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The Born-Einstein letters are a set of letters exchanged from 1916 to 1955 by the two famous 20th century physicists.

Albert Einstein and Max Born
Albert Einstein, born in 1879, is well-known for his ground-breaking ideas in the first half the 20th century which brought two revolutions in theoretical physics.

He became world-famous for the development of the general theory of relativity and he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics for his pioneering contribution to quantum mechanics. In 1933, he moved to Princeton in the US where he lived until his death in 1955.

Max Born, born in 1882, was a Professor of theoretical physics  at the University of Berlin, Frankfurt, Göttingen and  Edinburgh. He received the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the foundations of quantum mechanics. He died in Göttingen in 1970.



The letters
The letter exchange between the two great physicists began the year 1916. This was the year of the publication by Einstein of his landmark article on general theory of relativity. The last letter was written in 1955, the year of Einstein's death. The Born-Einstein letters present fascinating thoughts about the birth of modern theoretical physics. The tragic political history of Europe during the first half of the 20th century had a direct impact on the two physicist's lives. The political fate of Europe is a source of deep concern that is reflected in the letters all along. More than a hundred letters, precisely 117, are contained in the correspondance. They were written without publishing intention. They were mostly written in german while a few of them are in English. Some are from Hedwig Born, Max Born's wife. Born kept them all safely. He added comments and, towards the end of his life, decided to publish them.

Einstein had in the beginning of the 20th century a formidable intuition. This helped start two major scientific revolutions: the theory of relativity and the quantum theory. The quantum theory was then futher developed by Max Born, his close collaborators and by other physicists. The developments of the new quantum theory became increasingly a source of disagreement between the two men. The debates on the interpretation of this new theory are fascinating. Finally, Einstein rejected it on the ground that it is incomplete. Born tried tirelessly to find arguments to convince him with no success. On his side, Einstein is on a the quest for a unified theory that will merge both gravitation and quantum theory, with no success. Physicists today are still looking for such a theory called quantum gravity.

In spite of the deep scientific divisions, the tone of the letters testify of the infallible friendship between the two men.



Selected passages
The passages presented in this section cover rather well the range of topics and discussion that can be found in the letters.

Letter 48

 * << The idea that the electron can choose freely its path at all time, is unbearable to me.

If that were the case, I would rather abandon my scientist's career and find work as a shoemaker or as a casino employee. I have not found yet a tangible meaning to this quantum physics but I have not yet given up hopes to find one day its meaning...>>


 * Albert Einstein, 29 april 1924


 * << The fact that physics is fundamentally governed by statistical laws, what he refused, became a permanent

contentious subject between us. Einstein was firmly convinced that physics gives us access to an external objective reality . I became progressively convinced along with other physicists that, as a result of the new experiments conducted at the atomic scale, this was not the case. It seems we can have at all time only a limited and rough knowledge of this external objective reality  and we can only predict the future evolution in a probabilistic way using the quantum physics laws. >>


 * Comment by Max Born on letter 48

Letter 49

 * <>


 * Max Born, 15 july 1925

Letter 52

 * << Quantum physics is very impressive. However, an  inner voice tells me it is not the right thing yet. Quantum physics delivers results without grasping the fundamental reality of things. In fact, I am convinced that God does not throw dice...>>


 * Albert Einstein, 4 december 1926


 * << Einstein's judgement on quantum physics was a hard blow to me. Strangely he rejected it because of the inner voice rather than by logical reasoning.>>


 * Comment by Max Born on letter 48

Letter 80

 * << The most depressing idea was always the feeling that our science which is such a beautiful thing in itself and coud be

such a benefactor for human society has been degraded to nothing than means of destruction and death. Most of the German scientists have collaborated with the Nazis, even Heisenberg has worked full blast for these scoundrels. I do not blame anybody. For under the given circumstances nothing else can be done to save a rest of our civilisation. Yet I think that we must have an international organisation, and, even more important, an international code of behaviour on ethics, by which our scientific community could act as a regulating and stabilising power in the world, not, as at present, being nothing than tools of industries and governments.>>


 * Max Born, 15 July 1944

Letter 84

 * << I am convinced that physics must describe an objective reality in space-time without any spooky effect at a distance.>>


 * Albert Einstein, 3 March 1947

Letter 107


In the end I will convince you that quantum physics is as realistic and complete as evidence shows it....>>


