Published June 2012
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Journal Article
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Mistaken Identity and Mirror Images: Albert and Carl Einstein, Leiden and Berlin, Relativity and Revolution
- Creators
- van Dongen, Jeroen
Abstract
Albert Einstein accepted a "special" visiting professorship at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in February 1920. Although his appointment should have been a mere formality, it took until October of that year before Einstein could occupy his special chair. Why the delay? The explanation involves a case of mistaken identity with Carl Einstein, Dadaist art, and a particular Dutch fear of revolutions. But what revolutions was one afraid of? The story of Einstein's Leiden chair throws new light on the reception of relativity and its creator in the Netherlands and in Germany.
Additional Information
© 2012 The Author(s). © 2012 Springer. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Published: Jun 2012. For insightful comments, I am grateful to David Baneke, A.J. Kox, Willem Otterspeer, Ze'ev Rosenkranz, and Milena Wazeck. I presented the earliest version of this article at a conference on Editing Centenary Scientific Manuscripts that was organized by Scott Walter of the Poincare´ Archives in 2007 at the University of Nancy 2; I am grateful to Scott for inviting me to this conference. I am further indebted to my fellow editors of Volume 10 of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein for a most rewarding collaboration, and to Ms. Toontje Jolles of the National Archive in The Hague for assistance. Finally, I thank Roger H. Stuewer for his meticulous and thoughtful editorial work on my paper.Attached Files
Published - vanDongen2012p18438Phys_Perspect.pdf
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vanDongen2012p18438Phys_Perspect.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 31909
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20120614-130110362
- Created
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2012-06-18Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field