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New York Times, January 1, 1950, p. 81
DR. EINSTEIN'S LATEST GREAT THEORYGravitation and Light Different Kinds of Physics "(...) At the end of the year came Dr. Albert Einstein with the important announcement that he had developed a generalized field theory which in four equations unified gravitation and electromagnetism (light, magnetism, electric phenomena in general)" New York Times, January 9 (13?), 1950
EINSTEIN ANNOUNCES PROFOUND DISCOVERY"(...) Now Dr. Einstein has gone one step further. He has a series of equations which, he says, expresses all the relationships of the physical universe. Particularly, they tell the relationship between gravitation and the electromagnetic force that is all around us."
Editor's Note - This second reference and excerpt was taken from F. Scully's
The Truth Behind Flying Saucers, and we should view its accuracy (including the
stated time of publication of the NYT article) and relevance with great skepticism.
Commentary by the Correas - Both of these references appear to be simply follow-ups
on Einstein's enigmatic explanation of his quest for a 'theory of the total field' put forward
in a Scientific American article in January 1950, entitled On the Generalized Theory of
Gravitation. There, Einstein described the problem posed by the very different or
opposing solutions (E1 and E2) to the unified or total field that he and others had found,
and how he had then come up with a third solution (E3), such that "every solution of E3 is
a solution of E1 as well as of E2." As far as we know, Einstein has never presented
that solution E3, and in fact none was mentioned in his last writings on General
Relativity (also quoted by Smyth's text).
It might be good to keep these enigmatic words of
Einstein's in historical context, in relation precisely to the events that led Infeld to defect.
Here is the temporal sequence: Klaus Fuchs' first interrogation occurs on
21 December 1949 (followed by interrogations on 30 December 1949 and 13 January 1950);
Einstein's Scientific American article - where he reports
that he has solution E3 to the UFT but "cannot yet postulate it" as such because "it is not
justified without further analysis" - appears in the first week of January; on 23 January 1950,
under questioning by the MI-5, Fuchs confesses, and on February 3rd he is arrested by the
Scotland Yard; 6 weeks later
Infeld defects to Poland from Canada, following a refusal by the University of Toronto to
grant him a leave of absence.
Infeld's defection was quietly regarded as being due
to the security risk he posed because of his knowledge of nuclear physics. But his
actual field of investigation was General Relativity, which raises the question of the extent to which
his knowledge of the unified field played an additional role in his defection. More recently (since 1995),
Infeld's defection has been rehabilitated as an
"exile" and an
"injustice" caused by his "peace-activism".
Most curiously and ironically (given what happened to Reich), in accordance with
new details emerging from the FBI files on Einstein which were declassified in 2002 (The Einstein File: J.
Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist by Fred Jerome,
St. Martin's Press, 2003), on February 13, 1950, the day after Einstein had appeared on
the first of Eleanor Roosevelt's television shows to discuss his views on nuclear proliferation,
J. Edgar Hoover personally demanded a complete investigation of Einstein. The same declassified
files show that Army intelligence was aware that Einstein's office in Berlin, prior to his
1933 emigration to the US, was a 'cable-drop' for Stalinist agents. Whether
Einstein was aware of this or not, remains an open question (also ironically, one of the main
objections - drawn up by the Woman Patriot Corporation - to allowing his entrance into the US,
cited the large number of anti-Stalinist anarcho-communist organizations
that Einstein was affiliated with!).
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