Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered

vinlud writes "The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics. The German-language manuscript is titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas," and is dated December 1924. It is considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs. High-resolution photographs of the 16-page manuscript are posted on the institute's web site."

Comments

Other than

[LordChaos]

... being one of the first people to make the world see that atomic warfare was not such a good idea - to which he devoted much of his later life.

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

Japan was already starving, didn't do much to them. There is no such thing as "military complexes" as all industry was at the time basically a military installation. You'd have to bomb them back a few centuries, and even then they could secretly make weapons to send against your fleet. Suicide attacks to them weren't exactly against the rules.

From a US point of view a blockade would be expensive and probably unpopular, and Japan could last a while. Humanitarian agencies would object, complain and Japan would sooner or later get sent food anyway.

I'm rather sure that a lot more than a few hundred thousand would die of starvation before they managed to get farming up to a level where it could support the nation, probably millions would be dead as without industrialization farming could never support their population. So you advocate the starving of millions compared to the nuking of thousands, interesting position.

If you wish to see what a nation can degrade into given an insane enough government, look at North Korea. Doesn't mean the people are somehow unintelligent" or "uncivilized" simply that the government is too oppressive. Remember, for a long time most of Europe was composed of peasants (ie: mindless slaves).

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

From what I've read he was a blind fool who believed Stalin was a "good guy." Churchill didn't seem to have any such illusions. Russia was also able to by not declaring war on Japan to get three nice new US bombers to take apart, it was neutral (as far as the Japan-US war was concerned) so by international treaty it could not give them back to the US after they landed on Russian soil.

Point 3 made sense actually after the conference, Stalin got Berlin anyway so he may as well waste his own man in claiming it instead of the Allies wasting their own men only to give it to Stalin anyway.

Re:Other than

[MikeBabcock]

This is cloudier than you make it out to be.

IMHO, scientists and labourers may be immoral or even valid targets for war prisons, but are not in any means enemy combattants until they hold a weapon and aim it at their enemies.

What defines a civilian? They're the people with no means to defend themselves and probably no real interest in being active members of the war.

Are the singers who go to the front and sing for the soldiers combattants? They raise moral and troop effectiveness more than some of those in your list would.

Handwriting

[jthayden]

I know German, but I'm still having trouble reading the manuscripts. His n, u, r and m all look very similar. I do like the way the entire page has a slant to the right though. Maybe some student of Freud could read something into that?

Re:Handwriting

[onekanobe]

It's Sütterlin, the old German style of hand-writing. See here: http://www.peter-doerling.de/Englisch/Sutterlin.ht m

Re:Handwriting

[hankwang]

It's Sütterlin, the old German style of hand-writing.

Interesting theory, but no. The web page explains that it was taught at school between 1915 and 1941, while Einstein probably learnt writing between 1885 and 1890. Moreover the letters in Einstein's manuscript don't look anywhere close to those in the Sütterlin script. The only thing that can be said is that Einstein didn't make clear arcade curves (the ones in n, m) which makes it hard to read if you don't know German.

Not exactly

[mnemonic_]

Later in his life, Einstein was rather divided over violent and non-violent resistance. For example, in a 1941 letter to a pacifist he said:

If all the young people in America were to act as you intend to act, the country would be defenseless and easily delivered into slavery.

The issue became progressively more cloudy as Einstein aged. A Guardian article details Einstein's conversations with a Japanese pen-pal after World War II:

I didn't write that I was an absolute pacifist but that I have always been a convinced pacifist. That means there are circumstances in which in my opinion it is necessary to use force.

Einstein likely changed his views because of the plight of the Jews in Nazi-ruled Germany and elsewhere. Though he was not a practicing Jew, he still felt connected to the Semite people and served the Technion Institute in Israel. By the circumstances of his time, Einstein accepted war as a necessity to combat extraordinary evils.

One more manuscript to a pool of many scans

[schestowitz]

If it took them 80 years to find his manuscript, one wonders how much of his privacy is in jeopardy.

For the curious, I think it's been 2 or 3 years since Albert's manuscripts were put in:

http://alberteinstein.info/

I remember the announcement from Reuters at the time.

Einstein and Elvis

[cortex]

So much has made of Einstein's (admittedly great) discoveries for so long I am beginning to place him in the same mental catagory as Elvis...

"Yet another Einstein sighting, nothing to see here, move along."

Anyone else feel the same?

wife did the writing

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember seeing a documentary in Italy about Einstein and that his first wife did most of the grunt work and writing and copying. So I would say he had bad writing skills because he let others do most of it for him.

Many theories abound about her real input because she wasnt just a secretary but a mathematician in her own right.

It probably means nothing but seems to me when you live and work with someone who is a mathematician, there MUST have been some input.

Then again, many of his bios dont even mention her existence which again probably means nothing but makes you wonder how it can be overlooked.

daniel

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[eyeye]

Sorry, but the fact they (Japanese) used live humans as petri dishes for deadly bacteria then jumped on them to squeeze out all the blood so they can infect more people and breed more bacteria, somehow, even today, doesn't help at all the cause of those who go around saying "oh the poor Japanese, we shouldn't have bombed them, they are so innocent"

You seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between individual people and entire races. Cant you imagine in that small brain of yours that *just maybe* not the entire japanese race were evil murderers and didnt deserve to die horrible deaths.

By your own logic al qaeda should attack civilians for the military acts of some US soldiers.

Try to think about that for a second.

Re:Hey dude

[MightyMartian]

Good grief, have you ever bothered to read history? The Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally. The decision was made to retain the Emperor as a figurehead, to allow the smoother transition of Japanese society from an essentially militaristic, fascist government to a peaceful one. Considering the success of Japan in the post-war years, I'd have to say that of all the American foreign policy initiatives (such idiotic things Cuba and the Phillipines) the fashioning of modern Japan surely must stand out as an enormous success that turned a determined enemy into an industrious ally. I wish the Americans could do that more often.