95.
TO WILHELM OSTWALD
Milan,
3
April 1901
Esteemed Herr Professor!
A
few weeks
ago I
took the
liberty
of sending
you
from Zurich
a
short
paper
which
I
published
in Wiedemann's Annalen.
Because
your
judgment
of it matters
very
much to
me,
and I
am
not
sure
whether
I
included
my
address in the letter, I
am
taking the
liberty
of
sending
you my
address
hereby.
Respectfully,
yours
truly
Albert Einstein
cand[idatus] phys[icae]
Milan
Via Bigli 21
96.
TO
MILEVA MARIC
Zurich
[Milan]
Thursday.
[4
April 1901]
Dear Doxerl!
It's
already
a
long
time
ago
since
I
received
your
dear
good
little letter
&
could
not
yet
answer
it,
my
days
are so
filled
up,
mostly with
stupid
stuff. Secretly I look forward to being
away
from
home
again
because it
is
difficult
to
work here
solidly.
About Max Planck's studies
on
radiation, misgivings
of
a
fundamental
nature
have arisen in
my
mind,
so
that I
am
reading
his
article with mixed
feelings.
On the other
hand,
I have in
my
hands
a
study
by Paul Drude
on
the electron
theory,
which is
written
to
my
heart's
desire,
even
though
it contains
some
very
sloppy things.
Drude is
a man
of
genius,
there is
no
doubt about that. He also
assumes
that it is
mainly
the
negative
electric nuclei without
ponderable
mass
which determine the thermal and electric phenomena in
metals,
exactly
as
it occurred
to
me
shortly before
my
departure
from
Zurich.
Michele arrived with wife and child from Trieste the day before
yesterday.
He
is
an
awful
weakling
without
a
spark of healthy
humaneness, who cannot
rouse
himself to
any
action in life
or
scientific creation, but
an
extraordinarily
fine mind, whose
working,
though disorderly, I watch with great
delight. Yesterday evening
I
talked shop with him with great interest for almost
4
hours.
We
talked about the
fundamental
separation
of luminiferous ether and
matter, the definition of absolute rest,
molecular forces, surface
phenomena, dissociation. He is
very
interested in
our
investigations,
even
though he
often
misses
the overall
picture
because of
petty
considerations. This
is
inherent
in the petty disposition of his
being,
which
constantly
torments
him with all kinds of
nervous
notions. The
day
before
yesterday he went
on
my
behalf
to
see
his
uncle Prof. Jung,
one
of the most influential
professors
of
Italy
&
also
gave
him
our
paper.
I
met
the
man once
before
&
must admit that
he
impressed
me
as
quite
an
insignificant
person.
He
promised
that he
will write to
the most important professors of Italy
(physicists),
Righi
&
Battelli,
on
my
behalf, i.e., ask them whether they need
an
assistant. This is
already quite
a
lot,
because he
seems
to be
on
very
friendly
terms with them.
In addition,
I
applied
at
the
162