46 INTRODUCTORYFinally Einstein found a temporary job. Starting May 19, 1901, he became a
substitute teacher for two months at a high school in Winterthur. He wrote to
Winteler that he had never expected to derive such pleasure from teaching. 'After
having taught for five or six hours in the morning, I am still quite fresh and work
in the afternoon either in the library on my further education or at home on inter-
esting problems. ... I have given up the ambition to get to a university since I saw
that also under the present circumstances I maintain the strength and desire to
make scientific efforts' [El8].* To Grossmann he wrote, also from Winterthur,
that he was at work on kinetic gas theory and that he was pondering the movement
of matter relative to the aether [El9].
After Winterthur, another temporary position came his way. He was appointed
for one year, to begin in September 1901, at a private school in Schaffhausen [F3].
Once again there was enough time for physics. Here is Einstein writing in Decem-
ber 1901: 'Since September 15, 1901, I am a teacher at a private school in
Schaffhausen. During the first two months of my activities at that school, I wrote
my doctoral dissertation on a topic in the kinetic theory of gases. A month ago I
handed in this thesis at the University of Zurich'** [E20]. This work was not
accepted as a thesis, however, f This setback was the last one in Einstein's career.
It came at about the time that he left Schaffhausen for Bern, where he was to
spend the most creative years of his life.
The first initiative for the move to Bern had already been taken some time in
1900, when Marcel Grossmann had spoken to his family about Einstein's employ-
ment difficulties. This led Marcel's father to recommend Einstein to Friedrich
Haller, the director of the federal patent office in Bern. Einstein was deeply grate-
ful for this recommendation4 There the matter rested until December 11, 1901,
when a vacancy at the patent office was advertised in the Schweizerisches Bundes-
blatt. Einstein at once sent a letter of application [E20]. At some point he was
interviewed by Haller. Perhaps he received some assurances of a position at that
time. In any event, he resigned his job at Schaffhausen and settled in Bern in
February 1902, before he had any appointment there. At first his means of sup-
port were a small allowance from his family and fees from tutoring in mathematics
and physics. One of his students described him as follows: 'about five feet ten,
broad-shouldered, slightly stooped, a pale brown skin, a sensuous mouth, black
moustache, nose slightly aquiline, radiant brown eyes, a pleasant voice, speaking
*In this same letter, Einstein also reported that he had met one of the leading German physicists. I
have been unable to find out who that was.
**At that time, the ETH did not yet grant the PhD degree.
fl have been unable to find a response from Zurich concerning Einstein's proposed thesis. This
kinetic theory paper was later published [E21]. Earlier in the year, Einstein had contemplated sub-
mitting an extended version of his first paper, on intermolecular forces, as a PhD thesis [E14].
JHe expressed his gratitude in a letter to Marcel Grossmann dated April 14, 1901, [E14] (not 1902,
as is stated in [Sll]).