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EINSTEIN
"Imagination
is more important than knowledge "
>
At the age of 26, Albert
Einstein published three articles that revolutionized
Physics, one of which was the Theory of
Relativity.
After his death, the theories continued to generate
debates in the scientific field. 2005 marked the year of
Physics, paying homage to 100 years since Einstein’s
papers.<<
How
to explain Einstein's theory ?
See
a PASSAGE OF THE BOOK
CAIUS
ZIP IN:
EINSTEIN,
PICASSO, AGATHA
and CHAPLIN
Albert Einstein
was born
on the 14th of March 1879, in Ulm, Germany, in a Jewish
middle class family. His father, Hermann Einstein, had
an electronics workshop with his brother Jacob and was
greatly interested in everything related to electrical
inventions.
In1881, Maria Einstein (Maja) was born. Einstein was
always very close to his sister. They received a
non-religious education. Einstein’s childhood was
solitary.
Although
he only learned to speak at the age of three, it is
not true that he was a weak student. An evident trait in
his character, which would later manifest in a unique
way, was his obstinacy and audacity.
As
a student, he was only diligent when the subject
interested him intensely. Science was a preoccupation in
his life from an early age.
At the age of five, he was deeply impressed by a compass
his father had given him as a gift. "How can a
needle move, floating in space, without the help of any
mechanism?" he asked himself, imagining that all
object must have something hidden, something occult....
At seven, he demonstrates the Pythagoras Theorem to his
surprised uncle Jakob, who had taught him the fundaments
of geometry a few days before.
At eleven, he discovered what would later be designated
the “sacred book of geometry” by Euclid.
In 1894, his father’s business in Munich went bankrupt
and the family moved to Italy, leaving Einstein behind
to finish his secondary education. Einstein found it
difficult to tolerate the rigid discipline and dropped
out of school at 15 to join his family in Milan.
Later he would confess,
"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the
modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely
strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this
delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides
stimulation, is freedom. It is a very grave mistake to
think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be
promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
Quoted in H Eves Return to
Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988).
After half a year of travelling, he did his
admission exam for the Federal Polytechnic Institute in
Zurich (E.T.H.),
Switzerland. He tried to get in, although he did not
have a school diploma and was younger the age
requirement for higher education. He did not pass the
chemistry, biology or language exams but his excellent
grades in mathematics and physics impressed the school
principal, who advised him to finish his secondary
education in a cantonal school in Aarau,
near Zurich.
During his short stay at this school, he wrote about his
plans for the future.
“If
I were to have the good fortune to pass my examinations,
I would go to Zurich. I would stay there for four years
in order to study mathematics and physics. I imagine
myself becoming a teacher in those branches of the
natural sciences, choosing the theoretical part of them.
Here are the reasons which lead me to this plan. Above
all, it is my disposition for abstract and mathematical
thought, and my lack of imagination and practical
ability".
H
Dukas and B Hoffmann, Albert Einstein : the human
side. New glimpses from his archives (Princeton,
N.J., 1979)
He was more than happy in the free and motivating
environment of the cantonal school and only worried
about a problem that neither he nor his professor knew
how to solve:
the appearance of a light wave to someone travelling
alongside it! Would it look frozen? This problem would
return later on, when Einstein formulated his Theory of Relativity.
In September 1896, he passed the final exams and was
granted admission to the university. With the exception
of French, all his marks were good, especially
mathematics, physics, song and music (violin).
He was finally admitted at the E.T.H. in 1896. To his
surprise and disappointment, the Polytechnic did not
meet his expectations. Contrary to the school in Aarau,
where stimulating discussions were carried out in class,
at ETH the teachers would read entire books out loud! To
escape the boredom
of those monotonous classes, Einstein decided to
skip class and would occupy his free time reading
books on theoretical physics.
After
he finished the course, in August 1900, he hoped to
occupy the position of assistant to professor Hurwitz,
to then discover his ex-major professor, H.F. Weber, had
foiled his intention. From that point on, the
manifestations of animosity on behalf of his
ex-professors became evident. Einstein sought employment
for a long time and, in the meantime, dedicated some
hours of the day lecturing in a secondary school
Conrad Habicht, Maurice Solovine e Albert Einstein
Akademie
Olympia
On Easter of 1902, Maurice Solovine read an announcement
in a Bern paper in which Albert Einstein advertised that
he gave private maths and physics lessons for three
francs the hour. On the third day of class, Einstein
decided not to charge him and suggested they only hold
daily meetings in which they could discuss whatever
matter they fancied. Some weeks later, Conrad Habicht
started to participate in these meetings. To mock the
scientific academies, they named themselves Akademie
Olympia.
With these two colleagues, together with Michele Besso,
Einstein discussed the scientific ideas that resulted in
the extraordinary work published in 1905.
During the last years of his life, Einstein would
nostalgically recall these animated meetings where he,
eventually, gave violin concerts for his colleagues.
