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."

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.

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 [guardian.co.uk] 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.

Re:Not exactly

[Concerned Onlooker]

It seems a reasonable, if weird, position. You can feel in your core a disgust of violence, yet if you completely reject the use of force only the pricks and sociopaths will win in the end because they will always happily resort to violence.

Re:Not exactly

[zootm]

Your parent post was referring to atomic warfare, however, which I think was less of a contentious subject for him.

Re:Other than

[raider_red]

They're best not fought at all. This may not always be possible, and war may sometimes be a necessary evil.

Though it may be necessary, it is still evil, and should only be approached with the greatest trepidation and after all good options have been exhausted.

Re:Other than

[nukem996]

Actually no. We nuked Japan because we did not want the USSR to liberate Japan, like they did Germany(they were the first ones in Berlin and who killed all the remaining Nazis while we stayed about 60 miles away cleaning up any insurgents). We thought that it would make it look like the Soviets won the war and not the US. In fact many of the leaders in Japan were considering surrendering but would not surrender unconditionally like we wanted, they wanted to be able to keep there emperor who they viewed as G

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

Actually no. We nuked Japan because we did not want the USSR to liberate Japan,

While that may have been to some extent an unwritten view, the official one asfaik was to prevent an invasion. Then again, nothing ever does stop conspiracy theories does it?

like they did Germany(they were the first ones in Berlin and who killed all the remaining Nazis while we stayed about 60 miles away cleaning up any insurgents).

They got to Berlin first because Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt agreed beforehand that the area wo

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[benna]

The evil of the government is no excuse for us not to do everything we possibly could to avoid killing civilians. As I'm sure you learned in kindergarden, "two wrongs don't make a right." We did not have to sink to their level. What some japanese did does not reflect on all of them. Many Americans have done evil things, but that does not make all Americans evil.

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[benna]

I agree with most of this, but I get the sense from the end of your post that you are passing your own moral responsiblity to the Japanese. There may be every reason in the world the US DID nuke Japan. You've listed some good ones. It does not follow, though, that the US did the right thing.

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[drgonzo59]

I agree. It might not have been the right thing. It is me who thinks it is a right thing, but that doesn't mean much, just my oppinion.

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[shmlco]

"...ask the question "what in the hell was Japan thinking when it attacked U.S.?"

What, no one studied during history class? The Japanese believed that they were being pushed into a corner by Roosevelt and felt that they had to act to protect the Empire. They were thinking that the US was going to slap them with a trade embargo, which we did, in retaliation for Japan's expansionist efforts in China.

They were thinking that, if they eliminated the threat posed by the 7th fleet, strictly a military target, the US would be unable to enforce the embargo, and they'd have an additonal 6 months to a year in which to continue their expansion and seize the resource areas they thought they needed. After which, they'd present us with a fait accompli, and at the worst, sue for peace with their new borders intact.

In short, they did what quite a few people do. They went after what they wanted, and rationalized that no one would be in a position to stop them.

Unfortunately, the American people were outraged by the sneak attack and loss of life, made worse by the mistiming of the diplomatic note announcing the state of war between Japan and the US, which arrived well AFTER the attack took place.

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[drgonzo59]

Well, the more exact question, should have been "Didn't they really have any intelligence to estimate that US is many times more powerfull than they are?" It was a huge country that was not crippled by Nazis and that was ready to strike.

The reasonable answer to being pushed into a corner is to appologize for the attrocities commited in China, to return all the conquered territory and to turn against Hitler and become as neutral as possible and perhaps even a US ally. That is what generally Romania did. It

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[shmlco]

To answer your question, no, at that point in time our vast industrial capabilities were not obvious. And to continue the analogy, yes, stealing the Ferrari might be stupid... but then again, if you took out the only cop stationed within 4,500 miles, you might just get away with it.

You're entirely right that they could have backed down -- but really. .. how many nation states (or people, for that matter) are going to back down and admit they were wrong? After all, from their perspective, we were the ones

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[shmlco]

Actually, upon reflection, I take back the part about our idustrial capacity not being somewhat obvious.

However, there was still a real question as to whether or not we would mobilize that capacity, as it was apparent that our country was firmly in the grip of an isolationist stance. And even if we DID mobilize at some point in time, we were sure to become entangled in Europe with our Allies first.

