Einstein's pen

Although the giving of a personal fountain pen as a mark of respect between academic colleagues and friends -- as depicted in the Russell Crowe movie A Beautiful Mind was apparently apocryphal, the idea may have stemmed from a real-life exemplar.

In 1921 Albert Einstein presented his friend, and fellow theoretical physicist, Paul Ehrenfest with the fountain pen that he had used to write down his research on General Relativity. Now that's a gift!



The pen itself is on display at the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden.

Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered

"The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.



The handwritten manuscript titled 'Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas' was dated December 1924. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in January 1925.

High-resolution photographs of the 16-page, German-language manuscript and an account of its discovery were posted on the institute's Web site."

It would've stumped Einstein: the missing-pen-by-the-phone theorem

From the Christian Science Monitor:

"By Lenore Skenazy
NEW YORK – Yeah, yeah, this is the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "Miracle Year" - the year he figured out everything from relativity to atoms to e=mc2. So how come Mr. Genius never bothered to explain the deepest physics mystery of all: Where does the pen by the phone go?"

Ms. Skenazy questions a group of physicists -- and a professional organzier -- to help her solve the mystery!