Auction 69 Part 1 Rare and Important Items
Dec 3, 2019 (your local time)
Israel
 8 Ramban St, Jerusalem.

The preview and the auction will be held at our offices , 8 Ramban St. Jerusalem

The auction has ended

LOT 139:

A Scientific Letter Handwritten and Signed by Albert Einstein – Sent to Ernst Gabor Straus within the Framework of ...

Start price:
$ 20,000
Estimated price:
$30,000-40,000
Auction house commission: 23%
VAT: 17% On commission only
tags:

A Scientific Letter Handwritten and Signed by Albert Einstein – Sent to Ernst Gabor Straus within the Framework of Einstein's Work on the Unified Field Theory – USA, 1950
A letter handwritten by Albert Einstein to the mathematician Ernst Gabor Straus. Signed "A.S.". [Princeton, USA], July 15, 1950. German.
An interesting scientific letter in which Albert Einstein responds to Ernst Gabor Straus' reservations about his work. At the time the letter was written, Einstein was working on the development of the Unified Field Theory (a unified theoretical framework describing the fundamental forces of nature). In the third edition of his famous book "The Meaning of Relativity" (Princeton, 1950), Einstein published an appendix titled "Generalization of Gravitation Theory" in which he tried to introduce a Unified Field Theory which includes the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force; the present letter presumably refers to the claims published in this article.
At the beginning of the letter, Einstein writes: " I am glad that you are vigorously dealing with the question of compatibility. Yet it seems to me that your fears are unjustified. I want to phrase the proof so that your letters will be taken into consideration". Following is a long scientific explanation – the proof Einstein phrased for Straus.
The mathematician Ernst Gabor Straus was Einstein's assistant at the Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies between 1944 and 1948, working with him on the Unified Field Theory and helping him with mathematical models for his ideas. The two wrote three articles together. This letter, indicating the continuous collaboration between the two, provides an interesting peek into the process of their work.
The Jewish-German physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is considered by many the greatest physicist of the 20th century. Einstein was attracted to science at a very young age, autonomously proving Pythagoras' theorem at the age of 12. In 1905, Einstein published four groundbreaking articles in the "Physics Annual" (Annalen der Physik). The articles, dealing with the photoelectric effect, the Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy, are considered the fundamental building blocks of modern physics (due to their importance, the year is known as "Einstein's Extraordinary Year"). The short popular summary of one of the four articles is the well-known equation E=mc2 (Energy = mass x the speed of light squared), an equation that has become one of the most famous physics equations and the most identified with Einstein and physics in general. In 1915, after approximately ten years of work, Einstein published the General Relativity Theory – a geometric theory about gravitation which transformed the world of physics. General relativity was initially accepted in the scientific world with much skepticism; when it was finally confirmed, it was widely publicized even in the popular press and earned Einstein his world renown. Although many supported Einstein as a Nobel Prize laureate, the awarding of the prize was postponed time and again, due to the doubts of several conservative scientists and the objections of various antisemitic scientists. Eventually, in 1922 he was retroactively awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, not for General Relativity but rather "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
Einstein dedicated the final thirty years of his life to developing the Unified Field Theory, which was supposed to unify the fundamental forces of nature within a single theoretical framework. Although eventually, he did not succeed in transforming his ideas into a solid theory, his efforts motivated other scholars to search for "a unified theory". His work in this field is one of his most important contributions to the world of science.
Ernst Gabor Straus (1922-1983), a Jewish-German mathematician, especially remembered for his contribution to the development of the Ramsey Theory. Straus was born to a Jewish Zionist family from Munich (his mother, Rachel Straus, was the first female doctor to have been trained at a German university); in 1933, the family escaped to Palestine and after a short study period at the Hebrew University, he immigrated to the USA, concluding his studies at Colombia University. During the years 1944-1948, he was Einstein's assistant and in the years that followed worked with several of the most important contemporary mathematicians (Paul Erdős, Richard Bellman, Lovász László and many others).
[1] leaf, approx. 28 cm. Good condition. Fold lines and creases.