Albert Einstein to Hedi and Max Born

This letter antedates by a year or two the “new” quantum mechanics of Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Pasqual Jordan, and Erwin Schrödinger. Einstein begins with a response to a letter about Japan by Born’s wife, Hedi—a letter that has since been lost. But then, as he would for the next 30 years, Einstein launches into his differences with Max on the interpretation of quantum phenomena. If atomic phenomena are truly random, he grumbles, he’d rather be a croupier. Berlin, 29 April 1924