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

Re:Other than

[larry bagina]

USSR didn't declare war on Japan until august 8, 1945. For reference, the atomic bombs were dropped August 6th and August 9th.

If you take a look at the Yalta conference, you have to wonder if Roosevelt was the most incompetent President ever, or just liked getting fucked up the ass by "Uncle Joe" Stalin.

Consider: in exchange for declaring war on Japan (which they did at the last possible moment), USSR got

1. All of Eastern Europe
2. Some of the Japanase Islands
3. US troops sant around and waited 2 weeks so th

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

Re:Other than

[ErikZ]

Yeah shocking, isn't it? Hating people you're at war with. :-P

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

...as does almost every other fuckin weapon and war. Dresden had more deaths than either atomic bomb.

The alternative was an invasion, had that happened you'd be bitching about how we should have used the bomb to save the millions that died due to the invasion.

In Berlin children and the elderly were forced to fight or be shot by their own side. Many died, most were lacking decent weaponry or supplies and simply acted as a last ditch human shield. You think the Japanese would somehow act "better" during an invasion than the Germans did?

Of course, this is not counting the thousands who would die of disease or famine as they resist invasion on their already supply starved island. Then there would have been the inevitable massive non-nuclear bombings so common during WW2, which would probably lead to many more deaths alone than the two atomic bombs did.

In a more philosophical sense, there were few real civilians as they were almost all helping the war effort one way or another (Japanese are efficient that way). The American troops were also civilians till they got dragged into this, so were the Japanese troops for that matter.

Re:Other than

[nathanh]

The alternative was an invasion...

Because there are only ever two options.

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

No, these were simply the two options asfaik seen at the time as solutions which are likely to lead to the desired result. It is documented that an invasion was expected if the bombs were not dropped as Japan was not likely to surrender, as such I am working within the confines of history. If you have another one, which doesn't rely on some horrid amount of hindsight to work, then please post it. It would be even better if you had some historical references that the idea was thought up at the time, as other

Re:Other than

[Coryoth]

Other options were discussed I believe, though never all that seriously. There was some consideration of dropping an atomic bomb (or two) away from a heavily populated area as a demonstration. How effective that would have been is debatable. The targetting was already well underway by that point (see the firebombings of many Japanese cities that killed about a million civilians), so militarised populated areas were most certainly fair game. Basically the ethics had already been thrown out a while ago, so th

Re:Other than

[nathanh]

No, these were simply the two options asfaik seen at the time as solutions which are likely to lead to the desired result. I

The military commanders weren't even consulted before the bomb was dropped.

"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

Eisenhower recommended against dropping the bomb.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

Admiral Lehay opposed the bombings, stating that they achieved nothing.

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

The vice chairman of US bombing survey said that the a-bombs were not necessary.

"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... (I) concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."

Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37 (my emphasis)

However the most damning evidence came from the Director of Naval Intelligence.

"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

"Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

"I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.

Ellis makes it clear beyond reasonable dispute that the a-bombs were dropped for POLITICAL reasons, not MILITARY reasons.

These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies. They are lies that you wish to believe because otherwise you might have to face up to the reality that sometimes the USA has done evil things. It's better to accept that the USA is fallible - just like every other democracy - and admit that the a-bombs were a MISTAKE.

PS: all credit goes to DABANSHEE [slashdot.org] for the research.

Re:Other than

[Teun]

Thanks for sharing this interresting compilation.

I'm sure you could find a similar number of high ranking officials with a contrary view but they are allways in the lime light anyway.

It is the fact we hear these statements so rarely that gives them an extra dimention.

Re:Other than

[Alomex]

These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies.

Wow, quite a statement. And completely false. Truman always insisted (and there is no reason to doubt it) that saving American lives was a prime reason for him to drop the bomb. After Iwo Jima, where the casualty rate was a thousand soldiers a day even while the Japanese defenders were starving and running out of food and water made it obvious that the invasion of a weakened and starved Japan would result in

Re:Other than

[Alomex]

Truman always insisted (and there is no reason to doubt it) that saving American lives was a prime reason for him to drop the bomb.

To make this more clear, Truman was a politician and he knew that he could never be reelected if it ever became known that he had sat on a weapon that could have finished the war at once while American soldiers died in the Pacific theatre.

