The Solvay Congress In the fall of 1912 Einstein entered upon his duties as professor at the Polytechnic in Zurich. He was now the pride of the institution where he had once failed to pass the entrance examination, where he had studied and met his wife, and where on graduation he had been unable to obtain even a minor position. As early as 1910, when Lampa was considering Einstein’s appointment to Prague and seeking an opinion of his qualifications from a scientist who was generally recognized as an authority, Max Planck, the leading theoretical physicist, had written to the faculty committee at Prague: “If Einstein’s theory should prove to be correct, as I expect it will, he will be considered the Copernicus of the twentieth century.” Einstein was already beginning to be surrounded by an aura of legend. His achievements were characterized as a turning-point in physics comparable to the revolution initiated by Copernicus. In 1911, when a conference of a small number of world-famous physicists was to be convened in Brussels to discuss the crisis in modern physics, there was no question that an invitation would be extended to Einstein.
