Per our earlier discussion, I have outlined the areas of concern I have with Einstein's performance here at the patent office in Bern. As you know, he has been an examiner here for nearly five years. Albert is still fairly young -- 26 -- and he is certainly a pleasant enough fellow, although not terribly friendly (I bet you didn't even know he had a son last year, Hans Albert). He's certainly not been much of a team player here at the office. He even rolls his eyes during staff meetings.
Frankly, this year he's devoting very little of his energies to his job. Instead, he is spending endless hours of agency time developing what he says are "theories" about very complex scientific subjects that, frankly, I don't have the foggiest about. I'm not sure if this is just an elaborate ruse to avoid work, but I have found notes on his desk that say "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious; it is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science" and "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
There was even one that went on for pages and pages that said, "Maxwell's electrodynamics...when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena".
I quizzed him about this the other day, and he told me that he believed he had a special theory of relativity, and that he had "figured out that Newton was wrong about this whole space/time thing" and that "the energy content of a body is equal to the mass of the body times the speed of light squared."
I'm not kidding. That's what he said.
Now, Rolf, I'm all for people keeping their minds active when the have some down time at work, but this is ridiculous. I overheard some of the other examiners saying tha the has come up with three different, very complex physics theories this year alone, and had them published in scientific journals. When does he have time to examine patents? I quizzed Einstein about this, and he told me: "I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious."
Fine. Be curious after 5 o'clock.
Now, I understand that he has gotten a doctorate from the University of Zurich this year for writing about something called "molecular dimensions." Convince me that happened in his off hours.
Johann even confided to me that Albert's been walking around proclaiming this as his "Annus Mirabilis" or "Miracle Year." The only miracle I see is that the guy still has a job here.
What I propose is an attempt for management to focus Albert on some more success-oriented, team-buildng goals. He may be a genius, but no one patent examiner is more important than the next, don't you agree? Our job here is to find whoever is out there building a better mousetrap.
DH
One of Einstein's papers on the Unified Field Theory -- "the theory of gravitation has
occupied me unceasingly since 1916."
