EINSTEIN, Albert.

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Geometrie und Erfahrung (Geometry and Experience). First edition, rare author's presentation offprint, inscribed by Einstein shortly after publication to Professor Friedrich (Fritz) Behrend (1878-1939) of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where the lecture was first delivered. The paper includes Einstein's celebrated aphorism: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."This copy is inscribed in ink on the first page, "Mit freundlichen Gruss Albert Einstein. 1. III 21", with a portion of the original address label laid in, postmarked 2 March 1921. Einstein and Behrend corresponded in the early 1920s; their relationship was close enough for Behrend to ask Einstein to act as guarantor on a loan in December 1924, a request Einstein politely declined (Collected Papers, letters 568 and 596). The presentation offprint is distinguished from the trade issue by the printed statement "Überreicht vom Verfasser" on the front cover.Einstein delivered this lecture on the foundations and applications of geometry to the Prussian Academy on 27 January 1921, the year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. In what DSB describes as a "particularly beautiful lecture", he set out his mature views on the geometrization of physics and relativity, the distinction between pure and applied geometry, and the priority of empirical over a priori claims. The paper stands as his most considered response to Poincaré

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