When Walther Nernst passed away in 1942, Albert Einstein dedicated one of his "thoughts about difficult years" to him , which may be summarized as follows (1):
"The late Walther Nernst was one of the most eminent and interesting scientists with whom I came into contact. His scientific instinct was truly amazing - apart from a masterly acquaintance with a vast amount of facts that he could always readily bring to mind, he also possessed a rare command of methods and experimental findings which he excelled in …
As long as his egocentric weakness did not come into play, he demonstrated an objectivity that was seldom to be found, an infallible sense for the essential, and a genuine thirst for knowledge of the profound interrelations that exist in nature. This, along with an unusual creative productivity, formed the basis of the considerable influence that he exercised upon scientific life in the first thirty years of the century.
After Arrhenius, Ostwald and Van't Hoff, he was the last of a scientific dynasty" etc., etc.
After listing his various merits in the fields of physics and physical chemistry, Einstein concluded as follows :
"As a scientist Nernst did not limit himself to one field. His healthy common sense successfully involved him in all the spheres of practical life, and any conversation held with him always cast light on something of interest. What distinguished him from almost all of his fellow countrymen was his remarkable lack of prejudice. He displayed neither nationalist nor militarist tendencies. He judged people and things almost exclusively through their direct success, and not through social or ethical ideals…yet he was also interested in literature and had a sense of humor that can rarely be found in people involved in such a quantity of work. His personality was most original, indeed I have never met anyone else who resembled him at all in any way."
It would unfortunately appear, however, that a man so talented in scientific intuition and with a rare sense of humor became overwhelmed by "egocentric weakness" after 1930.
One might suppose that it was consequently out of respect for Nernst, that in the obituary that Einstein wrote only those works "that were unspoilt by his egocentric weakness" were widely quoted, the "spoilt" ones were mercifully ignored.
Little research is needed to determine which of the works Einstein would have considered" the most spoilt of them all".
It would in fact have been a paper written in 1937 entitled "Weitere Prufung der Annahme eines stationaren Zustandes im Weltall. Mit 2 Abbildungen" (Further Tests regarding the Hypothesis of there being a Stationary State in the Universe. With 2 Illustrations.) (2).
Here Nernst did in fact go into a cosmology completely ignoring, as irrelevant to his subject, the entire Theory of Relativity, both Special and General Theory, indicating that its cosmological implications, the Big Bang and the expanding universe, were pure fantasy, so he had obviously never considered them of any importance.
If he saw fit to refuse them it was only because he had come across a brilliant "Weitere Prufung" of their inconsistency.
Let us consider things in more detail.