Einstein papers to go digital on the Web

The university in Israel that holds the complete archive of Albert Einstein's papers says the entire collection will be digitized and made available online.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which previously had posted about 900 manuscript pages and a catalog listing of only half the archive's contents, says it has digitized all 80,000 items in the collection, The Washington Post reported Monday.

A grant from Britain's Polonsky Foundation, which previously helped digitize Isaac Newton's papers, allowed the complete contents of the Einstein collection to be cataloged and enhanced with cross referencing technology.

A Web site unveiled Monday will eventually contain the full inventory of the Einstein archives.

Visitors to the site can get a close look at an initial 2,000 documents from Einstein's personal and public life prior to 1921, and archivists will upload the remainder of the collection in coming years.

"Knowledge is not about hiding. It's about openness," Menachem Ben Sasson, president of the Hebrew University, said.

Einstein was one of the founders of the university and contributed the original manuscript of his famed theory of relativity to the university when it was founded in 1925.

On his death in 1955 he bequeathed the rest of his papers to the university.