Einstein Papers Project
Albert Einstein was a visiting scientist at Caltech on three separate occasions in the early 1930s. In spite of the brevity of his formal association, Einstein's contribution to and presence on this campus is undeniable. His legacy persists in the ongoing scientific projects currently exploring many implications of his theory of general relativity, and extending his interest in a unified field theory and in the history and structure of the universe. Seventy years later, his presence is officially restored at Caltech through a major humanities research project — The Einstein Papers Project, headed by Professor of History Diana Kormos-Buchwald.
A collaborative effort involving at present nine editors and staff members, several students, and a number of international contributors, the Einstein Papers Project constitutes a major addition to research and teaching in the history and philosophy of science at Caltech. The participants, who have expertise in physics, German language and history, as well as in the history and philosophy of modern science, are engaged in researching, selecting, editing, annotating, and publishing The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Published in chronological order and comprising Einstein's complete scientific and personal papers in large format hard-cover books, the series, which began at Boston University in 1987, is expected to run to 29 volumes containing more than 14,000 documents — the most ambitious publishing venture in the history of 20th-century science.
Over a period of 25 years after Einstein's death in Princeton in 1955, the trustees of his estate, Otto Nathan and Helen Dukas, organized the documents in his home and collected a substantial amount of additional material from all over the world. They strongly insisted that all of Einstein’s papers eventually be published — not just the scientific one — and in 1971 Princeton University Press took on the massive publishing effort. The collection includes Einstein's letters, scientific manuscripts (publications and drafts), as well as lectures, speeches and articles on a variety of topics ranging from the philosophy of science to education, Zionism, pacifism, civil liberties, and other humanistic and social issues.
Upon the appointment of Kormos-Buchwald as general editor by the executive board of the Project, seven large filing cabinets, each weighing as much as a grand piano and containing close to 100,000 documents, were moved into the basement of a Caltech house on Hill Avenue. These documents are photocopies of the original Einstein Archive, deposited at the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in accordance with Einstein's will. In addition, the Caltech collection contains copies of thousands of documents held in other private collections. A microfilm of the original archive has also been made available in the Caltech Institute Archives for use by qualified researchers.
The Einstein Papers Project is a priceless resource for scholarly research on Einstein's life and work. As significant is the intimate knowledge one gains of the intellectual, institutional, and personal relationships among physicists, mathematicians, and other academics during this revolutionary period in the history of modern science. Readers can follow the development of Einstein's work as he struggled with relativity; see what he, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, and Paul Ehrenfest had to write to each other about; or delve into the complex political turmoil that led Einstein to become involved in the League of Nations, international reconciliation and cooperation, and the establishment of a Hebrew university. All documents are published in their original language, most often German, the language in which Einstein expressed himself most eloquently and elegantly. The extensive annotations and editorial commentaries are in English.
Nine volumes of the Collected Papers covering the years 1879 to 1920 have
already appeared through the collaboration of many specialists, including J.
Stachel, M. Klein, A.J. Kox, R. Schulmann, and others.
The most recent volume, published in 2004, set in the turbulent post-World War I period, finds Einstein awaiting news of the 1919 British eclipse expedition to test the general relativistic prediction of the deflection of starlight by the sun. With the expedition's success, he becomes the first science celebrity of our age. Deeply interested in the other, stellar redshift test of his theory, Einstein supports astronomers engaged in experimental work on the issue. Piqued by early suggestions of a unified field theory, he ponders how to unify gravitation and electromagnetic field theory and also works to resolve contradictions between the new quantum physics and relativity. His open-minded exchanges with colleagues may challenge his later image as the stubborn critic of quantum mechanics.
For detailed descriptions of the published volumes, click here.