Albert Einstens’s Years in Prague, 1911-1912

In the entrance hall of Faculty of Sciences of Charles University old building (Vinicná street in Prague-New Town; at present are here Departments of Zoology, Parazitology and Ecology only) you can find on the wall a memorial tablet dedicated to Albert Einstein... In this building Einstein spent two years as professor of Charles University. The hall is open to public in weekdays from 9:00 to 17:00.

Einstein’s years in Prague are an important milestone in the life of this important researcher and philosopher. In Prague Albert Einstein found – according to his own writings – the necessary composure to give the basic thought of the general theory of relativity (1908) a more definite shape.

After Bologna and the Sorbonne in Paris, Prague as the third city had an university on the European mainland. Its founder, Charles IV, Czech King and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and its first director, archbishop and university chancellor Arnošt from Pardubice gave the Prague College glory and fame. The university town at the Vltava had always strongly attracted scientists and artists. The royal astronomer, scholar and God seeker Tycho de Brahe worked in Prague. Here his assistant and successor Johannes Kepler wrote his Astronomia nova. Here worked together with Kepler the royal clock maker, mathematician, instrument maker and inventor of the logarithms, Joost Buergi. This Swiss researcher had worked out his "Progress Tables" in Prague many years before Neper’s logarithm tables. Also the director Medicus Jan Jessenius worked here, furthermore the astronomer and mathematician Jan Marek Marci and the philosopher and theologian Bernard Bolzano. Apart from many other people the physicist Christian Doppler did his teaching profession here.

Einstein as full university professor for theoretical physics at the German University in Prague had to plead for the Austrian nationality of the back then monarchy. As professor he had to get the stipulated gala uniform (black coat with golden ribbons, tricorn and rapier). "Here Einstein’s humour was put to the test", writes Johannes Wickert in his Einstein monograph.

Shortly after assuming office at the University in Prague (April 1911) professor Einstein held lectures in the summer semester three times a week – on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 to 10 a.m. about mechanics and on Tuesday and Thursday at the same time he dealt with selected chapters of the kinetic heat theory. In addition he also lead the two-hour lasting seminars in the Institute for Theoretical Physics in the Vinicná street. On the whole professor Einstein had about six regular male and female students. Apart from the lectures at the university he held lectures for the broader Prague society. The run into the auditorium of the faculty was immense.

Einstein’s scientific work in Prague
The 17-month lasting stay in Prague was extraordinarily successful. Here Einstein wrote 11 scientific works, 5 of them on radiation mathematics and on quantum theory of the solids. In March 1916 in the Leipzig "Annalen der Physik" the work "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" was published and in December of the same year Einstein published his famous book "On the Special and General Theory of Relativity". This book was later translated also into the Czech language. Albert Einstein wrote a special preface to this edition.