Einstein’s Nobel Prize: A Glimpse Behind Closed Doors – The Archival Evidence

Elzinga, Aant, 2006, xii + 228pp., illus., cloth bound and jacketed How and why, after many years of waiting, did Albert Einstein finally receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921, awarded the following year? On the basis of a penetrating study of documents in the Nobel archive at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, the author reviews the sixty nominations Einstein received from 1910 to 1922. He analyzes the arguments against relativity theory and the Committee’s skepticism . . .   “ . . . In tandem with the revival of quantum scepticism in physics, his [Elzinga’s] book helps us recover Einstein’s story from the tendentious interpretation of it that has gone unchallenged far too long.” —BJHS “ . . . The great value of Einstein’s Nobel Prize is its detailed analysis of relevant documents showing how the academy managed to give Einstein the prize despite his work on relativity . . .” —Isis “ . . . one of his accomplishments with the book under review is that it bri