Partly-printed DS, signed "Einstein" and "A. Einstein," one page, 11.5 x 8.75, May-August 1920. Official Berlin University transcript of Isaak Firk, a medical student, noting his attendance and payment at a series of lectures in physiology, experimental physics, inorganic chemistry, anatomy, histology, and theoretical physics. Einstein signs twice as professor of theoretical physics, adding dates of May and August 1920; also signed twice by four other professors. The document bears several official university stamps. In very good condition, with creasing, light staining, short splits along intersecting folds, and a few small remnants of mounting tape to edges.
Einstein started teaching in Berlin in 1914, when his mentor Max Planck arranged for his appointment to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. This came with membership in the Berlin Academy of Sciences and a professorial rank permitting him to give lectures at Berlin University. It was during this period that he made some of his greatest contributions to science, and his theories of relativity earned growing admiration. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics—for his discovery of the photoelectric effect—in 1921, the year after signing this document. However, nationalism and anti-Semitic violence was growing in Germany, and he decided to spend much of the 1922-23 academic year traveling abroad. A decade later, he would leave Germany for good.
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