Although the atmosphere was intellectually rich, dinner
was a sad affair; they would generally eat a single
sausage, one item of fruit, a piece of cheese, honey and
one or two cups of tea. Of the three, the only one who
wrote about these meetings was Solovine. In the
introduction of his book, ‘Albert Einstein: Letters to
Solovine’, he writes that to discuss philosophy and
science, they read Plato, Spinoza, Karl Pearson, Stuart
Mill, David Hume, Ernst Mach, Helmholtz, Ampère and
Poincaré. They also read other literary works of
Sophocles, Racine and Charles Dickens. Of these authors,
the ones that most influenced Einstein were Hume, Mach
and Poincaré.
Inversely, during the last years of his life, Einstein
rarely had the patience to read scientific discourses
and had to depend on friends to keep himself informed
about the work of other scientists.
So, in 1902, he was finally employed as technician in
the Patent Office in Bern and was later promoted, in
1906, to second-class engineering technician. Einstein
remained there until 1909 when the University of Zurich
invited him to occupy the position of professor.
The years that Einstein lived in Bern were very happy
and productive. The intense pleasure he felt while
playing the violin, mmoments of total meditation.
He could now count on his wages from the Patents Office
to assure a modest living and his undemanding
professional obligations left spare time for
contemplation. His creative reasoning developed rapidly.
His famous 1905 papers were insuperable in logical
genius and audacity.
At
the end of the nineteenth century, Mileva Maric and
Albert Einstein studied together in the Polytechnic in
Zurich. She was the only woman in the institute and
mainly excelled in maths. They finished the course in
the first semester of 1900 but she failed twice the
exams for the secondary education teacher diploma. In
her second attempt, in July 1901, she was three months
pregnant (with Lieserl, Einstein’s daughter whose fate
remains unknown). Depressed, she returned to her
father’s house and abandoned the plan of obtaining an
ETH diploma. They married in 1903 and had two children,
Hans Albert and Edward. After ten years of
misunderstandings, they separated in 1903. Mileva
suffered cerebral tuberculosis and her husband decided
not to bother her with the matter of divorce. Although
they formalized their divorce in 1919, on September
1917, Einstein went to live with his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal,
whom he lived with until her death on the 20th of
December 1936.
________________________________________________________________
Some authors have carried out intensive research on
Einstein for decades, like Djordje Krstic, whose book,
"Albert and Mileva Einstein – Their Love and
Scientific Collaboration
",
published in Serbian after being launched in Slovenian
and English, presents a series of arguments which state
that the revolutionary work of Einstein originated from
joint work. According to Krstic, the couple worked
together until 1913 or 1914, when they separated and,
five years later, divorced. The separation was a hard
blow to her and she never fully recovered.
The biographers of
Mileva Maric agree that she lived in her husband’s
shadow, totally absorbed in Einstein and her family. She
was proud of saying that they both formed "a stone
", which in German is literally translated as
"einstein". The world became interested in
Serbia and her life twenty years ago, when the love
letters that Mileva kept until her death, were
published. They are valuable because they “showed how
Albert Einstein grew as a scientist by her side”,
explains doctor Bozic.
In 1994, the Novi Sad University created the Mileva
Maric prize for the best mathematics student. There is
also a project to transform the famous house built by
her father in Novi Sad, into a museum.
_______________________________________________________________
In 1905, Einstein wrote his
doctorate thesis for the University of Zurich,
which was dedicated to his friend, Grossmann, and was
titled "On a new determination of molecular
dimensions". His thesis was published in an edition
of the German scientific magazine Annalen der Physik,
containing the five papers.
The forth paper, titled "The electrodynamic moving
body", revolutionized Newtonian physics. It
contains a synthesis of classical mechanics, optics and
Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, demonstrating that
space and time are not independent of each other but
are, in fact, relative; that mass is relative and not
absolute, varying with movement.
The fifth paper, titled "Does the inertia of a body
depend on it’s energy-content?" is the corollary
of the preceding paper.
Einstein developed a new idea of equivalence between
mass and energy. He exposed the initial formulation of
the theory of Relativity that would later become known
throughout the world. Einstein presented the famous
equation E = mc2.
This equation proves that the mass of any object is
directly proportional to it’s energy.
(E = energy, m = object mass, c = speed of light).
In the period in which it was presented, Einstein’s
theories proved to be complex and highly controversial.
EINSTEIN,
THE PHILOSOPHER
His way of doing science was also new. It was a
philosophical science; he would sit down, use his
imagination, write equations, return to reality, check
if adjustments were needed, and return to the theory….
Science had never been conceived that way and was solely
based on facts verified in laboratories.
“All human knowledge begins with intuition, proceeds
from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.”
Prussian Philosopher Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804)
"There
is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental
laws. There is only the way of intuition... ".
Albert Einstein
_______________________________________________________________
(...)
Einstein
once asked:
“How
does a poet work?”
“How
do you mean?” said his friend.
“I
mean, how does the conception of a poem come about?
“I
don’t know, I just feel it. It simply happens.”
“That
is exactly what happens to a scientist, “ he
concluded. “The mechanism of discovery is not
logical...Don’t you see? It is sudden enlightenment,
almost ecstasy. There is a connection with the
imagination and imagination is more important than
knowledge.”