All the same this does not negate the fact that dropping the bomb was (i) convenient politically and (ii) resulted in all likelihood in a low

Re:Other than

[canuck57]

Ellis makes it clear beyond reasonable dispute that the a-bombs were dropped for POLITICAL reasons, not MILITARY reasons.

These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies. They are lies that you wish to believe because otherwise you might have to face up to the reality that sometimes the USA has done evil things. It's better to accept that the USA is fallible - just like every other democracy - and admit that the a-bombs were a MISTAKE.

The political rea

Re:Other than

[Echnin]

Dresden only had a fraction of the dead (most say 35,000, some claim more than 100,000 at maximum) of either Hiroshima (240,000), Nagasaki (75,000), or the often-forgotten fire bombings of Tokyo (over 100,000). Many nationalist Japanese actually see this comparison as an example of how the westerners were more reluctant to take the lives of other westerners than Japanese.

Re:Hey dude

[Rakishi]

*sigh*
We had an unconditional surrender, although the emperor was kept as a non-divine figurehead. This was not required although the US probably decided it would lead to the best post-war atmosphere. In addition, I'm rather sure that the Japanese terms involved no occupation of Japan, letting the Japanese prosecute their own war criminals and at least some powers still left to the emperor.

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.

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

[Teun]

Perfect write up!

Re:Other than

[PsiPsiStar]

You bomb the fuck out of their military structures, and you form a blockade around the country. You starve it.

I don't suppose you authored the policy on Cuba, huh?

If you took the time to do a proper blocade,

1. The Japanese Atomic bomb program, which was more advanced than the German Atomic bomb program, might have resulted in usable Japanese atomic weapon. Japan had bases on the Asian mainland free from the steady bombing that Germany was subjected to, which maked enrichment feasible.

2. China and Russia wer

Re:Other than

[benna]

Well then perhaps we should have used that as leverage to get them to surrender as opposed to nuking them. But of course, we could have gotten a conditional surrender anyway. Truman just wanted to send a message to Stalin.

Re:Other than

[benna]

I don't look at it that way. I would prefer to minimize civilian deaths on both sides before minimizing soldier casualties on my own. I realize many of the civilians (though by no means all) contribute to the war effort, but this is not really an excuse. They are not the ones dropping the bombs, firing the bullets, etc. And what about the children? They weren't contributing.

Re:Other than

[drgonzo59]

The issue of "civilian" vs. "fighter" is often not a black and white kind of thing. If someone is supporting the Nazis and chose to help build the concentration camps, even though they could have had other equally paid job, are they an enemy combatant? What about those that produced Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid) used in gas chambers, are they enemy combatants? I think they are.

Why doesn't the same apply to the people who worked for the Mitsubishi arms plant in Nagasaki? Most of the town employees where working at the plant building weapons and ammunition to kill Americans. They could have chosen to be farmers, or say teachers, instead they most likely did support the goverment policy and the war against us.

You are right, the children weren't fighting yet, but the ones in Berlin were, and if we invaded Japan a lot more children would have been dead, because they would have been forced to defend "the Empire"

One thing that is always usefull to keep in mind is that it was the Japanese that attacked the U.S. What in the hell were they thinking? It is like me attacking the local police department with a baseball bat, I know I will get in trouble and end up in jail for a long time. If I get my family and friends on it, they will end up in jail for a long time too. Someone might ask me "what in the hell were you thinking?" Same thing with Japan. It was their goverment that sealed the fate of its children and elderly when they attacked U.S. It wasn't a defensive war, it wasn't even a preemtive attack, I don't think US would have ever attacked Japan unprovoked. So when they sent the battleships and the airplanes to Pearl Harbor, they technically "killed" a lot of Japanese civilians and as well as fighters.

On the other side, let's imagine that Japan would have won the war (impossible but let's try) do you think they would hesitate bombing New York, or LA or other major city because there are civilians in it? Probably not, judging by what they did in China [fas.org]

Re:Other than

[commodoresloat]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the first times the US or allied forces targeted civilians. The firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden killed many civilians -- I think in Tokyo more were killed than Hiroshima -- and not only that, they were specifically targeted at civilians as a war strategy to try to turn the population against the government. The claim that civilians and children in Nagasaki, or Tokyo, or Dresden were "combatants" was not made, I don't think; the explicit point of the military strategy was t

Re:Other than

[MemoryDragon]

Dresden was an act of warcrime, the city basically was a refugee camp for people who fled from other cities, there was no major industry surrounding it. It simply was retaliation for the atrocities of the germans, nevertheless, it was a warcrime.

