{"title":"The Value of the Einstein-Besso Manuscript","authors":"Michel Janssen","doi":"10.1007/s00016-024-00311-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>On November 23, 2021, a manuscript consisting of about fifty pages of scratchpad calculations by Albert Einstein and his close friend Michele Besso sold at auction in Paris for a record $11.5 million. Most of these calculations date from 1913 and deal with the secular motion of Mercury’s perihelion. Einstein and Besso could only account for eighteen of the forty-three seconds of arc per century missing from the Newtonian account of this motion. In November 1915, drawing on this work with Besso, Einstein was able to account for all forty-three seconds. In the early 1990s, I prepared the Einstein-Besso manuscript for publication in volume four of <i>The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein</i> and wrote an essay about it for the auction catalog the first two times it changed hands, for $360,000 in 1996, for $500,000 in 2002. Rather than on the manuscript’s increasing monetary value, however, this essay focuses on its intellectual significance and its importance for my academic career.</p>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Physics in Perspective","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-024-00311-y","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
On November 23, 2021, a manuscript consisting of about fifty pages of scratchpad calculations by Albert Einstein and his close friend Michele Besso sold at auction in Paris for a record $11.5 million. Most of these calculations date from 1913 and deal with the secular motion of Mercury’s perihelion. Einstein and Besso could only account for eighteen of the forty-three seconds of arc per century missing from the Newtonian account of this motion. In November 1915, drawing on this work with Besso, Einstein was able to account for all forty-three seconds. In the early 1990s, I prepared the Einstein-Besso manuscript for publication in volume four of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and wrote an essay about it for the auction catalog the first two times it changed hands, for $360,000 in 1996, for $500,000 in 2002. Rather than on the manuscript’s increasing monetary value, however, this essay focuses on its intellectual significance and its importance for my academic career.
期刊介绍:
Physics in Perspective seeks to bridge the gulf between physicists and non-physicists through historical and philosophical studies that typically display the unpredictable as well as the cross-disciplinary interplay of observation, experiment, and theory that has occurred over extended periods of time in academic, governmental, and industrial settings and in allied disciplines such as astrophysics, chemical physics, and geophysics. The journal also publishes first-person accounts by physicists of significant contributions they have made, biographical articles, book reviews, and guided tours of historical sites in cities throughout the world. It strives to make all articles understandable to a broad spectrum of readers – scientists, teachers, students, and the public at large. Bibliographic Data Phys. Perspect. 1 volume per year, 4 issues per volume approx. 500 pages per volume Format: 15.5 x 23.5cm ISSN 1422-6944 (print) ISSN 1422-6960 (electronic)