Of Love, Physics and Other Passions: The Letters of Albert and Mileva (Part 2)

SEP 01, 1994

With a child on the way, Albert Einstein swore he would take the most menial job, he and Mileva Marić would marry and they would be a cozy couple, happily immersed together in the study of science.That’s not how it turned out.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881404

Gerald Holton

Few plans can be more romantic than when two young lovers agree to meet in springtime at sunny Lake Como for a long excursion into the Alps above. The year was 1901. Albert Einstein, 22 years of age, and Mileva Marić, some three years older, had first met as fellow students at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. Now they were leaving their troubles behind them—Mileva having failed her important examination, Albert still without the certainty of finding a job, least of all at a university. But they were united in the promise of a life devoted to each other and to the study of physics. (See part 1 of this article, in last month’s issue, page 23.)

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References

1. E. R. Einstein, Hans Albert Einstein: Reminiscences of His Life and Our Life Together, U. of Iowa P., Iowa City (1991).
2. E. H. Erikson, in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, G. Holton, Y. Elkana, eds., Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J. (1982), p. 151.
3. P. Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, Knopf, New York (1947).
4. R. Highfield, P. Carter, The Private Lives of Albert Einstein, Faber and Faber, London (1993).
Useful as an assembly of quoted sources, but marred by sensationist speculations.
5. P. Michelmore, Einstein: Profile of the Man, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York (1962).
6. A. Pais, Einstein Lived Here, Oxford U.P., New York (1994).
7. J. Renn, R. Schulmann, eds., Albert Einstein, Mileva Marić: The Love Letters (translated by S. Smith), Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J. (1992).
8. A. Reiser, Albert Einstein, Albert & Charles Boni, New York (1930).
9. J. Stachel, ed., The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. I: The Early Years, 1879–1902, Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J. (1987).
10. J. Stachel, in Creative Couples in the Sciences, H. Pycior, N. Slack, P. Abir‐Am, eds., Rutgers U.P., New Brunswick, N.J. (1994), in press. I have relied extensively on this source.
11. D. Trbuhovic‐Gjurić, Im Schatten Albert Einsteins: Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein‐Maric, Paul Haupt Verlag, Bern (1988).
See the corrections by Pais and Stachel (above) of the claims in this biography of Mileva.

More about the Authors

Gerald Holton. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.