Looking for the Winner

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. Looking for the Winner

Looking for the Winner

Looking for the Winner

The Einstein Editor was in sufficiently close touch with the details of the adjudication of the essays to have every realization of the difficulty of this work. The caliber of the essays submitted was on the whole high. There were many which would have been well worthy of the prize in the absence of others that were distinctly better—many which it was not possible to eliminate on the ground of specific faults, and which could only be adjudged “not the best” by detailed comparison with specific other essays. It was this detailed comparison which took time, and which so delayed the award that we were not able to publish the winning essay any sooner than February 5th. Especially difficult was this process of elimination after the number of surviving essays had been reduced to twenty or less. The advantages of plan possessed by one essay had to be weighed against those of execution exhibited in another. A certain essay had to be critically compared [13]with another so like it in plan that the two might have been written from a common outline, and at the same time with a third as unlike it in scope and content as day and night. And all the time there was present in the background the consciousness that a prize of $5,000 hung upon the decision to be reached. For anyone who regards this as an easy task we have no worse wish than that he may some day have to attack a similar one.

We had anticipated that the bulk of the superior essays would be among those received during the last day or two of the contest; for we felt that the men best equipped to attack the subject would be the most impressed with its seriousness. Here we were quite off the track. The seventeen essays which withstood most stubbornly the Judges’ efforts at elimination were, in order of receipt, numbers 8, 18, 28, 40, 41, 43, 92, 95, 97, 130, 181, 194, 198, 223, 267, 270, 275: a fairly even distribution. The winner was the 92nd essay received.

The Judges held their final meeting in the editorial office on January 18, 1921. The four essays which were before the committee at the start of the session were speedily cut to three, and then to two; and after an all-day session the Judges found themselves conscientiously able to agree on one of these as the best. This unanimity was especially gratifying, the more so since it by no means was to be confidently expected, on a priori grounds, that it would be possible of attainment. Even the Einstein Editor, who might have been called upon for a final decision but wasn’t, can hardly be classed as a dissenter; for with some slight mental reservations in favor of the essay by [14]Mr. Francis which did not enter the Judges’ final discussion at all, and which he rather suspects appeals more to his personal taste than to his soundest judgment, he is entirely in accord with the verdict rendered.

The fact that the prize went to England was no surprise to those acquainted with the history of Einstein’s theories. The Special Theory, promulgated fifteen years ago, received its fair share of attention from mathematicians all over the world, and is doubtless as well known and as fully appreciated here as elsewhere. But it has never been elevated to a position of any great importance in mathematical theory, simply because of itself, in the absence of its extension to the general case, it deserves little importance. It is merely an interesting bit of abstract speculation.

The General Theory was put out by Einstein in finished form during the war. Owing to the scientific moratorium, his paper, and hence a clear understanding of the new methods and results and of the sweeping consequences if the General Theory should prevail, did not attain general circulation outside Germany until some time in 1918 or even later. Had it not been for Eddington it is doubtful that the British astronomers would have realized that the eclipse expeditions were of particular consequence. Therefore at the time of these expeditions, and even as late as the November announcement of the findings, the general body of scientific men in America had not adequately realized the immense distinction between the Special and the General Theories, had not adequately appreciated that the latter led to [15]distinctive consequences of any import, and we fear in many cases had not even realized explicitly that the deflection of light and the behavior of Mercury were matters strictly of the General and in no sense of the Special Theory. Certainly when the American newspapers were searching frantically for somebody to interpret to their public the great stir made by the British announcement that Einstein’s predictions had been verified, they found no one to do this decently; nor were our magazines much more successful in spite of the greater time they had to devote to the search. In a word, there is not the slightest room for doubt that American science was in large measure caught asleep at the switch—perhaps for no reason within its control; and that American writers were in no such favorable case to write convincingly on the subject as were their British and continental contemporaries.

So it was quite in accord with what might have been expected to find, on opening the identifying envelopes, that not alone the winning essay, but its two most immediate rivals, come from members of that school of British thought which had been in contact with the Einstein theories in their entirety for two years longer than the average American of equal competence. This riper familiarity with the subject was bound to yield riper fruit. Indeed, had it not been for the handicap of writing in a strange language, it is reasonable to assume that the scientists of Germany would have made a showing superior to that of either Americans or British—and for the same reason that Britain showed to better advantage than America.

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