D O C U M E N T 7 5 S E P T E M B E R 1 9 2 5 8 3 If one were to ascend on a fine spring night from Zurich, the flight would be en- tirely safe. One could reach 3,000 or 4,000 m. During landing, a few accumulators would, in the worst case, have to serve as emergency ballast. I would very much like to perform this experiment, if funding for it were avail- able and if you could encourage me. However, I do not want to undertake anything before I have learned of your opinion. Respectfully and sincerely yours, A. Piccard 75. From Paul Ehrenfest Leyden, 23 September 1925 Dear Einstein, I am writing you hurriedly regarding the Kramers matter,[1] although I hardly believe that anything can be accomplished here. Background: Before the summer, I visited Ornstein[2] without any actual reason, motivated solely by the following circumstances: 1. Coming home from Göttingen, I felt so particularly pleased that, thanks to the energetic intervention of Mrs. Born, a mountain of completely unnecessary misunderstandings between Born[3] and me had been cleared up, which had weighed upon me all the more since I knew Born to be a truly noble person.— 2 Coster,[4] who had seen Ornstein’s laboratory, had told me that O. had managed not only a quite excellent job of equipping his new laboratory, but also a complete revitalization of the entire operation in the labora- tory—and, to be sure, not merely as a result of his rather severely ruthless energy but, above all, because he simply succeeds in getting all the people there to work together JOYFULLY.— I want to tell you directly that I had the same particularly favorable impression during my visit. 3 I felt that it is very important for the future that the good relationships between the physicists in Holland continue as they have up until now, above all, thanks to Lorentz.[5] Saturday, the 19th, I wrote to O. as per our agreement, with the most candid diplomacy possible throughout, that I had heard he wanted to give his position to Burger.[6] (You will, hopefully, not confuse Burger with Burgers![7] The former is a student and assistant of O., a physics lec- turer in Utrecht for about two years. This is the position that O. had successfully proposed to the Ministry as a savings measure, instead of the professorship for DE HAAS,[8] with whom the Ministry had at that time already carried out all discus- sions regarding the appointment.)— I wrote to him personally, and in letters that I asked to be forwarded by him to his faculty colleagues Cohen and Kruyt (physical
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