John Stachel’s analysis of Einstein’s use of personal pronouns in his letters to Mileva Marić
The following is an extract from
a talk delivered by John Stachel to the American
Association for the Advancement or Science,
The very term “electrodynamics of moving bodies” is used in the first letter by Einstein that touches on the subject, his letter of 10 August 1899. In this remarkable letter, he comments at some length on the topic, his remarks taking up about one‑half of the letter:
I am more and more convinced that the electrodynamics of moving bodies, as currently presented, is not correct, and that it should be possible to present it in a simpler way. The introduction of the term “ether” into theories of electricity leads to the notion of a medium of whose motion one can speak without, I believe, being able to associate any physical meaning with such a statement. I believe that electrical forces can only be directly defined for empty space, as Hertz also emphasizes. Further electrical currents are to be considered not as “the vanishing of electrical polarization in time,” but as motion of true electric charges, the physical reality of which seems to be proven by the electrochemical equivalent. Mathematically, they are then always to be considered in the form dX/dx + . + . Electrodynamics would then be the theory of the motions of moving electricities and magnetisms in empty space: Which of the two conceptions must be selected must be decided by the radiation experiments.
This case is one of the few in which we happen to have Marić’s reply to Einstein's letter (actually to this and Einstein's previous letter). What does she say in response to his comments on electrodynamics? Nothing! She discusses her happiness on getting his letters, she approves of his statement that he is not studying too much, she sends greetings to Einstein’s mother and sister (with whom he was vacationing), she worries about her impending examinations. Near the end of the letter, she writes: In truth, you aren’t letting anyone read my letters, you must promise me that (Vol. 1, p. 229), suggesting that she shares his feeling it is the two of them against the world (see his letter cited above). But there is not a word about any scientific topic in her letter, let alone a response to Einstein's lengthy discussion of his ideas about the electrodynamics of moving bodies.
The next letter that refers to this topic is his of 10 September 1899:
A good way of investigating how a body’s relative motion with respect to the luminiferous ether affects the velocity of propagation of light in transparent bodies occurred to me in Aarau [a Swiss town Einstein had recently visited]. I have also thought of a theory on this subject that seems to me to be very plausible. But enough of this! (Vol. 1, p. 230, translation from Stachel, Physics Today, May 1987, p. 45).
I have added, and will continue to add my own emphasis to each use of “I,” “my,” etc. in his letters. If we are going to attach great significance to one use of “our” in this context, I insist that we attach similar significance to his many uses of first person singular pronouns in the same context. It should also be borne in mind that his letters cited were written during periods when Einstein and Marić were separated for some time; so there is a strong presumption that any new work he reports to her during these periods really is exclusively his.
A couple of weeks later, during the same period of separation, he writes:
I also wrote to Professor [Wilhelm] Wien
in
The paper by Wien,
entitled “On Questions Relating to the Translatory
Motion of the Luminiferous Ether” discusses a number
of experiments, including the renowned experiment by Michelson and Morley on
this topic. I take this as evidence that Einstein knew something about this
experiment by the time he wrote this letter. Even if Marić
were the person who first informed Einstein about this experiment, as Dr. Troemel‑Ploetz suggested in
There is now a gap of over a year
in references to this topic. The next reference is in Einstein's letter of 27
March 1901, the one about “our work” cited first above. The next letter that
may refer to this topic is that of Marić to
Einstein in early November 1901. Einstein had been befriended by Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Physics at the
How pleased I am that Kleiner was nice to you! And during what holiday could you
perhaps carry out the investigation? (Vol. 1, p. 316).
This may be a reference to an experiment that Einstein had just recently described in a letter to his friend and fellow student at the Poly, Marcel Grossmann:
On the investigation of the relative motion of matter with respect to the luminiferous ether, a considerably simpler method has occured to me, which is based on customary interference experiments. If only relentless fate would give me the necessary time and peace! When we see each other, I will tell you more about it (Einstein to Marcel Grossmann, 6 September 1901, Vol. 1, p. 316, translation from Stachel, Physics Today, May 1987, p. 46).
On 17 December 1901, Einstein writes Marić:
I am now working very eagerly on an electrodynamics of moving
bodies, which promises to become a capital paper. I wrote you that I
doubted the correctness of the ideas about relative motion [that letter has not
been found]. But my doubts were based
solely on simple mathematical error. Now I
believe in it more than ever! (Vol. 1, pp. 325‑326, translation from Stachel, Physics Today, May 1987, pp. 46‑47).
Two days later Einstein wrote Marić that he had
spent the whole afternoon with Kleiner in
Whatever Einstein may have written then, he did not publish anything on the topic until 1905. Perhaps part of the explanation may be found in his final reference to the topic, on 28 December 1901:
I now want to buckle down to work and study what Lorentz and Drude have written on
the electrodynamics of moving bodies. [Jakob] Ehrat [a friend and former fellow
In summary, the letters to Marić show Einstein referring to his studies, his ideas, his work on the electrodynamics of moving bodies over a dozen times (and we may add a couple more if we include his letter to Grossmann), as compared to one reference to our work on the problem of relative motion. In the one case where we have a letter of Marić in direct response to one of Einstein's, where it would have been most natural for her to respond to his ideas on the electrodynamics of moving bodies, we find the same response to ideas in physics that we find in all her letters: silence. This proves nothing, as I emphasized in my paper, but it certainly must influence our estimate of the probability that Marić made a significant contribution.
Albert Einstein corresponded with his friend Michele Besso for about fifty years. Einstein's letters to Besso are filled with scientific references, many more and in much greater detail than in his letters to Marić. (For whatever reason, scientific comments are almost entirely lacking in Einstein’s letters to Marić after their marriage.) Besso’s letters to Einstein are similarly filled with scientific comments. (The Einstein‑Besso correspondence has been published in German with a French translation, so these claims are easily checked.) Besso is also the only person Einstein thanks for help in his 1905 paper on special relativity. Yet Besso never wrote an important paper in physics, and his efforts at collaborative research in general relativity with Einstein came to naught. Late in his life, Einstein characterized Besso as an “eternal student.” What does this mean? To me, it means that Besso was capable of understanding things that Einstein explained to him, and of asking intelligent questions that could help Einstein develop his own ideas (Einstein's ideas, that is) – but that Besso was not capable of any creative effort of his own. This is what I mean when I say that Besso acted as a sounding board for Einstein.
Now I challenge Walker and Troemel‑Ploetz: On the strength of the Einstein-Besso letters, and the reference to Besso in Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper, do you want to claim that Besso was the creative force behind Einstein, or even an equal scientific partner in any of his creative work? If so, please explain why you feel that Besso was, and where this leaves Marić. If not, please explain why you feel that there is a stronger case for Mileva Marić than for Besso. In her case, we have no published papers; no letters with a serious scientific content, either to Einstein nor to anyone else; nor any other objective evidence of her supposed creative talents. We do not even have hearsay accounts of conversations she had with anyone else that have a specific, scientific content, let alone a content claiming to report her ideas. (If you believe any of these assertions to be wrong, please cite the evidence for your belief.)