Skip to main content
Log in

Interrogating the Legend of Einstein's “Biggest Blunder”

  • Published:
Physics in Perspective Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

It is well known that, following the emergence of the first evidence for an expanding universe, Albert Einstein banished the cosmological constant term from his cosmology. Indeed, he is reputed to have labelled the term, originally introduced to the field equations of general relativity in 1917 in order to predict a static universe, his “biggest blunder.” However, serious doubts about this reported statement have been raised in recent years. We interrogate the legend of Einstein’s “biggest blunder” statement in the context of our recent studies of Einstein’s cosmology in his later years. We find that the remark is highly compatible with Einstein’s cosmic models of the 1930s, with his later writings on cosmology, and with independent reports by at least three physicists. We conclude that there is little doubt that Einstein came to view the introduction of the cosmological constant term as a serious error and that he very likely labelled the term his “biggest blunder” on at least one occasion. This finding may be of some relevance for those theoreticians today who seek to describe the recently discovered acceleration in cosmic expansion without the use of a cosmological constant term.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We thank Daniel Kennefick for this information.

  2. Gamow studied with Born’s group in Göttingen in 1928 and with Bohr’s group in Copenhagen in 1929–1931.

  3. We thank Orith Burla Barnea of the Albert Einstein Archive for confirming this.

References

  1. Albert Einstein, “Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1915), 844–47. Or “The Field Equations of Gravitation,” in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (hereafter CPAE), vol. 6, doc. 25, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/129.

  2. Albert Einstein, letter to Willem de Sitter, March 12, 1917, CPAE, vol. 8, doc. 311, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol8-trans/329.

  3. Chris Smeenk, “Einstein’s Role in the Creation of Relativistic Cosmology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Einstein, ed. Michel. Janssen and Christoph Lehner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 228–69.

  4. Albert Einstein, “Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1917), 142–52. Or “Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity,” CPAE, vol. 6, doc. 43, https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/433.

  5. Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, Michael O’Keeffe, Werner Nahm, and Simon Mitton, “Einstein’s 1917 Static Model of the Universe: A Centennial Review,” European Physical Journal H 42, no. 3 (2017), 431–74.

  6. O’Raifeartaigh et al., “Einstein’s 1917 Static Model” (ref. 5).

  7. Albert Einstein, letter to Felix Klein March 26, 1917, CPAE, vol. 8, doc. 319, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol8-trans/339.

  8. Albert Einstein, letter to Willem de Sitter April 14, 1917, CPAE, vol. 8, doc. 325. https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol8-trans/343

  9. Albert Einstein, “Spielen Gravitationsfelder im Aufbau der materiellen Elementarteilchen eine wesentliche Rolle?,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1919), 349–56. Or “Do Gravitation Fields Play an Essential Part in the Structure of the Elementary Particles of Matter?,” CPAE, vol. 7, doc. 17, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/97.

  10. Willem de Sitter, “On Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation and its Astronomical Consequences. Third Paper,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 78 (1917), 3–28.

  11. Smeenk, “Einstein’s Role” (ref. 3).

  12. Albert Einstein, “Kritisches zu einer von Hrn. De Sitter gegebenen Lösung der Gravitationsgleichungen,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1918), 270–72. Or “Critical Comment on a Solution of the Gravitational Field Equations Given by Mr. de Sitter,” CPAE, vol. 7, doc. 5, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/52.

  13. Albert Einstein, letter to Felix Klein, June 20, 1918, CPAE, vol. 8, doc. 567, https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol8-trans/622.

  14. Albert Einstein, Über die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, 3rd ed. (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1917), 116–18. Or On the Special and General Theory of Relativity (A Popular Account), CPAE, vol. 6, doc. 42, https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-doc/448; “Geometrie und Erfahrung” (Berlin: Springer, 1921), or “Geometry and Experience,” CPAE, vol. 7, doc. 52, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/224.

  15. Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, Michael O’Keeffe, Werner Nahm, and Simon Mitton, “One Hundred Years of the Cosmological Constant: From ‘Superfluous Stunt’ to Dark Energy,” European Physical Journal H 44 (2018), 73–117.

  16. Willem de Sitter, “On the Relativity of Inertia: Remarks Concerning Einstein’s Latest Hypothesis,” KNAW Proceedings 19 (1917), 1217–25.

  17. Edwin Hubble, “A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15 (1929), 168–73.

  18. Alexander Friedman, “Über die Krümmung des Raumes,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 10 (1922), 377–86. Or “On the Curvature of Space,” General Relativity and Gravitation 31 (1999), 1991–2000; Georges Lemaître, “Un Univers Homogène de Masse Constante et de Rayon Croissant, Rendant Compte de la Vitesse Radiale des Nébuleuses Extra-galactiques,” Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles A47 (1927), 49–59.

  19. Howard P. Robertson, “Relativistic Cosmology,” Reviews of Modern. Physics 5 (1933), 62–90.

  20. “Prof. Einstein begins His Work at Mt. Wilson,” New York Times, January 3, 1931, 1.

