The Man Who Stalked Einstein (15 page)

Indeed, the official announcement of Einstein’s prize went out of its way to disavow
any consideration of relativity in the Swedish Academy’s decision to reward Einstein’s
work. The cover letter that had accompanied his Nobel certificate specifically noted
that he was being recognized for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect “without
taking into account the value which will be accorded your relativity and gravitation
theories after these are confirmed in the future.”

Einstein received word that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in October 1922,
while his steamer was chugging toward a lecture tour in Japan. He had accepted the
Japanese invitation to allow time for things to cool off back home in Berlin, where
his friend Walther Rathenau recently had been assassinated and he had received death
threats. Perhaps because he resented how long it had taken the Nobel assembly to recognize
his contributions and because the members of the assembly appeared to be going out
of their way to ignore his most important work, Einstein refused the invitation to
backtrack to Sweden for the December 10 Nobel ceremony and dinner. He even stopped
to lecture in Jerusalem and Spain on his way back to Berlin. Einstein’s absence spoke
volumes. However, just as the prophet Elijah seats himself in an unfilled chair for
the Jewish Passover Seder, the spirit of the seer of theoretical physics inhabited
the Nobel stage.

Had he been present in Stockholm that evening, he would have heard Professor Arrhenius
declare at the outset of his introduction, “There is no physicist living today whose
name has become so widely known as that of Albert Einstein.” Arrhenius cited the theory
of relativity and its philosophical ramifications as the main reason for Einstein’s
renown. Next, he gave due attention to Einstein’s 1905 paper on Brownian motion, which
he noted had given rise to the burgeoning field of colloid chemistry. Finally, he
addressed the reason the physics committee had chosen Einstein to receive the prize:
Einstein’s discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. In a feat of linguistic
gymnastics, the committee had recommended Einstein—and the full Nobel assembly had
approved him—not for the photoelectric effect itself, which Philipp Lenard showed
to be the result of ultraviolet light striking a metal surface; and not for the finding
that the energy of the electrons emitted was related to the frequency of the incident
light; Lenard had described this as well. Einstein was being honored specifically
for his law employing Planck’s constant, which explicitly defined the relationship
between the wavelength of the incident light and the energy released.

In the law of the photoelectric effect, Einstein had drawn together two important
lines of inquiry in early-twentieth-century physics: quantum theory and photodynamics.
Citing American Robert Millikan’s elegant experimental proof of Einstein’s theoretical
triumph, Arrhenius concluded his introduction by noting, “Einstein’s law has become
the basis of quantitative photochemistry in the same way as Faraday’s law is the basis
of electrochemistry.”

At the same time as Einstein was out to sea, Philipp Lenard was attending the 1922
meeting of the German Society of Natural Scientists and Physicians, the same society
that had hosted his 1920 debate with Einstein. His face must have registered shock
at the announcement made during an interlude in the scientific sessions. After all,
he was the 1905 laureate. It is likely that he’d had some interchanges with certain
physics committee members wherein there had been agreement that Einstein’s theoretical
ravings were inappropriate for Nobel Prize consideration. He had heard that committee
member Allvar Gullstrand had privately told a mathematician friend that “Einstein
must never receive a Prize even if the whole world demands it.” Surely, the announcement
had been in error. The awarding of a prize to Einstein was unacceptable, if only because
it cheapened his own distinction.

Although he must have realized that any attempt to reverse the decision was hopeless,
Lenard nonetheless whipped off a four-page letter to the Swedish Academy, datelined
Heidelberg, January 23, 1923.

Highly esteemed sirs,

As a member of your academy and previous recipient of the Nobel Prize, I believe I
should communicate the following thoughts regarding the awarding of the Nobel Prize
to Mr. Einstein. It would seem a mistake to me to remain silent toward you as the
relevant center. Experts in the field would consider this mistake to weigh even more
heavily as they know that this award had vividly occupied me for a long time.

