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Mileva Manc; also sometimes spelled “Maritsch” and “Marity”. For the German version of this letter see Albert Einstein, Vol. I edited by John Stachel, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1987, pp. 260–261.
Einstein was presumably refemng to Boltzmann’s Vorlesungen über Gastheorie, Barth: Leipzig, either Volume I published in 1896 or Volume II published in 1898. For Einstein’s early work on statistical mechanics see Clayton A. Gearhart, “Einstein Before 1905: The Early Papers on Statistical Mechanics”, American Journal of Physics,58(1990)468–480.
Franz S. Exner (1849–1926) became Professor of experimental physics at the University of Vienna in 1891, succeeding Joseph Loschmidt. His father had been an influential philosopher and educator and several close relatives were also scientists. Exner did much work in electrochemistry and in the study of atmosphenc phenomena. He also was a very influential teacher, guiding more students to higher degrees in Vienna than either of his better-known contemporaries, Boltzmann or Mach. See B. Karlik and E. Schmid, Franz Exner und sein Kreis, österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Verlag: Vienna, 1982.
Leopold Gegenbauer (1849–1903) became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1893.
Mileva Maric (1875–1948) seems to have grown up in a Serbian family living in the town of Titel in what was then southern Hungary. She became a fellow student of Einstein in the ETH in Zürich. They had three children, one before and two after marriage. See The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. I edited by John Stachel, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1987, pp. 272–273 and 380–381 and Albert Einstein Mileva Maric - The Love Letters, edited by J. Renn and R. Schulmann and translated by Shawn Smith, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1992.
Helene Savic (1871–1943) was born in Vienna and was a history student in Zürich where she met and became friends with Maric and Einstein. She had just married a Serbian engineer, Milivoj Savic, when she received this letter. See Stachel, ibid., p. 386.
Albert Einstein, “Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen”, Annalen der Physik, 4 (1901), 513–523.
I is not yet known whether Boltzmann replied to Einstein.
It seems that Wilhelm von Hartel, Boltzmann’s colleague at the University of Vienna as well as Austrian Minister of Education, felt that Boltzmann’s heart remained in Austria and that he could be won back to the University of Vienna.
Meyer, Boltzmann’s longtime assistant at Vienna, became his interim successor in 1906, and in 1910 first director of the Radium Institute in Vienna.
George Jaffé, “Recollections of Three Great Laboratories”, Journal of Chemical Education, 29 (1952), 230–238.
Ibid., p. 231.
Ibid., p. 235.
David Heinrich Müller (1846–1912), dean of the Philosophy faculty at the University of Vienna,was an Orientalist, becoming professor in the Ring City in 1881.
Victor von Lang (1838–1921) was professor of experimental physics at the University of Vienna and in 1908 Rector. He worked largely in optics and crystallography. Franz Exner had been his assistant See Karlik and Schmid, op. cit., pp. 37–40. For details of the reorganization of the Institute see Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormack, Intellectual Mastery of Nature, Volume II University of Chicago press: Chicago, 1986, pp. 185–188.
Ilse M. Fasol-Boltzmann, “Ludwig Boltzmann and His Family”, in Ilse M. Fasol-Boltzmann (ed.), Ludwig Boltzmann ‘Principien der Naturf losofi - Lectures on Natural Philosophy 19031906, Springer: Berlin, etc., 1990, p. 31.
Franz Mertens (1840–1927) became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1894. He had replaced Müller as Dean of the Philosophy Faculty.
Boltzmann succeeded Stefan in Vienna in 1894. See letter #15, footnote 2 for more particulars.
A. Dick and G. Kerber, Ludwig Boltzmann - Katalog zur Ausstellung an der Zentralbibliothekfeit Physik in Wien, Vienna,1982, p. 29.
Alfred Kleiner (1849–1916) was an advisor and supervisor of Einstein at the ETH in Zürich. 2It is not clear which paper Einstein is referring to.
Either Volume I (1896) or II (1898) of Boltzmann book on gas theory.
John Stachel gives the following footnotes in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume I, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1987, p. 335, notes 7 and 8: “… Kaiser 1930, p. 69, states that Kleiner rejected Einstein’s work on the kinetic theory of gases bfraiise it ‘sharply criticized’ Boltzmann…. According to Einstein’s sister, he [Einstein] lcorresponded with Boltzmann until the latter’s death in 1906 (See Winteler-Einstein 1924,p.
Einstein presumably meant Ernst Mach’s, Principien der Wlirn elehre,either the 1896 or the 1900 edition.
Max Wien (1866–1938) taught physics from 1899 to 1903 at the Technical University of Aachen and from 1911 at the University of Jena. His work was largely concerned with acoustics, sparks, and electrical systems. He was a cousin of the better-known physicist Willy Wien. It is possible that the commission and its work which this letter describes served as preliminary labor for the 1905 conference in Leipzig which Boltzmann mentions at length near the beginning of the original German version of his article “On the Trip of a German Professor into E Dorado” (1905), which in translation can be found in Chapter 7 of this book.