  21. Albert Einstein, “Zum kosmologischen Problem der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1931), 235–37.

  22. Einstein, “Zum kosmologischen Problem” (ref. 21).

  23. Cormac O’Raifeartaigh and Brendan McCann, “Einstein’s Cosmic Model of 1931 Revisited: An Analysis and Translation of a Forgotten Model of the Universe,” European Physical Journal H 39 (2014), 63–85.

  24. Einstein, “Zum kosmologischen Problem” (ref. 21).

  25. Albert Einstein and Willem de Sitter, “On the Relation Between the Expansion and the Mean Density of the Universe,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 18 (1932), 213–14.

  26. Einstein and de Sitter, “Relation Between the Expansion” (ref. 25).

  27. Albert Einstein, postcard to Hermann Weyl, May 23, 1923, CPAE, vol. 14, doc. 40, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol14-trans/71; Norbert Straumann, “The History of the Cosmological Constant Problem,” in On the Nature of Dark Energy: Proceedings of the 18th IAP Astrophysics Colloquium, ed. Philippe Brax et al. (Paris: Frontier Group, 2002), 1–10.

  28. Richard C. Tolman, letter to Albert Einstein, September 14, 1931, Albert Einstein Archive Online, item 23-31, http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/Record/EAR000023525; Willem de Sitter, Kosmos: A Course of Six Lectures on the Development of Our Insight into the Structure of the Universe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 127.

  29. Arthur S. Eddington, “On the Instability of Einstein’s Spherical World,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 90 (1930), 668–78; Georges Lemaître, “The Expanding Universe,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 91 (1931), 490–501.

  30. Willem de Sitter, “The Expanding Universe,” Scientia 49 (1931), 1–10; Arthur S. Eddington, The Expanding Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 33.

  31. O’Raifeartaigh et al., “One Hundred Years” (ref. 15).

  32. Albert Einstein, “Sur la Structure Cosmologique de l’Espace,” in La Théorie de la Relativité (Paris: Hermann, 1933), 99–109.

  33. Albert Einstein, “On the Cosmologic Problem,” in The Meaning of Relativity, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 130–45.

  34. Albert Einstein, letter to Georges Lemaître, September 26, 1947, Albert Einstein Archive Online, item 15-85, http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/Record/EAR000031167.

  35. Albert Einstein, “Remarks to the Essays Appearing in this Collective Volume,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 7, ed. P. A. Schilpp (Wisconsin: George Banta, 1949), 665–88.

  36. O’Raifeartaigh et al., “One Hundred Years” (ref. 15).

  37. O’Raifeartaigh et al., “One Hundred Years” (ref. 15).

  38. George Gamow, “The Evolutionary Universe,” Scientific American 195, no. 3 (1956), 136–56.

  39. George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (New York: Viking Press, 1970), 44.

  40. O’Raifeartaigh et al., “One Hundred Years” (ref. 15).

  41. Alex Harvey and Engelbert Schucking, “Einstein’s Mistake and the Cosmological Constant,” American. Journal of Physics 68, no. 8 (2000), 723–28; John Earman, “Lambda: The Constant That Refuses to Die,” Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences 55, no. 3 (2001), 189–220; Straumann, “The History of the Cosmological Constant Problem” (ref. 27).

  42. Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 232–41.

  43. Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn, The Road to Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s “The Foundation of General Relativity” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 152; Alice Calaprice, Daniel Kennefick, and Robert Schulmann, An Einstein Encyclopedia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 168; Helge Kragh and James Overduin, The Weight of the Vacuum: A Scientific History of Dark Energy (Berlin: Springer, 2014), 51.

  44. Earman, “Lambda” (ref. 41); Livio, Brilliant Blunders (ref. 42); Gutfreund and Renn, Road to Relativity (ref. 43); Kragh and Overduin, The Weight (ref. 43).

  45. Linus Pauling, diary entry, 1956, Pauling Collection, Special Collections and Archives Research Centre, Oregon State University Library.

  46. Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders (ref. 42).

  47. Gamow, My World Line (ref. 39); Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe, and George Gamow, “The Origin of Chemical Elements,” Physical Review 73 (1948), 803–4; James D. Watson, Genes, Girls and Gamow (New York: Doubleday, 2002).

  48. Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow, “Origin of Chemical Elements” (ref. 47).

  49. Watson, Genes, Girls and Gamow (ref. 47), 90–95, 132, 251; Beverly Orndorff, George Gamow: The Whimsical Mind Behind the Big Bang (New York: Createspace, 2014), 2–4, 259–60.

  50. Gamow, My World Line (ref. 39), 149–50.

  51. Livio, Brilliant Blunders (ref. 42).

  52. Stephen Brunauer, Naval Surface Weapons Center, “Einstein and the Navy: …An Unbeatable Combination,” On the Surface 9 (January 24, 1986), 1–2.

