Princeton
University in the US has launched the Digital Einstein Papers project - an
open-access site that will deliver the extensive written legacy of Albert
Einstein to the public.
The
New York Times calls them "the Dead Sea Scrolls of physics”, and
they’re on their way to being publicly available - the 80,000 documents left
behind by Albert Einstein.
When
he died in 1955, Einstein bequeathed the copyright of his writings and
correspondence to Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem in Israel. Over the past three decades these institutions have been analyzing
and publishing the texts - which span from the years of Einstein's youth to
1923 - and just last week announced that they would now be distributing them
for free.
"Starting
on Friday, when Digital Einstein is introduced, anyone with an
Internet connection will be able to share in the letters, papers,
postcards, notebooks and diaries that Einstein left scattered in Princeton and
in other archives, attics and shoeboxes around the world when he died in 1955,” writes Dennis Overbye at The New York Times.
This
project follows on from previous efforts by the universities to disseminate
Einstein’s writings - Princeton has so far published nearly half of the
documents in 13 hardcover and paperback volumes; and the Hebrew University has
already set up their own digitized versions of some of the documents - called
the Einstein Archives. California Institute of Technology physics
professor and editor of the new Digital Einstein
website, Diana Kormos-Buchwald, told The New York Times that both the English
and German versions of the texts would be made available, and some will be
accompanied by annotated transcriptions and translations. The public can flick
between Einstein’s "love letters, his divorce file, his high school
transcript, the notebook in which he worked out his general theory of
relativity and letters to his lifelong best friend, Michele Besso, among many
other possibilities,” she said.
Head to the
Digital Einstein website to browse through the 7,000 pages
representing 2,900 unique documents have been digitized thus far.
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