12 ADVENTURES IX RADIOISOTOPE RESEARCH 



barber shop whose owner, a son of the City of Constance, praised the 

 beauties of Ufe in California, mentioning that his only wash in life was 

 to be permitted once to cut Einstein's hair. I told him that this wish 

 would not be easy to fulfill as, according to rumors, Mrs. Einstein 

 used to perform this work. When I told Einstein about the barber's 

 w ish, he remarked : ''Da er sich auf Ihrem Kopfe nicht austoben konnte, 

 wollte er meinen Kopf haben" ("As he could not sufficiently exercise 

 himself on your head [I had poor hair] he wants to have mine"). 



Einstein talked repeatedly to me on the problem of causality. He dis- 

 agreed with Bohr's views on this topic and asked me to convey his 

 objections to Bohr. He wished an explanation on a classical basis. 



When Lorenz left Ziirich for the University of Frankfurt (I was 

 later, after his death, asked to fill his chair). Willstatter called on 

 me to make the short statement : ''In Germany the assistant belongs 

 to the professor, in Switzerland to the laboratory— you stay here." 

 I did not, as I got much interested in the catalytic synthesis of ammonia 

 by Haber, a discovery which at that date rightly impressed all those 

 interested in chemistry. 



My monthly salary in Ziirich corresponding to $36 was entirely ade- 

 quate, as I was charged $15 a month for a very nice room and two good 

 meals a day. When I was promoted to a "first assistant", I was told that 

 my salary would be raised to $60 a month, the highest pay ever allotted 

 to an assistant. 



When I w-as leaving the laboratory one evening together with Will- 

 statter, he told me that he was moving to Berlin to take over one of the 

 Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. I asked him, much astonished, w^hy he was 

 leaving. He was the permanent head of the chemistry faculty and had 

 a very fine laboratory, and postgraduate students from all over the world 

 were anxious to work under his guidance. His answer was : "If the 

 fatherland calls, it is my duty to go." Thirty-two years later I was present 

 at the meeting of the Danish Academy of Sciences when the president, 

 S. P. L. Sorensen, death written on his face, read a letter from Willstatter 

 requesting that the Proceedings of the Academy should no more be sent 

 to him. Willstatter went on, saying : "I have no home any more. I have 

 lost all my belongings, which I do not mind much. What chagrins me is 

 that I lost my fatherland." 



Haber wished me to work in another field than that of catalytic synthe- 

 sis. I was to investigate whether or not oxidation of molten zinc is 

 accompanied by emission of electrons. No one in Haber's institute had 

 experience in the field of the conductivity of electricity in gases. I pro- 

 posed therefore to Haber that I proceed to England to acquire some 

 knowledge in this new field of physics and return later to his laboratory. 

 Haber entirely shared my view, and I left in the first days of January , 

 1911, for Manchester to work under Rutherford. 



