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Albert Einstein

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:6,000.00 - 8,000.00 USD
Albert Einstein

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Auction Date:2014 Dec 10 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Historically important ALS in German, signed “A. Einstein,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 6.5 x 8.25, June 15, 1914. Letter to his colleague, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Wilhelm Wien. In part (translated): “Haber gave me a letter today that you had written to Mr. Planck regarding the pending affairs of the German Phys. Society…I do not have the impression during the consultations that there was an inclination to grant fewer rights to corresponding than to those residing in Berlin…Haber is exerting his best efforts to hold German physicists together within a single society, because in this way greater benefits can be obtained for the members…I ask you please not to take offense at my novice meddling in these matters; I know very well that I am inexperienced in these administrative affairs.—It is extraordinarily inspiring here in Berlin. You have certainly already seen the fine analyses by Franck and Hertz. I am not doing much myself at the moment, because I must have a breather from gravitating. In Zurich I had found the proof for covariance in the gravitation equations. Now the theory of relat. really is extended to arbitrary moving systems.” In fine condition, with very subtle foxing. Accompanied by Wien’s retained copy of his response.

Einstein had lived in Zurich for nearly two decades before returning to Germany in 1914, where he became the director of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and joined the German Physical Society as its youngest member. Einstein's statement about the Theory of Relativity refers to work he undertook with Adriaan Fokker in 1913–14, which lead to the first treatment of gravitation in which general covariance is strictly obeyed; it was around this time and as a consequence of this covariance discovery that he first referred to his theory as the ‘general’ theory of relativity. Most of Einstein's study in early 1914 was dedicated to this subject, publishing several papers throughout the year on the subject, including 'On the Theory of Gravitation,' 'The Formal Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity,' and 'Covariance Properties in the Field Equations of the Theory of Gravitation Based on the Generalized Theory of Relativity,' which he had published with Marcel Grossmann just two weeks before writing this letter. It would be over one more year before Einstein finally published his formalized general theory of relativity. An extraordinary, lengthy letter concerning one of the momentous breakthroughs along the path leading to the definitive theory.