DOC.
12
JUNE
1914 23
12. To
Otto Stern
[Berlin,
after
4
June
1914][1]
Dear Mr.
Stern,
I
have read
your paper many
times
over
and
enjoyed
it
very
much.[2]
It
is
written with
exceptional clarity.
I
urged
Haber
strongly
to
think the
matter
through carefully.
I
continue to
like
it
here
extremely
well.
Intellectual
stimula-
tion
abounds
here,
there
is just
too much of it. Some ideas have
come
to
me
in
the
area
of
photochemistry
but
nothing
fully developed
as
yet. Yesterday
I
spoke
with
Gehrcke. If he had
as
much
intelligence
as
self-esteem,
it
would be
pleasant
to discuss
things
with
him.[3]
Gravitation
elicits
just
as
much
respect among my
colleagues as skepticism.
I
am going
to
lecture
on
it in
the
near
future
at
the
colloquium.
The
Academy
is
amusing, actually
more
droll
than
grave.
This
type
of
thing is
always
subject
to
mass
psychology.
With
greetings
and
best
wishes
for
the
semester, yours,
Einstein.
Sackur has also
just
read
your paper,
likewise Haber.[4]
Sackur wanted to main-
tain
against
your
calculation
that
you may
have
perhaps
assumed too
high
a
specific
heat for
I2
(due
to
oscillation).[5]
Haber refuted
him,
however. From
the
theoretical
standpoint
the
most
doubtful
aspect
is
that
you
so
unhesitatingly
su-
perimposed
the rotation
of
I2
on
to
the
I2
considered to be monatomic.[6]
But
the deduction
seems
convincing
to
me
nonetheless. Haber
pointed out, though,
that
sensitive
areas are nonsense
in
the
case
of
atoms,
and
perhaps
he
is
not
so
wrong.[7]
For,
the
conception
that the
atom
is
an
object
with
preferred
orien-
tations strikes
as
odd. But I tell
myself
that
this
unnatural construction
must
paralyze
that of
the
central
forces.
It
does not
appear
as
if
something
fundamen-
tally
false would result
from
this
approach (central
forces + sensitive
regions).
In
the
end
I
think that
Haber’s
argument
will
not
capture
the
essentials for
the
following
reason.
In order
to
eliminate
the
entropy
difference
at
absolute
zero
for
chemical
bonds,
spatial
arrangement
must
be excluded in the atomic
context;
states of various
degrees
of
spatial
arrangement
in
the
macroscopic
context
(con-
centration!)
cannot be
excluded,
however.
That
is
why
this
method
of
inquiry
is
probably
not
the
correct
one
at all.
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