Lenard acknowledged that the Prize had rightly not been given for Einstein’s well-known
theories of gravitation or relativity but for “less contentious thoughts.” He also
conceded that Einstein’s law of the photoelectric effect had been “at least partially
verified.” Still, he continued,

I can, however, not appreciate the communication of thoughts without empiric testing—of
thoughts that could just as well be right or wrong, of sheer hypotheses, as achievements
of the natural sciences, even less so as there was no discovery or progress whatsoever,
for which this prize originally had been meant . . . what could render these thoughts
valuable would be their diligent examination based on empirical testing.

The last complaint ignored the work of Robert Millikan, cited by Professor Arrhenius
in his Nobel introduction of Einstein, which anyone conversant in the field would
find odd. Citing Einstein’s 1905 article in
Annalen der Physik
, “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,”
in which Einstein laid out his law, Lenard wrote,

[E]xperts in the fields and persons acquainted with the historical facts know that
there is nothing new which is proven in this work and there is nothing proven which
is new, either. In fact, they know that there is nothing new at all in it other than
the assumption that the energy quanta of Mr. Planck are not so much energy elements
but rather light quanta. . . . The hypothesis [of Einstein] is based on (1) Mr. Planck’s
observation of energy elements in 1901 . . . as well as (2) my own work on the nature
of the photoelectric effect performed in 1899-1902 and a unique property of this effect
observed at that time . . . (3) Stoke’s rule, which had been known for longer, and
(4) my discovery based on detailed studies of phosphorescence in 1904 that the induction
of phosphorescence also constitutes a photoelectric effect.

Lenard concluded, “Mr. Einstein’s work does not contain more than a summary of these
previous works with a few hypothetical additions.” Copying a page from his Nobel Lecture’s
dismissal of Roentgen’s contributions to the discovery of X-rays as trivial, Lenard
noted that “with the methods developed by myself, [Einstein] was able to demonstrate
that Planck’s energy quanta, in fact, play a role in the transformation of light energy—which
was to be expected, as these elements mean something in reality . . . [Einstein’s
1905] publication of a specific hypothesis had been unnecessary, as it had been clear
from Planck’s work that the role of energy elements had to follow this rule.”

Having presented his case, Lenard then asked the key rhetorical questions, ones that
echoed his long-term gripes about theoretical physics more generally: “Where is the
scientific achievement in Mr. Einstein’s publication? Is the uttering of thoughts
that do not even need a mathematical work to create them, that create such dismal
contradictions . . . really a deed of science? Or does it become one by the superfluous
addition of mathematical equations?”

Lenard believed that he grasped the situation. The Nobel Prize given Einstein for
his law of the photoelectric effect was “nothing more than a subterfuge that was taken
to avoid too great a disgrace” by recognizing his relativity theory. He closed with
the following:

I deeply and utterly regret that the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Committee have
not summoned enough clear German spirit to evade a fraud like this. My regret is all
the deeper as the public attention that is rightfully stirred by the granting of a
Nobel Prize will lead to a further acceptance of these fraudulent theories. To do
my part against this, I wish that my concerns be publicly known. May—after all the
history of science—this erroneous notion not be further nourished, that the striving
for human recognition and the lack of reverence for still undiscovered truths be an
indicator of scientific spirit.

To the Academy and the Committees

Yours faithfully,

P. Lenard

The press caught wind of Lenard’s letter. The conservative Swedish newspaper,
Nya Dagligt Allehande
, gave vent to Lenard’s views, including his charge that Einstein was nothing more
than a “publicity-seeking Jew.” The rival
Svenska Dagbladet
condemned the explicit racism and ran an article on Lenard’s anti-Einstein connections
to the 1920 Working Society of German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science.
In an ironic turnaround, an article published in
Svenska Dagbladet
chided Lenard for his failure to use “clear Germanic intellect.”

