New batch of Einstein letters goes to Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, Middle East - Israel's Hebrew University announced on Wednesday that it had obtained a "magnificent" collection of Albert Einstein's manuscripts, shedding new light on the mind and soul of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist ahead of his 140th birthday.

The bulk of the 110-page collection consists of yellowed pages of handwritten equations, as well as several personal letters written in German.

Hebrew University unveiled the collection to coincide with the 140th anniversary of Einstein's birthday on March 14.

Most of the documents constitute handwritten mathematical calculations behind Einstein's scientific writings in the late 1940s.

There are also letters that Einstein, born in Germany in 1879, wrote to collaborators that deal with a range of scientific and personal issues, including one to his son, Hans Albert.

Nearly all the documents had been known to researchers and available in the form of copies - "sometimes better copies, sometimes very poor copies", said Hanoch Gutfreund, scientific adviser to the university's Einstein archives.

Gutfreund, a physics professor and former president of the university, said the eight-page appendix of the 1930 unified theory paper had never been published, though researchers had copies of it.

"But in the copies we had, one page was missing, and that was a problem. That was a puzzle," Gutfreund said.

"And to our surprise, to our delight, that page is now here. It came with the new material," he said.

The university said: "This article was one of many in Einstein's attempts to unify the forces of nature into one, single theory and he devoted the last 30 years of his life to this effort."

The collection, acquired through a donation from the Crown-Goodman Foundation in Chicago, was bought from Gary Berger, a North Carolina doctor who had a private collection of Einstein writings.

The acquisition was a birthday gift not only to the collectors and public, "but to Einstein himself, because all of the material here reaches the place he wanted it to", Gutfreund said.

Afp - Ap

(China Daily 03/08/2019 page11)