Einstein, the searcher

by Alexander Moszkowski

With all their joys and inspirations the experiences in Italy remained but a short episode. Einstein resolved on a new tour, which was not without a professional purpose. He made a pilgrimage to Switzerland with the intention of studying mathematics and physics at the Zürich Polytechnical Institute. But he was not to be successful in his first effort to gain entrance. The conditions of entry required a standard in descriptive sciences and modern languages that he had not yet reached. So he turned to Aarau, where he was allowed to extend his knowledge with the help of excellent methods at the Canton school. Even it the present day Einstein talks with extreme enthusiasm of the organization of this model school that corresponds in rank approximately to a German Realgymnasium (or an English Grammar School). There was nothing to remind him of the continual manipulation of the sceptre of authority at the Luitpold school barracks; he easily obtained his leaving certificate, and now the portals of the Zürich Polytechnicum were open for him.

He himself was probably not aware that he carried a marshal's baton in his own mathematical equipment. But, in looking back, we come across astounding things. For it is a fact that even in the pupil at Aarau problems had taken root that already lay in the vanguard of research at that time. He was not yet a finder, but what he sought as a sixteen-year-old boy was already stretching into the realms of his later discoveries. We have here simply to register facts, and to abstain from making an analysis of his development, for how are we to trace out the intermediate steps, and to discover the sudden phases of thought that lead a very young Canton pupil to feel his way into a still undiscovered branch of physics? The problem that occupied him was the optics of moving bodies, or, more exactly, the emission of light from bodies that move relatively to the ether. This contains the first flash of the grandiose complex of ideas that was later to lead to a revision of our picture of the world. And if a biographer should state that the first beginnings of the doctrine of relativity occurred at that time, he would not be making an objectively false statement.

The ambitions of the youth by no means reached these flights of imagination, for whereas the latter signified the coming power of his wings, he himself set a modest goal. He wished to become a schoolmaster, and imagined that in choosing this career he was allowing his hopes to run high. This was in conformity with the esteem in which he held the status of teachers. In the Zürich Technical School there is a section equipped as a department for preparing teachers, and in this Einstein studied from the age of seventeen to the age of twenty-one, perfectly satisfied with the thought of sitting, not on the pupil's bench, but at the master's desk, and of exercising a beneficial if limited influence as a preceptor of the young.

He was still under the sway of the feeling that he was not sufficiently experienced in life and that he dare not venture out into the light for existence in the great turmoil of the world. He saw in this struggle, which pitted man against man, led to exhibitions of violence, and aroused ambition for glittering unrealities, cause only for disgust and alienation. The prospect of personal success did not lure him to try force against force. Thus, for the time being, it was his ideal to lead a very modest existence. From various quarters he had been given hopes of a position as assistant to some professor of physics or mathematics. But for unknown reasons he was everywhere refused. These apparently obscure grounds, it must be said with regret, become clearer when we bear in mind his confession of faith. Nor did his hopes of teaching at a gymnasium seem near fulfilment, as certain conditions of birth raised obstacles. In the first place, he was not a Swiss; in fact, since his stay in Milan he was without a nationality at all in the bureaucratic sense, and then he had no personal connexions, without which, at least at that time, there was no chance of progress even for a talented person. Yet the young student who was entirely without protection of any sort had to overcome the cares and satisfy the needs of daily life. He could not rely on material help from his parents, who themselves lived in restricted circumstances, and thus we find him a little later in Schaffhausen and Bern, where he earned a small pittance as a private tutor.

He found consolation in the fact that he preserved a certain independence, which meant the more to him as his instinct for freedom led him to discover the essential things in himself. Thus, earlier, too, during his studies at Zürich he had carried on his work in theoretical physics at home, almost entirely apart from the lectures at the Polytechnic, plunging himself into the writings of Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, Boltzmann, and Drude. Disregarding chronological order, we must here mention that he found a partner in these studies who was working in a similar direction, a Southern Slavonic student, whom he married in the year 1903. This union was dissolved after a number of years. Later he found the ideal of domestic happiness at the side of a woman whose grace is matched by her intelligence, Else Einstein, his cousin, whom he married in Berlin.

