Privatdozent Photo Edition #8

Einstein's 70th Birthday Party at the IAS (1949)

From left to right: Robertson, Wigner, Weyl, Gödel, Rabi, Einstein, Ladenburg, Oppenheimer, and Clemence. (Photo: IAS Archive)

Following Kurt Gödel (1906-1978)’s publications of the first- and second incompleteness theorems (1931) and later work on Cantor’s continuum hypothesis (1947), Gödel in 1948 turned his attention to cosmology. In an extensive investigation of Einstein’s field equations, Gödel found one of few known exact solutions, whose implications—the “Gödel universe”—are very peculiar. Gödel presented his solution to Einstein in the form of a manuscript on the occasion of the latter’s 70th birthday in 1949. Read the this story here:

Gödel's Solution to Einstein's Field Equations (1949)

The photograph above shows both Gödel and Einstein, alongside their colleagues Eugene Wigner (1902-95), Hermann Weyl (1885-1955) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67) during the birthday celebration at the Institute for Advanced Study, among others.

Related Privatdozent newsletters:

• Gödel’s Constitutional Quarrel, June 14th 2021

• Kurt Gödel’s Brilliant Madness, June 21st 2021

• Einstein and Hilbert’s Relativity Race, July 3rd 2021

• The Eccentricities of J. Robert Oppenheimer, June 23rd 2021

• When Heisenberg met Einstein, June 11th 2021

This is Photo Edition — a shorter, more frequent newsletter for subscribers of Privatdozent. If you don’t want to receive these emails, go to your Substack profile and uncheck the box titled ‘Photo Edition’.

The photograph has been colourized for effect. Send inquiries about unwanted use/copyright claims to privatdozent @ protonmail.com.