Ehrenfest’s Library :: Einstein Manuscript Found in Leiden ¶ Updated

University of Leiden — Institute Lorentz :: Einstein archive

At the initiative of Paul Ehrenfest, a special chair in Leiden was created for Albert Einstein, enabling him to come to our university for short periods of his choosing. On October 27, 1920, Einstein began his new position with an inaugural address on ether and relativity theory. The yearly visits stopped when Einstein fled Europe in 1933. The position was formally terminated by the German occupation.

Reminiscenses of Einstein’s visits to Leiden are described elsewhere. Here we present the three Einstein manuscripts preserved in our archives.
Read the story of their discovery (in dutch).

<click on document for full manuscript>

Bose-Einstein condensate

Manuscript in Einstein’s handwriting (dated December 1924), with editorial markup. It was evidently used by Einstein to correct the page proofs in early 1925 and then left behind in Leiden. The publication is in the proceedings of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. (The reprint shown here was Ehrenfest’s copy.)

Page 2 of the manuscript reports the last scientific discovery of Einstein’s career: the prediction of the new state of matter now called the Bose-Einstein condensate. (The 2001 Nobel prize went to its experimental observation in a cold dilute gas.)

The manuscript follows up on an earlier article, which is preserved in manuscript at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. That earlier work, however, does not yet contain the prediction of the condensation phenomenon.

Einstein and Ehrenfest (left) with his son Paul Jr., June 1920
Collection Museum Boerhaave   Link to virtual visit of museum!

Update [2005-8-22 4:23:6 by Oui]:

See some fine comments with additional links to Einstein’s manuscripts world wide.

Einstein Gallery and Jewish National & University Library