This circular was apparently kept by Boltzmann and not returned to Max Wien. See the next letter for a possible explanation.
Georg Gänsthaler was a laboratory employee in Boltzmann’s laboratory in Vienna For his coming switch to Exner’s laboratory and for Boltzmann’s opinion of Gänsthaler, see the previous letter. Since neither letter was provided with an exact date or easily determinable temporal clues, their sequence is not certain, though the next letter would suggest that we have probably placed them in the right order.
The building which currently houses the various institutes of physics in Vienna as well as chemistry was basically finished in 1913. It is a huge building which understandably took a long time to complete. Appropriately, the entrance to the Institute for Theoretical Physics is located on Boltzmanngasse, as is the Radium Institute finished in 1910, which had Stefan Meyer as its first director.
Ernst Mach (1838–1916) moved from a professorship in experimental physics in Prague to “Brentano’s Chair” in philosophy in Vienna in 1895, albeit with the title changed to “the history and philosophy of the inductive sciences”. But Mach suffered a stroke in 1898 which paralysed the right side of his body. He retired in 1901, thereby apparently planting the idea in Boltzmann’s mind that since he too was writing more and more philosophy that he also might be permitted to teach philosophy in Vienna, especially since the Brentano-Mach chair was still vacant. Nevertheless, it is not certain whether his visit to Mach mentioned above was connected with this possibility.
Christian Wiener (1826–1896). He had been a mathematician and philosopher at Karlsruhe, publishing the book Grundzilge der Weltordnung in Leipzig in 1863.
Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), who had studied animal electricity and strongly rejected vitalistic explanations in biology, had became a leading philosopher of science in Central Europe by the 1870’s and 1880’s. He suggested that there were “seven riddles” which would never be solved in science and to which one must answer “Ignorabimus”. Mach thought he was too pessimistic, but it remains the case that the seven problems remain as unsolved as ever over a hundred years later.
Ewald Hering (1834–1918) was a physiologist well-known for his nativism, color theory, and notion of inherited memory. He had been Mach’s colleague in Prague for many years before moving to Leipzig.
Leo Königsberger (1837–1921), a mathematician and longtime friend and colleague of Helmholtz, published his biography, Hermann von Helmholtz, Band I, Braunschweig, in 1902.
But Boltzmann’s letters to Helmholtz have recently been published. See Herbert Hörz and Andreas I sass, Ludwig Boltzmann Wege nach Berlin, Akademie Verlag: Berlin, 1989, pp. 87–96.
Königsberger, op. cit., p. 375.
Frau Boltzmann was writing to her daughter Ida who continued to attend a Gymnasium in Leipzig after other members of the family returned to Vienna. Ida Boltzmann (1884–1910) studied mathematics and physics and passed the examination for secondary school teachers, but died a few years afterwards.
George Cecil Jaffé (1880–1965) was born in Moscow, studied in Munich and Leipzig, did research with J.J. Thomson in Cambridge and Marie Curie in Paris, taught physics in Leipzig and later Giessen from 1916 to 1933 when he left for America and taught at Louisiana State University until his retirement. See #37A in this book and his article “Recollections of Three Great Laboratories” in Journal of Chemical Education, 29 (1952), 230–238.
Ludwig Boltzmann, Vorlesungen fiber die Prinzipien der Mechanik, Leipzig, 1897 (Band I) and 1904 (Band II)
See Ludwig Boltzmann, ‘Zur Theorie des von Hall entdeckten elektromagnetischen Phänomens“, Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften [Vienna], 94 (1886), 644–669.
Boltzmann’s son Arthur (1881–1952) was still a student. He studied physics in Vienna and Berlin and mechanical and electrical engineering at the Technical University of Vienna See letter #59, footnote 1, for more information about his adult career.
See letter #25 and footnote 1.
Svante Anhenius, “Anwendung der physikalischen Chemie auf das Studium der Toxine und Antitoxine” in Festschrift v. Im. of Stat. Serum-Inst., Copenhagen, 1902.
Arrhenius won a Nobel prize in 1903 for his theory of electrolytic dissociation described in his doctoral dissertation.
Theodor des Coudres (1862–1926) was actually more of an experimentalist than theorist concerning himself at least in the early years with measuring the velocity of cathode rays, and while he would apparently get along with Wiener well, he would publish little after arriving in Leipzig, even in experimental physics. See C. Jungnickel and R. McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature, Vol. 2, Unicersity of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1986, pp. 179–183.
