The Man Who Stalked Einstein (6 page)

Suddenly, in 1905, without having given any earlier sign of what he had been doing,
Einstein revealed in a letter to his fellow Olympic Academy member, Conrad Habicht,
that he had been working on some novel ideas. On first glance, Einstein’s reason for
writing the letter was to express interest in reading Habicht’s doctoral dissertation,
but on closer inspection, it is clear that was something of a ruse. The letter is
much more about the overwhelming excitement he felt concerning his own frenzy of creativity
than his curiosity over what had occupied Habicht. Einstein adopts a self-congratulatory
tone in writing this letter to his friend:

Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am
committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble. So, what
are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul? Why have
you still not sent me your dissertation? Don’t you know that I am one of the 1.5 fellows
who would read it with interest and pleasure, you wretched man? I promise you four
papers in return. The first deals with radiation and the energy properties of light
and is very revolutionary, as you will see if you send me your work first. The second
paper is a determination of the true sizes of atoms. The third proves that bodies
on the order of magnitude 1/1000 mm, suspended in liquids, must already perform an
observable random motion that is produced by thermal motion. The fourth paper is only
a rough draft at this point, and is an electrodynamics of moving bodies which employs
a modification of the theory of space and time.

At about the same time as Einstein wrote his letter to Habicht, Lenard sent Einstein
an example of his recent work. What precipitated Lenard to send this publication to
Einstein? Most likely, Lenard was responding to Einstein’s referencing his earlier
publication on the photoelectric effect. Einstein wrote back, “Esteemed Professor!
I thank you very much for the work you have sent me, which I have studied with the
same feeling of admiration as your earlier works.” In addition, Einstein commented
on the conclusions of Lenard’s investigations, which dealt with the generation of
spectral lines by atoms at different states of energy.

It was four years before Lenard responded to Einstein’s letter, a long enough duration
that Einstein may well have forgotten that he had first written to Lenard. Indeed,
he probably wondered why Lenard had bothered writing at all. Perhaps, Einstein’s growing
reputation as a scientist on the rise had piqued Lenard’s interest, and he wished
to establish contact. Addressing Einstein as “highly esteemed colleague,” Lenard began
with an apology for having taken so long to reply, then continued,

Let me thank you for your friendly words on the occasion of my last writing. What
could be more exciting for me than when a profound comprehensive thinker finds favor
with some points from my work. . . . I am having more and more thoughts about our
different opinions on electrical speeds and related things. I think, namely, that
we are in some sense both correct; however, I will not be satisfied until I see the
comprehensive and prodigious connections found by you to everything remaining, which
I imagine fit into the whole picture. . . . With excellent regard, your loyal P. Lenard.

By the time Einstein received Lenard’s letter, he had attracted the attention of a
number of major academic centers. In 1908, he was appointed a
Privatdozent
at the University of Bern. A year later, he became an associate professor of theoretical
physics at the University of Zurich.

Mileva was instrumental in her husband’s advancement. She vetted his publications,
looked up references, checked his computations, and copied notes, but their romantic
relationship had deteriorated. The decline of Einstein’s marriage was helped along
by the incursion of another woman. A young Basel housewife named Anna Meyer-Schmid
had met Einstein a decade earlier at a resort hotel when she was just seventeen. Having
read about his academic appointment at Zurich, she contacted him. Einstein sent her
a flirtatious letter that included his office address, suggesting she visit him if
she got to Zurich. Meyer-Schmid wrote back in kind, but Mileva intercepted the letter
and reacted vindictively. She sent Meyer-Schmid’s husband a letter claiming that Einstein
had been offended by the exchange. Einstein had to intercede. He apologized to Herr
Schmid for his wife’s jealousy.

