D O C U M E N T 3 4 9 A U G U S T 1 9 2 6 5 5 9 Ich habe mich nun entschlossen, morgen heimzureisen, da ich doch schon recht lange herumfahre, und mich nach Ruhe und Konzentration dürstet. Auch braucht meine Frau No 2 gründlich einer moralischen Stütze, da sie ganz allein bei ihrer hoffnungslos kranken Mutter sitzt.[8] Sei mit Anna[9] herzlich gegrüsst von Deinem Albert. ALSX. Einstein and Besso 1972, pp. 229–231. [7 361]. [1]Dated by the fact that the document was written on a Wednesday, and under the assumption that Einstein did indeed leave for Berlin on the following morning, as he announces at the end of the letter. For this would mean that Doc. 350, written on 16 August 1926, was written in Berlin and the Wednesday before 16 August was 11 August. [2]Beck, Go. 1926 and Gottfried Beck to Besso, 12 April 1926 (see Docs. 265 and 271). [3]Otto Halpern (1899–1982). He had recently published on the quantized rotator (Halpern 1926). [4]Beck used Bohr’s atomic model to calculate the speed of the electron in a hydrogen atom. [5]Einstein likely refers to Besso’s letter of 18 January 1926 (Doc. 171). However, at the time he thought that the trace-free field equations with a factor of instead of mutiplied by the Ricci scalar were to be preferred, whereas he would return to the original Einstein equations with a factor of in Einstein and Grommer 1927 (Doc. 443). One way or the other, both sets of field equations reduce to in the vacuum case, and it is those equations on which Einstein and Grommer base their attempt to derive the equations of motion of particles represented by singularities. [6]For the possibility of deriving the equations of motions of singularities from the vacuum equa- tions, see Einstein and Grommer 1927 (Doc. 443). [7]The equation should be , which is equivalent to , where is the Maxwell tensor . These equations, in turn, are equivalent to the trace-free field equations Einstein had proposed in Einstein 1919a (Vol. 7, Doc. 17), and which he had proposed to Besso as “the best of what is available today” in Doc. 138. [8]Elsa and Fanny Einstein. [9]Anna Besso-Winteler. 349. To Josepha Whitney-Newcomb[1] Berlin. 15. VII [August] 26.[2] Sehr geehrte Frau Whitney! Ich nehme Bezug auf unsere Begegnung im Hause des Völkerbundes und ver- suche, Ihnen die gewünschte Auskunft zu geben. Die Lebensarbeit Ihres Herrn Vaters[3] ist von monumentaler Bedeutung in der Astronomie. Sie lässt sich so charakterisieren. Kepler hat empirisch die Gesetze 1 4 -- - 1 2 -- - 1 2 -- - Rik 0= Rik 1 2 --gik - fαβ f αβ– fiα fkβ gαβ = Rik = Tik 1 4 -- - gikT¹ © § · –k Tik 1 4 -- - gik fαβ f αβ fiα fkβ gαβ
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