Warm thanks are due to Mr. Raymond Kershaw, B.A., and to my sister, Miss Hilda Brose, for help in reading the manuscript and the proofs. HENRY L. BROSE OXFORD, 1921 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Phenomena in the Heavens II. Beyond our Power III. Valhalla IV. Education V. The Discoverer VI. Of Different Worlds VII. Problems VIII. Highways and By-ways IX. An Experimental Analogy X. Disconnected Suggestions XI. Einstein's Life and Personality INDEX EINSTEIN THE SEARCHER CHAPTER I PHENOMENA IN THE HEAVENS Proclamation of the New Mechanics.--Verification of Theoretical Results.--Parallels with Leverrier.--Neptune and Mercury.--Testing the Theory of Relativity.--The Solar Eclipse of 1919.--The Programme of an Expedition.--The Curved Ray of Light.--Refinement of Calculation and Measurement.--Stellar Photography.--The Principle of Equivalence.--The Sun Myth. ON the 13th October 1910 a memorable event took place in the Berlin Scientific Association: Henri Poincaré, the eminent physicist and mathematician, had been announced to give a lecture in the rooms of the institute "Urania"; an audience of rather meagre dimensions assembled. I still see him before me in my mind's eye, a scholar who was snatched away in the prime of his creative period, a man whose external appearance did not suggest the light of genius, and whose carefully trimmed beard reminded one rather of the type of a practising barrister. He walked up and down the platform, accompanying his speech with gestures marked by an easy elegance. There was no sign of an attempt to force a doctrine. He developed his thesis, in spite of the foreign language, in fluent and readily intelligible terms. It was at this lecture that we heard the name Albert Einstein pronounced for the first time. Poincaré's address was on the New Mechanics, and was intended to make us acquainted with the beginning of a tendency which, he himself confessed, had violently disturbed the equilibrium of his former fundamental views. He repeatedly broke the usually even flow of his voice to indicate, with an emphatic gesture, that we had perhaps arrived at a critical, nay epochal, point marking the commencement of a new era of thought.