Jerusalem: An Albert Einstein “puzzle” has been solved thanks to a missing manuscript page emerging in a trove of his writings newly acquired by Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, officials announced yesterday.
The handwritten page, part of an appendix to a 1930 paper on the Nobel physics prize winner’s efforts towards a unified field theory, was discovered among the 110-page trove the university’s Einstein archives received two weeks ago. Hebrew University unveiled the collection to coincide with what would have been his 140th 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.
The 1935 letter to his son expresses concern about the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.
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.
“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, our delight, that page is now here. It came with the new material.”
Read the article in The Australian (AFP).