D O C U M E N T 2 9 5 N O V E M B E R 1 9 2 1 3 4 3
[2]Most likely Jaffé 1910.
[3]Here the transcriber adds in parentheses: “vielleicht Naturwissenschaften?”
[4]“den” should be “zu dem.”
[5]Einstein 1921c (Vol 7, Doc. 52).
[6]Ellipsis is indicated by the transcriber.
295. To Arthur S. Eddington
Berlin, den 12. XI. 21.
Dear Mister Eddington!
It is for Dr. Buchholz in
Halle,[1]
that I take the liberty to trouble you. Prof.
Buchholz is an ardent scholar of Boltzmann and has undertaken to publish his un-
published
lectures.[2]
But he is in difficultys, because the edition needs a supply of
money of 100 pounds. Some month ago he addressed himself confidently to J. J.
Thomson, hoping to receive this sum for the mentioned aim by the Royal Society.
J. J. Thomson has not yet answered—which is nothing to be astonished, if I do not
be wrong, because he is famous not only as a physicist but also as a man, who never
answers letters, what ever they are. The unhappy Buchholz is now between fear and
hope.
I beg you instantly in the name of humanity, occasionally to ask in this matter
Prof. J. J.
Thomson[3]
and to write me about this only quite short on a card, that I
can inform Mr. Buchholz, if he does right for the next time to be in fear or in hope.
With heartly regards yours
P. S. I have heard that St. John has made deciding measures of the red-deflection of
spectral-lines of the sunlight by examination of the light, reflected at the Venus. It
is said, that he takes his examinations for a finally proof of the existence of the red-
deflection. The publication is not yet
followed.[4]
TLC. [9 279].
[1]Hugo Ferdinand Buchholz (1866–1921) was Titular Professor of Astronomy and Applied Math-
ematics at the University of Halle. He died on 24 November.
[2]See Buchholz 1908.
[3]Joseph J. Thomson (1856–1940) was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution.
[4]In St. John and Nicholson 1921, Charles E. St. John and Seth B. Nicholson showed, by observa-
tions of spectral lines in sunlight reflected from the planet Venus, that John Evershed’s hypothesis that
radial Doppler shifting might explain redshifting of spectral lines at the limb of the Sun (the so-called
Earth effect) was untenable. Evershed had sought to bolster his claim that the Earth exerted a repulsive
influence on solar gases by observations of Venus that purported to show that there were variations in
redshift of spectral lines observed there which depended on Venus’s position relative to Earth and Sun
(Evershed 1919). St. John and Nicholson showed that the correlation was rather with the altitude of
Venus in the Earth’s sky, and was therefore likely to be due to refraction of the Earth’s atmosphere.