“We are assured with complete certainty that the competition for the five-thousand-dollar prize will be very keen, and that many essays will be submitted which, if they bore the names of their authors, would pass anywhere as authoritative statements. The judges will confront a task of extraordinary difficulty in the effort to determine which of these efforts is the best; and we believe the difficulties are such that multiplication of judges would merely multiply the obstacles to an agreement. It is altogether likely that the initial impressions of two or three or five judges would incline toward two or three or five essays, and that any final decision would be attainable only after much consultation and discussion. It seems to us that by making the committee as small as possible while still preserving the necessary feature that its decision represent a consensus, we shall simplify both the mental and the physical problem of coming to an agreement. We believe that the award should if possible represent a unanimous decision, without any minority report, and that such a requirement is far more likely to be met among two men than among three or five. At the same time, the bringing together of two men and the details of general administration of their work together are far simpler than if there were three or five. So we have finally decided to have but two judges, and in this we have the endorsement of all the competent opinion that we have consulted.
“The gentlemen who have consented to act as Judges are Professors Leigh Page and Edwin Plimpton Adams, of the departments of physics of Yale and Princeton Universities, respectively. Both are of the younger generation of physicists that has paid special attention to those phases of mathematics and physics involved in the Einstein theories, and both have paid special attention to these theories themselves. We are gratified to be able to put forward as Judges two men so eminently qualified to act. We feel that we may here appropriately quote Professor Page, who says in his acceptance: ‘As the large prize offers a great inducement, I had thought of entering the contest. However I realize that not many people in this country have made a considerable study of Einstein’s theory, and if all who have should enter the contest, it would be difficult to secure suitable Judges.’ Without any desire to put the gentleman in the position of pleading for himself, we think this suggests very well the extent to which the Scientific American, the contestants, and the public at large, are indebted to Professors Page and Adams for their willingness to serve in the difficult capacity of Judges.”
It might appropriately have been added to this announcement that it was altogether to the credit of science and the scientific spirit that the first two gentlemen approached with the invitation to act as Judges were willing to forego their prospects as contestants in order thus to contribute to the success of the contest.
Three Thousand Words
Of the conditions, the one which evoked most comment was that stating the word limit. This limit was decided upon after the most careful discussion of the possibilities of the situation. It was not imagined for a moment that any contestant would succeed in getting within 3,000 words a complete discussion of all aspects of the Special and the General Theories of Relativity. It was however felt that for popular reading a single essay should not be much if any longer than this. Moreover, I will say quite frankly that we should never have encouraged Mr. Higgins to offer such a prize if we had supposed that the winning essay was the only thing of value that would come from the contest, or if we had not expected to find in many of the other essays material which would be altogether deserving of the light. From the beginning we had in view the present volume, and the severe restriction in length was deliberately imposed for the purpose of forcing every contestant to stick to what he considered the most significant viewpoints, and to give his best skill to displaying the theories of Einstein to the utmost advantage from these viewpoints. We felt that divergent viewpoints would be more advantageously treated in this manner than if we gave each contestant enough space to discuss the subject from all sides; and that the award of the prize to the essay which, among other requirements, seemed to the Judges to embody the best choice of material, would greatly simplify the working of the contest without effecting any injustice against those contestants who displayed with equal skill less happily chosen material. Perhaps on this point I may again quote with profit the editorial page of the Scientific American:
“An essay of three thousand words is not long enough to lose a reader more than once; if it does lose him it is a failure, and if it doesn’t it is a competitor that will go into the final elimination trials for the prize. If we can present, as a result of the contest, six or a dozen essays of this length that will not lose the lay reader at all, we shall have produced something amply worth the expenditure of Mr. Higgins’ money and our time. For such a number of essays of such character will of necessity present many different aspects of the Einstein theories, and in many different ways, and in doing so will contribute greatly to the popular enlightenment.
“Really the significant part of what has already appeared is not the part that is intelligible, but rather the part that, being unintelligible, casts the shadow of doubt and suspicion on the whole. The successful competitor for the prize and his close contestants will have written essays that, without any claim to completeness, will emphasize what seems to each author the big outstanding feature; and every one of them will be intelligible. Together they will in all probability be reasonably complete, and will retain the individual characteristic of intelligibility. They will approach the various parts of the field from various directions—we could fill this page with suggestions as to how the one item of the four-dimensional character of Einstein’s time-space might be set forth for the general reader. And when a man must say in three thousand words as much as he can of what eminent scientists have said in whole volumes—well, the result in some cases will be sheer failure, and in others a product of the first water. The best of the essays will shine through intelligent selection of what is to be said, and brilliant success in saying it. It is to get a group of essays of this character, not to get the single essay which will earn the palm, that the prize is offered.”