DOCUMENT 200 MARCH 1910 233 [2]In Laub 1909b the macroscopic polarization in a gas is calculated, using special relativ- ity, by first determining the polarization due to the electrons in those molecules of the gas that move with a certain speed v in a given direction and then by summing over all values and di- rections of v. [3]Alfred Kleiner. [4]Philipp Lenard. [5]Max Born was Privatdozent in physics at the University of Göttingen Gustav Herglotz (1881-1953) was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Leipzig. The papers are Her- glotz 1910 and Born 1910, which is a reaction to Herglotz's paper and elaborates on Born's first paper on the relativistic rigid body, Born 1909a. See Pauli 1921, sec. 45, and Miller 1981, secs. 7.4.7-7.4.12, for more details. See also Docs. 179 and 197 for earlier comments by Ein- stein on the rigid-body problem. [6]See Herglotz 1910. The conclusion that in relativity theory a rigid body (in Born's sense) has only three degrees of freedom was reached independently by Fritz Noether (1884-?) in Noether 1910. [7] Presented 21 September at the 81st meeting of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Arzte and published as Einstein 1909c (Vol. 2, Doc. 60). [8]The predictions were made in Einstein 1907a (Vol. 2, Doc. 38). [9]Walther Nernst (1864-1941) was Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Berlin Heinrich Rubens. Nernst visited Einstein on the way to Lausanne, canton of Vaud. De- scribing his meeting with Einstein as very stimulating and interesting, Nernst praises him as "Boltzmann redivivus" and stresses the importance of his "quantum hypothesis," while re- maining unsure of its validity (see Walther Nernst to Arthur Schuster, 17 March 1910, UkLRS, Sc. 130). On 17 February Nernst had submitted a paper (Nernst 1910) in which it was conclud- ed that the behavior of specific heats was in qualitative accordance with Einstein's theory. Fur- ther work led a year later to Nernst's conclusion that his experimental results constituted a "brilliant confirmation" ("glänzende Bestätigung") of quantum theory (Nernst 1911b, p. 310), even though the low temperature behavior of the specific heats did not quite fit with the pre- dictions. Rubens's work (see, e.g. Rubens and Hollnagel 1910) focused on the measurement of residual rays in the far infrared. His results were interpreted as providing information on the frequencies of atomic vibrations-the crucial parameters in Einstein's theory of specific heats. See Vol. 3, Introduction, sec. 4, for more details. [10]Johannes Stark and Arnold Sommerfeld. Their controversy concerned Stark's applica- tion of the light quantum hypothesis to X-rays in Stark 1909b. In this paper Stark had given an explanation of the observed asymmetry of the intensity of the X-rays emitted by cathode rays. In Stark's explanation the quantum hypothesis played a role Sommerfeld claimed that classi- cal electromagnetic theory (the pulse theory of X-rays) could account for the observations. See Sommerfeld 1909, 1910a, and Stark 1910 for the discussion see also Hermann 1967 and Wheaton 1983, pp. 120-132 for historical discussions. Einstein's comments on Sommerfeld's explanation of the asymmetry are in Doc. 197. [11]Paul Hertz. 200. To Lucien Chavan [Zurich,] Donnerstag. [24 March 1910][1] Lieber Herr Chavan! Ihr Brief hat mich ausserordentlich erfreut. Es wäre mir am allerliebsten, wenn Sie sogleich zu uns kämen für mehrere Tage, wenn irgend möglich mit Ihrer Frau. Erst gestern Abend sagte ich zu meiner Frau, dass ich Sie so gern wiedersehen möchte. Nehmen Sie also sogleich etwas Ferien und kommen
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