We’re thrilled to share that the latest volume of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein has been released in North America, with European release slated for late October. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 17: The Berlin Years, June 1929 – November 1930 is available as a 1,240-page hardcover edition, with a 496-page paperback translation supplement that makes available a selection of non-English texts from the cloth edition.
Volume 17 covers a period of active travels within and beyond Europe, including to the United States to begin an academic term at the California Institute of Technology. During this period, Einstein is working on the teleparallel approach to unified field theory and in correspondence with Élie Cartan, W. Pauli, M. Born, M. Schlick. In his personal life, Einstein and his wife achieve their dream of owning a summer house outside Berlin, Einstein becomes a grandfather; he also sees his daughter married and his son start university and undergo his first serious mental health crisis. We find his ties to the Zionist movement seriously tested in the wake of the violence that erupts in British Mandate Palestine in 1929, to which he reacts with forceful calls for a genuine symbiosis between Jews and Arabs, proposing the establishment of joint administrative, economic, and social organizations. In Germany, too, Einstein champions democracy in the face of rising support for the Nazi Party, is active on behalf of Jewish refugees, opposes the death penalty, and supports abortion rights and the decriminalization of homosexuality.
As with all volumes in the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein program, Volume 17 and the translation supplement will be made available in digital form on the Digital Einstein Papers website 18 months after its publication in print.
About the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein is one of the most ambitious publishing ventures ever undertaken in the documentation of the history of science. Providing the first assemblage and English translation of Einstein’s massive written legacy, the papers are edited by The Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology with the assistance of The Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
About the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein Editors
At the California Institute of Technology, Diana Kormos Buchwald is the Robert M. Abbey Professor of History and general editor; Ze’ev Rosenkranz is senior editor; József Illy, Daniel J. Kennefick, A. J. Kox, and Tilman Sauer are senior editors and visiting associates in history; Joshua Eisenthal and Jennifer L. Rodgers are editors and assistant research professors; and Barbara Wolff is assistant editor.