Albert Einstein | Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929

Albert Einstein.

Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatini, praising his recent articles (“Ihre Arbeiten haben mich sehr interessirt…”) and comparing their work (“...Sie die Lokal-Tensoren bevorzugen, während ich hauptsächlich gewöhnliche Tensoren verwend...” [you prefer local tensors, while I mainly use ordinary tensors]), sending him a copy of his latest paper, 'Einheitliche Feldtheorie und Hamiltonsches Prinzip' and discussing its implications and the direction of further research (“...Ob die Theorie wirklich zutreffend ist, kann erst das Bewegungsproblem lehren, dessen Lösung bestimmt implizite in den Gleichungen steck...” [Whether or not this theory is really relevant can only be learned from the problem of motion, whose solution is present implicitly in the equation]), in German, 1 page, 4to, [Berlin], 12 May 1929, with envelope, small nicks at folds

A LETTER ON THE CONTINUING REFINEMENT OF GENERAL RELATIVITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF UNIFIED FIELD THEORY. Attilo Palatini (1889–1949) was, at the time of writing, Professor of Rational Mechanics and Mathematical Physics at the University of Pavia. He had made several contributions to the mathematical modelling of Relativity, especially the use of tensors. This letter is a response to two articles that Palatini had sent to Einstein: 'Sulla geometrica intrinsica come strumento di calcolo' (1928) and 'Intorno alla nueva teoria di Einstein' (1929). In return, Einstein sent Palatini a copy of his latest paper, on the application of Hamilton's Principle to Unified Field Theory. This work attempted to integrate electromagnetic and gravitational fields in a teleparallel framework but, as Einstein notes here, it remained to be seen whether the theory could successfully model subatomic motion. See also previous lot.

LITERATURE:

Albert Einstein, Collected Papers Vol. 16: Writings and Correspondence, June 1927-May 1929, no. 529