BIB_ID
292033
Accession number
MA 4725.1
Creator
Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955.
Display Date
1911 Sept. 1.
Credit line
Gift of Mr. Horace Wood Brock, Mr. John Biddle Brock, and Ms. Hope Brock Winthrop, in loving memory of their parents, Horace Brock (1918-1981) and Hope Distler Brock (1908-1988), 1991.
Description
1 item (2 p.) ; 17.3 cm
Notes
Freundlich's letter was probably in response to Leo Pollak's inquiry a week earlier on Einstein's behalf concerning the possibility of an astronomical test of the Einstein's predictions made that in a gravitational field spectral lines would be shifted toward the red and light would be deflected.--Cf. Klein, p. 317., n. 2.
Part of a collection of 25 letters from Albert Einstein to the German astronomer Erwin Finlay Freundlich. Letters are described individually in 25 catalog records (MA 4725.1-25).
Written from Prag. Signed A. Einstein.
Part of a collection of 25 letters from Albert Einstein to the German astronomer Erwin Finlay Freundlich. Letters are described individually in 25 catalog records (MA 4725.1-25).
Written from Prag. Signed A. Einstein.
Provenance
Mr. Horace Wood Brock, Mr. John Biddle Brock, and Ms. Hope Brock Winthrop.
Summary
Thanking Freundlich for his letter, in which he laid out an interesting question, and discussing it and Freundlich's research. Noting that the answer to the "interessante Frage" is not easily found because the light refraction by the Sun's atmosphere has to cooperate. Stating that one thing can be said with certainty: if no such deflection [of spectral lines] exists, then the prerequisites of this theory are not applicable. Further stating that these prerequisites, however self-evident they might be, are very audacious. Musing on the ability to conduct the research if we had a larger planet than Jupiter, but noting that nature did not make it easy for us to find out her principles. Mentioning that Einstein was told that similar surveys had been made in Hamburg, and asking for the results from Freundlich's research on measuring the planets.
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