The Competing Essays

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The Competing Essays

The Competing Essays

At all times after the first announcement the Einstein Editor had a heavy correspondence; but the first real evidence that the contest was under way came with the arrival of the first essay, which wandered into our office in the middle of September. About a week later they began to filter in at the rate of one or two per day—mostly from foreign contestants who were taking no chances on the mails. Heavy returns did not commence until about ten days before the closing date. The great avalanche, however, was reserved for the morning of Monday, November 1st. Here we had the benefit of three days’ mail; there were about 120 essays. Among those which were thrown out on the ground of lateness [10]the honors should no doubt go to the man who mailed his offering in The Hague on October 31st.

Essays were received in greater quantity from Germany than from any other foreign country, doubtless because of the staggering value of $5,000 when converted into marks at late 1920 rates. England stood next on the list; and one or more essays were received from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, India, Jamaica, South Africa and the Fiji Islands. Canada, of course, contributed her fair share; and few of our own states were missing on the roll-call.

The general level of English composition among the essays from non-English-speaking sources was about what might have been expected. A man may have a thorough utilitarian knowledge of a foreign tongue, but when he attempts intensive literary competition with a man who was brought up in that tongue he is at a disadvantage. We read French and German with ease and Spanish and Italian without too much difficulty, ourselves; we should never undertake serious writing in any of these languages. Not many of the foreign contributions, of course, were as ludicrous as the one we quote to some extent in our concluding chapter, but most of them were distinctly below par as literary compositions. Drs. De Sitter and Schlick were the notable exceptions to this; both showed the ability to compete on a footing of absolute equality with the best of the native product.

We dare say it was a foregone conclusion that [11]many essays should have been over the limit, and that a few should have been over it to the point of absurdity. The winning essay contains 2,919 words, plus or minus a reasonable allowance for error in counting; that it should come so far from being on the ragged edge should be sufficient answer to those who protested against the severity of the limitation. One inquirer, by the way, wanted to know if 3,000 words was not a misprint for 30,000. Another contestant suggested that instead of disqualifying any essay that was over the line, we amputate the superfluous words at the end. This was a plausible enough suggestion, since any essay able to compete after such amputation must necessarily have been one of extreme worth; but fortunately we did not have to decide whether we should follow the scheme. Perhaps twenty of the essays submitted were so seriously in excess of the limit that it was not even necessary to count their words in detail; most of these offenders ran to 3,500 words or thereabouts, and one—a good one, too, from which we use a good deal of material in this volume—actually had 4,700. On the other extreme were a few competitors who seemed to think that the shortest essay was necessarily the best, and who tried to dismiss the subject with 500 or 1,000 words.

By a curious trick of chance there were submitted in competition for the prize exactly 300 essays. Of course a few of these did not require serious consideration—this is inevitable in a contest of such magnitude. But after excluding all the essays that were admittedly not about the Einstein theories at all, and all those whose English was so execrable [12]as to make them quite out of the question, and all those which took the subject so lightly as not to write reasonably close to the limit of 3,000 words, and all those which were given over to explanation of the manner in which Einstein’s theories verify those of the writer, and all those in which the writer attempted to substitute his own cosmic scheme for Einstein’s—after all this, there remained some 275 essays which were serious efforts to explain in simple terms the nature and content and consequences of Special and General Relativity.

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This book is part of the public domain. Albert Einstein (2020). Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022.

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