Připravil Brian Kenety.
Natočeno 2020. Premiéra 1. dílu 14. 2. 2020 (ČRo Radio Prague, 12 min).
Lit.: Kenety, Brian: “Einstein in Bohemia” – part 1: how a Prague sojourn sparked his theory of general relativity, journey of self-discovery. In web ČRo Radio Prague, 14. 2. 2020 (článek + nahrávka k poslechu) – Cit.: Albert Einstein’s tenure as a professor of theoretical physics in Prague is often noted in passing – as an “interlude” or a “sojourn” of no great significance, even though it was in the Czech capital where his most extraordinary work, the theory of general relativity, truly began to emerge. With his new book Einstein in Bohemia, Princeton University history professor Michael D Gordin makes a compelling case that not only did Einstein’s time in Prague shape the science, literature, and even politics of the city for decades to come, the same is true in reverse: the acquaintances Einstein made in Bohemia and ideas he was first exposed to there continued to occupy him. Einstein arrived in Prague to take up a post at the German University in April 1911 with his first wife Mileva Marić, herself a physicist, and two sons. He only taught there for three full semesters – and at first didn’t warm to the city. But apart from first fully devoting his time to positing what would be his greatest discovery, while in Prague Einstein was compelled to think differently about his own identity – as an atheistic German-born Jew with Swiss citizenship, wary of nationalism, the Zionist movement included.
Before receiving a review copy of his book, I had heard a lecture by Prof. Gordin on Einstein in which he said he started looking into his time in Prague at first thinking he would write a “micro-history” about that year and a half, and then “an intellectual urban history” of the Bohemian capital, before gravitating towards a hybrid of the two. I began by asking Prof. Gordin what drew him to the subject and how and why his concept for his book Einstein in Bohemia evolved.
“I began my career as a historian of science in Russia and the Soviet Union, and that interest quickly expanded to other Slavic areas. I was interested in a whole bunch of topics, but like all historians of the physical sciences, I was interested in Einstein.
“While reading several biographies of him, I noticed only very brief mentions of his time in Prague; that he had received a position in Prague, arrived in 1911 and left in 1912.
“And I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to focus just on that year and a half and see what one could find. I started studying Czech for a number of reasons and thought that would help with the project, which it did.”
“Einstein is a special case not in the history of science but in much of 20th century history, in that he is incredibly well documented. We have a very large number of his letters, his notebooks, reminiscences about him, government documents, etc. So, I thought I would investigate in very close detail what he did almost week by week, from when he arrived in early April 1911 to when he left in August of 1912. What he taught, who he met, etc. “It turns out that there were two things wrong with that plan. The first is that no matter how well documented Einstein is by the standards of our present-day understanding, there are months when we don’t know much about him. And he wrote about what he chose to write about, and administrative documents cover certain parts of his time there and not others. So, it wasn’t possible to do it as a historian would like to.
“The second problem is that it wasn’t terribly interesting. Most of what he did was go to work, think about physics and go home. He had very limited engagements with the culture of the city – but I became interested in those engagements and the culture of the city. The more I dug into those, the richer it seemed to be to talk not just about Einstein but to talk about the world he had been in, and follow also the lives of his major interlocutors where he was.
“So, I tracked them through this period – and this is where it being Prague is especially helpful in that the city in the pre-World War I period, from say 1900 to 1914 is also extremely well documented because of lot of interest especially in the life of Franz Kafka, who had many similar connections to Einstein.
“I was able to trace a lot of that environment, and that’s where the book came from – trying to look in-depth at a particular person in a particular place, and then following the strands of his influence and the influences upon him over time.”