50 YEARS AGO

OBITUARY — Prof. Albert Einstein.

My first contact with Einstein was in Vienna in September 1913... he lectured to the Physics Section on “Gravitation”, and his lecture quite obviously impressed most of his hearers as the work of a master-mind. But it was clear in the discussion which followed that many German-speaking men of science were not yet converted to his ideas... Einstein remained smilingly unperturbed and said he was prepared to stand or fall by the results of an empirical examination of his predictions. He had not very long to wait, for when I translated his popular work on “Relativity” in 1920, I suggested to him that he might like to include an appendix on the experimental confirmation of the theory...

His world-wide and unsought fame undoubtedly reached its zenith with the confirmation of his predicted gravitational deflexion of light rays by Eddington and others in 1919... His first comments in Britain on the results of the solar eclipse expeditions were published at the request of The Times... Referring to this in a letter to me, he wrote: “It cannot do any harm, for, thank God, the solar eclipse and the theory of relativity have nothing in common with politics... I should like to utilize the favourable circumstances to contribute as much as possible towards the reconciliation of German and English colleagues.”

Robert W. Lawson

From Nature 28 May 1955.

100 YEARS AGO

On Friday, May 12... Lord Avebury, on behalf of his fellow trustees, received from Mr. Andrew Carnegie the gift of the full-sized model of the skeleton of the gigantic American dinosaur known as Diplodocus carnegii, which has been mounted in the reptile gallery of the Natural History Branch of the British Museum... It is almost an appalling thought that the skeleton of a creature which lived at least several million years ago should have come down in such a marvellous preservation to our own day.

From Nature 25 May 1905.