Simple drafts that are worth gold.
On November 23, an exceptional auction will take place in Paris.
Fifty-four documents are for sale, drafts of the thoughts of one of the most brilliant minds of his time, Albert Einstein.
Dating back more than a century, specialists estimate their overall value at around three million euros.
These documents helped revolutionize the scientific approach to the universe.
These drafts were written between June 1913 and early 1914, in tandem with his lifelong friend and confidant Michele Besso.
Among the 54 pages of the manuscript, twenty-six are written by Einstein, twenty-five by Besso and three written by two hands.
Organized by Christie's and the Aguttes house, the sale should panic counters with these rare relics of a physicist who has since entered the legend.
Understanding the trajectory of Mercury
Einstein published in 1905 his theory of special relativity, which already defined the contours of future advances. Aware of the limits of his work, he seeks to extend his vision to a more general approach, and
ultimately to
understand the functioning of the Universe. At the heart of the scientific questioning of the time, the anomaly of the orbit of the planet Mercury. Its slow movement around the sun does not exactly follow Newton's equations, which are then authoritative. Einstein spends nearly a decade solving this impossible equation.
If these manuscripts, abandoned at the time by the Swiss physicist, are still in excellent condition one hundred and eight years later, it is largely thanks to the rigor of Michele Besso, who preferred to keep these precious working documents.
Filled with errors and doubts, they bear witness to the thought process of the most eminent scientist of his time.
Only one manuscript on the same subject existed so far.
Dated in the winter of 1912-1913, it is currently kept in the archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
After years of phosphorous, Albert Einstein finally submitted his final manuscript on general relativity on November 25, 1915 to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Prussia.
A limpid presentation which calls into question all the certainties of the time on Space.
The person in charge of this sale at Christie's Adrien Legendre specifies that “
the scientific autograph documents of Einstein from this period, and more generally from before 1919, are extremely rare. (...) He is an exceptional witness to Einstein's work and allows us a fascinating dive into the mind of the greatest scientist of the twentieth century
. "
