence”: Douglas, Arthur Stanley Eddington, 104.

  “a place where miracles happen”: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 305, 310; Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 456.

  Einstein finally set foot: Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: World Publishing, 1971), 270.

  “a few ‘irreconcilables’”: König, “General Relativity in the English-Speaking World,” 188.

  He gave lectures in German: Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 508.

  Einstein either did not realize: Price, Loving Faster than Light, 35.

  “takes its own course”: Ibid., 37.

  “a splendid chap”: CPAE volume 14, document 127, “Einstein to Elsa Einstein, 1 October 1923,” 123.

  The Einstein scholar: John Stachel, “The Young Einstein,” in Einstein from “B” to “Z” (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2002), 21.

  EPILOGUE

  Every generation has used: For examples see Stephen G. Brush, “Prediction and Theory Evaluation: The Case of Light Bending,” Science 246 (1989): 1124–129; Deborah G. Mayo, Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 133–37, 278–93; and Robert Hudson, “Novelty and the 1919 Eclipse Experiments,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 34 (2003): 107–29.

  That drove him: Karl Popper, “On Reason and the Open Society,” Encounter 38, no. 5 (1972): 13.

  “dazed”: Roberta Corvi, An Introduction to the Thought of Karl Popper (New York: Routledge, 1996), 4.

  “intellectual modesty”: Richard Bailey, Education in the Open Society—Karl Popper and Schooling (New York: Routledge, 2000), 12.

  “a scientific model”: Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 95.

  “to make explicit certain points”: Dario Antiseri, Popper’s Vienna (Aurora, Colorado: Davies Group Publishers, 2006), 25.

  Popper’s falsificationism has become: Michael Gordin, “Myth 27: That a Clear Line of Demarcation Has Separated Science from Pseudoscience,” in Newton’s Apple and Other Myths About Science, ed. Ronald Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015), 219–25.

  “no point of rest in science”: Popper, “On Reason and the Open Society,” 17.

  The results strongly confirmed: Jeffrey Crelinsten, Einstein’s Jury (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

  “partly because the world”: Dennis William Sciama, The Physical Foundations of General Relativity (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 69.

  “cooler reflection”: C. W. Francis Everitt, “Experimental Tests of General Relativity: Past, Present and Future,” in Physics and Contemporary Needs, vol. 4, ed. Riazuddin (New York: Springer, 1980), 533.

  “Only Eddington’s disarming way”: Ibid., 534.

  “their measurement had been”: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), 32.

  The new analysis gave: G. M. Harvey, “Gravitational Deflection of Light,” The Observatory 99 (December 1979): 195–98.

  Two astronomers wrote: P. A. Wayman and C. A. Murray, “Relativistic Light Deflections,” The Observatory 109 (October 1989): 189–91.

  “despair on the part”: John Earman and Clark Glymour, “Relativity and Eclipses: The British Expeditions of 1919 and Their Predecessors,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 11 (1980): 49–85.

  Earman and Glymour’s argument: H. M. Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

  It was not just that Eddington was biased: Ibid., 27–56.

  “science needs decisive moments”: Ibid., 52.

  Surely, he said, science: N. David Mermin, “What’s Wrong with This Sustaining Myth?” Physics Today 49, no. 3 (March 1996): 11–13; N. David Mermin, “The Golemization of Relativity,” Physics Today 49, no. 4 (April 1996): 11–13.

  Context, he writes: Daniel Kennefick, “Testing Relativity from the 1919 Eclipse—A Question of Bias,” Physics Today 62 (2009): 37–42, and Daniel Kennefick, “Not Only Because of Theory: Dyson, Eddington, and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition,” in Einstein and the Changing Worldviews of Physics, ed. Christopher Lehner (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2012), 201–32.

  coll
eagues in astronomy: Matthew Stanley, Practical Mystic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 122–23 and 268 n181.

  “opportunely put an end”: Eddington, “Sir Frank Dyson, 1868–1939,” Royal Society Obituary Notices of Fellows 3 (1940), 167.

  On the Einstein centenary: W. H. McCrea, “Einstein: Relations with the RAS,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 20, no. 3 (1979): 251–60.

  Hawking called them: Hawking, A Brief History, 32.

  In our present time: Clifford Will, Was Einstein Right? (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 76.

