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Collectors snap up pricey historical materials. (Physics for Sale).


Want a glimpse of Albert Einstein's mind at work? Last week, it cost a buyer $559,500.

An unprecedented sale of manuscripts, books, and reports documenting the development of modern physics took place at Christie's auction house in New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
 on Oct. 4. It brought in nearly $1.8 million. The highest-selling documents were those attributed to the most famous physicists, with 8 of the top 10 written by Einstein.

The half-million-dollar centerpiece of the Harvey Plotnick Library, named for the man who collected the items, was a handwritten hand·write  
tr.v. hand·wrote , hand·writ·ten , hand·writ·ing, hand·writes
To write by hand.



[Back-formation from handwritten.]

Adj. 1.
 1913 manuscript by Einstein and his colleague Michele Besso Michele Angelo Besso (Riesbach, May 25 1873 – March 15 1955 in Genova) was a Swiss/Italian engineer, and a close friend of Albert Einstein during his years at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich[1] .

Using early versions of Einstein's general theory of relativity Noun 1. Einstein's general theory of relativity - a generalization of special relativity to include gravity (based on the principle of equivalence)
general relativity, general relativity theory, general theory of relativity
, Einstein and Besso unsuccessfully struggled with an anomaly in Mercury's motion that's not explicable ex·plic·a·ble  
adj.
Possible to explain: explicable phenomena; explicable behavior.



ex·plic
 with Issac Newton's theory of gravitation Noun 1. Newton's theory of gravitation - (physics) the theory that any two particles of matter attract one another with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them . The manuscript contains more than 50 pages of calculations.

"It's a snapshot of Einstein's thinking process," says Francis Wahlgren, head of the books and manuscripts department at Christie's in New York. The Einstein-Besso document is one of only two existing works-in-progress showing how Einstein developed the general theory of relativity Noun 1. general theory of relativity - a generalization of special relativity to include gravity (based on the principle of equivalence)
Einstein's general theory of relativity, general relativity, general relativity theory
. The other, the Zurich Notebook, is in the Einstein Archives at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"I can't say that the average collector can read it and see into the mind of Einstein," says Spencer Weart, the director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is a professional body representing American physicists and publishing physics related journals. It was founded in 1931.

The aims of the organization are: "promoting the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics and its
 in College Park, Md. But whether you are a physicist or not, says Weart, "you can feel that what you're holding is a genuine representation of the creative process of what may count as the most amazing scientific discovery of all time."

One of the few pre-20th-century physicists represented in the sale was Newton, whose gravitational theory Einstein improved upon with the general theory of relativity. Newton came in second on the list of top sellers: A small scrap of manuscript added to the second English edition of his Opticks, published in 1717, sold for $89,625.

Rounding out the top three, a copy of Einstein's 1916 book on the general theory of relativity sold for $83,650. This particular volume was marked up by the Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, who, as a teenager, used it to teach himself general relativity. "You see the mind of one person trying to comprehend the mind of another person," says Weart.

The entire sale, "says something about the acceptance of science as a cultural element, not just as something of practical value," adds Weart. "It points out that people see a work of science in the way they would see a great painting or a bone of an ancestor."
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Author:Gorman, J.
Publication:Science News
Date:Oct 12, 2002
Words:433
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