The Nobel Museum in Stockholm has been gifted Albert Einstein‘s first paper published after he received the Nobel Prize in 1922 and discussing his then still controversial relativity theory.
Swedish businessman Per Taube bought the handwritten two-page document at an auction for 1.2 million krona (110,000 euros) in December last year. He has now made good on his promise to gift the manuscript to the Nobel Museum, which will put it on display in a glass frame this autumn.
The paper, written in November 1922 while Einstein was attending conferences in south-east Asia, was published a month later by the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
It also has handwritten editor’s annotations by German physicist Max von Laue who won the Nobel Prize in 1914. Von Laue owned the manuscript until 1948 before it passed into the hands of private collectors.
Significantly, the document contains a modified version of the relativity theory and shows that Einstein was facing fierce resistance within the scientific community.
“This letter shows that even though Albert Einstein had received the Nobel prize, his physics was very much part of the debate among scientists at that time and Albert Einstein himself was also part of this debate,” said Gustav Kallstrand, senior curator at the Nobel Prize museum.
Published - June 20, 2019 09:25 pm IST
