This volume presents cumulative indexes and cumulative editorial apparatus for the
first ten volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (CPAE).
After the publication in 1987 of Volume 1, The Early Years, which contained
various documents, writings, and correspondence covering the first twenty-three
years of Einstein’s life, the CPAE volumes chart three main chronological periods:
the Swiss years; the Berlin years; and the Princeton years.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) spent his childhood and adolescence in southern
Germany. In 1896 he moved to Switzerland, where he attended the Swiss Polytech-
nic Institute (ETH), completed his doctorate, and worked, with a brief interlude in
1911–1912 as professor at the German University in Prague, until 1914, when he
moved to Berlin as a permanent member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and
professor at the University of Berlin. In 1933, Einstein emigrated to the United
States, where he spent the last twenty-two years of his life as a faculty member at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
To date, an additional nine volumes covering the years 1903–1921 have been
published, both in the original language “documentary edition,” and in the English-
language “translation edition.”
These subsequent volumes are divided into separate Writings and Correspon-
dence volumes. Thus, Volumes 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 contain Einstein’s Writings until
and including the year 1921, while Volumes 5, 8, 9, and 10 contain his Correspon-
dence until and including the year 1920. In a total of more than 7500 printed pages,
the first ten volumes of the series present 256 items of Writings as full text, and
2837 items of Correspondence, either as full text or in abstract.
*
With these ten volumes, the CPAE series now covers the first half of Einstein’s life
and thus more than two decades of extraordinary scientific achievements. The se-
ries, which begins with Einstein’s birth certificate, contains all his scientific and
nonscientific published writings. These include not only his first essay of 1895, his
first research paper in 1901, the singular publication record of his annus mirabilis,
1905, and the papers leading to his breakthrough to general relativity in late 1915
INTRODUCTION