338
DOC. 445
JUNE
1913
against
him
too
much.
Because without
taking
a
risk from time to time it
is
impossible,
even
in
the
most exact
natural
science, to
introduce real
innovations.
At the
moment he
works
intensively on a new
theory
of
gravitation;
with
what
success,
only
the future
will
tell.
Apart
from
his
great
productivity,
Einstein
has
a
special
talent for
getting
to
the
bottom of other
scientists'
newly
emerging
views and assertions, and for
assessing
their
relationship to
each other
and
to
experience
with
surprising
certainty.
It
is not
only
in
the formulation
and
critique
of
new
hypotheses, however,
but
also
in
the
handling
and
deepening
of
classical
theory
that Einstein
has
ranked
as a
master
ever
since
the
beginning
of his
publishing
activity.
His
preferred
area
of
work
here
is
the
kinetic
theory
of
matter and its
relations
to
the
principal
laws
of
thermodynamics.
He
supplemented
Gibbs's
somewhat abstract
treatment of statistical
mechanics
by
an
intuitive,
physical presentation,
and drew from
Boltzmann's
laws
concerning
the
fluctuations of
state
variables of
a
system
in
thermodynamic equilibrium
a
number of
consequences
that
stimulated
experimental
research
in several directions, such
as,
first
of
all,
Perrin's
elegant
investigations
of Brownian molecular motion
(translation
and
rotation of
suspended particles),
whose
importance
for the
kinetic
theory
of
matter
was
much
enhanced
precisely
by
Einstein's contribution.
The
undersigned
are very
well
aware
that their
proposal
to
accept
so
young
a
scholar
as a
regular
member of
the
Academy is
unusual;
but
they
are
of
the
opinion not
only
that
the unusual circumstances
adequately
justify
the
proposal,
but
also
that the interests of
the
Academy
really
require
that
the
opportunity
that
now
presents
itself
to
obtain
such
an
extraordinary person
be
taken
advantage
of
as fully as possible.
Even
if
they,
naturally,
cannot
guarantee
the future,
they
are
fully
convinced
that the recommended
individual's
previous
accomplishments, only
the
most
prominent
of
which
are
set out in
the
compilation
given
here,
fully justify
his
appointment
to
the
country's
most
distinguished
scientific
institute, and
they
are,
further, also convinced
that the entire
world
of
physics
will
consider Einstein's
joining
the
Berlin
Academy
of
Sciences
as
an
especially
valuable
gain
for the
Academy.
[Max]
Planck
[Walther]
Nernst
[Heinrich]
Rubens
E[mil]
Warburg[11]