The 17-Page Dissertation

Imagine a doctoral student submitting a dissertation only 17 pages long. At many universities, the first reaction would likely be a reprimand or a demand for a complete rewrite. Academic tradition often treats thickness as a measure of intellectual weight: a 100-page undergraduate thesis seems more convincing than a 60-page one, while a 200-page master’s thesis appears stronger than a 120-page version.

Albert Einstein offers a striking challenge to that habit. On April 30, 1905, he submitted his doctoral dissertation, “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions,” to the University of Zurich. It was only 17 pages long. He officially received his doctorate on January 15, 1906.

The story later grew into an academic legend. One popular version says Einstein’s supervisor returned the dissertation because it was too short. Einstein supposedly added a single explanatory sentence, resubmitted it and saw the work accepted immediately. Another version says the 17-page manuscript became 21 pages after publication.

The essay argues that the scientific substance matters more than the legend. Einstein did not formulate general relativity in those 17 pages. His monumental theory of gravity came about a decade later, with its final formulation in 1915.

Instead, the dissertation addressed a basic question in physics: how large is a molecule? At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists still disagreed over whether atoms and molecules were real physical entities or useful abstractions. Einstein believed the microscopic world truly existed and sought to demonstrate it through measurable effects.

Using hydrodynamics, he examined liquids containing dissolved substances, such as sugar in water. Dissolving sugar changes the liquid’s physical properties, especially its viscosity and diffusion. Einstein used the relationship between these measurable changes and microscopic behavior to investigate molecular dimensions.