einstein

The 1921 Prize
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NOBEL LAUREATE
1921–1927
Einstein in Paris, 1922
It seemed obvious that Einstein would someday win the Nobel Prize for Physics. He had, in fact, already agreed to transfer the money to his first
wife, Mileva Mari , when that occurred. The questions were: When would it happen? and, For what?
Once it was announced—in November 1922, awarding him the prize for 1921—the questions were: What took so long? and, Why “especially for
his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”?
It has been part of the popular lore that Einstein learned that he had finally won while on his way to Japan. “Nobel Prize for physics awarded to
you. More by letter,” read the telegram sent on November 10. In fact, he had been alerted as soon as the Swedish Academy made the decision in
September, well before he left on his trip.
The chairman of the physics award committee, Svante Arrhenius, had heard that Einstein was planning to go to Japan in October, which meant
that he would be away for the ceremony unless he postponed the trip. So he wrote Einstein directly and explicitly: “It will probably be very desirable
for you to come to Stockholm in December.” Expressing a principle of pre–jet travel physics, he added, “And if you are then in Japan that will be
impossible.” 1 Coming from the head of a Nobel Prize committee, it was clear what that meant. There are not a lot of other reasons for physicists to
be summoned to Stockholm in December.
Despite knowing that he would finally win, Einstein did not see fit to postpone his trip. Partly it was because he had been passed over so often
that it had begun to annoy him.
He had first been nominated for the prize in 1910 by the chemistry laureate Wilhelm Ostwald, who had rejected Einstein’s pleas for a job nine
years earlier. Ostwald cited special relativity, emphasizing that the theory involved fundamental physics and not, as some Einstein detractors
argued, mere philosophy. It was a point that he reiterated over the next few years as he resubmitted the nomination.
The Swedish committee was mindful of the charge in Alfred Nobel’s will that the prize should go to “the most important discovery or invention,”
and it felt that relativity theory was not exactly either of those. So it reported that it needed to wait for more experimental evidence “before one can
accept the principle and in particular award it a Nobel prize.” 2
Einstein continued to be nominated for his work on relativity during most of the ensuing ten years, gaining support from distinguished theorists
such as Wilhelm Wien, although not yet from a still-skeptical Lorentz. His greatest obstacle was that the committee at the time was leery of pure
theorists. Three out of the committee’s five members throughout the period from 1910 to 1922 were experimentalists from Sweden’s Uppsala
University, known for its fervent devotion to perfecting experimental and measuring techniques. “Swedish physicists with a strong experimentalist
bias dominated the committee,” notes Robert Marc Friedman, a historian of science in Oslo. “They held precision measurement as the highest
goal for their discipline.” That is one reason Max Planck had to wait until 1919 (when he was awarded the delayed prize for 1918) and why Henri
Poincaré never won at all. 3
The dramatic announcement in November 1919 that the eclipse observations had confirmed parts of Einstein’s theory should have made 1920
his year. By then Lorentz was no longer such a skeptic. He along with Bohr and six other official nominators wrote in support of Einstein, mostly
focusing on his completed theory of relativity. (Planck wrote in support as well, but his letter arrived after the deadline for consideration.) As
Lorentz’s letter declared, Einstein “has placed himself in the first rank of physicists of all time.” Bohr’s letter was equally clear: “One faces here an
advance of decisive significance.” 4
Politics intervened. Up until then, the primary justifications for denying Einstein a Nobel had been scientific: his work was purely theoretical, it
lacked experimental grounding, and it putatively did not involve the “discovery” of any new laws. After the eclipse observations, the explanation of
the shift in Mercury’s orbit, and other experimental confirmations, these arguments against Einstein were still made, but they were now tinged with
more cultural and personal bias. To his critics, the fact that he had suddenly achieved superstar status as the most internationally celebrated
scientist since the lightning-tamer Benjamin Franklin was paraded through the streets of Paris was evidence of his self-promotion rather than his
worthiness of a Nobel.
This subtext was evident in the internal seven-page report prepared by Arrhenius, the committee chairman, explaining why Einstein should not
win the prize in 1920. He noted that the eclipse results had been criticized as ambiguous and that scientists had not yet confirmed the theory’s
prediction that light coming from the sun would be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum by the sun’s gravity. He also cited the discredited