DOC. 6 RESPONSE TO
A
COMMENT BY
J.
STARK
125
Doc.
6
Response
to
a
Comment
by
J. Stark:
"On
an
Application
of Planck's Fundamental Law ..."
by
A. Einstein
[Annalen
der
Physik
38
(1912):
888]
J.
Stark has
written
a
comment
on
a
recently published paper
of
mine1
for the
purpose
of
defending
his intellectual
property.2
I
will
not
go
into the
question
of
priority
that he has
raised,
because this would
hardly
interest
anyone,
all the
more so
because the law of
photochemical equivalence
is
a
self-evident
consequence
of the
quantum hypothesis.3
But
I
see
from Stark's remark
that I did
not
bring
out
the
purpose
of
my paper clearly enough.
The
paper
was
supposed
to
show that the
derivation of the
law of
photochemical equivalence
does not
require
the
quantum
hypothesis,
but that
it
can
be
deduced from certain
simple assumptions
about the
photochemical process by way
of
thermodynamics.
Prague,
30
May
1912
(Received
on
30
May
1912)
1A.
Einstein,
Ann.
d.
Phys. 37(1912):
832.
2J.
Stark,
Ann.
d.
Phys.
38
(1912):
467.
3Besides,
for the
case
where the
photochemically
sensitive molecule is
split
into
ions,
I
already
enunciated this law
distinctly as
far back
as
in
my
first
paper
on
the
quantum
hypothesis
(Ann.
d.
Phys.
17 [1905]:
148).