Post fact reasonement ?

[aepervius]

As far as I can remmember the first discovery were done by the russian at the very end of january the other ally a bit of one month later. So retaliation is a bit "doubtful". At that point in time the bombardement of Dresden was only a military goal. If it was really retaliation as you purport this would make it even LESS justifiable and a true warcrime.

Re:Other than

[Morganth]

What a load of horse shit. Try actually studying history, not being taught the pseudo-history of our high schools and middle schools.

So the reason the US was justified in dropping the bombs was because we're big and powerful and you just don't mess with big and powerful countries? You say their government sealed the fate of their children, but that is a total logical fallacy (as, sadly, is often employed by writers on Slashdot). US wouldn't have dropped bombs if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor. There

Re:Other than

[drgonzo59]

The problem with your argument is that it assumes there are innocent lives and there are enemy combatants. The line is not so clear always. What about the ones in the factories, making bombs, are they innocent? A more complete discussion of this is in this topic (civilian vs. enemy fighter) is here [slashdot.org]

Re:Other than

[Teun]

They could have chosen to be farmers, or say teachers, instead they most likely did support the goverment policy and the war against us.

That's not how a war is fought.
People are forced to do certain labour.
They might still get a regular wage, they are not slaves in the historic sence but non the less they cannot freely choose their job.

Besides that as Japaneese they had been brought up with the notion they were waging a fair war by defending the Emperor.

Einstein was one of the few that saw the future

Re:Other than

[drgonzo59]

That is the first mistake, having a goverment that will completely dictate to its people and distort everything any way it sees fit. Having an emperor with an absolut, god-like power is a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later you are bound to have a Caligula that will go nuts and convince everyone that the sky is actually lime green instead of blue .

In a certain way, that still doesn't change the argument that it was the Japanese Emperor that is responsible for the deaths of its people. He might have made t

Re:Other than

[Cyberax]

Yes, and people in WTC were working towards strengthening USA economic, so they were a valid military target. Right?

After all, you bombed oil plants in Iraq during the Gulf War. How WTC is different?

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 i

Re:Other than

[srleffler]

keep in mind is that it was the Japanese that attacked the U.S. What in the hell were they thinking? It is like me attacking the local police department with a baseball bat

Keep in mind that the US was not then the superpower that it is now. IIRC, at the start of the war Japan's military was larger than the US's. They probably didn't think they had so much to lose.

Re:Other than

[mickwd]

"The issue of "civilian" vs. "fighter" is often not a black and white kind of thing."

"You are right, the children weren't fighting yet, but the ones in Berlin were, and if we invaded Japan a lot more children would have been dead, because they would have been forced to defend "the Empire""

"It was their goverment that sealed the fate of its children and elderly when they....."

Have you ever considered joining Al-Qaeda ? Your views about deaths of civilians seem remarkably similar to theirs.

Re:Other than

[drgonzo59]

The makers of Zyklon-B, that gas that used in the Nazi concentration camps, were convicted and executed for war crimes. The makers didn't kill a single person, they just made chemicals, yet some of these "civilians" were executed for it. You ignore the fact that there is _not_ a sharp destinction between enemy combatant and civilian in two countries that fight each other.

Do you really think that everyone was forced at the gunpoint to work in the factories? I highly doubt it. Some were but most probably we

Re:Other than

[Cyberax]

But was a single plant _worker_ executed for this crime?

Re:Other than

[XchristX]

"there are no innocent people in the country you go to war with."



Hamas, Al-Quaeda and the bloody IRA say the exact same thing.
I guess white people don't like it when the same rule is applied to their women and children, but have no propblem using it to massacre those they consider to be 'der untermenschen'.

Re:Other than

[peculiarmethod]

Other than in video games, thusly improving your hand/eye coordination?

no.

Re:Nuclear vs. conventional death

[cheesybagel]

No country has 100 megaton warheads in use.

