The 100th Anniversary of Einstein's Nobel Prize: Facts and Fiction

Abstract

As the 100th anniversary approaches of Albert Einstein being awarded a Nobel Prize, questions remain about the motivation for the prize and about the absence of any specific mention of his theory of relativity. By revisiting and supplementing earlier scholarly studies, it will be shown that “Einstein did not receive, as often claimed, a prize for his theory of the photoelectric effect and that committee member Allvar Gullstrand's error in comprehending relativity was not the cause for rejecting this strongly nominated achievement.” Rather, in their evaluations of relativity, “Svante Arrhenius (1920) and Gullstrand (1921 & 1922) brought to the task bias, if not prejudice; they incorporated arguments from the German ultranationalist experimental physicists’ politically and racially motivated opposition to Einstein and his theories of relativity and gravitation. Only when Carl Wilhelm Oseen joined the committee in 1922, he nominated, evaluated, and proposed a prize for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” The precise wording and deliberate silence about Einstein's quantum theoretical derivation of the law owes to Oseen's insightful understanding of the challenges facing any effort to award a Nobel Prize to both Einstein and Niels Bohr.