The B'nai B'rith magazine · 1927-07-01 · 10 (7.1927) · p. Seite 424

The Jews and Relativity F ALL the great revolutions in thought that have been thrust upon an unwilling world in the last few centuries, that of relativity seems to have had the most farreaching effect in intellectual circles. Whatever might be thought of the special theories of relativity, the general doctrine is here to stay. The literature on the subject constitutes a library of many thousands of volumes and articles. There is scarcely a branch of science which has not been affected to some extent by this remarkable innovation, and yet its importance does not lie in its being an innovation but in being proven a fact. Its truth has been demonstrated more than once and all its traducers have not been able to dislodge it from its scientific throne. It is common knowledge that the man whose name is most intimately associated with the theory of relativity is a Jew of unmistakable Semitic origin and avowedly nationalistic tendencies. Albert Einstein has already taken his place with Galileo Kepler, Copernicus and Newton in the forefront of scientific achievement. But it is not generally known that the doctrine of relativity has been reared, so to speak, on a Jewish foundation. It was not Einstein alone who evolved this cosmic theory. He had his predecessors in physics and mathematics, as well as his collaborators, and it may be of sig- Albert Einstein By A. A. Roback nificance that the most prominent among these are Jews. Perhaps the starting point in the development of the relativity theory was the result of an experiment made possible through the ingenuity, if not genius, of another Jew, also an Albert. It was Albert Abraham Michelson, a Polish Jew making his domicile in America, who constructed the giant interferometer which was the essential medium in the famous Michelson- Morley experiment. There were, to be sure, other experiments undertaken to ascertain whether there was an ether drift with the earth's motion or not, and possibly Michelson's rather negative result was one of several bits of evidence which were instrumental in overturning the Newtonian system; but it seems as if Einstein was more impressed by the amazing technique of the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 which by the way was the earliest, as well as the most accurate, of all these tests. It is not my purpose to enter into the intricacies of the relativity theory, even were I to flatter myself in supposing that I belonged to the proverbial few who are thoroughly conversant with it. It is only as an historian approaching his subject from a certain angle, namely the socio-psychological angle, that I am eager to bring up the matter here. If Einstein has taken his cue from a Jew on the physical side, he has turned to another Jew on the mathematical side. The name of the distinguished mathematician, Levi-Civita in Italy is, for obvious reasons, less well-known than that of Michelson, but it was this Italian Jew who practically created the branch of mathematics called tensor calculus, which enables us to analyze manifolds of any number of dimensions. The doctrine of relativity contains so many aspects that threads must be seen connecting it with a number of different scientific branches. It is a pity that those who consider Lorentz a Jew are mistaken about his origin, for it was this Leyden mathematical physicist who served as the forerunner of Einstein, in that he supplied the famous "transformation" formula for turning one set of co-ordinates (say, at rest in an ether) into another set (in motion with a given velocity). Lorentz has so often been Albert A. Michelson represented to me as Jewish by his students, and looks so much like his great compatriot Josef Israels, that at one time there was no doubt in my mind that he belonged to Einstein's race. Even Weyl, the chief exponent of relativity after Einstein, supposed that Lorentz was a Jew, but to make sure I took the liberty of addressing the question, which at times is rather delicate, to the man himself, and his reply was an explicit denial that he was of Jewish descent. Lorentz's "foreignness" in this regard somewhat lessens the solidarity of the Semitic builders of the relativity conception, but Lorentz, I understand from some of his students, is so modest as to give Einstein all the credit for the discovery, and he even refers to the transformation as the Einstein equation. If, however, Lorentz could not be added to the list of Jewish scientists who might be regarded as the midwives of the relativity principle, at least one other brilliant Jewish name can be added to our record—that of the lamented mathematical giant, Minkowski. It was he who supplied the notation for the great symphony which Einstein conceived. According to Hermann Weyl, ("Space-Time-Matter," English translation of the fourth German edition page 173), "the adequate mathematical foundation of Einstein's 424