great difficulties to overcome in his attempts, Einstein has attained
the results, which I have tried to sketch, while still young; he is
now 45 years old. He completed his first investigations in Switzerland,
where he first was engaged in the Patent Bureau at Berne and later as a
professor at the Polytechnic in Zurich. After having been a professor
for a short time at the University of Prague, he settled in Berlin,
where the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute afforded him the opportunity to
devote himself exclusively to his scientific work. He repeatedly
visited our country and made his Netherland colleagues, among whom he
counts many good friends, partners in his studies and his results. He
attended the last meeting of the department of natural philosophy of
the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the members then had the privilege
of hearing him explain, in his own fascinating, clear and simple way,
his interpretations of the fundamental questions to which his theory
gives rise.