HOW EINSTEIN GOT THE NOBEL PRIZE 509Haas and Warburg are also back. General relativity is cited in letters by W. Dal-
lenbach (Baden), Eddington (Cambridge), G. Jaffe and E. Marx (Leipzig), G.
Nordstrom (Helsingfors), W. Walcott (Washington), and O. Wiener (Leipzig).
J. Hadamard (Paris) proposes either Einstein or Perrin. T. Lyman (Harvard)
cites Einstein's contributions to mathematical physics. Eddington writes, 'Einstein
stands above his contemporaries even as Newton did' [E5].
Professor Carl Wilhelm Oseen from the University of Uppsala proposes Ein-
stein for the photoelectric effect.
At this point, the Committee requests that its member Allvar Gullstrand pre-
pare an account of the theory of relativity and that its member Arrhenius do the
same for the photoeffect.
Gullstrand, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Uppsala since
1894, was a scientist of very high distinction. He obtained his medical doctor's
degree in 1890 and became the world's leading figure in the study of the eye as
an optical instrument. In 1960 it was written of him: 'The ophthalmologists con-
sider him to be the man who, next to Helmholtz, contributed more than anyone
else to a mathematical understanding of the human eye as an optical system....
While making these investigations, he discovered a number of widespread miscon-
ceptions about optical image formation, and, being a fighter, he devoted many of
his later papers to an attempt to destroy these misconceptions' [H2]. In 1910 and
again in 1911, he was proposed for the Nobel prize in physics. 'In 1911 the orig-
inal suggestion from the Committee was that the prize should be given to Professor
A. Gullstrand, Uppsala, "for his work in geometrical optics." Gullstrand had
become a member of the Committee the same year. ... However, it turned out
that the Committee for Physiology and Medicine had had the same good idea,
giving Gullstrand their prize "for his work on the dioptrics of the eye." So Gull-
strand declined the prize in physics, and the Committee wrote an extra report
(now including Gullstrand among the signers) suggesting Wien for the prize'
[Nl]. Gullstrand was a member of the Committee for physics from 1911 to 1929,
its chairman from 1923"to 1929.
Gullstrand's report, highly critical of relativity, was not a good piece of work.
I quote from its summary, found in the Report for 1921. Concerning the special
theory: 'The effects that are measurable with physical means are, however, so
small that in general they lie below the limits of experimental error.' Also beside
the mark is his finding about the general theory: 'As Gullstrand has shown, the
situation is that it remains unknown until further notice whether the Einstein
theory can at all be brought into agreement with the perihelion experiment [!] of
Le Verrier.' Gullstrand had fallen into the trap (he was not the only one) of
believing that he had shown that the answer for the perihelion effect is coordinate-
dependent. He also expressed the opinion (more reasonable though not very
weighty) that other, long-known deviations from the pure two-body Newtonian
law should be re-evaluated with general relativistic methods before there could be
even an attempt to identify the residual effect to be explained. On May 25, 1921,