Felix Ehrenhaft was married to Lilly Rona. Einstein and Ehrenhaft regularly met and discussed about magnetic poles or fractional charges. Einstein didn't agree and used his authority to keep Ehrenhaft from doing things like being a director of a science iinstitute. Their friendship fell apart because of a silly thing like a monopole or a fractional charge (about which Eherenhaft turned out to be right later, after quarks were found).
We can read (here):
The unconventional correspondence between physicists Albert Einstein and Felix Ehrenhaft, especially at the height of the alleged production by the latter of magnetic monopoles, is examined in the following paper. Almost unknown by the general public, it is sometimes witty, yet it can be pathetic, and certainly bewildering. At one point the arguments they exchanged became a poetic duel between Einstein and Ehrenhaft's wife. Ignored by conventional Einstein biographies, this episode took place during the initial years of the Second World War, but was rooted in disputes dating back to the early years of the twentieth century. The interesting intersection of a series of scientific controversies also highlights some aspects of the personal dramas involved, and after so many years the whole affair in itself is still intriguing.
Both Felix and Lilly asked Einstein not to show up again. I'm curious about the poems that were used in the duel with words between Ehrenhaft's wife and Einstein. What were they about?