  The plaque is a celebration: Gisa Weszkalnys, “Principe Eclipsed,” Anthropology Today 25, no. 5 (October 2009), 8–12. Also see Richard Ellis, Pedro Ferreira, Richard Massey, and Gisa Weszkalnys, “90 Years On—The 1919 Eclipse Expedition at Principe,” Astronomy and Geophysics 50, no. 4 (August 2009): 412–15.

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  INDEX

  The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

  Abraham, Max, 64–65, 66

  Adler, Friedrich, 197

  Airy, George, 269

  Annalen der Physik, 21–22, 36–37

  Anti-Semitism

  in Berlin, 132

  conspiracy theories, 186, 248–49

  directed at Einstein, 43, 311–13

  Haber’s conversion and, 123

  Jewish donors to Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and, 75

  in late-nineteenth century, 8

  Nazism and, 182

  Anti-War Council, 154

  “Appeal to Europeans, An” (Nicolai), 97–98, 196–97

  Armstrong, Henry, 120

  Asquith, H. H., 82, 94

  Association of the Like-Minded, 172

  Astronomische Gesellschaft, 60, 314

  Astronomische Nachrichten, 117–18

  Astronomy. See Eclipse expeditions (1919); Eddington, Arthur Stanley; individual names of professional associations

  Astrophysical Observatory (Potsdam), 149–50

  Atkinson, J. J., 56–57

  Austria-Hungary, World War I inception and, 79–81

  Baeyer, Adolf von, 95

  BASF, 123, 124

  Basset, A. B., 119

  Bateson, William, 79

  Bayer, 124

  Belgium

  German invasion and occupation, 82–83, 85–86, 88, 106, 125

  Louvain, burning of, 89, 93, 167

  Berlin Academy of Sciences, 177

  Berliner, Arnold, 261, 284

  Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, 304, 305

  Berlin Goethe League, 144, 148

  Besso, Michele

  Einstein/Marić mediation by, 77, 141

  Einstein’s early friendship with, 18, 22

  on general relativity, 65, 74, 149, 154, 171

  on special relativity, 29–30, 35–36

  Black Hand, 62, 79–80

  Black holes, discovery of, 163

  BNV (New Fatherland League), 99, 131, 139, 172, 246, 249

  Born, Max, 73, 101, 162, 228, 306, 307

  Bosch, Carl, 123

  Bragg, Lawrence, 128

  Bragg, William Henry, 128, 132

  Brazil eclipse expedition (1912), 56–59, 150

  Brazil eclipse expedition (1919). See Eclipse expeditions (1919)

  Brief History of Time (Hawking), 326

  British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA)

  Australia meeting of (1914), 78–79, 84, 110, 112, 117

  eclipse expeditions (1919) and, 281–82

  Eddington as section president of, 55

  Eddington on general relativity at, 169–70, 180

  Eddington’s early expeditions for, 40

  WWI and scientific community rift, 109, 120, 121

  British Astronomical Association, 232

  Brose, Henry, 302, 317

  Brownian motion, theory of, 36

  Burtt, Joseph, 265

  Cadbury, William, 265–66

  Cambridge. See University of Cambridge

  Campbell, W. W., 122, 323

  Cannon, Annie Jump, 121

  Canterbury, Archbishop of, 4, 318

  Central Organization for a Durable Peace, 144

  Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan, 211

  Chaplin, Charlie, 301

  Chemical Society of London, 125

  Chemical warfare

  ammonia synthesis, 50, 107–9, 123

  chlorine gas, 123–26

  Haber’s Nobel Prize and, 309

  mustard gas, 206–7

  phosgene gas, 206

  Christie, William H. M., 24, 55

  Churchill, Winston, 81, 82, 112, 199

  Coelostats

  description, 57, 58

  for eclipse expeditions (1919), 257–58, 270, 272, 280, 286, 325, 327

  Collins, Harry, 327–30

  Cortie, Aloysius, 256, 257, 266

  Cottingham, Edwin T., 256, 258, 260, 263–64, 266–67, 270, 272, 274, 332. See also Eclipse expeditions (1919)

  Crichton-Browne, James, 120–21

  Crommelin, Andrew, 255, 256, 263, 266, 270–71, 286, 329–30. See also Eclipse expeditions (1919)