Their relationship suffered another blow in 1911, when Einstein accepted an appointment
in Prague and then, almost immediately, moved his family back to Switzerland in 1912
for a faculty position at the University of Zurich, where he had done the work for
his doctoral degree. While traveling alone to Berlin that year, Einstein reconnected
with his recently divorced cousin and childhood playmate, Elsa Lowenthal. Elsa was
almost the same age as Mileva but the exact opposite in temperament. Cheerful, bourgeois,
and engaging, she was a breath of freedom from the dark moods of his bohemian wife.
Upon his return home, he wrote Elsa, “I have to have someone to love, otherwise life
is miserable. And this someone is you.” He had second thoughts and broke off their
secret correspondence for a time, but the romance resumed a year later and took off
in 1914 upon his assuming his professorship in Berlin. Immediately upon agreeing to
the Berlin appointment, he wrote Elsa, “I already rejoice at the wonderful times we
will spend together.”

The Meyer-Schmid episode and the new relationship with Elsa were symptomatic of the
deep rift that had developed between husband and wife. Einstein’s letters tell the
sad tale. In 1900, he’d stopped addressing Mileva as “Sie” and moved on to the informal
“du.” He’d called her endearing nicknames, like “Dollie” and “sweetheart,” and written
her bits of doggerel like this 1900 quartet:

Oh my! That Johnnie boy!

So crazy with desire,

While thinking of his Dollie,

His pillow catches fire.

In 1914, after he had begun the affair with his cousin that eventually would lead
to his divorce from Mileva and his second marriage, he wrote down his conditions for
continuing their cohabitation:

A. You will see to it (1) that my clothes and linen are kept in order, (2) that I
am served three regular meals a day in my room. B. You will renounce all personal
relations with me, except when these are required to keep up social appearances. And:
You will expect no affection from me. . . . You must leave my bedroom or study at
once without protesting when I ask you to.

Mileva’s role had regressed from lover to spouse to servant. The cruel tone of this
note speaks volumes and reflects a bitterness that went far beyond simple alienation
of affection. Einstein may have so wearied of Mileva’s company that he could rationalize
even cruelty.

For her part, Mileva hated Berlin. In that most Prussian of German cities, she bridled
at a rigid caste system that viewed Slavs as being on the same social plane as Jews.
She also was much closer than she wanted to be to Einstein’s mother, who had a trenchant
dislike of her daughter-in-law. Einstein had written to Mileva about the day in 1900
when he had first intimated his seriousness about her to his mother. Things hadn’t
gone well then, and the relationship between mother- and daughter-in-law had grown
worse with time:

So we arrive home and I go into Mama’s room (only the two of us). First I must tell
her about the [final] exam, and then she asks me quite innocently, “So what will become
of your Dollie now?” “My wife,” I said, just as innocently, prepared for the proper
scene that immediately followed. Mama threw herself on the bed, buried her head in
the pillow, and wept like a child. After regaining her composure, she immediately
shifted to a desperate attack. “You are ruining your future and destroying your opportunities.
No decent family will have her. If she gets pregnant, you really will be in a mess.”

Shortly after their arrival in the German capital, Mileva separated from Einstein
and returned to Zurich, taking her sons Hans Albert and Eduard with her. The loss
of his children was a severe blow to Einstein. Despite his visiting his sons frequently,
Hans Albert, in particular, took his mother’s side. It was only over years that Einstein
was able to repair the rent in their relationship.

Little did Einstein know that his marriage to Mileva would linger well past their
separation. It would cost him five years and a great deal of misery. To overcome his
wife’s reluctance to agree to a divorce, Einstein made a most unusual contract. Beginning
in 1910, he had regularly been nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics. He promised
to give Mileva the substantial monetary proceeds of the award should he ever actually
receive it. By the terms of the divorce, the money was to be held in trust in a bank.
While Mileva would be entitled to draw freely on the interest, she could only use
the capital by agreement with Einstein. In the event of her remarriage or death, the
money would go to their two sons.

These plans were thrown into disarray by a turn of events. Their younger son, Eduard,
was an excellent student. He had begun to study medicine with the goal of becoming
a psychiatrist when he took ill at age twenty. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia
and intermittently required hospitalization for the condition until he died at age
fifty-five. The expense of treating his illness combined with the severe economic
inflation that Einstein was experiencing living in Berlin put considerable financial
stress on all parties. Mileva struggled with money, particularly during the periods
when Eduard was out of the hospital and living at home.

