748 14 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6479 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: BENJAMIN COUPRIE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONSA
little-known encounter between Al-
bert Einstein and Franz Kafka may
have occurred in Prague in 1911. We
know that both men attended, on at
least one occasion, evening gather-
ings in the famous salon of Berta
Fanta and that Einstein may have lectured
to this audience on the relativity princi-
ple in May 1911. It is likely that
Kafka was present at this lecture.
As Michael Gordin points out
in Einstein in Bohemia, it is “over-
whelmingly tempting to imagine
Einstein and Kafka engaged in
a meeting of minds,” given that
both were about to become cre-
ators and icons of major cultural
transformations. But, alas, no
record of such a meeting exists,
and although absence of evidence
is not evidence of absence, Gor-
din wryly observes, it is hardly evidence of
presence either. To illuminate the elusive sig-
nificance of Einstein’s brief tenure in Prague,
both for the biography of the famous physi-
cist and for the cultural history of Bohemia,
is the aim of Gordin’s book.
Einstein lived in the capital of Bohemia
a mere 16 months, from April 1911 to Au-gust 1912, having accepted appointments as
a full professor at the German University
of Prague and director of its Institute for
Theoretical Physics. He was unhappy with
his new situation from the beginning. He
found life in Prague with his wife and their
two sons, aged 7 and 1, “less homey (the
Czech language, bedbugs, miserable wa-
ter, etc.),” he confided to his Zurich friend
Marcel Grossmann. As his correspondence
attests, he began in November
1911 to inquire about his chances
of returning to his alma mater in
Zurich and soon began negotiat-
ing the terms of his return. It is
no wonder, then, that Einstein’s
brief stint in Prague has been
downplayed as a brief interlude
of little significance by most
biographers.
Gordin sets out to challenge
this view. An expert in the his-
tory of modern physical sciences
and of Russian, European, and American
history, he pulls together a wealth of infor-
mation about the wider context of Einstein’s
stay in Prague and of the cultural, scientific,
and political history of Bohemia.
Einstein’s most important work in Prague
was an early paper on gravitational light
deflection, published 4 years before the
completion of his general theory of relativ-
ity. During this time, he also attended the
1911 Solvay conference in Brussels, the first
international conference at which partici-pants discussed the puzzles of the emerging
field of quantum physics. We learn about
notable individuals with whom Einstein in-
teracted during this period, including those
who would have an impact on his work. One
chapter, for example, is devoted to Philipp
Frank, Einstein’s successor at the German
University of Prague. Frank authored one of
the first biographies of Einstein and was a
source of much of what is known about the
physicist’s stay in Prague. Gordin also dis-
cusses Max Brod, whom—like Kafka—Ein-
stein met at Fanta’s salon. Some scholars
have argued that one of the main charac-
ters in Brod’s 1915 novel, Tycho Brahe’s Path
to God, was modeled after Einstein (a claim
that Gordin convincingly refutes).
Readers also learn about Prague’s com-
plicated and convoluted history. The west-
ernmost and largest region of the Czech
lands, Bohemia was plagued by troubled
relations between its Czech and German
populations, a conflict that played out in
the city’s Czech and German universities
and in Einstein’s life as a physicist, as a
German, and as a Jew. Here, Gordin also
discusses the cultural impact of Einstein’s
work in Prague academia, revealing, for ex-
ample, how Oskar Kraus, a Prague philoso-
pher and colleague of Frank’s, evolved into
a vocal critic of relativity. Frank, mean-
while, turned a 1929 meeting of German
physicists and mathematicians in Prague
into a venue for the philosophical frame-
work of logical positivism, leading the city
to become a center of a philosophical tra-
dition that was inspired and challenged by
Einstein’s innovations in physics.
Gordin turns his account into an analysis
of how key developments in 20th-century
theoretical physics are intertwined with and
play out in regional, cultural, and broad-
er political history. But would Einstein’s
biography or Prague’s history have looked
much different if Einstein had not spent a
year in Bohemia? As Gordin aptly remarks
about the encounter between Kafka and
Einstein: “The meeting happened but the
minds did not register it.” I enjoyed read-
ing this highly informative, profoundly
researched, and well-written book but, in
the end, was not convinced that Einstein’s
time in Prague left any deeper traces be-
yond what one would expect.
Nonetheless, Gordin explores unknown
connections and forgotten biographies
with impressive scholarly meticulousness
and fervor, tracing lines of development
that follow a dynamic of their own. Even if
they played only a minor role in the biog-
raphy of the famous physicist, these details
are interesting in their own right. j10.1126/science.aba0952HISTORY OF SCIENCEPhysics meets Bohemia
A historian dives deep into Einstein’s brief, often
overlooked time in Prague
Einstein (second from right) attended the historic first Solvay conference during his tenure in Prague.INSIGHTS | BOOKSThe reviewer is at the Physics, Mathematics, and Computer
Science Department, Johannes Gutenberg University of
Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany. Email: [email protected]By Tilman SauerEinstein in Bohemia
Michael D. Gordin
Princeton University
Press, 2020. 360 pp.Published by AAAS