BRACERS Record Detail for 132436
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The letter was one of three from BR to Silberstein auctioned in May 2021 by RR Auction.com.
On the projective treatment of vectors and scalar coefficients. BR refers to "the distractiions of these days" -- meaning the Armistice and the end of the War -- and to the trivial problem of marmalade.
BR TO LUDWIK SILBERSTEIN, 12 NOV. 1918
BRACERS 132436. ALS(DX). Internet print
Proofread by K. Blackwell
57 Gordon Sq. WC1
12.11.18
Dear Dr Silberstein
I have read your MS with the greatest interest. It is a real pleasure to know that there is a projective treatment of vectors. You do not, in the MS you send me, state the principle of your construction, which is simply to substitute an arbitrary line for the line at infinity. The treatment of scalar coefficients, as we agreed when we met, is identical with the usual method of introducing projective coordinates, but the idea of connecting it with vector analysis is, so far as I know, entirely new.
Many thanks for the relativity paper, which I am ashamed to confess I have not yet found time to read amid the distractions of these days. It is extraordinarily kind of you to take up the “marmalade problem” but I hate to think of your time being spent upon such a trivial matter.
Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell.
