Conrad Habicht

Conrad Habicht (28 December 1876 in Schaffhausen – 23 October 1958 in Schaffhausen) was a Swiss mathematician and close personal friend of Albert Einstein.

Together with Maurice Solovine, the three founded the Olympia Academy, an informal circle of friends who met together in Bern from 1902 to 1904 to discuss physics and philosophy.

Habicht and Solovine were the only two witnesses to Einstein's 1903 wedding to Mileva Marić.

Habicht was the recipient of Einstein's 1905 letter in which Einstein described his Annus mirabilis papers. Habich also received Einstein's letter about quanta.

Einstein and Solovine lost contact with Habicht but regained contact in 1947.

A book of letters between Einstein and Habicht in German Language was published in 2000.

Habicht came from a middle class family in Schaffhausen and grew up there with four brothers and sisters. Son of Johann Conrad Habicht, merchant, and Susanna Elisabetha Oechslin, from Schaffhausen. In 1913 he married Anna Margarethe Kehlstadt, teacher, from Basel. He studied mathematics and physics in Zurich, Munich and Berlin, earning a doctors degree in 1903 at Bern, writing a dissertation on series of circles by Steiner. He studied violin.

Conrad's brother Paul was active in early development of automobile engines and had many Swiss patents.