The US Peacekeeper missile has 10 warheads with 300 kilotons each. Trident II could have 8 warheads with 300 kilotons.

The Russian Topol-M has like 1 warhead with 550 kilotons. Their old R36-M Satan missile can carry a single 25 megaton warhead, but I don't know how many of those they have left.

Amazing

[Sv-Manowar]

Its amazing that something like this can have lain undiscovered for so long, and a good thing that we can use modern technology to archive it and preserve it for future generations. It's all very well knowing what Einstein theorized, but to see the actual work is something different and humanises the achievement.

Re:Amazing

[MavEtJu]

The dailytimes article didn't mention that it was found in a private archive instead of the universities main archive.

Under absolutely no condition

[jd]

Should word of this leak out to the authors of the DMCA or the Sony Bono Copyright Act. I'm not even sure if I'm joking, here. SOMEone is going to try and squeeze money out of this.

I wouldn't go around telling the Department of Homeland Security, either - the idea of someone publishing a guide on how to supercollapse matter would scare them witless.

Re:Under absolutely no condition

[grazzy]

And the guy that came up with the idea isn't even american!! Teh terrorists are coming!

Re:Amazing

[Usquebaugh]

If it's so frigging easy and obvious. When can we expect you to deliver a link to the OCR document?

Re:Amazing

[PsychicX]

When I can get to the site. It won't respond to me.

Re:Amazing

[EvanED]

Um, you're missing the point. The text of the paper has been available for some time. They didn't discover a NEW paper, just the original of one of them.

And as such, an image of what Einstien actually wrote is the ONLY way to present it in a way that hasn't been available before.

Re:Amazing

[JabberWokky]

I'm not sure any OCR software would work on it. It's typed on a manual typewriter, but a good chunk of it is handwritten symbols in what looks like a fountain pen with an italic nib. Then there are many handwritten notes scrawled in several colors in the margins and in between lines. Not to mention a couple places where the typewritten text has been crossed out and corrected with a pen. Oh, and the stains, rustmarks from paperclip, the folding marks. And of course, the first part is all in handwritten ge

Re:Amazing

[Teun]

yet lacked the ability to OCR it.

Was to be expected, this is one of the oldest surviving Universities in the world (8th. Feb. 1575), all these centuries they have done fine with just a quil and inkwell.

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

[Will2k_is_here]

On the subject of handwriting, it's cool how these manuscripts match the handwriting on my Einstein poster.

Re:Handwriting

[abulafia]

It isn't that hard, really. Or maybe I spent too much time reading my prof's attacks on me... Really, it isn't that hard to read.

Now, understaning it, that's different. I don't have a don't have a degree that would help. (I did calc in a German school, and won awards for various Stupid Math Tricks while there. But I'm over 30 now, and I don't pretend I'm going to do anything interesting.)

I'm going to be reading this for a while. Some of it is hard to translate, some is hard to transliterate, and some of

Re:Handwriting

[onekanobe]

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

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.

Mix of both

[henni16]

I think it is a mix of both: most letters are Latin (script) but some are Sütterlin.
For example, his small type 'z' and the capital 'E' look like Sütterlin.

I think it was quite common to use a mix of both at that time;
I looked into an inherited "Poesiealbum"(*) from that time and it contained very different writing styles:
Completely Sütterlin, completly Latin and very often mixtures of both - some very similar to Einstein's (using Sütterlin 'z' and 'E').

(*autograph book with littl

Re:Handwriting

[odin53]

When I was a child, we were taught in school to write script with a slant to the right, which I still do to this day. YMMV -- e.g., I'm American -- but I doubt you can read anything much into it. Incidentally, I wonder if kids today even have penmanship class anymore?

Re:Handwriting

[op12]

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?

The table he wrote on was slanted.

Table?

[lullabud]

Table? Oh, right. I thought we were talking about politics.

Re:Handwriting

[nfarrell]

Modern handwritten German is just as bad. it's particularly annoying when you're trying to decipher love letters - and unlike scientific papers, you can't bluff your way through and pretend you read it all.

Obvious!

[zonix]

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?

