Einstein Albert

Albert Einstein Regarding Gravitation, "If you would be right the earth would receive from the sun an infinite acceleration."

ALBERT EINSTEIN, Typed Letter Signed, to George Aristotle Solounias, December 3, 1954, Princeton, New Jersey. On Institute for Advanced Study stationery; with envelope. 1 p., 5.5" x 6.5".

Complete Translation

December 3, 1954

Mr. George A. Solounias

30, Tripodon Str.

Athens 1, Greece

Dear Mr. Solounias:

I received your letter of November 25th. If you would be right the earth would receive from the sun an infinite acceleration.

Sincerely yours,

A. Einstein.

Albert Einstein.

Historical Background

Sir Isaac Newton developed the theory of universal gravitation in the 1680s and first published it in his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. In sum, the theory states that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. British scientist Henry Cavendish first tested Newton's theory of gravitation in 1798, more than seventy years after Newton's death.

In 1915, Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, building on the work of Hermann Minkowski, who suggested space-time in a 1908 essay. The central idea is that space and time are two aspects of spacetime, a mathematical model that joins space and time into a single idea called a continuum. Einstein's general relativity explained how spacetime is curved in the presence of gravity, matter, energy, and momentum. The theory aided cosmology to understand how the universe operates on both the large level of galaxies and the sub-microscopic level of atoms. Einstein's theory of general relativity superseded Newton's law of universal gravitation, but scientists continue to use Newton's formula for an excellent approximation of the effects of gravity in most applications.

Albert Einstein fled Nazi Germany in 1932, and in 1933, he emigrated to the United States, where he joined the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

In October 1953, George A. Solounias first wrote to Einstein about his hypothesis that "inertial mass" and "gravitational mass" were identical. After considering Einstein's response and "theoretical remarks concerning the identity of inertial and gravitational mass of the General Theory of Relativity." More than thirteen months later, on November 25, 1954, George A. Solounias wrote again regarding his belief that "Inertial mass does not exist at all as something different and independent of the gravitational mass and that both masses constitute one and the same physical reality." He offered a mathematical proof of the idea, then concluded, "Dear Professor, I repeat my request to You, to be kind enough investigate and estimate my ideas concerning inertia and gravitation. I believe that an Inertia, which is the Gravitation itself, is enough to explain completely all phenomena of inertia and gravitation. And I assure You that a Univers without the force of ‘universal attraction' or the ‘gravitational fields,' is more simple and more true than whatever ‘other' Univers. I think also that such a Univers is more agreeable to the deeper meaning of Relativity."

Apparently weary of their exchange on the subject, Einstein responded with this brief letter that dismisses Solounias's mathematical proof with the observation that "the earth would receive from the sun an infinite acceleration." It appears that this brief response by Einstein ended their two-year correspondence, fewer than six months before Einstein's death in April 1955.



Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg in the German Empire to non-observant Ashkenazi Jewish parents. In 1894, the Einstein family moved to Italy. Einstein went to Switzerland to finish his secondary schooling, and graduated from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich in 1900. In 1903, he married Mileva Maric (1875-1948), with whom he had two sons. In 1919, they divorced and he married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal. In 1905, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Zürich. From 1908 to 1932, he taught at a series of universities in Switzerland, the Austrian Empire, and the German Empire. As a theoretical physicist, he published ground-breaking papers as early as 1905 and developed the theory of relativity including the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc2. In 1922, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the photoelectric effect. In January 1933, when Adolph Hitler came to power, Einstein was visiting the United States and remained here, becoming a citizen in 1940. A year earlier, he signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany could develop a nuclear bomb, and urging the U.S. to become involved in uranium research, thus beginning the "Manhattan project." Though he focused on the need to defeat Hitler during the war, afterwards he became known for efforts to further world peace. At the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., from 1933 until his death in 1955, he worked unsuccessfully to develop a unified field theory and to refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics. Considered the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects of history, Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers and over 150 non-scientific works.

George Aristotle Solounias (1901-1981) was born in Pythagoreio of Samos, Greece, and received a high school education. He worked as a writer and as a businessman for land developer and importer Gerassimos Panas in Athens; he retired in the mid-1960s. Solounias was largely self-educated and was an amateur astronomer. He submitted several papers to the Academy of Athens about gravity and the solar system, and he published Paul, or the Search of the Absolute Truth (A Philosophical Dialogue) (1938, Greek), The Error of Newton (1939, Greek), Is There Universal Gravity? (1941, Greek), and The Origin of the Solar System: A New Theory (English, 1973). In addition to Einstein, Solounias also corresponded with J. Robert Oppenheimer between 1949 and 1964. Solounias married elementary school teacher Ioanna Katsimatidou (1908-1964) in 1933, and they had three children: Sibyl, who was a housewife and worked in a bank; Aristotle, who became a well-known artist; and Nikos, who is a professor of anatomy and evolutionary biology at the New York Institute of Technology and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History.

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