einstein
einstein
einstein
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Zurich, 1909<br />
CHAPTER EIGHT<br />
THE WANDERING PROFESSOR<br />
1909–1914<br />
As a self-assured 17-year-old, Einstein had enrolled at the Zurich Polytechnic and met Mileva Mari , the woman he would marry. Now, in October<br />
1909, at age 30, he was returning to that city to take up his post as a junior professor at the nearby University of Zurich.<br />
Their homecoming restored, at least temporarily, some of the romance to their relationship. Mari was thrilled to be back in their original nesting<br />
ground, and by the end of their first month there she became pregnant again.<br />
The apartment they rented was in a building where, they happily discovered, Friedrich Adler and his wife lived, and the couples became even<br />
closer friends. “They run a bohemian household,” Adler wrote his father approvingly. “The more I talk to Einstein, the more I realize that my favorable<br />
opinion of him was justified.”<br />
The two men discussed physics and philosophy most evenings, often retreating to the attic of the three-story building so they would not be<br />
disturbed by children or spouses. Adler introduced Einstein to the work of Pierre Duhem, whose 1906 book La Théorie Physique Adler had just<br />
published in German. Duhem offered a more holistic approach than Mach did to the relationship between theories and experimental evidence, one<br />
that seemed to influence Einstein as he staked out his own philosophy of science. 1<br />
Adler particularly respected Einstein’s “most independent” mind. There was, he told his father, a nonconformist streak in Einstein that reflected<br />
an inner security but not an arrogance. “We find ourselves in agreement on questions that the majority of physicists would not even understand,”<br />
Adler boasted. 2<br />
Einstein tried to persuade Adler to focus on science rather than be enticed into politics. “Be a little patient,” he said. “You will certainly be my<br />
successor in Zurich one day.” (Einstein was already assuming that he would move on to a more prestigious university.) But Adler ignored the<br />
advice and decided to become an editor at the Social Democratic Party newspaper. Loyalty to a party, Einstein felt, meant surrendering some<br />
independence of thought. Such conformity confounded him. “How an intelligent man can subscribe to a party I find a complete mystery,” Einstein<br />
later lamented about Adler. 3<br />
Einstein was also reunited with his former classmate and note-taker Marcel Grossmann, who had helped him get his job at the patent office and<br />
was now a professor of math at their old Polytechnic. Einstein would often visit Grossmann after lunch for help with the complex geometry and<br />
calculus he needed to extend relativity into a more general field theory.<br />
Einstein was even able to forge a friendship with the other distinguished math professor at the Polytechnic, Adolf Hurwitz, whose classes he had<br />
often skipped and who had spurned his plea for a job. Einstein became a regular at the Sunday music recitals at Hurwitz’s home. When Hurwitz told<br />
him during a walk one day that his daughter had been given a math homework problem she did not understand, Einstein showed up that afternoon<br />
to help her solve it. 4<br />
As Kleiner predicted, Einstein’s teaching talents improved. He was not a polished lecturer, but instead used informality to his advantage. “When<br />
he took his chair in shabby attire with trousers too short for him, we were skeptical,” recalled Hans Tanner, who attended most of Einstein’s Zurich<br />
lectures. Instead of prepared notes, Einstein used a card-sized strip of paper with scribbles. So the students got to watch him develop his thoughts<br />
as he spoke. “We obtained some insight into his working technique,” said Tanner. “We certainly appreciated this more than any stylistically perfect<br />
lecture.”<br />
At each step of the way, Einstein would pause and ask the students if they were following him, and he even permitted interruptions. “This<br />
comradely contact between teacher and student was, at that time, a rare occurrence,” according to Adolf Fisch, another who attended the lectures.<br />
Sometimes he would take a break and let the students gather around him for casual conversation. “With an impulsiveness and naturalness he<br />
would take students by the arm to discuss things,” recalled Tanner.<br />
During one lecture, Einstein found himself momentarily stumped about the steps needed to complete a calculation. “There must be some silly<br />
mathematical transformation that I can’t find for a moment,” he said. “Can one of you gentlemen see it?” Not surprisingly, none of them could. So<br />
Einstein continued: “Then leave a quarter of a page. We won’t lose any time.”Ten minutes later, Einstein interrupted himself in the middle of another<br />
point and exclaimed, “I’ve got it.” As Tanner later marveled, “During the complicated development of his theme he had still found time to reflect upon<br />
the nature of that particular mathematical transformation.”<br />
At the end of many of his evening lectures, Einstein would ask, “Who’s coming to the Café Terasse?” There, with an informal cadre on a terrace<br />
overlooking the Limmat River, they would talk until closing time.<br />
On one occasion, Einstein asked if anyone wanted to come back to his apartment. “This morning I received some work from Planck in which<br />
there must be a mistake,” he said. “We could read it together.” Tanner and another student took him up on the offer and followed him home. There<br />
they all pored over Planck’s paper. “See if you can spot the fault while I make some coffee,” he said.<br />
After a while, Tanner replied, “You must be mistaken, Herr Professor, there is no error in it.”<br />
“Yes, there is,” Einstein said, pointing to some discrepancies in the data, “for otherwise that and that would become that and that.” It was a vivid<br />
example of Einstein’s great strength: he could look at a complex mathematical equation, which for others was merely an abstraction, and picture<br />
the physical reality that lay behind it.<br />
Tanner was astounded. “Let’s write to Professor Planck,” he suggested, “and tell him of the mistake.”<br />
Einstein had by then become slightly more tactful, especially with those he placed on a pedestal, such as Planck and Lorentz. “We won’t tell him<br />
he made a mistake,” he said. “The result is correct, but the proof is faulty. We’ll simply write and tell him how the real proof should run. The main<br />
thing is the content, not the mathematics.” 5<br />
Despite his work on his machine to measure electrical charges, Einstein had become a confirmed theorist rather than experimental physicist.<br />
When he was asked during his second year as a professor to supervise laboratory work, he was dismayed. He hardly dared, he told Tanner, “pick<br />
up a piece of apparatus for fear it might blow up.” To another eminent professor he confided, “My fears regarding the laboratory were rather well<br />
founded.” 6<br />
As he was finishing his first academic year at Zurich, in July 1910, Mari gave birth, again with difficulty, to their second son, named Eduard and