Michele Besso

Michele Angelo Besso ( born May 25, 1873 in Riesbachstrasse, † March 15, 1955 in Genoa ) was a Swiss- Italian engineer, who was a close friend and colleague of Albert Einstein at the patent office in Bern.

Besso, who was descended from Sephardic Jews who grew up in Italy, where he had relatives. He was a fellow student of Einstein at the ETH Zurich, where Besso studied mechanical engineering. They met on a house music night know. From 1904 he was on Einstein's recommendation, a colleague of Einstein at the Patent Office in Bern. With Besso and other friends discussed Einstein there philosophical and scientific subjects, her circle called Olympia Academy. Besso to Einstein while having acquainted with the philosophy of Ernst Mach. He was the most important discussion partners Einstein in the development of the Special Theory of Relativity and is the only person of Einstein thanked in his famous essay On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies of 1905 ( he writes that his " faithful side stood " Besso and " that he him some valuable suggestion owe "). Their friendship lasted a lifetime and they corresponded with each other. When Einstein and Mileva Maric in 1914 and separated, she moved with her ​​two sons to Zurich that Bessus was the link between Einstein in Berlin and his divorced wife, which they used during an illness. Even in the development of the general theory of relativity Einstein exchanged with Besso ideas, and Besso supported Einstein in 1913 in the calculation of the perihelion of Mercury, then still unsuccessful, as Einstein did not yet have the final field equations.

As Besso in 1955 three weeks before Einstein died, Einstein wrote to the members: " Now he is to me a little preceded with the leave of this strange world. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future only the importance of, though stubborn, illusion. " '

Besso was married to Anna Winteler, the eldest daughter Einstein's host family in Aarau. With the son of Wintelers Einstein's sister Maja was married.