 * Max Born, 22 December 1953

Letter 110


I think a wave function Ψ should describe a collection of objects and should not completely describe a single object in order to meet the requirements of the locality principle. This statistical interpretation removes an apparent paradox of coupling of distant objects. Moreover, this has the advantage of giving us a clear objective description which is independent of observation and which makes sense for the observer...>>


 * Albert Einstein, 20 january 1954

Letter 114


In 1932, I was deeply saddened when ....>>


 * Comment by Max Born on letter 114

Letter 117



 * Comment by Max Born on letter 117

Notable cited names
Cinquante prix Nobel et d'autres personnes notables, issues principalement du monde scientifique mais aussi des domaines politique,littéraire et artistique, sont mentionnés dans la correspondance:


 * Hans Christian Andersen
 * Edward Appleton
 * Felix Auerbach
 * Guido Beck
 * Carl Heinrich Becker
 * Henri Bergson
 * Arnold Berliner
 * Ernest Bevin
 * Ludwig Bieberbach
 * Patrick Blackett
 * David Bohm
 * Harald Bohr
 * Niels Bohr
 * Oskar Bolza
 * Walther Bothe
 * Ludwig Boltzmann
 * Satyendranath Bose
 * William Lawrence Bragg
 * Percy Williams Bridgman
 * Léon Brillouin
 * Max Brod
 * Imre Bródy
 * Louis de Broglie
 * Luitzen E J Brouwer
 * Heinrich Brüning
 * Constantin Carathéodory
 * Winston Churchill
 * Georges Clemenceau
 * Stephan Cohn-Vossen
 * Arthur Compton
 * Richard Courant
 * Marie Curie
 * Charles Darwin
 * Clinton Joseph Davisson
 * Peter Debye
 * René Descartes
 * Paul Dirac
 * Christian Doppler
 * William Duane
 * Friedrich Ebert
 * Arthur Eddington
 * Paul Ehrenfest
 * Tatiana Pavlovna Ehrenfest
 * Paul Ehrlich
 * Walter M. Elsasser
 * Friedrich Engels
 * Friedrich Epstein
 * Matthias Erzberger
 * Euclide
 * Paul Peter Ewald
 * Kazimierz Fajans
 * Michael Faraday
 * George FitzGerald
 * Vladimir Fock
 * Adriaan Fokker
 * Ralph Howard Fowler
 * James Franck
 * Philipp Frank
 * Erwin Freundlich
 * Klaus Fuchs
 * Carl Friedrich Gauss
 * Ernst Gehrcke
 * Hans Geiger
 * Walther Gerlach
 * Willard Gibbs
 * Donald Arthur Glaser
 * Kurt Gödel
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 * Henry Goldman
 * Leonhard Grebe
 * Herbert S. Green
 * Eduard Grüneisen
 * Fritz Haber
 * Otto Hahn
 * Richard Haldane
 * Adolf von Harnack
 * Friedrich Hasenöhrl
 * Werner Heisenberg
 * Walter Heitler
 * Ernst Hellinger
 * Gustav Herglotz
 * Friedrich Herneck
 * Paul Hertz
 * Gustav Ludwig Hertz
 * Gerhard Herzberg
 * David Hilbert
 * Adolf Hitler
 * Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
 * Erich Moritz von Hornbostel
 * Edwin Hubble
 * Erich Hückel
 * David Hume
 * Friedrich Hund
 * Abram Ioffé
 * Leopold Infeld
 * Carl Jacobi
 * Leopold Jessner
 * Pascual Jordan
 * Emmanuel Kant
 * Theodore von Kármán
 * Piotr Kapitsa
 * Rudolf Kayser
 * Nicholas Kemmer
 * Hans Kienle
 * Felix Klein
 * Wolfgang Köhler
 * Walther Kossel
 * Hendrik Anthony Kramers
 * Juri Alexandrowitsch Krutkow
 * Heinrich Gerhard Kuhn
 * Rudolf Ladenburg
 * Joseph-Louis Lagrange
 * Lev Landau
 * Alfred Landé
 * Paul Langevin
 * Irving Langmuir
 * Joseph Larmor
 * Max von Laue
 * Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
 * Philipp Lenard
 * Vladimir Ilitch Lénine
 * Wilhelm Lenz
 * Gilbert Lewis
 * Frederick Lindemann
 * Fritz London
