Letters From Einstein

In the fall of 1923, Albert Einstein was living in Berlin, but after outbursts of anti-Semitic violence in the city and rumored threats to his life, he suddenly fled for the Netherlands, enduring what he called a “cheerful banishment” in the university town of Leyden. Although these experiences contributed to Einstein’s social and political engagement at that time, he was also simultaneously engaged in establishing the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at work on significant scientific challenges—such as attempting to find a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism. This important period in Einstein’s life is documented in the latest volume put out by the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech. The Collected Papers of
 Albert Einstein, Volume 14: The Berlin Years: Writings & Correspondence, April 1923–May 1925, published in February, includes some one hundred writings by Einstein and more than one thousand letters by and to him over those two years. The volume provides a wealth of detailed material on his experimental and theoretical work, including the Bose-Einstein statistics, and many insights into the Nobel Prize winner’s academic and personal life during this politically tumultuous time.

In addition to its release of the new print collection, the Einstein Papers Project partnered with Princeton University Press to launch The Digital Einstein Papers in December 2014. This makes available online for free the previous 13 volumes of the Collected Papers— meaning that you now need nothing more than an Internet connection to easily access and experience the project’s vast scholarship on Einstein.

—Jessica Stoller-Conrad

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Photo: Courtesy of Diana Kormos-Buchwald/Einstein Papers Project