D O C U M E N T 3 3 3 J U LY 1 9 2 6 5 3 9 Published in League 1926c, pp. 18–19. [84 708]. [1]Einstein made these statements at the third meeting of the eighth session of the ICIC, held on 27 July 1926. [2]The first session on the establishment of an International Bureau of Meteorology had taken place the previous day (see Doc. 331 and Abs. 548). [3]The chairman was Hendrik A. Lorentz. Alfredo Rocco. Jacob E. de Vos van Steenwijk. The sec- retary of the ICIC was Georges Oprescu. The “small Committee” was the subcommittee on establish- ing an international bureau of meteorology. [4]The Council of the League of Nations. [5]Julien Luchaire. [6]Murray (1866–1957) was vice-chairman of the ICIC and Professor of Greek Philology at the University of Oxford. [7]Arthur Korn (1870–1945) was a German-Jewish physicist, mathematician, and inventor, and Professor of Physics at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. For a summary of the contents of Korn’s memorandum, see Abs. 480. The memorandum was published in League 1926c, p. 59. [8]Robert Haas (1891–1935) was the French director of the League of Nations’ Communications and Transit Section. The International Radiotelegraph Conference was to be held in Washington, D.C., between 4 October and 25 November 1927 (see Télégraphique 1928, p. 71). 333. From Gilbert N. Lewis[1] [Berkeley, California,] 27 July 1926 My dear Professor Einstein: One of my friends of the Department of Physics of this university, Professor William H. Williams,[2] is spending a year abroad, and hopes some time during this year to call upon you. Professor Williams is not only a man of unusual charm but he is one of the men who have followed with thorough comprehension your theory of gravitation. He has not himself written on the subject, but has a remarkably clear and critical appreciation. I am sure, if he calls, you will be glad to make his ac- quaintance. I am sending you, under separate cover, a few of my recent papers, one or two of which I have hoped might interest you for they are based essentially upon your own ideas, which, however, I am trying to carry a little farther than anyone has ventured to do hitherto. The papers on A New Principle of Equilibrium,[3] and The Distribution of Energy in Thermal Radiation[4] probably owe their origin to a con- versation that I had with you in Zurich many years ago,[5] and the fundamental idea is the one developed by Gibbs,[6] Boltsmann[7] and yourself [8] that the laws of ther- modynamics are only the laws of large numbers. I assume not only that most irre- versible processes are due to the random occurrence of elementary processes which are themselves reversible, but that every elementary atomic and molecular process, including the processes of the radiation and absorption of light, are reversible in every particular. In this way I am led to a view of radiation which is not in accord with the one which leads to your derivation of the Planck distribution law.
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