Einstein (39 page)

Einstein studied with the greatest interest the work of the Jews in developing an independent national life. He saw the new Jewish city of Tel-Aviv. In Europe the Jews usually belonged to only one particular class of the population; they were often persecuted by other classes, who represented the work performed by the Jews as being especially easy or particularly obnoxious. Tel-Aviv, however, was a city in which all work was done by Jews. Here they could not so easily acquire the feeling of occupying an abnormal position as an ethnic and economic group.

Nevertheless, Einstein also saw the difficulties of the Jewish situation — above all, the unsatisfactory relations with the Arabs. He was not enough of a national partisan to do what so many others did — that is, simply put the blame on the ingratitude of the Arabs and the insufficient support of the Jews by England. He demanded on the part of the Jews an effort to understand the cultural life of the Arabs and to make friends with them.

For this reason not all the Zionist groups welcomed Einstein. The extreme nationalists looked upon him just as suspiciously as the adherents of Jewish religious orthodoxy. The latter took it a little amiss that he did not consider the observance of the ancient rites important and that occasionally he even ventured a joke.

In March 1923 Einstein returned from Palestine by boat to Marseille. Thence he traveled to Spain, whose landscape and art were always a source of joy to him. Just as he had conversed with the Empress of Japan, so Einstein also had a conversation with King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Thus he not only saw strange lands and cities, but also obtained a personal impression of a class of people that usually remains unknown to scientists. Einstein, who always retained something of the curiosity of an intelligent child gathered new strength for his creative work from all these experiences. Everything seemed to him like a dream, and he sometimes remarked to his wife: “Let us enjoy everything, before we awake.”

On November 10, 1922, while Einstein was on his trip to the Orient, the committee of the Swedish Academy of Science awarded him the Nobel prize for physics. Although he had
long been recognized as one of the greatest physicists of his time, it had taken rather a long while for the committee to decide to award him the prize. In establishing the endowments, Alfred Nobel had stipulated that the prize should be awarded for a recent discovery in physics from which mankind had derived a great use. No one was sure whether Einstein’s theory of relativity was a “discovery.” Originally, it did not assert new phenomena, but was rather a principle from which many facts could be derived more simply than formerly. Furthermore, whether this discovery was of any great use to mankind was naturally a matter of personal opinion. After Einstein’s theory became an object of so many attacks and was even linked to political controversies, the Swedish Academy thought that it should be cautious and not award the prize to Einstein for a while. After the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945, the Academy apparently recognized the great use to mankind of Einstein’s theory of relativity, as it quickly awarded the prize to O. Hahn, the discoverer of the uranium fission.

Toward the end of 1922, however, the Academy thought of a clever expedient by which it could award the prize to Einstein without having to take a stand on his relativity theory. It awarded the prize to Einstein for his work in “quantum theory” (see
Chapters III
and
IV
). This work had not been so hotly debated as the theory of relativity. But in it “facts were discovered” — that is, statements were advanced from which observable phenomena could be deduced by means of few conclusions. In the case of the theory of relativity this train of reasoning was much longer. This subtle distinction, however, authorized the Academy in the case of the photoelectric and photochemical law to speak of a “discovered fact,” while it would not do so in the case of the relativity theory. By this expedient the Academy succeeded to avoid the expression of any opinion about the controversial theory of relativity. The statement of the award was couched in very general terms: “The prize is awarded to Einstein for the photoelectric law and his work in the field of theoretical physics.”

As soon as Einstein’s enemies heard of this, they began to assert with greater vehemence than ever before that there was something peculiar about the entire business. Einstein, they said, received the prize for a discovery that was not important enough to justify such a reward. Early in 1923 his old enemy Lenard wrote a letter to the Swedish Academy in which he branded the
entire action as an attempt “to restore Einstein’s lost prestige without compromising the Academy itself.”

In July 1923, when he received the award, Einstein lectured at a meeting of Scandinavian scientists at Göteborg, which was attended by the King of Sweden.

Since the public, especially in Germany, carefully followed everything that Einstein did, some with enthusiasm, others with suspicion and hatred, the following report, which appeared on September 15 in the
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
, a paper for the more educated and wealthier nationalistic groups, could not but arouse great excitement, and in some people even anger and indignation:

“From Moscow we learn that Professor Einstein is expected there at the end of September. He will speak there on the theory of relativity. Russian scientists are looking forward to the lecture with great interest. In 1920 Einstein’s writings were brought to Russia by plane, immediately translated, and appeared among the first works of the Bolshevist state press.”

It must be kept in mind that in Germany Einstein’s relativity theory had been characterized as “Bolshevism in physics,” that many people believed in a Jewish conspiracy in which Einstein and Rathenau had participated, and finally that Rathenau had concluded the treaty of friendship with Soviet Russia. At that time the alliance with Soviet Russia was not yet regarded by the German nationalists as a particularly shrewd move in foreign policy intended to serve the national interests of Germany, but rather as a betrayal of the German people. Hence it is not surprising that many persons saw Einstein’s reported trip as an indication of his participation in a Bolshevist conspiracy against Germany, and spread all kinds of rumors about it.

On October 6 the democratic
Berliner Tageblatt
reported: “Professor Einstein has left for Moscow.… In Moscow preparations are being made to give the famous German scientist an imposing welcome.”

On October 27 the nationalistic
Berliner Börsenzeitung
reported: “The Soviet Russian press reports that Einstein is arriving in Petersburg on October 28 and will speak on the relativity theory to a group of scientifically trained workers.”

On November 2 the
Kieler Zeitung
reported: “Einstein is staying in Petersburg for three days.”

