

Launch of the Digital Einstein Papers - Thevet
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/05/princeton-u-press-launches-open-all-digital-version-einstein-papers-project

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tokenadult
Walter Isaacson, a biographer of Einstein (and of Steve Jobs and of Benjamin
Franklin) has some interesting commentary[1] on posting archival materials
online. "My initial joy about the project was tempered, however, by a pinch of
sadness. I realized that most future Einstein researchers would no longer have
to make the journey to the cozy house on the edge of the Caltech campus where
the scholars of the Einstein Papers Project were eager to embrace their rare
visitors and ply them with guidance, insights and tea. They wouldn’t likely
spend delightful days there—as I did for my biography of Einstein—with the
science historian Diana Kormos-Buchwald and her colleagues as they debated
such issues as how to explain what Einstein meant when he referred to quanta
as 'spatial' or his fellow Jews as Stammesgenossen (tribal comrades)." On the
whole, Isaacson thinks it will be a benefit to scholarship to have Einstein's
papers and other archives available online, but this will change the process
of historical and biographical research.

[1] "What Could Be Lost As Einstein's Papers Go Online," _Wall Street Journal_
5 December 2014.

[http://online.wsj.com/articles/what-could-be-lost-as-
einstei...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/what-could-be-lost-as-einsteins-
papers-go-online-1417790386)

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Thevet
Link to the actual site:
[http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu](http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu)

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chm
Thanks, the other links were pretty useless. Two minutes of looking around and
I didn't have a paper before me.

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WalterBright
I think it's awesome that these are going online.

I'm a bit curious why they aren't pdf files - the viewer scheme they use is
rather awkward, and can't be downloaded and read on an ebook, for example.

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plg
I wonder if Einstein would have been able to obtain research funding if the
funding climate back then was like it is now.

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sampo
Einstein graduated with his Masters degree in 1900, but was unable to find an
academic job. He worked in a patent office, while working on his ideas and in
1905 publishing his four groundbreaking *annus mirabilis' papers, and also
getting his PhD in 1905. But it was only after he was already famous that in
1909 he got a position in a university.

