Physics Meets Economics : Albert Einstein and Irving Fisher on Science, Peace, and the Great Depression

Albert Einstein came to The California Institute of Technology in early 1933 and delivered a speech on the causes of the ongoing economic depression. Soon after that, Irving Fisher sent the German physicist his recent book Booms and Depressions, depicting the crisis as a monetary phenomenon. An unusually long letter by Einstein was elaborated in reply. The following year, they held a private and entertaining meeting in Rhode Island. The current paper reconstitutes the episode by looking first at Einstein and Fisher as public intellectuals during the interwar years and their opinions on science-making and global peace. Next, Einstein’s views on freedom and socialism, as well as on the economic depression as a consequence of technological unemployment, are scrutinized. After that, Fisher’s ideas on social justice, his positive appraisal of innovations, and his over-indebtedness theory of business cycles are laid out. Lastly, some considerations on their common beliefs as scientists are articulated for the sake of conclusion