This Tuesday, in Paris, a manuscript of Albert Einstein is going to auction.
Christie’s Auctions and Private Sales will be putting the document up to auction on behalf of the Aguttes auction house later this week in Paris. This is probably one of the most valuable manuscripts of Einstein to ever come to auction and is expected to garner a sum fit for its significance: between two to three million euros.
Preliminary work
“This is without a doubt the most valuable Einstein manuscript ever to come to auction,” Christie’s said in a statement, according to the AFP.
The 54-page long manuscript was handwritten between 1913 and 1914 in Zurich, Switzerland by Einstein and Swiss engineer Michele Besso, his colleague and friend. It contains the preparatory groundwork for the theory of relativity, arguably one of the most important contributions to physics of the 20th century. His work earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
Besso was instrumental in preserving the document, Christie’s adds, as Einstein himself was likely to have seen it as an unimportant working document.
The manuscript offers “a fascinating plunge into the mind of the 20th century’s greatest scientist”, according to the auction house. Einstein died aged 76 in 1955 and is widely considered to be one of the greatest physicists ever. He’s also something of a popular icon, and widely known today.