 * Hendrik Lorentz
 * Richard Lorenz
 * Erich Ludendorff
 * Walther Ludwig
 * Otto Lummer
 * Martin Luther
 * Ernst Mach
 * Erwin Madelung
 * Mao Zedong
 * Karl Marx
 * James Clerk Maxwell
 * Pat McCarran
 * Joseph McCarthy
 * Lise Meitner
 * Edgar Meyer
 * Albert Abraham Michelson
 * Gustav Mie
 * Robert Andrews Millikan
 * Edward Arthur Milne
 * Hermann Minkowski
 * George Minot
 * Richard von Mises
 * Viatcheslav Molotov
 * Rudolf Mössbauer
 * Robert Mulliken
 * Benito Mussolini
 * Otto Nathan
 * Walther Nernst
 * John von Neumann
 * Isaac Newton
 * Herman Nohl
 * Lothar Nordheim
 * Paul Oppenheim
 * Robert Oppenheimer
 * Wolfgang Pauli
 * Linus Pauling
 * Rudolf Peierls
 * Max Planck
 * Jerzy Plebański
 * Robert Pohl
 * Henri Poincaré
 * Michael Polanyi
 * Ludwig Prandtl
 * Alfred Pringsheim
 * Maurice Pryce
 * Karl Radek
 * Chandrashekhara Venkata Râman
 * Carl Ramsauer
 * Fritz Reiche
 * Dieter Richter
 * Eduard Riecke
 * Bernhard Riemann
 * Howard Percy Robertson
 * Wilhelm Röntgen
 * Franklin Roosevelt
 * Paul Rosbaud
 * Heinrich Rubens
 * Juri Borissowitsch Rumer
 * Carl Runge
 * Bertrand Russell
 * Ernest Rutherford
 * Moritz Schlick
 * Erhard Schmidt
 * Arthur Moritz Schoenflies
 * Erwin Schrödinger
 * Issai Schur
 * Albert Schweitzer
 * Hans Schwerdtfeger
 * Carl Seelig
 * William Shakespeare
 * George Bernard Shaw
 * Francis Simon
 * Socrate
 * Johann Georg von Soldner
 * Arnold Sommerfeld
 * Hertha Sponer
 * Ferdinand Springer
 * Joseph Staline
 * Johannes Stark
 * Otto Stern
 * Carl Still
 * Fritz Strassmann
 * August Strindberg
 * Leó Szilárd
 * Rabindranath Tagore
 * Edward Teller
 * Alfred von Tirpitz
 * Henry Tizard
 * Joseph John Thomson
 * Otto Toeplitz
 * Richard Tolman
 * Tchang Kaï-chek
 * Sigrid Undset
 * Bartel Leendert van der Waerden
 * Woldemar Voigt
 * Richard Wachsmuth
 * Emil Warburg
 * Pierre Weiss
 * Victor Weisskopf
 * Chaim Weizmann
 * Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
 * Max Wertheimer
 * Hermann Weyl
 * Edmund Taylor Whittaker
 * Guillaume II (empereur allemand)
 * Max Wien
 * Norbert Wiener
 * Eugène Wigner
 * Thomas Woodrow Wilson
 * Hideki Yukawa
 * Agnes von Zahn-Harnack
 * Carl Zeiss

Traductions

 * Correspondance 1916-1955, traduction par Pierre Leccia, Collection Science Ouverte, Le Seuil (1972) ISBN 2-020-02813-1
 * The Born-Einstein letters : Correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916 to 1955 with commentaries by Max Born, traduction par Irène Born, Walker and Company (1971), ISBN 0-802-70326-7
 * The Born-Einstein letters : friendship, politics, and physics in uncertain times : correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916 to 1955 with commentaries by Max Born, traduction par Irène Born, Macmillan (2005), ISBN 1-403-94496-2

Bibliographie

 * Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein, créateur et rebelle, Collection Points-Sciences, Le Seuil (1975) ISBN 978-2-020-05347-1. Biographie au format poche, par un ancien collaborateur d'Einstein.
 * Françoise Balibar, Einstein la joie de la pensée, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Découvertes », (1993) ISBN 978-2-070-53220-9.
 * Philippe Frank, Einstein – Sa vie et son temps, Collection Les savants & le monde, Albin Michel (Paris 1950). Réédition en poche dans la collection Champs, Flammarion (1993), ISBN 978-2-080-81242-1.