1. Another recently published chapter for this study is the analysis of the probable sources of Einstein’s first paper on relativity theory; see Am. Scholar
37 (Winter, 1967), 59–79. See also ‘Einstein, Michelson, and the ‘Crucial’ Experiment’, Isis
60 (Summer 1969), 132–197.
2. These documents are mostly on deposit at the Archives of the Estate of Albert Einstein at Princeton; where not otherwise indicated, citations made here are from those documents. In studying and helping to order for scholarly purposes the materials in the Archives, I have benefited from and am grateful for the help received from the Trustees of the Albert Einstein Estate, and particularly from Miss Helen Dukas. - I thank the Executor of the Estate for permission to quote from the writings of Albert Einstein. I also wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Rockefeller Foundation for cataloguing the collection in the Archives at Princeton. The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and its director have been most hospitable throughout this continuing work. I am also grateful to M. Vero Besso for permission to quote from the letters of his father, Michelange Besso. All translations here are the author’s, unless otherwise indicated. — Early drafts of portions of this essay have been presented as invited papers at the Tagung of Eranos in Ascona (August, 1965), at the International Congress for the History of Science in Warsaw (August, 1965), and at the meeting, Science et Synthèse, at UNESCO in Paris (December, 1965).
3. F. Herneck, Forschungen and Fortschritte 36 (1964), 75. This and the next letter cited have been published by F. Herneck.
4. The only other known attempt on Einstein’s part to obtain an assistantship at that time was a request to Kammerlingh-Onnes (12 April 1901), to which, incidentally, he also seems to have received no response.
5. J. T. Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II (reprint, Dover Publishing Co., N. Y., pp. 184, 199.