Typed Letter Signed, to Julien Elfenbein, on personal embossed letterhead, thanking him for the presentation of a tablecloth designed to show the “Gaussian primes” as drawn by Professor Balthasar van der Pol.

EINSTEIN, ALBERT

23rd November

Princeton

1954

* WITH: Original tablecloth displaying Gaussian Primes. And: Related correspondence between J.E. van Dissel and Julien Elfenbein (see below).

In October 1954, then-editor of the Haire Publishing Company, Julien Elfenbein, a writer and later professor of journalism at New York University, received a sample tablecloth from J.E. van Dissel, Managing Director of N.V. Linnenfabrieken E.J.F van Dissel & Zonen - a linen manufacturing company in Eindhoven, Holland. The tablecloth was woven by the firm for the occasion of the 1954 International Congress of Mathematicians which took place that year in Amsterdam. The pattern used was based on the formula of a series of integers or, the “Gaussian primes,” designed in March, 1954 by Dutch mathematician Professor Balthasar van der Pol in Geneva. Van Dissel included an explanation of the tablecloth showing the Gaussian primes as squares woven into the tablecloth amidst x- and y-axes parallel to the sides of the cloth. Van Dissel believed this “unique and never done before” and sent one to Elfenbein for publication in his periodical: Linens & Domestics. Three weeks later Elfenbein acknowledged that a notice of this “special serviette” would appear in the next issue and also suggests sending a second sample for presentation to Dr. Albert Einstein. In mid-November, Elfenbein received a second tablecloth and sent it to Albert Einstein with an attached note, modestly admitting his incomprehension of the mathematical principle: “Even with the explanation included I am still in the dark as to what it means. I am sure you will find it enlightening.” Einstein’s response asks Elfenbein to send his thanks and appreciation to Mr. van Dissel in Holland.