262
DOC. 360
FEBRUARY
1912
360. To
Hendrik
A.
Lorentz
Prague,
18
February
1912
Highly
esteemed and dear
Prof. Lorentz:
The
important
and cordial
letter
I
received from
you
two
days
ago[1]
threw
me
into
an
agitated state,
even
though
the
path
I
must
follow has
already
been
definitively
traced
out for
me.
For
a
few weeks
ago
I
signed my
contract for
the
position at
the Zurich
Polytechnic, i.e.,
I
agreed
to start
working
there
next fall
as a
teacher of theoretical
physics.[2]
And
now
the
most
admired
and the
dearest
man
of
our
times offers
me a
place
close
to
him,
in
that
he holds
out
to
me
the
prospect
of
a
friendly
personal
relationship! I
can
think of
nothing more
beautiful than
to
experience
the
problems
and
developments
in
our
mysterious
science in
conversation
with
you. My feeling
of
intellectual
inferiority
with
regard to
you
cannot
spoil
the
great
delight
of
such
conversations, especially
because
the
fatherly
kindness
you
show
to
all
people
does not
allow
any feeling
of
despondency to
arise.
However, to
occupy your
chair
would be
something
inexpressibly oppressive
for
me.
I cannot
analyze
this
in
greater detail,
but
I
always
felt
sorry
for
our
colleague
Hasenöhrl
for
having
to
occupy
Boltzmann's
chair.[3]
So
I dream of Leiden between
delight
and
anxiety.
But I must not succumb to this
temptation.
For
I promised
earlier that
I
would
accept a
post
as a
theoretician
at
the
Zurich
Polytechnic,
I
let
them
appoint me,
and
I accepted
the
appointment
officially.
So
now
I
am
only doing my
duty
by
going
there,
and
I
do
not
doubt that
you
will
approve
the
handling
of
the matter in this
way.
From
the
standpoint
of
your faculty
it
is not
a
great
pity
that
I will
not
come
to
Leiden. For
although
I
am a really good
teacher
with
respect to elementary
things, my knowledge
is
modest
and
my
command of mathematics
is not
good
enough to
make
me a worthy
representative
of
our
discipline
at
Holland's
most important
university.
I
can
very
well
undertake
my
long
and
wearisome
brooding
on a
few scientific
eggs
in
a
less
exposed
and
illuminated
niche.
And
now
I
would like
to tell
you
about
two little
eggs
hatched
out
since
our
last encounter.[4]
According
to
the
quantum
hypothesis,
the
radiant
energy
hv
is
absorbed
in
the
photochemical decomposition
of
a
molecule
by
radiation
of
frequency
v.
Remarkably,
one can
prove
this in
a
purely thermodynamic
way
if
one assumes
that the
state
of
molecular
decomposition is proportional to
the
first
power
of
the
density
of
the effective
radiation. The
argument
is
as
follows.[5]
Under the
influence of
radiation
of
density
p
&
frequency v,
a gas
(molecule
A)
decomposes
into
two
gases (molecules
B and
C).
When
A is
reconstituted
from B and
C,
radiation
(of
the
same
frequency
v)
is
emitted
again.
In
the actual
thermodyn.
equilibrium
at
temperature
T and
a
specific
concentration
C
of
A
etc.,
we
will have
Number of
decomposing
molecules
=
const.
p
·
CA
"
"
reconstituted
"
=
const.
·
CB
·
Cc