212 DOCS.
218,
219
APRIL-MAY
1916
218. To
Paul
Ehrenfest
[Berlin,
29 April
1916]
Dear
Ehrenfest,
Upon returning
from
Switzerland I found
your
postcard. I’ll
gladly
send
you
what
you request, quite musty stuff,
God forbid.
I
could not find
the
Solvay
publication.[1]
But
these
things
are
developed impeccably
in
Lorentz’s
Parisian
lectures,[2]
so
you
lose
nothing.
I’ll
also send
you
an
uncorrected
correction
of
my
summarizing paper
on
gravitation;[3]
write
me a
frank
critique
of
this
portrayal
of
the
subject
sometime!
I
wanted to write
a
comprehensible
introduction but
don’t know whether
this
has succeeded.
Show
it to Nordstrom[4]
as
well
when he
comes.
I
was
very pleased
about
Planck’s
open
letter
and
no
less
about
Lorentz’s
fine
cooperation.[5]
The
world would be
a
true
paradise
if such
persons
were
leaders
of
the
general
public.
I constantly feel like
popping
in to
see
you
all.
Maybe
this
will
happen
some-
time
unexpectedly.
With
warm
regards
to
you, your
family,
Lorentz,
and de
Haas, yours,
A.
Einstein.
219. To
Michele
Besso
[Berlin,]
14
May,
[1916][1]
Dear
Michele,
Everything else
went
well
(on
the
trip
and
later).[2]
My
laziness in
writing
has
not
gotten worse,
you
know,
it’s
just
that
you’ve
improved, strangely
and happily
enough.
Our
real-life Sterne novel
is at
least
as
fine
as
the
original
and calls for
continuation.[3]
That
thing
about
Brownian motion
is Stodola’s[4]
barroom
idea,
which
I
have
already
tried
to
talk
him out
of
once,
in vain. The
curve
is not
an
extremum
problem.
The allowed lift
is
given by
the
stability
conditions of
the
fluid
flow;[5]
when
the
lift
is
great,
the
airflow
does
not follow
the
surface,
resulting
in vortices.
airfoil