D O C U M E N T 8 5 J U L Y 1 9 2 0 3 4 9
ter Menschen, deren nötige Organisation sie verkörpern und erhalten. Sie hängen
also gewiss nicht ab von der Solidität juristischer Grundbegriffe.
Es thut mir leid, dass Vero so empfindet, weil ich glaube dass die Quelle dieser
Unzufriedenheit im Gemüt und nicht im Intellekt
sitzt.[13]
Ich möchte ihm mög-
lichst bald eine praktische Arbeit wünschen, etwa wie wir sie im Patentamt hatten,
sodass er immer vor kleinen, wohlumgrenzten Aufgaben steht.
Es grüsst Dich herzlich Dein viel geplagter
Albert
Viel geplagt durch übertriebene Verhimmelung und einen erdrückenden Hagel von
Korrespondenz und anderen inoffiziellen Pflichten. Im Übrigen [a]ber geht es mir
sehr gut, menschlich und gesundheitlich.
ALSX. Einstein/Besso 1972, pp. 151–154. [70 366].
[1]Date provided by the recipient: “26.VII.20.”
[2]It was most likely Besso who rendered Guillaume’s name illegible at a later date.
[3]Einstein had recently resumed a correspondence with Edouard Guillaume, started in January, in
an effort to comprehend the latter’s arguments (see Docs. 71 and 77).
[4]In May, Willem H. Julius had given his opinion that Einstein’s gravitational redshift prediction
could no longer be reconciled with observational evidence in the case of the solar redshift (see
Doc. 8). His arguments appeared in print in Julius and Cittert 1920.
[5]See Grebe and Bachem 1920b.
[6]See Doc. 76, note 6, for more details.
[7]A number of leading physicists, including Adriaan D. Fokker, Arthur S. Eddington, and Arnold
Sommerfeld had expressed the hope that Weyl’s unified theory of gravity and electromagnetism (Weyl
1918a) might explain the apparent failure of relativity theory to agree with solar redshift measure-
ments. See Adriaan D. Fokker to Einstein, 26 July 1919 (Vol. 9, Doc. 75) for Fokker’s view, and its
note 18 for further references.
[8]Einstein steadfastly rejected Weyl’s theory, despite his enthusiam for its pleasing formal struc-
ture, on the grounds of this “measuring rod objection” (“Maßstab-Einwand”; for more on the issue,
see Einstein 1918g [Vol. 7, Doc. 8] and Einstein’s correspondence with Weyl in April and May 1918
in Vol. 8.
[9]For Einstein’s plans to see his children in Swabia, see Doc. 81, where he discusses the matter
with their mother, Mileva Einstein-Maric;. He had been planning to visit with the priest Camillus
Brandhuber in Benzingen (see Doc. 70).
[10]Marcus Aurelius (121–180), Roman Emperor, and Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), President of
the United States of America.
[11]For Einstein’s quantum theory of radiation and its derivation of Max Planck’s formula, see Ein-
stein 1916j and 1916n (Vol. 6, Docs. 34 and 38). In 1916, he had described this work to Besso in
enthusiastic terms (see Einstein to Michele Besso, 11 August 1916 [Vol. 8, Doc. 250]).
[12]Walter Dällenbach (1892–1990) was Assistent in mechanical engineering at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology. He subsequently wrote to Einstein, having seen this letter to Besso, seeking
further clarification of Einstein’s views (giving specific examples of a charged rotating disk and a
rotating magnet), from the standpoint of relativity theory (see Walter Dällenbach to Einstein, 16
August 1920, in Calendar). The topic of electric and magnetic fields generated by a rotating charged
sphere in general relativity had earlier been raised by Gustav Mie (see Gustav Mie to Einstein, 29 June
1919 [Vol. 9, Doc. 65]).
[13]Vero Besso.