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On
22nd of July 2005, I stumbled upon an original handwritten manuscript of Albert
Einstein. The article was written in december 1924 and contains Einsteins last
big discovery: the prediction of a new state of matter, later called the Bose-Einstein
Condensate. I have found the manuscript, while I was working with Paul Ehrenfest's
library in the Lorentz
Institute for Theoretical Physics in Leiden for my own Master's Degree research.
The Austrian born Ehrenfest was the Professor in theoretical physics in Leiden between 1912 and 1933 and one of Einstein's closest friends. Einstein was extraordinary-professor in Physics in Leiden in the twenties and visited the University at least once a year. February 1925 was such a visit. During this visit he approved the preprint for the Sitzungsberichten of the Prussian Academy of Science and he left the handwritten original version behind in Ehrenfest's library, where I found it eighty years later. I also found more than sixty other papers, letters and manuscripts from other famous contemporary physicists like Niels Bohr. Some of these letters I have used in my final thesis.
Together with chief-science editor of the NRC Handelsblad newspaper, Dirk van Delft, I have written an article about these discoveries. It appeared on the 20th of August and soon after every newspaper in the world reported on these remarkable findings. It was a pure coincidence with the World Year of Physics. All manuscripts are now kept in the Library of the Leiden University. Theoretical Physics Professor Beenakker made scanned images of Einstein's documents available on the history section of the Leiden Physics Institute.
***
:: My Master's Research Website
:: Presentation on My Research
:: Radio
interview for Singapore International Radio (19/10/2005, English)
:: Radio
interview for This Week's Discoveries (13/09/2005, Dutch)
:: Radio
interview with BNN United (22/08/2005, Dutch)
:: Article
in the ADB Magazine (01/11/2005, English) 
:: Article
in Discover Magazine (January 2006, English)
:: Inventory
of all discovered materials (Dutch)
:: Original
NRC article (20/08/2005, Dutch)
:: Article in Physics Today (April 2006, English)
:: Overview
of foreign articles
:: Different
articles in foreign media
:: More
about the discovery (Dutch)
