JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I set out to see when the first mention of “Einstein” occurs in the Physical Review to vaguely see how he was presented in what was even then in its first few decades of existence the premier U.S. physics journal. It is well known that he doesn’t publish a paper in the journal until 1931, and then publishes “only” two more papers there (the EPR paper in 1935 and then the Einstein-Rosen bridge (the wormhole) paper in 1937). There was one other small contribution as a letter to the editor in 1952, but that was it. (There have been many papers written on his anti-interest in publishing in the Physical Review so I won’t go into that right now.) I had just discussed the first appearance of a relativity paper in the Physical Review, found in the bibliography by Maurice Lecat (1929), which spots 1908 as the first effort published in the journal, though of course this doesn’t necessarily answer the first “Einstein” appearance. According to my searches on the American Physical Society Physical Review site, the first time Einstein’s name is mentioned in the PR is in the May 1, 1914 issue, and then only 11 more times to 1919. Unfortunately the 1914 record is definitely not the first time E is mentioned, as just about the fist paper on relativity published in the PR does mention him by name in January 1909. (This is an abstract of a paper given by G. Lewis and R. Tolman in vol 28 1909 p 150.) So I’m not all that sure what this means, except that it seems unlikely that this sort of word search is an accurate (or definitive) tool–and I’m pretty sure that I can’t access hoped-for easy answers answers to these questions.
In any event, Einstein doesn’t have much of an existence in the Physical Review until his big year of 19161, and then again another uptick following the verification experiment of the eclipse of May 28, 1919. It seems though that the major amount of fame and acknowledgment comes in the popular press, where Einstein becomes EINSTEN after the eclipse proofs. As a side note Einstein had no notice whatsoever in the New York Times until June 1919, at which time the massive coverage of him as the New & Improved Newton begins.
I don’t have much of anywhere to go with this post, but I thought I’d at least share what I found, faulty as it probably is. As a limp distraction from my inconclusive searches, here below are a couple of examples of early humorous treatments of Einstein, found in the pages of Punch, or the London Chiaravari, 1919-1921; the full results aren’t in yet, but it seems as though Einstein has more mentions in the 1920s in this satirical/entertainment magazine than he does in the Physical Review. I haven’t done supplementary searches in the databases of other journals/magazines/newspapers yet, though I will if this question of the earliest Einstein appearance in the Physical Review hasn’t left me.
