A note written by renowned physicist Albert Einstein to a young Italian female scientist who had declined to meet him sold for $6,100 at auction on Tuesday, along with a batch of other letters left by Einstein.
Written in Einstein's native German, signed and dated October 1921, the note says, "To the scientific researcher at whose feet I slept and sat for two full days, as a friendly souvenir."
The note was sold by Winner's Auctions and Exhibitions in Jerusalem.
The auction house said Einstein, then 42 and soon to win the Nobel Prize, wrote the letter to Elisabetta Piccini, a chemistry student half his age who lived one floor above his sister, Maja, in Florence.
Einstein was on a visit to the city and "was very interested in meeting her. However, Elisabetta was introverted and too shy to meet with such a famous person," Winner's said on its website.
Also sold on Tuesday, for $103,000, was a 1928 note in which Einstein outlined ideas for his "Third Stage of the Theory of Relativity," the auction house said. A 1946 English-language letter of encouragement that he wrote to an American World War II veteran who aspired to be a scientist also fetched $6,100.
Last October, Winner's sold another Einstein letter, a 1922 meditation on happiness that he wrote upon learning he had won the Nobel Prize, for $1.3 million.