Ah yes, I see now! Without doubt, this shows he subconsciously desired his mother! Desires developed during the Phallic Phase, yadda yadda. :-)

Sorry. Einstein.

z

Re:Handwriting

[sl8r]

I wish people would stop furthering this "looking at the handwriting will tell me more about a person's soul/mind/whatever".

Case in point: Here in Switzerland (bastion of psycho-analysts and -therapists that it is), applying for a job sometimes requires the applicant to submit a hand-written test. Not quite sure but must've been in the early 90's when the head of the Swiss Psychologist's Association went on to say in an interview that the whole handwriting analysis is a hoax and is mainly used by dumb-ass P

It's in German...

[aurb]

The manuscripts are in German. Can someone post a translation? :-)

Re:It's in German...

[Anonymous Coward]

E=MC2

Re:It's in German...

[Tablizer]

No, it's Farfegnugen.

Re:It's in German...

[maxwell demon]

Never dared to RTFA, did you? From the page linking to the photographs:

Page 2 of the manuscript reports the last scientific discovery of Einstein's career: the prediction of the new state of matter now called the Bose-Einstein condensate. (The 2001 Nobel prize went to its experimental observation in a cold dilute gas.)

Actually the referred-to part in the manuscript is the second paragraph on the second page, which I'd translate as follows:

I claim that in this case a number of molecules growing with the over

High Resolution???

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm... The words "High" and "Resolution" appearing in a link from a Slashdot article. Certainly this will not need a mirror...

Coral Cache Link

[Dubpal]

Because we all know "High-resolution photographs of the 16-page manuscript are posted on the institute's web site" usually means said website is about to become very uncooperative.

http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.nyud.net:8090/his tory/Einstein_archive/ [nyud.net]

Re:Coral Cache Link

[gardyloo]

[...] usually means said website is about to become very uncooperative.

      Yes, well, they're Germans.

      (I kid! I kid!)

Translation of an important footnote

[paiute]

In the margin, he had scribbled:

Und so investieren die Schüler nicht selten mehrere Monate, um einem Problem auf die Spur zu kommen. Von der Literaturrecherche bis zur Slashdotten durchlaufen sie in kleinen Gruppen alle Phasen einer Forschungsarbeit

which can be translated as:

I have elucidated the necessary relationships that describe the General and the Special Theories of Relativity. Now I must add to those the third and last: the Slashdot Theory of Relativity, namely that a URL posted to Slashdot will result in the associated server being relatively quickly removed from our frame of reference.

Re:Translation of an important footnote

[DarkHelmet]

No, you read that wrong... it should instead be:

I have found out a breakthrough on how to unify theories of Gravity and Electromagnetism. Unfortunately, the formulas are too large to write in the footnote here.

High resolution?

[HorsePunchKid]

This is pretty nifty, but the submitter and I apparently have very different thresholds for considering something "high resolution". These are less than 150dpi, unless these were originally printed on 3×4" sheets of paper or something. If you wanted to print one of these out as a poster or something (hey, don't judge me!), they wouldn't be very attractive. Maybe if you tiled them all together, though.

Am I possibly missing the links to some even-higher-resolution versions?

Re:High resolution?

[Mikey-San]

This is pretty nifty, but the submitter and I apparently have very different thresholds for considering something "high resolution".

To the submitter, it's actually huge.

It's all about your frame of reference.

Handwriting...

[doormat]

I'm surprised to see his handwriting is a little bit messy, but doesnt look too bad. I figured it would have been all over the place.

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/ [alberteinstein.info]

I remember the announcement from Reuters at the time.

absolute zero, or below zero? (dept nitpicking)

[MavEtJu]

Don't you love if when they use figures without giving the units?

The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 460 degrees below zero -

So absolute zero is 460 degrees below zero, but I have been tought that it was 273 degrees below zero.

So if Toby Sterling is reading: The absolute zero is:

- zero Kelvin
- minus 273.15 degrees Celcius
- minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit

Feel free to properly describe it next time!

It's all relative

[Teun]

Fahrenheit/Rankin or Celcius/Kelvin, it's relatively absolutele for this temperature.

How dare they!!!!

[Bob Gelumph]

He hasn't been dead for 50 years, let alone 75!

Aren't they violating copyright by posting images of his work?

Or is this another one of those wacky European loopholes?

Re:How dare they!!!!

[digitalunity]

Hi, I know you were probably just joking, but just as an FYI...

