Conversation

David Hilbert sent a postcard to Einstein #OTD in 1915.

He offered congratulations for the previous day’s lecture, in which Einstein presented his final field equations for general relativity and used them to explain the anomalous precession of Mercury.

The postcard read:

"If I could calculate as rapidly as you, in my equations the electron would correspondingly have to capitulate, and simultaneously the hydrogen atom would have to produce its note of apology about why it does not radiate."