In 1901, after living in Switzerland for five years, he acquired the citizenship of Zürich, and this at last gave him the opportunity of rising above material cares. His University friend, Marcel Grossmann, lent him a helping hand by recommending him to the Swiss Patent Office, the director of which was his personal friend. Einstein occupied himself here from 1902 to 1905 as a technical expert, that is, as an examiner of applications for patents, and this position gave him the chance of moving about in absolute freedom in the realms of technical science. Whoever has a strong predilection for discovery will perhaps feel estranged to find Einstein so long in the sphere of "invention," but, as Einstein himself emphasizes very strongly, both regions make great demands on clearly defined and accurate thought. He recognizes a definite relationship between the knowledge that he gained at the Patent Office and the theoretical results that appeared at the same time as products of intensive thought.

In 1905, in the midst of his work, the storm broke loose in him with the suddenness of a hurricane. In quick succession his mind disburdened itself of the abundance of ideas that had stored themselves up in the work of the preceding years, and these ideas signify more to us than a definite stage in the development of an individual. What physicists have come to regard as an elaboration of the heritage of Galilei and Newton had matured in him. We merely record the title of dissertations, which appeared in 1905 in the Annalen der Physik: "Concerning a Heuristic Standpoint towards the Production and Transformation of Light"—"Concerning the Inertia of Energy"—"The Law of Brownian Movement."—Then the most important contribution: "The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," that contained the revolutionary ideas underlying the special theory of relativity. To these is to be added a dissertation for his doctorate in the same year: "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions."

In all, these represent a life-work that belongs to the history of science. It was certainly some considerable time before his work began its triumphal march in the sight of the world, and it may be added that treasures were hidden in these disquisitions that were not understood till long years afterwards. Yet the youthful discoverer was not passed over without signs of friendly appreciation. He received a letter, couched in very warm terms, from the celebrated physicist, Max Planck, who was a complete stranger to him at that time; it spoke in glowing words of his essay, "The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." This letter was the first diploma, the forerunner of all the honours that later swept over him like a tidal wave.

It was his intention to obtain a tutorial position at the University. An appointment to Bern was at first again hindered by certain obstacles which he would probably have overcome if he had applied himself energetically to attaining his goal. He finally received his appointment, but exercised his duties for only a very short time, as Zürich now opened her arms to him. In 1909 he accepted the position of Professor extraordinarius there for theoretical physics, and soon assembled a grateful audience about himself. Nevertheless, during the earlier stages of his professorship he found it difficult to suppress a longing for the quiet, unexcited life of his patent-office work, in which he seemed to have had a still greater degree of independence. In 1911 he accepted a new appointment as Professor Ordinarius to Prague, which offered him more favourable emoluments as an inducement. In the autumn of 1912 he returned to Zürich as a Professor at the Polytechnic, and in the early part of 1914 he was drawn into the strong magnetic field of the northern capital; he arrived at the Spree, and has, since then, lived among us. He is now a Swiss by nationality, a world citizen by conviction, and, professionally, a member of the Berlin Academy and attached in a lecturing capacity to the University. Here he perfected his works on relativity, ending in the superlative elaboration of the theory of gravitation, the beginnings of which stretch back to the year 1907. He had spent eight years in a concentrated effort of severe thought to bring it to completion, and perhaps centuries will be necessary before the world will gain a complete perspective of all the consequences of his theory.

For the theory asks us to brush aside habits of thought that have claimed an hereditary position in pre-eminent minds. One of the foremost physicists, Henri Poincaré, had confessed as late as 1910 that it caused him the greatest effort to find his way into Einstein's new mechanics. Another whole year passed before he gave up his last doubts. Then he passed with flying colours into Einstein's camp, and recommended Einstein's appointment to the Professorship at Zürich, in conjunction with the discoverer of radium, Madame Curie, in an exuberant letter which may add its note of appreciation here: