“You have to realize that Einstein was going through a divorce at the time,” Marsha Malinowski explained to a well-dressed handful at Sotheby’s private exhibition of new acquisitions at its gallery on West Huron. “The editor of the journal repeatedly tried to get him to finish the draft, but Einstein politely declined. This is the longest unpublished manuscript by Einstein known to exist, and the earliest known draft of his theory of special relativity. I think it is one of the most important documents we have ever handled.”
The manuscript will be auctioned in New York on December 11, and Malinowski, Sotheby’s vice president of manuscripts, was shepherding it under heavy security to various cities, allowing those lucky enough to get an invitation a chance to gaze at the yellowing pages before they’re sold to the highest bidder. Asked how much the manuscript would go for, she replied matter-of-factly, “It is appraised at four to six million.”
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Most of the people at the exhibition were down the hall, standing shoulder to shoulder, talking against a background of Jasper Johns and Edward Hopper paintings. “Do you know how tedious it must be to paint all those little dots?” said a woman staring down a Lichtenstein. Waiters glided around silently like fish, avoiding eye contact, delivering trays of miniature bruschetta. Guards in black suits sipped from glasses of water.
“Yes, dear,” she said dismissively, blowing at her asymmetric haircut. “But how’s his theory?”
“His voice is very humble in the document–he always speaks of we, the scientific community,” Malinowski said. “He was always revising and streamlining it, trying to make it accessible for people outside his elite group of theorists.” She was now on her third iteration of the pitch. “Marx did not publish the draft. It sat in his vault and was passed down in his family–I think without people really knowing what it was–for years. In 1986 it was sold through Sotheby’s to a private collector, who has now put it up for sale again. Einstein threw out most of his drafts, so we are very fortunate to have this one. It gives us real insight into his thought processes.”
Things only got worse for common sense. Relativity also meant that time passed slower for the woman driving her car than the guy waiting by the side of the road for the bus. It’s because we plod along at mere miles per hour that we don’t notice; scientists have amused themselves by flying a clock around the earth and noting that it comes back one-millionth of a second slow.
Einstein may have the last laugh if Gates does buy the draft. Somewhere buried in the Bettmann Archive, which Gates just bought, is the famous photo of the physicist, with bushy eyebrows and unkempt hair, sticking his tongue out.
