Michele Besso

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Portrait of Michele A. Besso (ETH Zurich)

Michele Angelo Besso (born May 25, 1873 in Riesbach , † March 15, 1955 in Geneva ) was a Swiss-Italian engineer who was a close friend and colleague of Albert Einstein at the patent office in Bern .

Besso, who was descended from Sephardic Jews , grew up in Italy where he had relatives. He was one of Einstein's fellow students at ETH Zurich , where Besso studied mechanical engineering. They met at a house music evening in Selina Caprotti's house in Zurich. From 1904, on Einstein's recommendation, he was his colleague at the patent office in Bern. With Besso and other friends, Einstein discussed philosophical and scientific topics there; their group was called the Olympia Academy . Besso is said to have introduced Einstein to the philosophy of Ernst Mach . He was Einstein's most important discussion partner in the development of his special theory of relativity and is the only person who thanks Einstein in his famous essay on electrodynamics of moving bodies from 1905 (he writes that Besso “stood by his side” and “that he was at his side I owe some valuable suggestions ”). Their friendship lasted a lifetime and they corresponded with each other. When Einstein and Mileva Maric separated in 1914 and they moved to Zurich with their two sons, the Bessos were the link between Einstein in Berlin and his divorced wife, whom they also looked after during an illness. Even when the general theory of relativity came into being , Einstein exchanged ideas with Besso, and Besso assisted Einstein in calculating the perihelion of Mercury in 1913 , unsuccessful at the time because Einstein did not yet have the final field equations .

When Besso died three weeks before Einstein in 1955, Einstein wrote to the relatives: “Now he has also preceded me a little with saying goodbye to this strange world. That does not mean anything. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future has only the meaning of an illusion, albeit a persistent one. "

Besso was married to Anna Winteler, the eldest daughter of Einstein's Aarau landlord Jost Winteler . Einstein's sister Maja was married to the Winteler son Paul .

literature

  • Pierre Speziali (ed.): Albert Einstein - Michele Besso. Correspondance 1903–1955. Hermann, Paris 1972 ( review by B. Kouznetzov, A. Frenk, Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, Volume 27, 1974, pp. 77-82).
  • Michel Janssen: The Einstein-Besso Manuscript: Looking Over Einstein's Shoulder, MPI WG, pdf

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Albrecht Fölsing: Albert Einstein. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 69.
  2. ↑ Einstein went into this more precisely in a lecture in Kyoto in 1921. After long attempts to improve Lorentz's theory , it occurred to him in discussions with Besso that the concept of time was frame- dependent. Abraham Pais : "Subtle is the Lord ..." The science and the life of Albert Einstein. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1982, ISBN 0-19-853907-X , p. 139.
  3. ↑ Pierre Speziali (ed.): Albert Einstein - Michele Besso. Correspondance 1903–1955. Hermann, Paris 1972.
  4. ↑ The so-called Einstein-Besso manuscript. Published in Volume 4 of Einstein's Collected Works. The Einstein Project ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . The manuscript was auctioned at Christie's in 1996 for $ 360,000 . Pierre Speziali, the editor of the Einstein-Besso correspondence, got it from the heirs of Besso, who own other manuscripts. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.einstein.caltech.edu
  5. ↑ On winding paths to the general theory of relativity , NZZ, 2015-11-27.
  6. ↑ Pierre Speziali (ed.): Albert Einstein - Michele Besso. Correspondance 1903–1955. Hermann, Paris 1972, pp. 537/538.
  7. ^ Letter from Einstein of March 21, 1955 to Vero and Bice (Beatrice) Besso. Einstein Archive Document 7-245
personal data
SURNAME Besso, Michele
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Besso, Michele Angelo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-Italian engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Riesbach
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1955
Place of death Geneva