A picture taken on November 22, 2021, shows pages of a manuscript that was to be auctioned off at Christie's in Paris a day before. The image is courtesy of Agence France-Presse.
A 54-page manuscript co-written by Albert Einstein and Swiss engineer Michele Besso has sold at auction for a record-breaking $13 million.
The manuscript has set a new record for the most expensive signed scientific document ever sold, according to Christie's auction house. Christie's noted that the auction attracted interest from buyers around the world, though the identity of the buyer has not been revealed.
Einstein and Besso tested equations that would eventually become the foundation of Einstein's theory of relativity in the summer of 1913.
According to Christie's, the manuscript contains 26 pages written in Einstein's hand, 24 pages written in Besso's and three pages written by the two. There are margin notes on many pages, including an excited "stimmt!" (that's German for "It works!") inked by Einstein next to one of his equations.
The manuscript is rare because Einstein rarely kept drafts of his own writing and correspondences, and Besso preserved much of his work with Einstein. This manuscript is one of the two remaining that show the foundations of general relativity.
The works of Einstein were included in the sale. A letter from Einstein to a rival physicist was sold for over $1 million. Two short notes written by Einstein to a bellboy at a Tokyo hotel sold for more than $1 million.
Live Science published the original article.
