D O C U M E N T 3 3 8 O C T O B E R 1 9 2 4 3 4 1
2) Financial aid to (13) students of the “Union of Jewish Student Associations in
Germany”[4]
800 marks
3) For (23) teaching faculty at the “Russian Scientific Institute in
Berlin”[5]
6,800 marks
4) For Russian students in Holland 200 Dutch guilders.
We request that the Secretariat see to it that each of these four entries be remitted
by check; specifically, the first three of these checks to Prof. Einstein (5 Haberland
St., Berlin), the fourth to Prof. N. van
Wyk[6]
(36 Nieuw Street, Leyden). The grant
mentioned under (3) may at first glance seem high; but it does not nearly meet the
most urgent needs; they mainly involve academics who despite self-sacrificing
work in their fatherland were recently expelled from Russia by the government,
some of them being scholars of merit. We request that you also inform the Infor-
mation Office for Russians Abroad in Bern of this communication, which was the
subject of discussion at our meetings; we unfortunately do not have their address
available.
In great respect,
A. Einstein
P. Ehrenfest
T.
Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa.[7]
338. From Auguste Piccard[1]
Brussels, 14 Ernestine Avenue, 16 October 1924
Highly esteemed Professor,
Thank you very much for yesterday’s letter. I just wanted to write you how far I
have come along, up to now. It is a matter of testing whether the electrostatically
measured ratio between a proton and an electron really is exactly equal to unity, or
whether a systematic difference may exist at the 18th digit after the decimal
point.[2]
If one poses the question this way, the impression one gains is that the
measurement cannot be entirely
simple.[3]
As chance would have it, though, I man-
aged to reach the seventeenth decimal point quite easily; but then come the sources
of error, which have precisely the order of magnitude of your effect. A first exper-
iment already even gave me, at a precision of 30%, the value of 0.1 stat. units
per
m3
of air. In order to avoid various sources of error, however, I had to rebuild
the apparatus. That is why I have not come very much farther along and today can-
not say anything, either for or against the new theory. Now, to something about my