ajkox-einstein

Einstein

As the most important and influential physicist of the twentieth century Albert Einstein is a favorite subject for historians of physics. I am no exception in that respect. But although I have published some papers on aspects of Einstein’s work, and on his relationship with the Dutch physics community—he was permanent guest professor in Leiden from 1921 on—I made my main contributions to Einstein scholarship as an editor of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. From 1985 on I have been connected with the Einstein Project, in various capacities—but always part-time, next to my work in Amsterdam. Until 2025 I was a Senior Editor at the Project as well as a Visiting Associate in History at the California Institute of Technology, spending between two and four months each year in sunny California. Nowadays I am a regular contributor. The first Einstein volume appeared in 1987, the most recent one, Volume 17, was published in 2024. There are at least thirteen more volumes to come, which will take more than thirty years to complete. A rather daunting prospect.

Some of my publications on Einstein

  • Ad Maas and A.J. Kox, “Albert Einstein, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and the discovery of superconductivity.” European Journal of Physics 46 (2025): 055805.
  • A.J. Kox. “Einstein on statistical physics: Fluctuations and atomism.” In Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Einstein, pp. 103–116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  • A.J. Kox, “Confusion and Clarification: Albert Einstein and Walther Nernst’s Heat Theorem, 1911–1916.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37 (2006): 101–114.
  • A.J. Kox, “Einstein, specific heats, and residual rays: The history of a retracted paper.” In A.J. Kox and Daniel M. Siegel, eds., ‘No truth except in the details’: Essays in honor of Martin J. Klein, pp. 245–257. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995.
  • A.J. Kox, “Einstein, Lorentz, Leiden and general relativity.” Classical and Quantum Gravity 10 (1993): S187–S191.
  • A.J. Kox, “Einstein and Lorentz: More than just good colleagues.” Science in Context 6 (1993): 43–56.