Lenard’s indignation was to be expected. Despite a clamor from scientists around
the world, the traditionalists on the physics committee had prevented Einstein from
receiving a Nobel Prize for a dozen years. His recognition for the law of the photoelectric
effect came only after the deaths of two conservative physics committee members and
the appointment to the committee of a politically savvy new member who was much more
inclined toward—and knowledgeable about—the theoretical physics typified by Einstein’s
work. The Academy’s resistance to Einstein made it look silly in the eyes of both
scientists and the general public. Things had reached such a state that by the time
Einstein received his Nobel Prize, the Nobel assembly more needed Einstein’s acceptance
of the prize to salvage its leaky reputation than Einstein required the Academy’s
benediction of his work.

Einstein had first been nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics in 1910. However,
the same battle that raged in Germany between the old science of experimental physics
and the new theoretical physics also consumed the attentions of Swedish scientists.
Three of the five members of the Nobel physics committee were drawn from among the
strongly conservative, experimental physicists of Uppsala University, an ancient and
renowned seat of learning located in nearby Stockholm. Sometimes referred to as the
“Small Popes in Uppsala” for the power they wielded and their certainty in their own
views, Professors Per Gustaf David Granqvist, Allvar Gullstrand, and Clas Bernhard
Hasselberg, often with the complicity of committee members Svante Arrhenius and Vilhelm
Carlheim-Gyllensköld, managed to quash any award to Albert Einstein. During 1910–1922,
the only Nobel Prizes awarded to theoretical physicists were the 1914 award to Max
von Laue for his work on X-ray diffraction by crystals, and the 1918 award to Max
Planck for quantum theory.

Nominations for Einstein came as regularly as the ticking of the clock in the Bern
City Hall tower that had helped inspire his theory of relativity. Except for 1911
and 1915, he received nominations every year between 1910, when only a single German
nominator submitted his name, and 1922, when seventeen esteemed scientists from around
the world nominated him for the prize. His combined total of sixty-three nominations
for 1910–1922 was far more than any other candidate ever received.

However, Einstein’s candidacy presented several unique problems. An initial hurdle
was that some committee members held that the theory of relativity was not actually
physics at all, but that it fell into the realm of the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.
Another was the argument that the theory of relativity had too little relevance to
the real world of the senses. His critics on the committee adopted Philipp Lenard’s
argument that the theory did not conform to common sense. It was unclear how Einstein’s
theories stacked up against the importance of other contenders’ work and whether,
in accordance with Alfred Nobel’s will, Einstein’s theories actually benefited mankind.

However, the main objection of relativity naysayers was that the theory of relativity
had insufficient empirical support. Although the theory had shown itself accurate
in a small number of circumstances, it lacked proof of more general applicability.

In 1910, when the physics committee considered seventeen nominees, Einstein’s name
was put forward for the first time by the winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize for Chemistry,
Wilhelm Ostwald, to whom Einstein had unsuccessfully applied for a job in 1905, when
he had just received his doctoral degree. He and Ostwald had recently become personally
acquainted during the granting of honorary degrees to both men in Geneva. Ostwald
cited the far-reaching consequences of Einstein’s theory of relativity as his rationale
for nominating the young physicist, then only thirty-one years of age. “With this
new principle’s help,” the committee acknowledged, “A number of previously difficult
to understand phenomena obtain a simple interpretation. . . . Einstein has pointed
to a whole lot of phenomena against which the principle may be tested. This is an
indication of its radical significance.” However, in concluding that there was insufficient
empirical evidence to support Einstein’s theory, the committee decided that “it is
justified to wait for the result of such tests in some important cases before the
principle is accepted and especially before it is rewarded with a Nobel Prize.”

No nominations came for Einstein during 1911, when the Wuerzburg physicist Wilhelm
Wien won the Nobel for physics, but there were four in 1912, three in 1913, and two
in 1914. In these years, the committee routinely categorized nominations by their
perceived type: