einstein

61. Einstein to Maurice Solovine, undated, in Solovine, 33, 35.
62. Krauss, 35–47.
63. Seelig 1956a, 28. For a full mathematical description of the special theory, see Taylor and Wheeler 1992.
64. Pais, 1982, 151, citing Hermann Minkowski, “Space and Time,” lecture at the University of Cologne, Sept. 21, 1908.
65. Clark, 159–60.
66. Thorne, 79. This is also explained well in Miller 2001, 200: “Neither Lorentz, Poincaré, nor any other physicist was willing to grant Lorentz’s
local time any physical reality . . . Only Einstein was willing to go beyond appearances.” See also Miller 2001, 240: “Einstein inferred a
meaning Poincaré did not. His thought experiment enabled him to interpret the mathematical formalism as a new theory of space and
time, whereas for Poincaré it was a generalized version of Lorentz’s electron theory.” Miller has also explored this topic in “Scientific
Creativity: A Comparative Study of Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein,” Creativity Research Journal 5 (1992): 385.
67. Arthur Miller e-mail to the author, Aug. 1, 2005.
68. Hoffmann 1972, 78. Prince Louis de Broglie, the quantum theorist who theorized that particles could behave as waves, said of Poincaré in
1954, “Yet Poincaré did not take the decisive step; he left to Einstein the glory of grasping all the consequences of the principle of
relativity.” See Schilpp, 112; Galison, 304.
69. Dyson.
70. Miller 1981, 162.
71. Holton 1973, 178; Pais 1982, 166; Galison, 304; Miller 1981. All four authors have done important work on Poincaré and the credit he
deserves, from which some of this section is drawn. I am grateful to Prof. Miller for a copy of his paper “Why Did Poincaré Not Formulate
Special Relativity in 1905?” and for helping to edit this section.
72. Miller 1984, 37–38; Henri Poincaré lecture, May 4, 1912, University of London, cited in Miller 1984, 37; Pais 1982, 21, 163–168. Pais
writes: “In all his life, Poincaré never understood the basis of special relativity . . . It is apparent that Poincaré either never understood or
else never accepted the Theory of Relativity.” See also Galison, 242 and passim.
73. Einstein to Mileva Mari , Mar. 27, 1901.
74. Michelmore, 45.
75. Overbye, 139; Highfield and Carter, 114; Einstein and Mileva Mari to Conrad Habicht, July 20, 1905.
76. Overbye, 140; Trbuhovic-Gjuric, 92–93; Zackheim, 62.
77. The issue of whether Mari ’s name was in any way ever on a manuscript of the special theory is a knotted one, but it turns out that the
single source for such reports, a late Russian physicist, never actually said precisely that, and there is no other evidence at all to support
the contention. For an explanation, see John Stachel’s appendix to the introduction of Einstein’s Miraculous Year, centennial reissue
edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), lv.
78. “The Relative Importance of Einstein’s Wife,”The Economist , Feb. 24, 1990; Evan H. Walker, “Did Einstein Espouse His Spouse’s
Ideas?”, Physics Today , Feb. 1989; Ellen Goodman, “Out from the Shadows of Great Men,”Boston Globe , Mar. 15, 1990;Einstein’s
Wife , PBS, 2003, www.pbs.org/opb/einsteins wife/index.htm; Holton 2000, 191; Robert Schulmann and Gerald Holton, “Einstein’s Wife,”
letter to the New York Times Book Review, Oct. 8, 1995; Highfield and Carter, 108–114; Svenka Savi , “The Road to Mileva Mari -
Einstein,” www.zenskestudie.edu.yu/wgsact/e-library/e-lib0027.html#_ftn1; Christopher Bjerknes, Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible
Plagiarist , home.com cast.net/~xtxinc/CIPD.htm; Alberto Martínez, “Arguing about Einstein’s Wife,”Physics World , Apr. 2004,
physicsweb.org/articles/world/17/4/2/1; Alberto Martínez, “Handling Evidence in History: The Case of Einstein’s Wife,”School Science
Review , Mar. 2005, 51–52; Zackheim, 20; Andrea Gabor, Einstein’s Wife: Work and Marriage in the Lives of Five Great Twentieth-
Century Women (New York: Viking, 1995); John Stachel, “Albert Einstein and Mileva Mari : A Collaboration That Failed to Develop,” in
H. Prycior et al., eds., Creative Couples in Science (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 207–219; Stachel 2002a,
25–37.
79. Michelmore, 45.
80. Holton 2000, 191.
81. Einstein to Conrad Habicht, June 30–Sept. 22, 1905 (almost certainly in early September, after returning from vacation and getting to work
on the E=mc 2 paper).
82. Einstein, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content?,”Annalen der Physik 18 (1905), received Sept. 27, 1905, CPAE 2:
24.
83. For an insightful look at the background and ramifications of Einstein’s equation, see Bodanis. Bodanis also has a useful website that
includes further details: davidbodanis.com/books/emc2/notes/relativity/sigdev/index.html. The calculation about the mass of a raisin is in
Wolfson, 156.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE HAPPIEST THOUGHT
1. Maja Einstein, xxi.
2. Fölsing, 202; Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 42.
3. More precisely, the definition that Richard Feynman uses in his Lectures on Physics (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1989), 19-1 is, “Action in
physics has a precise meaning. It is the time average of the kinetic energy of a particle minus the potential energy. The principle of least
action then states that a particle will travel along the path that minimizes the difference between its kinetic and potential energies.”
4. Fölsing, 203; Einstein to Maurice Solovine, Apr. 27, 1906; Einstein tribute to Planck, 1913, CPAE 2: 267.
5. Max Planck to Einstein, July 6, 1907; Hoffmann 1972, 83.
6. Max Laue to Einstein, June 2, 1906.
7. Hoffmann 1972, 84; Seelig 1956a, 78; Fölsing, 212.
8. Arnold Sommerfeld to Hendrik Lorentz, Dec. 26, 1907, in Diana Kormos Buchwald, “The First Solvay Conference,” in Einstein in Context
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 64. Sommerfeld is referring to the German physicist Emil Cohn, an expert in
electrodynamics.
9. Jakob Laub to Einstein, Mar. 1, 1908.
10. Swiss Patent Office to Einstein, Mar. 13, 1906.
11. Mileva Mari to Helene Savi , Dec. 1906.