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    Letters to Solovine, 1906–1955
    Letters to Solovine, 1906–1955
    Letters to Solovine, 1906–1955
    Ebook176 pages

    Letters to Solovine, 1906–1955

    By Albert Einstein, Neil Berger and Maurice Solovine

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    A provocative collection of letters to his longtime friend and translator that spans Einstein’s career and reveals the inner thoughts and daily life of a transformative genius


    From their early days as tutor and scholar discussing philosophy over Spartan dinners to their work together to publish Einstein’s books in Europe, in Maurice Solovine, Albert Einstein found both an engaged mind and a loyal friend. While Einstein frequently shared his observations on science, politics, philosophy, and religion in his correspondence with Solovine, he was just as likely to express his feelings about everyday life—his health and the effects of aging and his experiences in the various places where he settled and visited in his long career. The letters are both funny and frank, and taken together, reflect the changes—large and small—that took place over a half century and in the remarkable life of the world’s foremost scientist.   Published in English alongside the German text and accompanied by facsimile copies of the original letters, the collected Letters to Solovine offers scholar and interested reader alike unprecedented access to the personal life of Albert Einstein.   This authorized ebook features a new introduction by Neil Berger, PhD, and an illustrated biography of Albert Einstein, which includes rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhilosophical Library Open Road
    Release dateSep 27, 2011
    ISBN9781453204849
    Letters to Solovine, 1906–1955
    Author

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was a German mathematician and physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. His work also had a major impact on the development of atomic energy. In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory.

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      Letters to Solovine, 1906–1955 - Albert Einstein

      Preface by Neil Berger

      THE AKADEMIE OLYMPIA (known today as the Olympia Academy) was formed in early 1902, soon after the Romanian student Maurice Solovine answered an advertisement that Albert Einstein placed in a Bern newspaper for private lessons in physics. Solovine wanted to be tutored in mathematics and physics, and Einstein needed money. This volume documents the lifelong friendship that developed from that meeting. The ten-page introduction by Solovine outlines the early history of the Olympia Academy and explains how Einstein lost a paying student and gained a philosophical partner. The Olympia Academy eventually included Einstein, Besso, Solovine, and the brothers Habicht, among others. It is all the more fascinating that this group held its time-consuming meetings during the period in which Einstein turned out many of his famous papers. Perhaps most important to relativity theory were the discussions that centered on Mach’s critique of the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time.

      The correspondence documented here started when Solovine left the group in 1906, and continued until February 27, 1955, less than two months before Einstein’s death.

      These letters attest to the great importance that Einstein attached to this group and indicate obliquely how important Einstein’s study of philosophy was to the development of his physics. In the letter dated April 3, 1953, slightly more than fifty years since its founding, Einstein created a touching ode to the Olympia Academy and sent it to Solovine. This was a result of receiving a card sent from Paris by Habicht and Solovine addressed to the president of the Olympia Academy.

      Einstein’s social life and obligations are well documented here, as are his trials and tribulations with his ongoing work. There are letters where he expresses self-doubt about his work, as well as others where he is enthusiastic about a new line of reasoning. Other letters comment about his family and the lives of his friends. As a famous person, Einstein felt it was his obligation to secure support for his friends, and he frequently comments upon payments and royalties and how he hopes to help them.

      These letters to Solovine, Einstein’s dear and close personal friend, paint a very human portrait of the greatest physicist of all time.

      Neil Berger,

      Associate Professor Emeritus of Mathematics

      University of Illinois at Chicago

      October 2010

      Introduction by Maurice Solovine

      WHEN I WENT TO Berne as a student at the beginning of the century, I had not decided on the subjects that I wished to study. Since philosophy, though unworthy of the distinction today, still held claim to the study of the most exalted problems, I felt strongly inclined toward this subject, but simultaneously I had a burning desire to learn about concrete things, with the result that along with courses in Greek philosophy, literature and philology, I also studied mathematics, physics, and geology as well as a course in physiology in the Faculty of Medicine. By dint of hard work, I managed to acquire during the first year a body of knowledge which was far from enough to bring complete satisfaction but which allowed me to untangle the jumbled ideas that filled my head and to become aware of the paths and procedures through which the mind achieves positive results. My course in experimental physics had been absorbing, but the professor seemed to delight in speaking disdainfully of physical theories. He used to say that physical theories are more or less arbitrary constructions based on hypotheses and that the discovery of new facts undermines them and causes them to collapse, while facts which are carefully studied experimentally and shaped analytically stand as a definitive acquisition of physics and contribute to its continuous elaboration.

      But what I found most absorbing were these theories, for they gave me an overall view of nature and a firm basis for the study of philosophy, but I felt incapable of understanding them because of a deficiency in mathematics; still, I tried hard to grasp as much as I could. The discovery of radium caused considerable agitation since it was thought to reverse the principle of the conservation of energy.

      Having bought a newspaper and started to walk down the streets of Berne one day during the Easter vacation of 1902, I came to a place which said that Albert Einstein, a former student of Zurich Polytechnical School, would teach physics for three francs an hour. I mused: Perhaps this man could explain theoretical physics to me. I made my way to the house mentioned in the advertisement, walked up to the second floor and rang the bell. I heard a thunderous "Herein!" and soon saw Einstein appear. The hallway was dark and I was struck by the extraordinary radiance of his large eyes. After I had gone inside his apartment and taken a seat, I told him that I was studying philosophy but wanted also to delve into physics so as to acquire a thorough understanding of nature. He confessed that he, too, had leaned toward philosophy when he was younger, but that the vagueness and arbitrariness that characterizes philosophy had turned him away from it and that he now concentrated exclusively on physics. For two hours we talked

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