In most countries, anything pre-Berne convention should be deemed as having NOT been copyrighted unless such notice is included in the work. Copyright laws now dictate that copyright is automatic, and in some countries such as the Netherlands, there are even rights that cannot be signed away.

I didn't see any copyright notices on Einstein's papers, and judging by the date they were authored, it is reasonable to conclude that the text of the docum

Superman, where are you?

[Yeechang Lee]

Superman, we need your help! Lex Luthor just stole the Einstein document [superman.ws] just after its discovery! Fortunately, your friend Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet was one of the witnesses [superman.ws]; he can tell you what happened.

Title?

[slavemowgli]

The German-language manuscript is titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas,"

Huh? No, it's not. It's titled "Quantentheorie des einatomigen idealen Gases", and considering that it's written in German, that shouldn't be much of a surprise, either. What you gave above is the translation of the title, not the title itself.

Sheesh. Slashdot editors. :)

Re:amazing

[wasted time]

everything's relative, I guess.

Except

[zonix]

everything's relative, I guess.

Except the speed of light, I believe.

z

Re:amazing

[treff89]

Yes. My .sig is clearly no exception.

Re:Article in full

[Night Goat]

This article repost was modified. Mod down. I can't believe I even need to bring this up.

Re:Article in full

[jeronimoe]

Ha! You're right. At first I thought it was fine, but then I finally got through to the real article -- there are quite a few modifications. Unfair for those who can't compare with the real one. Here's the real article in full.

Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered

By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press Writer

The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1926 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.

The handwritten manuscript titled "Quantum theory of the diatomic ideal gas" was dated December 1925. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in January 1926.

High-resolution photographs of the 160-page, German-language manuscript and an account of its discovery were posted on the institute's Web site.

"It was quite amazing" when a student working on his master's thesis uncovered the delicate manuscript written in Einstein's distinctive scrawl, said professor Carlos Beenakker. "You can even see Einstein's thumbprints in some places, and it's full of notes in the margins and underlining from his editor."

"We're going to keep it as a reminder of his work here, which is quite a pleasurable memory for us," Beenakker said.

The German-born physicist, who was Jewish and part Gypsy, taught in Berlin between 1910 and 1933, fleeing to the United States after Adolf Hitler came to power.

Einstein, whose name is now synonymous with science, was a frequent guest lecturer at Laden in the 1920s due to his friendship with physicist Paul Oppenheimer, among whose papers the manuscript was found.

The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 560 degrees below zero - particles in a gas can reach a state of such low energy that they clump together in one larger pair, a "di-atom."

The idea was developed in collaboration with Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Boshe and the then-theoretical state of matter was dubbed a Bose-Einstein condensation.

In 1985, University of Colorado at Boulder scientists Eric Cornell and Carlos Wiemann created such a condensation using a gas of the element rubidium and were awarded the Nobel peace prize for physics in 2000, together with Wolfgang Amadeus Ketterle of the Californian Institute of Technology.

Beenakker said the student who found the manuscript, Rowdy Boeyink, was painfully reviewing documents in the archive for a thesis on Oppenheimer when he came across the Einstein paper and immediately recognized its importance.

He said Boeyink had found other interesting documents during his search, including a letter from Dutch physicist Niels Bohr, and was all but certain to receive top marks on his thesis.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Plagiarism

[Mazem]

A lot of the "plagarism" that the paper accuses Einstein of is not actually plagarism, but rather misattributions by other people.

Further, the article lost all credibility when I got to this quote:

It turns out that Einstein mixed kinematics and mechanics, and out popped the neutrino. The neutrino may be a mythical particle accidentally created by Einstein (Carezani, 1999). We have two choices with respect to neutrinos: there are at least 40 different types or there are zero types. Occam's razor rules here.

Re:Plagiarism

[jpflip]

Sigh... OK, so this article is complete crap, as a cursory read will show (another poster has pointed out a nonsense passage about neutrinos, for example).

It is true, however, that a lot of the ideas we commonly attribute to Einstein were thought of by others. Poincare and Lorentz, for example, did think a lot about the synchronization of moving clocks and come up with ideas later used in relativity (e.g. Lorentz transforms). Einstein did not attribute all of these sources in his paper, and I believe th