A few comments on the Einstein/Maric correspondence: I've now received the translated letters (Renn and Schulmann, 1992). Something not apparent from the Lukacs article on which I have commented at length (30 November) is the preponderance of letters by Einstein in the collection (43 by Einstein compared with 11 by Mileva). Most of Mileva's letters to Einstein over this period (effectively 1898-1902) are missing. The first from Mileva is from 1897 (that is, from well before they started their close relationship), and contains a light-hearted description of a lesson by Lenard at Heidelberg. None of the remaining ten letters contains any physics ideas, not even those few surviving ones directly responding to letters from Einstein in which he enthusiastically (and often profusely) writes of his own ideas or the publications of eminent physicists he is excited about. That most of Mileva's letters are missing is hardly surprising; Einstein was at that time a happy-go-lucky extrovert. In one of his letters he writes: "You know what a dreadful state my worldly possessions are in" (R&S, p. 69), and in his almost perpetual state of excitement about physics revealed by the letters to be his habitual state it is unlikely he would have bothered much about keeping his correspondence in any kind of order. As Renn and Schulmann write, "In all probability, Albert carelessly discarded some of the letters he received from Mileva." (One letter indicates that, despite his strong feelings and concern for Mileva, he more than once forgot to send her a greeting on her birthday.)
What is evident is that there is nothing in the surviving letters by Mileva to indicate her working on anything other than her College material, her Diploma thesis, and, later, the Ph.D thesis that she was hoping to be able to complete when (as she anticipated) she obtained her Diploma. On the issue of Einstein's several times use of "our" in relation to work he was involved with, one letter in particular is revealing. In the spring of 1901 he tells Mileva: "I gave [Prof. Weber] our paper." A note appended at this point provides the information that this paper was the one published in 1901, his first. In relation to it Mileva had written to a friend: "Albert wrote a paper that will probably soon be published in Annalen der Physik. You can imagine how proud I am of my darling." There is no hint of any contribution from Mileva in her report to her friend (despite Einstein's "our" in his letter), nor in a letter dated as probably 1906 in which she wrote that "the papers he has written are already mounting quite high." (At this stage his last papers had been the famous ones published in 1905.) Again, in a letter to the same friend in 1901 she writes in regard to Einstein's Ph.D dissertation: "I have read this work with great joy and real admiration for my darling, who has such a clever head." These do not read like the words of someone who has substantively contributed to his important writings. (Popovic, 2003, pp.70, 80, 88.) Even the PBS "Einstein's Wife" website notes that "Mileva never demanded any public credit for the work of 1905, and never claimed she was Einstein's collaborator". http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/science/mquest.htm One other point is worthy of note. In a letter shortly before the birth of baby Lieserl (January 1902) before they were married, Einstein writes: "The only problem that still needs to be resolved is how to keep our Lieserl [Mileva was convinced the baby would be a girl!] with us; I wouldn't want to have to give her up." When she was born he wrote: "I love her so much and don't even know her yet." The only other information about her is a letter in which Einstein writes he is sorry to hear Lieserl has contracted scarlet fever. Whether she died or was adopted is not known. Either way, there is no doubt that Mileva was deeply affected by the loss of her firstborn, and even twenty years later she wrote to a friend: "You know about my unfulfilled desire for a daughter, etc." As Popovic writes about the tragedy, "Mileva never really recovered from the loss of Lieserl, and this had far-reaching effects on her own mental state." Very likely it played a major part in her evident loss of enthusiasm for physics, which seems to have been limited to her taking a passive role in the regular meetings of the "Olympia Academy" that met at the Einsteins in the first years of their marriage. Certainly by the end of 1901 her ambition had been reduced to suggesting she might get a job in a girls' high school (Popovic, p. 72). Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=57 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=58 http://www.srmhp.org/0202/review-01.html --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
