Einstein, Albert. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - photo 1

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Starting price
£ 12 000
Auction dateClassic
09.12.2020 00:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 470113
Lot 56 | Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Letter to Axel Frey Samsioe. 10 February 1921

EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955). Typed letter signed ('A. Einstein') to Axel Frey Samsioe, 5 Haberlandstrasse, Berlin, 10 February 1921.



In German. One page, 290 x 223mm, the words 'gµ?-Feld' inserted in autograph.



On general relativity, Foucault's pendulum and Mach's principle, written in the year of Einstein's Nobel prize. The recipient, a Swedish civil engineer, had written on 4 February to ask Einstein 'whether, when we ascertain a rotation of the Earth by means of Foucault's pendulum, the rotation is a motion with respect to the Sun, the stars, or to something else' (summarised in Collected Papers, vol. 12, ed. Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze'ev Rosenkranz, Tilman Sauer, József Illy, & Virginia Iris Holmes, p. 431). Einstein's response is that 'According to the general theory of relativity, one must consider that the Foucault pendulum adjusts itself rotation-free against the inertial total mass of the universe. This mutual influence should however not be interpreted as action at a distance: the masses define the gµ?-field in space, and this field defines the inertial behaviour of the mass of the Foucault pendulum'.



A Foucault pendulum is an experimental device first demonstrated Léon Foucault in 1851, in which a large mass swinging from a long line rotates in relation to the earth's surface. Einstein's last sentence frames what he referred to as Mach's principle, an explanation of how rotating objects maintain a frame of reference which was one of his guiding principles in framing the general theory of relativity. Collected Papers, vo. 12, no.39: published with a few minor variants from the autograph draft (on the verso of Samsioe's letter) which survives in the Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The present is the letter actually sent to Samsioe.

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