2 9 2 D O C U M E N T 1 7 8 O C T O B E R 1 9 2 0
Now, however, I learned during a visit there, whence I recently returned, that it
might perhaps still come to pass that we later meet there, after all. For according to
long-standing agreements, I am, in all probability, going to be moving [over] there
again as soon as my current “geophysical” period has ended, for which there is
prospect in the not too distant
future[3]
—and now I learn that the issue of your be-
ing called to Christiania is being seriously considered.
Whether something will come of what to many is an “exotic” plan, I dare not
say. Naturally, you would find the University of Christiania intellectually poor.
Nonetheless, it is not completely without tradition, and particularly not so in your
own field. No one before yourself has made a more energetic attempt than my
father[4]
to trace gravity (and other forces of nature) back to the effect of inertia,
although not to such an effect of the gravitational masses themselves within curved
space—rather that effect of free, space-filling masses within Euclidean space.
I take the liberty of sending you the most important publications with regard to
this—all of them unfortunately by
me;[5]
he himself never sat down to writing,
probably partly an effect of his isolation in Christiania.
I myself long to return to the area of research into which I had been introduced
already as a
boy.[6]
I would very much like to know, before I stop, why these ex-
tended analogies exist. Are they the play of a—very improbable—coincidence? Or
do deeper formal or real reasons lie behind it, and if so, which ones? I would like
to have a chance to discuss such questions with you all the more when I take up this
work again.
Yours very truly,
V. Bjerknes
178. From Zionist Student Association of Eastern
Galicia
Lemberg [Lwów], 18 October 1920
Your Eminence,
Highly esteemed Sir and Master,
Moved by the outrageous hate campaign that is being conducted by German stu-
dents and pseudoscientists against your person as a Jew and a
scholar,[1]
we, the rep-
resentatives of the Zionist university scholars of East Galicia in Lemberg, feel moved
to express to Your Eminence our sentiments of profound respect and devotion.