In the middle of November, when it was believed that Einstein
had returned from Russia, he received many threatening letters in which nationalistic fanatics threatened that he would be “executed” like Rathenau, if he continued his conspiracies with the Bolsheviks. The remarkable thing about all this, however, is that Einstein has never been in Russia, either then or at any other time in his life. His journeys to France and England had frequently been taken amiss and had produced a great deal of unpleasantness for him in Germany. Evidently it was of no avail even to avoid such unpopular trips if one once had become the target of hate-filled agitators.

For Einstein the end of 1923 was the end of a period of journeys throughout the world as a messenger of international understanding and as a symbol of an omnipresent interest in the most general questions regarding the nature of the universe. In 1925 he made a trip to South America, but in general he spent the following years in Berlin.

In 1924, after his many journeys, Einstein settled down again in Berlin. The transition from lecturing in different countries in different languages to people with various intellectual training back to regular teaching of physics was not entirely a smooth one. Since he was not required to give a regular course of lectures, he preferred to give lectures of two extremely divergent types. On the one hand, he liked to speak before an audience of educated laymen to which he could explain the general scientific principles as simply and clearly as possible, seeking to give his listeners a vivid picture of the general trends in the development of scientific thought. On the other hand, he also liked to give highly technical lectures on the problems with which he was concerned at the moment, before an audience of very advanced students.

Then, too, his world fame attracted many foreigners visiting Berlin. Their lists of sights to be seen there included, together with the Brandenburg Gate with its goddess of victory, the Siegesallee with its statues of Prussian princes, and the theatrical productions of Reinhardt, the famous Einstein. Many who did not even know whether he was a physicist, mathematician, philosopher, or dreamer came to listen to his lectures. On occasions when these sightseers were unusually numerous, Einstein would say: “Now I shall stop for a few minutes so that all those who have no further interest can leave.” Usually only eight or ten students would remain, and then Einstein was happy to be able to talk about the things closest to his heart without being disturbed by the sight of faces devoid of any understanding.

Such lectures were not easy to follow even for students intending to become physicists. Even the brighter ones generally expected that Einstein would drum into their heads in a form adapted for students the famous discoveries that he had presented in his writings and about which everyone spoke. Einstein, however, was not much interested any longer in researches
that had been concluded and published. He was always looking for the solutions of new problems, and students who were willing and able to think about these difficult problems independently were few and far between even in such a large center of learning as Berlin.

As I already mentioned, Einstein was at first skeptical about the use of very advanced mathematics in developing physical theories. When in 1908 Minkowski showed that Einstein’s special theory of relativity could be formulated very simply in the language of four-dimensional geometry, Einstein had regarded this as the introduction of an involved formalism by which it became rather more difficult to grasp the actual physical content of the theory. When Max von Laue, in the first comprehensive book on Einstein’s relativity theory, presented it in a very elegant mathematical form, Einstein remarked at that time jokingly: “I myself can hardly understand Laue’s book.”

The center of German mathematical teaching and research during this period was the University of Göttingen. Minkowski taught there, and the mathematical formulation of the relativity theory had begun there. Einstein once remarked playfully: “The people in Göttingen sometimes strike me, not as if they wanted to help one formulate something clearly, but instead as if they wanted only to show us physicists how much brighter they are than we.” Nevertheless, the greatest mathematician in Göttingen, David Hilbert, realized that while Einstein did not care for superfluous formal difficulties in mathematics, he did know how to use mathematics where it was indicated. Hilbert once said: “Every boy in the streets of our mathematical Gottingen understands more about four-dimensional geometry than Einstein. Yet, despite that, Einstein did the work and not the mathematicians.” And he once asked a gathering of mathematicians: “Do you know why Einstein said the most original and profound things about space and time that have been said in our generation? Because he had learned nothing about all the philosophy and mathematics of time and space.”

In his general theory of relativity, however, Einstein had had to resort to the use of a branch of advanced mathematics called “tensor analysis” in order to give an adequate description of physical phenomena in four dimensional non-Euclidean space. With the complication in the calculations that this entailed, Einstein began to find the need for an assistant who was well trained in mathematics. For this purpose Einstein preferred young people who had a scientific education and ambition, but
who because of external circumstances were unable to get a job at a public institution. Thus one of his first assistants in Berlin was a Russian Jew who suffered from a pathological enlargement of his bones (leontiasis) and as a result made such a repulsive impression on people that no one wanted to engage him as an assistant, let alone as a teacher. In time the young man understandably wanted to advance to an independent position. He expected Einstein to get him a position as teacher in a school although it was obvious that with his unfortunate appearance no school would hire him. Nevertheless he blamed Einstein for not trying hard enough and finally quarreled with him.

It was not easy for Einstein to find a suitable assistant. This may appear strange, but there were reasons for it. Students who wanted to study physics could wish for no better opportunity than to watch and help a man like Einstein at his creative work, and to this was added the pleasure of being in contact with a man with a very interesting personality, who was extremely friendly and adept in the art of conversation. But in large measure Einstein’s trouble was due to the fact that he did not carry on any ordinary teaching in Berlin. The students at the university who were working toward the doctorate or to pass examinations as physics teachers were busy enough trying to satisfy all the demands made on them. They studied with the professors at the university who gave the examinations, and received from them the subjects for their doctoral dissertations. Only rarely did one of them come into personal contact with Einstein. As a result Einstein usually had as assistants students from outside Germany. These foreigners did not come to Berlin to pass examinations or to find positions, but to learn from the outstanding scientists there. They immediately turned to men like Planck, Nernst, or Einstein. In this way Einstein had as collaborators first the aforementioned Russian and later the Hungarian Cornelius Lanczos and the Austrian Walter Mayer. The last two were of great help to Einstein, and published valuable contributions to the general theory of relativity. They are now both teaching in American institutions.