Einstein's Letter to Marie Curie (1911)

http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol8-trans/34

by anacleto • 11 years ago

174 30 11 years ago

einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu

devnonymous• 11 years ago

Interesting. Some context about the matter: http://www.iflscience.com/physics/albert-einstein-told-marie...

marvel_boy• 11 years ago

Summing up: Haters gonna hate.

ape4• 11 years ago

@MarieCurie You go gurl

drdeadringer• 11 years ago

@Einstein This new element, so hot right now

xchip• 11 years ago

The reason for that letter is that Marie Curie's husband died and she quickly married his husband's assistant. She was heavily criticized for that.

fabrice_d• 11 years ago

According to http://www.iflscience.com/physics/albert-einstein-told-marie...: "A few years later, she became romantically involved with physicist Paul Langevin, who had been a doctoral student of Pierre’s."

That doesn't qualify as "quickly married his husband's assistant" at all, and they were never even married.

ptaipale• 11 years ago

Apparently the affair was too quick for the tastes of that time, anyway.

maaku• 11 years ago

Langevin was ;)

navait• 11 years ago

Nobody would care today. But then, it was a huge scandal.

jacquesm• 11 years ago

On top of that, why blame her?

einie• 11 years ago

gotta love the PS.

te_platt• 11 years ago

What is the comical witticism referred to in the post script?

schoen3• 11 years ago

The footnote to the German original says that the derivation is described in more detail in this letter to Lorentz:

http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol5-trans/249

(It's the section beginning "I have little that is new to report in physics".)

antognini• 11 years ago

This article provides a little more context as to what was going on at the time:

http://www.aip.org/history/curie/scandal1.htm

Pierre Curie died in 1906 and she became romantically involved with Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre, in 1910. At the time it was considered gauche for a widow of her age (she was 38 at the time of Pierre's death) to remarry. But what really ignited the ire of the press was mostly the fact that Langevin was already married, though estranged from his wife.

ctdavies• 11 years ago

What!? This correspondence doesn't correspond at all to their love affair as depicted in the film Young Einstein.

eliben• 11 years ago

Brief letter of personal support following Curie's remarriage scandal.

And then comes the P.S.:

  I have determined the statistical law of motion of the
  diatomic molecule in Planck's radiation field [...]

Priceless :-)

jackreichert• 11 years ago

You forgot the best part! "...by means of a comical witticism"

schoen3• 11 years ago

The German original (linked there) says "durch einen lustigen Witz", which I would have understood as 'by means of a funny joke'.

It's a pretty amusing way for Einstein to describe his derivation, anyway.

not_that_noob• 11 years ago

Amazing woman -

* Born in obscurity in Poland, she didn't have money for studies. Her sister and her made a pact where one worked as a governess so the other could study. She eventually made it to the University of Paris, at a time when Oxford and Cambridge were closed to women.

* She won TWO Nobel prizes!

* She poisoned herself by exposing herself to x-rays (unwittingly) in mobile x-ray units for the French Army in WW1

* Her affair with the married Langevin drove his jealous wife to steal their incriminating letters, which she then released to the press. It was an amazing scandal, which is what Einstien is referring to here. She was denounced as a Polish foreigner.

There was an amazing documentary on Nova (I believe) but can't seem to find it online.

[Edit] - found it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do41AJwIjZE

guylepage3• 11 years ago

Very inspiring documentary. Thank you for sharing.

vinhboy2• 11 years ago

It really bothers me that people living in 1911 (and even before that) understand more about the physics than I do.

Gosh, I am dummy.

sukilot2• 11 years ago

Why? Huge amounts of knowledge areost whenever someone dies. This is always going to hold back human progress.

Retra• 11 years ago

In some ways, that is true. But I'd argue the main reason things like nationalism, racism, and other bigotry dies away is because those who support those ideas can't pass them on before they die.

So it's not all bad.

schuke• 11 years ago

To quote Max Planck:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

grayclhn• 11 years ago

Do you spend time actively studying Physics, or do you just expect to be gifted with this knowledge?

bnegreve• 11 years ago

But you could expect from your high school education that it teaches you scientific facts established over 100 years ago.

At least that's how I interpret Vinhboy's comment.

sukilot2• 11 years ago

Sigh, another website with a custom hacked document viewer that doesn't work on today's very popular small screens. So much effort poured into building systems that work worse then the platform default.

Einstein's Letter to Marie Curie (1911)

Related Stories