Albert Einstein - Young Einstein

The Young Einstein: Einstein in Italy

Einstein's family spent the years 1894-1902 between Milan and Pavia, in Lombardy (northern Italy). Albert's father and uncle founded the Einstein & Garrone firm and built an electrotechnical factory in Pavia. In December 1894, the young Albert, who had been left in Munich, joined them in Milan and in March 1895 they all moved to Pavia. Here Albert spent many months, from March to October, without attending school, privately preparing the entrance examinations to the Zurich Polytechnic. It is well known that in 1895 he wrote the Pavia essay, his first, unpublished, scientific work. This work discusses the velocity of light in a magnetized ether and shows a certain knowledge of Hertz's experiments.

Einstein's family lived in a beautiful house, not far from the University, and in January 1896 the Einstein & Garrone firm signed a contract with the rector of the University for the electrification of a building. The rector was C.Golgi, who in 1906 was to become the first Italian Nobel prize winner. The old University (1361) had lot to offer the young Einstein: a University library with a very rich and up-to-date collection of physics and mathematics books, including many in German, a rich collection of scientific journals, including a complete series of the Annalen and numerous Proceedings of Academic Societies from all over the world. Moreover there was a well-equipped physical cabinet and laboratory, with hundreds of physics instruments, many of which are still there today.

The fluctuations of radiation pressure played an important role in Einstein's 1905 papers. In the Autobiographical Notes he recalled ten years (1895-1905) of struggle in search for a theory of principles, like thermodynamics. It would appear important to recall that in Pavia in 1895 Adolfo Bartoli (1851-96) held the physics chair dating back to Volta. Bartoli was well known for his original thermodynamic derivation of radiation pressure through a thought experiment (1876, 1884), and for his acknowledged influence on Boltzmann (1884) for the theoretical derivation of the Stefan-Boltzmann law, on Wien (1893) for the derivation of his displacement law, and on Lebedew (1901) for his experimental corroboration of radiation pressure. Bartoli moreover gave important contributions to other fields of interest to the young Einstein (1901,1902): capillarity, molecular dimensions, electrochemistry and ionic theories. He was remembered in Arrhenius' Nobel lecture (1903).

Did the young Einstein make use of this wealth of resources while preparing his entrance examinations? No direct evidence has been found, but an illustration of Pavia's scientific context in 1895 is not without interest.

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"The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it."

- A. Einstein