Friar Bellows

The Mysterious Story of the Unknown Physicist, S. B. Preuss:

When Einstein decided he no longer needed to have an extra term (the so-called cosmological constant) in his field equation, he published it in the following journal: Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. The correct citation for the paper in which Einstein published his decision is:

Einstein. A. (1931). Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. 235-37.

Now, physicists can be as lazy as the next guy. So in the years following the publication of Einstein's 1931 paper, many of them referenced or quoted it in their papers without actually having seen it, let alone read it. So it was not surprising that the citation changed over the years, mutating into something quite different. Here is one sequence:

- A. Einstein. 1931. Sitzsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. ...
- A. Einstein. Sitzber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. ... (1931)
- A. Einstein (1931). Sber. preuss. Akad. Wiss. ...
- Einstein. A .. 1931. Sb. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. ...
- A. Einstein. S.-B. Preuss. Akad. Wis. ...1931
- A. Einstein. S.B. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. (1931) ...
- Einstein, A., and Preuss, S.B. (1931). Akad. Wiss. 235

And so was born S. B. Preuss, a colleague of Einstein's, who co-authored one paper, and then mysteriously disappeared from the academic scene. I smell a nice research project for a student historian of science.

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: Friar Bellows ]</p>