Ludwig Schlesinger, who was born in 1864, was a mathematician at Klausenburg and later at Giessen. He was largely interested in differential equations and functions.
The suspicion is, given the date of publication, i.e. the beginning of 1903, that Boltzmann received and in his letter was referring to a republication of the brief 1832 appendix on non-Euclidean geometry by Johann Bblyai which had originally been placed at the end of his father’s much longer work. A new edition of that longer tome by Wolfgang BOlyai de Bblya, Tentamen inventutem studiosem in elementa matheseos. introducend, mathematisches Lehrbuch, was then in the process of being published. The new edition in two volumes came out in 1899 and 1904.
The Institute was finally finished in 1905.
Boltzmann’s second son. He became an assistant lecturer at Vienna University, was artillery observer in a tethered balloon during World War I, and subsequently became Austrian civil servant in the Federal Office for Weights and Measures and later its direct(See Ilse M. Fasol-Boltzmann, “Ludwig Boltzmann and His Family” in Ilse M. Fasc Boltzmann (ed.), Ludwig Boltzmann ‘Principien der Filosofc’, Springer. Berlin, etc., 199 p. 28. See also Letter #54 above, footnote 3.
The German name for Bratislava, now the capital of the Independent Republic Slovakia.
This undated letter starts out like letter #51 as if Boltzmann had forgotten that he had written the earlier one. See the last line of #61 for an admission of confusion. On the other hand, being undated one cannot be certain that it was in fact written after what we have listed as #51. Nevertheless, #61 is intrinsically interesting and Boltzmann’s little story was reproduced by Königsberger in his own autobiography, Mein Leben, Heidelberg, 1919, pp. 110f.
Königsberger’s biography went through Helmholtz’s scientific work article by article such that actually it is as much a description of science as it is a narrative story of his life. See also letter #51.
Konigsberger included excerpts from Boltzmann’s letters to Helmholtz in his biography as well as adding a few comments about their scientific exchanges.
Eduard Suess (1831–1914) was Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Vienna and had been a member of the Austrian Parliament for some thirty years.
The Austrian Academy of Science.
George Hartley Bryan (1864–1928) was born in Cambridge and graduated from his hometown University with a PHD in science in 1895. He was very interested in Boltzmann’s work and they collaborated on a paper in 1894 “Über die mechanische Analogie des Wärmegleichgewichts zweier sich beruhender Korper”, Sitz. ber. kaiserlich. Akad. Wiss. [Vienna], 103 (1894), 1125–1134. The above quotation is included in Wolfgang Stiller, Ludwig Boltzmann, Verlag Harri Deutsch: Frankfurt am Main,1989, p. 80.
Karl Przibram, “Erinnerungen an Boltzmanns Vorlesungen” in The Boltzmann Equation - Theory and Applications, edited by EG.D. Cohen and W. Thirring, Springer Verlag: Vienna and New York, 1973, p. 641.
Quoted by Engelbert Broda, Ludwig Boltzmann: Man - Physicist - Philosopher,Ox Bow Press: Woodbridge, Connecticut, 1983, p. 12. Originally a personal communication to Broda from Franz Skaupy, a metallurgist who had attended Boltzmann’s lectures from 1902 to 1904.
Lise Meitner, “Looking Back”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 20 (Nov. 1964), 3.
Alois Höfler, “Ludwig Boltzmann als Mensch und als Philosoph”, Siiddeutsche Monatshefte, 3 (October 1906), 18–22. Alois Höfler (1853–1922) was an Austrian philosopher of education. He had been much influenced by Franz Brentano.
Ludwig Ramm, “Die Persönlichkeit Boltzmann”, Wiener Chemiker Zeitung, 47 (1944), p. 30. Ludwig Ramm (1885–1964) became a physical scientist at the Technical University of Vienna and Ludwig Boltzmann’s son-in-law.
Pczibram, op. cit., p. 642.
Abraham Pais is a well-known physicist and scholar. He became Desley W. Brunk Professor at Rockefeller University and won the J. Robert Oppen’eimer Memorial prize in 1979. The quotation is from his very well received book ’Subtle is the Lord’ - The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1982, p. 65–66 and 67.
Ludwig Boltzmann, “On the Principles of Mechanics II”, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, edited by Brian McGuinness and translated by Paul Foulkes, Reidel: Dordrecht, 1974, pp. 146 and 149–151. (This book is largely a translation of Ludwig Boltzmann, Populäre Schnften, Leipzig,1905.)
The English translation is taken from: Ludwig Boltzmann, “Inaugural Lecture on Natural Philosophy”, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, edited by Brian McGuinness and translated by Paul Foulkes, Reidel: Dordrecht, 1974, pp. 154–156.
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Blackmore, J. (1995). Back to Vienna. In: Blackmore, J. (eds) Ludwig Boltzmann His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 168. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0489-2_4
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