  53. Livio, Brilliant Blunders (ref. 42).

  54. Einstein, “Zum kosmologischen” (ref. 21); Einstein, “Sur la Structure” (ref. 32); Einstein, letter to Lemaître (ref. 34).

  55. Einstein,“Kritisches” (ref. 12).

  56. Hans C. Ohanian, Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of a Genius (New York: Norton & Co., 2008), 118–21, 161–64.

  57. Eamon Harper, “George Gamow: Scientific Amateur and Polymath,” Physics in Perspective 3, no. 3 (2001), 335–72.

  58. Karl Hufbauer, “George Gamow 1904–1968: A Biographical Memoir” in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington DC: US National Academy of Sciences, 2009), http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/gamow-george.pdf; Martin Harwit, In Search of the Universe: The Tools, Shaping, and Cost of Cosmological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 158.

  59. Hans Bethe, “Influence of Gamow on Early Astrophysics and on Early Accelerators in Nuclear Physics,” in The George Gamow Symposium, ed. Eamonn Harper et al., Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series 129 (1997), 45–48.

  60. Watson, Genes, Girls and Gamow (ref. 47), 90–92.

  61. Vera C. Rubin, “Intuition and Inspiration Made Gamow a Star Turn,” Nature 415 (2002), 13.

  62. Robert J. Finkelstein, “My Century of Physics,” ArXiv, November 30, 2016, https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.00079.

  63. Galina Weinstein, “George Gamow and Albert Einstein: Did Einstein Say the Cosmological Constant Was the ‘Biggest Blunder’ He Ever Made in His Life?,” ArXiv, October 3, 2013, https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.1033; Harper, “George Gamow” (ref. 57).

  64. Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), 575–76; Abraham Pais, The Life and Science of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 473–74; Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography, trans. Ewald Osers (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997), 734–36.

  65. Harper, “George Gamow” (ref. 57); Roger H. Stuewer, “Gamow, Alpha Decay and the Liquid-Drop Model of the Nucleus,” in Harper et al., eds. Gamow Symposium (ref. 59), 30–43.

  66. Finkelstein, “My Century of Physics” (ref. 62); Harper, “George Gamow” (ref. 57); Ernest Walton, “Personal Recollections of the Discovery of Fast Particles,” in Cambridge Physics in the Thirties, ed. John. Hendry, (Bristol: Hilger, 1984), 49–55.

  67. Albert Einstein, letter to Moritz Schlick, May 18, 1932, Albert Einstein Archive Online, item 21-640, http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/Record/EAR000023952; Brian Cathcart, The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (London: Viking, 2004), 93–94.

  68. Harper, “George Gamow” (ref. 57); Stuewer, “Gamow” (ref. 65).

  69. Ralph Alpher, “George Gamow and the Big Bang Model,” pt. 1, “Cosmochemistry in the Early Universe,” in Harper et al., eds. Gamow Symposium (ref. 59), 50–68. We note that Gamow was nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics on at least three occasions (1943, 1946, and 1967).

  70. George Gamow, “The Evolution of the Universe,” Nature 162 (1948), 680–82.

  71. Albert Einstein, letter to George Gamow, August 4, 1948, Albert Einstein Archive Online, item 70-960, http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/Record/EAR000049424.

  72. Livio, Brilliant Blunders (ref. 42).

  73. Edwin F. Taylor and John A. Wheeler, Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity (San Francisco: Addison Wesley, 2000), G11.

  74. Ralph Alpher, posting on the online message board of the History of Astronomy Discussion Group, April 2, 1998.

  75. O’Raifeartaigh et al., “One Hundred Years” (ref. 15); Sean Carroll, “The Cosmological Constant,” Living Reviews in Relativity 4 (2001), 1–56.

  76. William H. McCrea, “The Cosmical Constant,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 12 (1971), 140–53; Christopher Ray, “The Cosmological Constant: Einstein’s Greatest Mistake?,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (1990), 589–604.

  77. Philippe Brax, “What Makes the Universe Accelerate?: A Review on What Dark Energy Could Be and How To Test It,” Reports on Progress in Physics 81 (2018), 016902.

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the use of online materials in the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (CPAE), an important historical resource published by Princeton University Press in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We also thank the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for permission to display the Einstein letters shown in figures 2 and 5. Cormac O’Raifeartaigh thanks the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for the use of research facilities and Norbert Straumann, Werner Nahm and Michael O’Keeffe for helpful discussions. Simon Mitton thanks St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge for the support of his research in the history of science.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cormac O’Raifeartaigh.

Additional information

Cormac O’Raifeartaigh (corresponding author) lectures in physics at Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland, and is Visiting Associate Professor of Physics at University College Dublin. Simon Mitton is a historian of science and Life Fellow of St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

O’Raifeartaigh, C., Mitton, S. Interrogating the Legend of Einstein's “Biggest Blunder”. Phys. Perspect. 20, 318–341 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-018-0228-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-018-0228-9

Keywords

Navigation