Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

Autograph note signed ('A. Einstein') to Fritz Haber, [Berlin], 12 July 1922.

In German, one page, 60 x 103mm, on the verso of Einstein's printed visiting card as member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Provenance: by descent from Professor M.M. Bobtelsky.

Writing to Fritz Haber to recommend a young chemist. 'I am sending you with this Mr Bobtelsky from Bern, with the idea that he can perhaps work with you. He seems to have worked principally in colloid chemistry, especially in electro-chemistry'. In a postscript, Einstein notes that he is leaving at the end of the week to visit his sons in Zurich.

The brilliant Fritz Haber (1868-1934) was one of Einstein's closest friends in Berlin. His discovery of the Haber-Bosch process for producing nitrogen-based fertilisers won him the 1918 Nobel Prize, and remains fundamental to modern food production; Haber is however also a controversial figure for his work in pioneering poisonous gases during the Great War. Mordechai Max Bobtelsky (1889-1964) was a chemist of Russian Jewish origin who had studied at the University of Bern. Einstein's recommendation in the present card was successful, and Bobtelsky worked as Haber's assistant in Berlin for a period before moving to an industrial role in Czechoslovakia. In 1925 he emigrated to Palestine, going on in 1927 to found the Department of Inorganic and Analytic Chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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