246
DOC.
254
SEPTEMBER
1916
254. To Michele Besso
[Berlin,] 6
September 1916
Dear
Michele,
I
transmitted the
message
to
your
friend
Russi.[1] Your
thorough report
on
Mileva’s condition
appeased
me greatly.[2]
From
now
on,
I’ll not
trouble
her
any
more
with the
divorce.[3]
The
corresponding
battle
with
my
relatives has been
fought.
I
have learned
to
withstand
tears.[4]
Planck’s
papers provide
no
correlation between
h
and
e.
You have in
mind
the
dimensional
equivalence
and
virtually
identical order
of magnitude
of
e2/c
and
h,
which
no
theory
has elucidated
yet,
though.[5]
To
derive Wien’s
displacement
law,
the
Doppler principle
and the law
of
radiation
pressure
are
needed,
which
have been described
only according
to
undulatory
theory, however,
on
the
whole
similar
to
the
concept
of
frequency,
of
course.[6]
But what
is
crucial
is
that the
statistical
considerations
leading
to
Planck’s formula have become
uniform
and
thus
have become the
most
general imaginable,
in
that
nothing
more
is
assumed
about
the
special
properties of
the molecules involved
than the
most
general
idea
of
the
quantum.[7]
The result
(not
yet
contained in the
paper
sent
to
you)
thus
obtained
is
that
at
each
elementary
transfer
of
energy
between
radiation and
matter,
the
impulse
quantity
hv/c
is
passed
on
to
the
molecule.[8]
It
follows
from
this that
any
such
elementary process
is
an
entirely
directed
process.
Thus
light
quanta
are as
good
as
established.
I’m
going
to attempt
the
trip to Lorentz.[9]
To do
it,
I need
an
original
of
my
citizenship
certificate. I wrote to
Zurich for it and
requested
that the
document
be
sent to
you,
in
case
the
Registry
Office
does
not
prepare mailings
abroad. In
that
case,
be
so
good
as
to
send
me
the
document
by
return
mail.[10]
With best
regards
to
you
and
your
family,
yours,
Albert.
With
whom
are
you staying,
and
what
is
tying you
down in Berne for such
a
long
time?