einstein

55. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Nov. 28, 1901.
56. Mileva Mari to Einstein, Nov. 13, 1901; Highfield and Carter, 82.
57. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Dec. 12, 1901; Fölsing, 107; Zackheim, 35; High-field and Carter, 86.
58. Pauline Einstein to Pauline Winteler, Feb. 20, 1902.
59. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi , ca. Nov. 23, 1901.
60. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Dec. 11 and 19, 1901.
61. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Dec. 28, 1901.
62. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Feb. 4, 1902, Dec. 12, 1901.
63. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Feb. 4, 1902.
64. Mileva Mari to Einstein, Nov. 13, 1901. For some context, see Popovi , which includes a collection of letters between Mari and Savi
collected by Savi ’s grandson.
65. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Feb. 17, 1902.
66. Swiss Federal Council to Einstein, June 19, 1902.
67. See Peter Galison’s treatment of the synchronization of time in Europe at that period, in Galison, 222–248. Also, see chapter 6 below for a
fuller discussion of the role this might have played in Einstein’s development of special relativity.
68. Einstein to Hans Wohlwend, autumn 1902; Fölsing, 102.
69. Einstein interview, Bucky, 28; Reiser, 66.
70. Einstein to Michele Besso, Dec. 12, 1919.
71. Einstein interview, Bucky, 28; Einstein 1956, 12. Both say essentially the same thing, with variations in wording and translation. Reiser, 64.
72. Alas, as a rule, all applications were destroyed after eighteen years, and even though Einstein was by then world-famous, his comments on
inventions were disposed of during the 1920s; Fölsing, 104.
73. Galison, 243; Flückiger, 27.
74. Fölsing, 103; C. P. Snow, “Einstein,” in Goldsmith et al., 7.
75. Einstein interview, Bucky, 28; Einstein 1956, 12. See Don Howard, “A kind of vessel in which the struggle for eternal truth is played out,”
AEA Cedex-H.
76. Solovine, 6.
77. Maurice Solovine, Dedication of the Olympia Academy, “A.D. 1903,” CPAE 2: 3.
78. Solovine, 11–14.
79. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Nov. 25, 1948; Seelig 1956a, 57; Einstein to Conrad Habicht and Maurice Solovine, Apr. 3, 1953; Hoffmann
1972, 243.
80. The editors of Einstein’s papers, in the introduction to vol. 2, xxiv–xxv, describe the books and specific editions read by the Olympia
Academy.
81. Einstein to Moritz Schlick, Dec. 14, 1915. In a 1944 essay about Bertrand Russell, Einstein wrote, “Hume’s clear message seemed
crushing: the sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the
knowledge and still less to the understanding of lawful relations.” Einstein 1954, 22. See also Einstein, 1949b, 13.
82. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature , book 1, part 2; Norton 2005a.
83. There are varying interpretations of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781). I have tried here to stick closely to Einstein’s own view of Kant.
Einstein, “Re-marks on Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Knowledge,” (1944) in Schilpp; Einstein 1954, 22; Einstein, 1949b, 11–13; Einstein,
“On the Methods of Theoretical Physics,” the Herbert Spencer lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933, in Einstein 1954, 270; Mara Beller, “Kant’s
Impact on Einstein’s Thought,” in Howard and Stachel 2000, 83–106. See also Einstein, “Physics and Reality” (1936) in Einstein 1950a,
62; Yehuda Elkana, “The Myth of Simplicity,” in Holton and Elkana, 221.
84. Einstein 1949b, 21.
85. Einstein, Obituary for Ernst Mach, Mar. 14, 1916, CPAE 6: 26.
86. Philipp Frank, “Einstein, Mach and Logical Positivism,” in Schilpp, 272; Overbye, 25, 100–104; Gerald Holton, “Mach, Einstein and the
Search for Reality,”Daedalus (spring 1968): 636–673, reprinted in Holton 1973, 221; Clark, 61; Einstein to Carl Seelig, Apr. 8, 1952;
Einstein, 1949b, 15; Norton 2005a.
87. Spinoza, Ethics, part I, proposition 29 and passim; Jammer 1999, 47; Holton 2003, 26–34; Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the
Heretic (New York: Norton, 2006).
88. Pais 1982, 47; Fölsing, 106; Hoffmann 1972, 39; Maja Einstein, xvii; Overbye, 15–17.
89. Marriage Certificate, CPAE 5: 6; Miller 2001, 64; Zackheim, 47.
90. Einstein to Michele Besso, Jan. 22, 1903; Mileva Mari to Helene Savi , Mar. 1903; Solovine, 13; Seelig 1956a, 46; Einstein to Carl
Seelig, May 5, 1952; AEA 39-20.
91. Mileva Mari to Einstein, Aug. 27, 1903; Zackheim, 50.
92. Einstein to Mileva Mari , ca. Sept. 19, 1903; Zackheim; Popovi ; author’s discussions and e-mails with Robert Schulmann.
93. Popovi , 11; Zackheim, 276; author’s discussions and e-mails with Robert Schulmann.
94. Michelmore, 42.
95. Einstein to Mileva Mari , ca. Sept. 19, 1903.
96. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi , June 14, 1904; Popovi , 86; Whitrow, 19.
97. Overbye, 113, citing Desanka Trbuhovic-Gjuric, Im Schatten Albert Einstein (Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1993), 94.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE MIRACLE YEAR
1. This quote is attributed in a variety of books and sources to an address Lord Kelvin gave to the British Association for the Advancement of
Science in 1900. I have not found direct evidence for it, which is why I qualify it as “reportedly” said. It is not in the two-volume biography by
Silvanus P. Thompson, The Life of Lord Kelvin (New York: Chelsea Publishing, 1976), originally published in 1910.
2. Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1820; reprinted, New York: Dover, 1951). This famous statement of
determinism comes in the preface of a work devoted to probability theory. The fuller line is that in ultimate reality we have determinism, but in
practice we have probabilities. The achievement of full knowledge is not reachable, he says, so we need probabilities.
3. Einstein, Letter to the Royal Society on Newton’s bicentennial, Mar. 1927.