D O C U M E N T 8 M A Y 1 9 2 0 1 5 3
1) Go to the Reich Commissariat for Export Permits and apply for the permit to
export the violin lying in storage at Bentheim.
2) Send the export permit to Gerlach & Co.,
Bentheim,[4]
with the instructions
to send the violin here to me and to charge all expenses cash on delivery.
The journey proceeded excellently. I made the acquaintance of a few young men
who are emigrating to South America, former officers. The trip third class was
excellent. I did not need the cushion. Little Paul Ehrenfest is playing with me, such
a cute fellow, but he won’t let me
write.[5]
So, for today, just heartfelt greetings from your
Albert
Also to the
children.[6]
Liberate the poor violin soon!
8. From Willem H. Julius
[Utrecht,] 8 May 1920
Dear Colleague Einstein,
Permit me, in connection with yesterday’s
conversation,[1]
to summarize briefly
once again the main points of our thoughts on line
displacements;[2]
this could per-
haps be useful in some way toward solving the problem.
The conclusion that Grebe and Bachem reach did not appear to us sufficiently
supported;[3]
since, first, the mean 0.56 km/sec is noticeably smaller than the theo-
retical value 0.63 and even drops down to 0.475 if the one line 3866.960 is omitted
(which in the earlier paper had been described as
unusable);[4]
and second, it was
not shown beyond doubt that the observed shifts did not furnish the result of a su-
perposition of many causes. Possible photographic effects and evaluation errors
have been taken into consideration by G. and B.; however, pressure and Doppler
effects or anomalous dispersion still could distort the gravitational shift even of a
line standing by itself.
There can be no doubt that various causes of the same order of magnitude play
a part. Surely, the considerable limb-center shifts (0.0068 Å as the mean for 476
lines)[5]
are interpretable as a gravitational shift only with
difficulty;[6]
or as a pres-
sure effect (as Evershed has adequately
shown);[7]
but even less likely as a conse-
quence of a repulsive force that the Earth specifically, or the British Empire, were
exerting upon the solar
gases.[8]
And the fact that the shifts are so very different
from line to line (to the degree that well-established violet shifts occur) without
showing any relation to the experimental pressure shifts, whereas, if one takes a
mean, a simple relation to line intensity results as predicted by dispersion theory—
this fact seems inexplicable unless one conceives
Fraunhofer[9]
lines essentially as
dispersion lines.