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

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?

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.