E = mc² = £300k? Note by Einstein goes on sale
THE contents are a little bewildering for the lay reader, but a letter from albert Einstein is expected to fetch £300,000 when it comes up for sale.
That is largely because it features what is probably the world’s most famous equation E = mc², Einstein’s formula on the relationship between mass and energy.
The one-page letter, which is signed ‘a. Einstein’, is one of just a handful of documents known to exist with the equation in the mathematician’s hand.
Einstein came up with his theory of relativity in 1905, propelling him to academic superstardom.
The 1946 letter was written on his Princeton University letterhead paper to the Polish-american dr Ludwik Silberstein.
dr Silberstein had cast doubt on the formula in the 1930s, even claiming in the Press that it was ‘flawed’.
However, by the time of this written exchange, he appears to have come around to Einstein’s way of thinking. Einstein tries to answer a query from the fellow physicist, saying his question ‘can be answered from the E = mc² formula’. He then plunges into a complex explanation.
The letter has been put up for sale by dr Silberstein’s descendants with RR auction, of Boston, in the US.
Bobby Livingston, of RR, said: ‘It’s an important letter from both a holographic [a document wholly in the writer’s hand] and a physics point of view.’
In later life, Einstein explained his theory of relativity as: ‘Mass and energy are but different manifestations of the same thing.
‘Furthermore, the equation E is equal to mc², in which energy is put equal to mass multiplied by the velocity of light squared, showed that a very small amount of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy, and vice versa.’
Einstein died in 1955. The sale ends on May 20.