Despite the ongoing marital drama, Einstein’s work continued apace. He began to revise
his view of Lenard around 1909–1910, influenced by his exchange of letters with Lenard’s
assistant, Johann Jakob Laub. Laub originally wrote Einstein that he disagreed with
the common view around the laboratory that Lenard was a tyrant. Nonetheless, from
the very beginning of his employment, Laub’s correspondence with Einstein reveals
a tension between Lenard’s scientific beliefs and his own. Laub’s May 1909 letter
to Einstein includes the passage, “We have without Lenard a private colloquium in
Pockel’s [another Heidelberg faculty member] home where we discuss the theory of relativity.
In the coming days, we shall proceed to the light quantum theory. . . . I doubtless
anticipate your visit. It is not so far to Heidelberg.”

The conflict between Lenard and Laub would eventually engage Einstein on Laub’s behalf,
but not for some time. A letter from Einstein to Laub extolling Lenard crossed Laub’s
in the mail. “I took great pleasure in this news [of your working with Lenard],” he
wrote. “However, I think that the opportunity to work together with Lenard is worth
far more than the assistantship and income combined. . . . He is a great master, an
inventive thinker!” Despite the compliments, Einstein may have had a premonition of
disaster. He concluded with a veiled warning: “Perhaps he will be entirely affable
in the face of a man he has learned to respect.”

At this point, Einstein’s esteem for Lenard was reciprocated. Lenard went so far
as to present a paper written by Laub on the theory of special relativity at the June
1909 meeting of the newly formed Heidelberg Academy of Science. The next year, with
Lenard’s approval, Laub followed up this initial work by writing a paper entitled,
“On the Experimental Fundamentals of the Relativity Principle.” The article was included
in a volume edited by the man who was to become Lenard’s close colleague in his attacks
on Einstein, Johannes Stark. Given the symbiotic relationship between Lenard and Stark,
Lenard may well have prevailed on Stark to publish his assistant’s work. Regardless,
the publication makes clear that Lenard was very familiar with what Einstein had been
up to, as the work includes a complete listing of Einstein’s publications to that
time.

Despite the apparent
bonhomie
between the two men, important differences between Lenard’s and Einstein’s scientific
philosophies were beginning to emerge. In particular, the two men disagreed over quantum
theory, of which Einstein was a strong proponent. This was of special significance
because Einstein had followed Lenard in investigating the photoelectric effect. Specifically,
he employed the concept of energy quanta to develop a new law of physics that would,
in time, earn him a Nobel Prize. Einstein’s position reflected his willingness to
give up on the strictures of classical physics to explain the new phenomena associated
with very small particles. In contrast, Lenard held tight to what he knew, preferring
to adapt, modify, or expand upon the accepted fundamentals even if very complicated
machinations were necessary to make the old ways work. In his 1910 publication, “On
Ether and Matter,” Lenard was explicit in this regard: “I do not believe the difficulties
should keep us from developing and protecting the existing view because otherwise
we would discard each such view and even the mechanical comprehensibility of nature.”

Even allowing for their differences over quantum theory, their relationship at this
time remained cordial. It wasn’t long, though, before Lenard’s tolerance for the new
physics reached its limits. Lenard’s regard for Einstein began to deteriorate around
the issue of the ether—the mysterious medium that Lenard believed supported the passage
of electromagnetic radiation through space and was responsible for gravitational effects.
Lenard was very attached to the idea of ether, which had held sway for nearly two
hundred years. Einstein’s theory of special relativity obviated the need for ether,
but for Lenard, the abolition of ether from the mainstream construct of how the universe
worked was unimaginable. He was prepared to defend ether “even if, in order to make
clear the mechanics of the ether, he would have to establish after the ether and its
assembly still another ether.”