604. E. B.: Albert Einstein and Austria, Austria Today 4/1979, 40.

AIABERT EINSTEIN AND AUSTRIA by Engelbert Broda

n 1979, a hundred years after his Niels Bohr - also birth, the greatest scientist o( our one of Einstein's I time, Albert Einstein, has been great friends, celebrated m many countries. In however. Ein- Austria it has been recalled that stein feIt a deep Einstein had many dose ties with our affection for country; both on the level of ideas and Hans Thirring that cf personal relationships. of Vienna, as a While Einstein was still an result of the unknown "expert 3rd dass" in the latter's contribu- Swiss patent office, he was under the tion to the speIl of two Austrian physicists. They Theory of Rel- were both alive then, but they had ativity and also never heard of Einstein. Their his upright re- thoughts were to accompany hirn all sistance against his life. warrnongers and One of them· was Ernst Mach, of Nazis. Graz, Prague and Vienna Universities, Einstein's re- an experimental physicist who also had lationship with an intense interest in sense physiology, Einstein in Vienna (J 93]) the Adler family in the history of science and in was also re- philosophy. Mach's criticism of markable. In dogmatic ideas gready helped Einstein uniform. When his litde son, Hans Zutich, he became friends with his in formulating his trail-blazing Theory Albert, asked hirn to go out in the colleague Friedrich Adler, the son of of Relativity in 1905, one of the pillars uniform, Einstein replied, "But people the undisputed leader of the Austrian of modern physics. On the other hand, will take me fQr a Brazilian admiral!" Social Democrats, Victor Adler. On a Einstein firmly rejected Mach's Einstein moved in the cirde of the visit to Vienna, Einstein marvelled at astonishing disbelief in the existence of writer Max Brod, Franz Kafka's great the enormous respect Adler enjoyed atoms. friend. When in the end Einstein even among his political opponents in The second major influence in returned to his dear Switzerland, he the Habsburg Empire. When Einstein Einstein's formative years was the forgot to tell the Ministry ofEducation was still a little known figure, greatest champion of atomistics, in Vienna. Only years later, on the Friedrich Adler and Einstein were both Ludwig Boltzmann. Born in Vienna, occasion of one of his many visits to candidates for the same position in and for most of his career professor of Vienna, did he go to the Ministry to Zur ich. Einstein won. To his great theoretical physics at the Universities sign the appropriate forms and put honour, Adler then freely admitted of Graz and Vienna, it was Boltzmann them into the hands of the official that Einstein was the better physicist. who gave atomistics (not nudear concerned, who gratefully embraced Friendship continued, and when in science!) its final form. Einstein built hin). Einstein said that he did not want 1916 Friedrich Adler, to protest on Boltzmann's foundations in his to see people unhappy. against the war, shot Count Stürgkh, work on the ceaseless, spontaneous As Einstein's biographers Philipp the Prime Minister of Austria, Einstein movement of visible partides Frank and Friedrich Herneck say, he offered hirnself to the courts as a ("Brownian movement") and on liked the Austrian way of life. Among character witness. Incidentally, Adler partides of light (quanta). In later his great friends were Paul Ehrenfest, a believed neither in atoms nor in the years Einstein also moved from Mach's student of Boltzmann and professor in Theory of Relativity. positivist to Boltzmann's realist the N etherlands, the colourful and Muchto the second Mrs. Einstein's philosophy. overpowering Felix Ehrenhaft, and the sorrow, Albert Einstein liked to go On the personal level, we recall that nudear physicist, Lise Meitner, all sailing with a blonde lady from V ienna Einstein married a Serb girl from the Viennese. For decades Einstein during one of his last summers in Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1911, he corresponded with Erwin Schrödinger Berlin. She was cheerful and always went to the German University in of Vienna, one of the founders of brought along fine home-made- va- Prague, then part of Austria, and thus quantum mechanics; they shared a nilla croissants, Vienna style. Unfortu- became an Austrian citizen. He even distaste for the so-called Copenhagen nately, we have been unable to unearth had to acquire a gorgeous ceremonial interpretation of its equations, due tO her name. •

40 AUSTRIA TODAY 4/1')79