Celebrating the Centennial of Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize Lecture

Albert Einstein gave his Nobel prize lecture entitled Fundamental Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity on July 11, 1923. The centennial of this event is a reminder of the remarkable history of Einstein’s Nobel prize and Nobel prize address.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences had repeatedly rejected Einstein as a Nobel prize recipient despite his sixty nominations, most of them for relativity, over a decade. In 1921 the Committee for Physics became deadlocked, resulting in no award that year. The following year, the Academy awarded Einstein the unused 1921 prize – but pointedly not for the theory of relativity. The prize was for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Einstein’s 1905 publication on the photoelectric effect was undoubtedly worthy of a Nobel prize. It explained the behavior of electron emission from metals when struck by light. His theory that light conveys energy in discrete packets, or quanta, was a foundation of quantum mechanics. But it was surprising to many that he didn’t receive the award for his most significant scientific contribution─the general theory of relativity─which is the basis of virtually everything we know about the universe’s structure, history, and behavior.

In March 1923, Svante Arrhenius, Chairman of the Committee for Physics, wrote to Einstein suggesting that he not wait until December to deliver his Nobel lecture in Stockholm but instead address the Scandinavian Society of Science in Gothenburg in July on the 300th anniversary of the city’s founding. Even though he had been instrumental in excluding relativity from Einstein’s Nobel award, Arrenhius suggested also that the address be about relativity. Einstein accepted the invitation and gave the lecture on July 11, 1923.

In honor of this centennial, here are six Einstein items being offered for purchase at Manhattan Rare Books:

Here are Einstein's manuscript scientific notes on relativity, c. 1912-1915. From 1912 onward, when Einstein returned from Prague to Zurich, he was intensely and incessantly involved in trying to generalize his special relativity theory from inertial to accelerated frames of reference. The effort included two years of collaboration with his friend Marcel Grossmann in Zurich, and then continued work in Berlin from spring 1914 onward, where Einstein took up a specially designated research chair sponsored by the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He achieved a successful result by November 1915, when he presented four communications of his new General Theory to the Prussian Academy. While most Einstein autograph material on the market is in the form of letters to friends or colleagues, or drafts of papers to be published, the present manuscript gives us a glimpse of Einstein doing what he did best - original research. It clearly illustrates his highly visual way of thinking, for the manuscript contains several illustrative diagrams alongside mathematical formulas.

Philippe Halsman’s now iconic 1947 photograph of Einstein has become not only one of the most celebrated images of Einstein, but one of the most recognizable images of the twentieth century. It was used to a 1966 US postage stamp of Einstein and was featured on the cover ofTime Magazine honoring Einstein as the “Person of the Century”.

Another master photograph of Einstein is this one by Yousuf Karsh taken in 1948. On February 11, 1948, Yousuf Karsh, perhaps the most accomplished portrait photographer of his generation, visited The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to fulfill a dream of his: to photograph Albert Einstein. As he later explained, “Among the tasks that life as a photographer had set me, a portrait of Albert Einstein had always seemed a ‘must’ – not only because this greatest refugee of our century has been accounted by all the world as the [most] outstanding scientist since Newton, but because his face, in all its rough grandeur, invited and challenged the camera...”

Also taken at Princeton is this rare suite of seven photographs of Einstein by photographer Roman Vishniac in 1942. As Vishniac recalled, "It was a singular experience. An idea had suddenly come to him, and the room was filled with the movement of the great man’s thought. I waited several minutes, and then when I saw that he did not intend to say anything more to me and that he was off in a world of his own, I started taking pictures." Einstein later admitted that a Vishniac photograph taken that day was his favorite portrait."

The imperative “to protect the rights of the individual... was Einstein’s most fundamental political tenet. Individualism and freedom were necessary for creative art and science to flourish. Personally, politically, and professionally, he was repulsed by any restraints. This remarkable letter – from 1943 – is one of the earliest examples of his interest in condemning racism in the United States. It is dated 22 September 1943 and written in English to Walter F. White, the enormously influential African-American civil rights leader who led the NAACP from 1929-1955, praising him for his work and revealing his own awareness of and frustrations with racism and prejudice in America.

This other letter was written by Einstein to his son Eduard “Tetel” Einstein in 1937. In German, Einstein offers life advice and discusses Freud, Shakespeare and Schiller. From an early age, Eduard became enamored with the teachings of Freud, even hanging a picture of famous psychiatrist on his bedroom wall. By the age of twenty he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and consequently was institutionalized several times throughout his life. Einstein advises Eduard in this letter that it is the pursuit and the work in attaining the goal that brings satisfaction and sustains one throughout life, even if “the work of a single person will not have much of an impact in the big picture”. This, he notes, is critical to understand after the illusions of youth have succumbed to reality.

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