D O C . 1 2 8 A D D R E S S AT L O R E N T Z J U B I L E E 1 5 1 128. Address at Celebration of Hendrik A. Lorentz’s Doctorate Jubilee [Einstein 1926b] Dated 11 December 1925 Published January 1926 In: Physica 6 (1926): 20–21. A great number of scholarly societies from abroad extended their congratula- tions to you, esteemed colleague, in eloquent addresses on this uplifting occasion which has brought us together today.[1] I speak here not only in their names but also in the names of countless foreign scientific researchers who are thinking of you to- day with admiration and congeniality.[2] Your influence on the development of physics has been so decisive that without your work nobody can say when science would have correctly recognized the in- fluence of matter and its[3] motions on electromagnetic and optical processes. By continuing Maxwell’s lifework in a consistent way, you not only solved the relation between matter and the electromagnetic field but thus delivered the basis for rela- tivity theory and the electric theory of matter. Your work is so wonderfully com- plete that one can reduce its axiomatic basis to a single statement: The Maxwell equations of empty space are valid everywhere and matter acts electromagnetically solely in that its smallest particles are bearers of electric charges.[4] Relying on this assumption, you derived an almost immeasurable abundance of consequences which have been confirmed by experience. For about 20 years we have known that your wonderful electrodynamic system requires elaboration in order for it to describe the so-called quantum phenomena.[5] The Maxwell-Lorentz theory also serves as an important tool for the probing en- deavors of our time so as to come closer to the nature of elementary processes. You yourself participated crucially in this more recent development[6] with a clear and general proof of the failure of the so-called classical theory as well as with deriva- tions of important individual results you dedicated yourself to individual problems always with as much interest as to questions of principle. There is hardly a subfield in the physical sciences that you have not furthered at some time or another by your investigations. [p. 20] [p. 21]