  Crookes, William, 96

  Cunningham, Ebenezer, 134–35, 239, 282, 302

  Curie, Marie, 51–52, 74–75, 101, 308

  Curtis, Heber, 277

  Darwin, Horace, 200

  Davidson, Charles, 56–57, 256–57, 263, 266, 271, 279–80, 325, 329–30. See also Eclipse expeditions (1919)

  Dease, Maurice, 88–89

  De Donder, Théophile, 184

  Deflection of light

  eclipse expeditions (1919) on, 259–60, 268, 272, 277, 279–80, 282–83, 285–88

  Einstein’s theories about, 50–51, 53–54, 66–74, 136–37, 150, 154, 202–3, 206, 217–18, 232

  Democratic People’s Union, 248

  Derby, Lord, 104

  De Sitter, Willem

  cosmological models and, 187–93, 214–15

  eclipse expeditions (1919) and, 284

  Eddington’s correspondence with, 168–73, 180, 274

  at Leiden, 156

  photo of, 331

  relativity publicity and, 302, 310

  Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (DFG, German Peace Society), 193

  Douglas, Alice Vibert, 61

  Du Bois-Reymond, Emil, 76

  Dyson, Frank

  death of, 331

  early solar eclipse research by, 56

  eclipse expedition role of, 254, 256–61, 271, 274, 277–82, 285–89, 327. See also Eclipse expeditions (1919)

  Eddington’s objection to conscription and, 236, 239–42

  Eddington’s travel with, at beginning of WWI, 79

  as Royal Astronomical Society president, 55

  WWI and scientific community rift, 96, 111, 118

  E = mc2, 36

  Earman, John, 327–30

  Ebert, Friedrich, 248

  Eclipse expeditions (1919), 252–95. See also General relativity publicity

  Brazil arrival, 266

  check plates and photography, 259, 271–74

  coelostats used for, 257–58, 270, 272, 280, 286, 325, 327

  cost of, 256

  Duhem–Quine thesis and, 324–25

  Dyson’s assistance and, 200–204

  eclipse event, 269–71

  Eddington’s measurements of, 259–60, 278–82, 297

  Eddington’s preparations for, 252–53, 254–61, 265

  Eddin
gton’s return to Britain, 274–75

  Einstein-Eddington correspondence following, 1–2, 294–95, 303, 318

  Einstein’s knowledge about, 261–62, 282–85

  equipment for, 257–58

  falsificationism and, 321–24

  as healing of scientific rift, 293–95

  historical importance of, 321, 330–34

  Hyades stars observed for, 202–4, 268–69, 272, 279

  later analysis and critiques of, 324–30

  1922 follow-up expedition, 298, 323

  presentation of formal results, 285–89

  Principe arrival, 262–69

  publicity about, 281–82, 289–94

  telescopes used for, 255, 257, 266–72, 277, 279–80, 286, 329

  Economic Consequences of the Peace, The (Keynes), 276

  Eddington, Arthur Henry (father), 13

  Eddington, Arthur Stanley. See also Eclipse expeditions (1919); Quakers

  biographical information and early education of, 11–16

  conscription threats to, 163–68, 232–42

  on criticism of relativity, 204–6, 218, 230–32

  de Sitter’s communication with, 168–73, 180, 274

  Dyson’s assistance, to prove relativity, 200–204

  early jobs and research of, 24–26

  early knowledge of Einstein by, 133–35

  education of, 14–15, 120

  Einstein’s correspondence/meeting with, 1–2, 294–95, 303, 318

  general relativity publicized by, 296–301, 303, 306, 311, 314–19

  hired by Cambridge, 59–62

  isolation during WWI by, 103–7, 111, 121–22, 129–30. See also World War I and scientific community

  late career of, 325

  legacy of, 211, 331–34

  lifestyle of, 13, 15–16, 18, 41, 59, 61, 180–81, 198, 296

  mathematical ability of, 39–42

  photos of, 5, 15, 331

  as RAS officer, 1, 54–59, 168

  Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation, 211–19, 294–95

  at Royal Observatory, 38–42

  on scientific internationalism, 121, 174–81

  travel by, at beginning of WWI, 78–79, 84

  Trimble’s friendship with, 15–16, 38–39, 41, 59–60, 198

  Eddington, Sarah Ann (mother), 13, 264, 267, 274

  Eddington, Winifred (sister), 13, 41, 61, 264, 267

  Edward VII, King, 39

 

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