Previously unpublished letters written by Albert Einstein are to be auctioned off by Christie's in May – including an unseen photograph of the famous scientist as a child.
The letters, which date from 1897 to 1951, were correspondence between the theoretical physicist and his younger sister, Maja Winteler-Einstein.
Thomas Venning, the head of the books and manuscripts department at the British auction house, told the Guardian that the Jewish scientist “was very conscious of what was expected of him after he became famous, and you don’t get any of that in letters to his sister. He says some things that I’ve never seen him say anywhere else, and I’ve catalogued many hundreds of his letters.”
Einstein completed his general theory of relativity in 1915. Nine years later, at the age of 45, he wrote to his sister, “scientifically I haven’t achieved much recently – the brain gradually goes off with age, although that’s not so unpleasant. It also means that you’re not so answerable for your later year”.