“I think 99 times and discover nothing,” Albert
said. “I stop thinking, dive into a great silence and
the truth is revealed to me. The mind proceeds up to the
point it can analyse but then passes onto a higher
dimension, without knowing how it got there. All great
revelations make that leap.”
(...)
Space and time without a body, but
a body cannot exist without space-time. Everything that
exists, everything we observe becomes knowledge, does it
not? Time and space are concepts we have instinctively.
Therefore, everything that exists, all our knowledge, is
based on cosmic intuition.
Observation is based on our senses that give us the mere
appearance of reality. One has to free oneself of the
illusory cuffs of the senses. Intuition is our starting
point. Imagination is the road that needs to be followed
with reason. Only this way can we you, I and all
of us, reach our destiny, free knowledge.
(Passages
from the book, Caius Zip in: Einstein,
Picasso, Chaplin and Agatha
Click
here to read more
_______________________________________________________________
From
this new vision, based on the reading books like
Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, Einstein found
himself confronting the theory of Newton and the laws of
mechanics that had been established and needed to be
modified. One of the characteristics of this
transformation is that when the coordinates are
transformed, time also has to be altered. There is where
a new mechanism starts. If I am in movement, the space
interval is different in two reference points, then time
must also be different for reason to remain the same.
Time and space intervals are different in different
reference points. The intervals are relative and that is
why the theory is called RELATIVITY.
There is no simultaneity in moving reference points.
When comparing two clocks, it is possible to prove that
the one in movement ticks slower than the other. If a
clock is placed in a Concorde, after a few hours in
flight we can compare it with another and see that there
are differences. The difference is minute but measurable
and coherent with Einstein’s theory.
CONTINUING
WITH THE LIFE OF THE SCIENTIST AND PHILOSOPHER...
From 1909 to 1932, he was a professor of Theoretical
Physics in the universities of Zurich, Prague and
Berlin.
He created a new theory of General Relativity in 1915,
and in 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Einstein has made important contributions in almost all
areas of physics but, without a doubt, his most
significant contributions were those related to the
theory of restricted relativity and general relativity.
He became a North American citizen in 1940, a country to
where he emigrated in 1933, forced by the ascent of
Nazism, and where he started lecturing in the Institute
for Advanced Study of Princeton, in New Jersey. Einstein
was always concerned about the problems of society and
was an active pacifist and defender of Judaism. However,
in 1952 he politely declined an invitation to be the
president of Israel.
Being a great and
profound thinker, he delighted in the silence of
scientific and philosophical reflection. Although he was
mostly known as a scientist, he is also the author of
many beautiful thoughts. He died in Princeton, in 1955.
Everything
is relative, is it not?
It is an error to attribute the
statement that "everything is relative" to
Einstein. He was in doubt as to what the name of his
theory should be and even considered calling it
‘Equivalence’ due to equality of energy with mass
times speed of light…. Maybe it could be
‘Invariance’ because the speed of light does not
vary….Or better, ‘Relativity’, to highlight that
time and space are relative to the system of reference.
The scientist even tried to change the name of his work
to "The Theory of Invariance ", but Relativity
had already caught on.
Curiosities
Einstein
as Hopi Indian during a visit to Hopi House near the Grand
Canyon in 1931.
THE
UNRECOGNIZED SCIENTIST
Was he only awarded the Nobel Prize Award in 1921?
In fact, from 1910 to 1921, the Nobel Commission
rejected Einstein eight times as the jury was divided
about the matter of Relativity. They even indicated a
member to analyze the Theory but it was in vain. He
simply could not understand it. The Nobel Committee for
Physics of the Royal Academy of Science in Sweden did
not dare award the prize for fear that one day someone
would prove the Theory wrong.
When he eventually received the Nobel Prize, of 32
thousand dollars, it was for his work on the
Photoelectric Effect.
At the award ceremony, he surprised everyone during his
speech; using his famous ironic humour, he only
mentioned the Theory of Relativity and did not utter a
word about the Photoelectric Effect.
Einstein gave Mileva Maric the money from the award, in
compliance to a divorce settlement.
THE
MUSICIAN
At the age of 6, stimulated by his mother and later
consolidated with lessons from Heller Schmidt from 6 to
13 years of age, the violin would become a fundamental
instrument throughout his life to help in the reflection
of his theories.
He
also liked to compose hymns on the piano. He learned to
play the piano on his own, listening to his mother, a
talented pianist. At home, he had lessons on the Judaic
religion but at the age of 12, preparing for his bar
mitzvah, he lost what he later called his “religious
paradise of youth”. What particularly shocked him, and
led him to reject any anthropomorphic conception of God
by all his life, was a citation by Xenophanes,
“If
oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with
their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses
would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen
like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their
several kinds”.
Einstein called his religious convictions a “cosmic
religious feeling”.
In Berlin, 1919, a small orchestra
made up of writers and scientist would frequently meet
at the house of the mathematician, Hadamar. The
favourite repertoires of those amateur musicians were
the symphonies of Mozart and some works by Beethoven.
They needed a good first violin and Jacques solved the
problem by bringing along a new friend, Albert Einstein.
He was still unknown outside of specialized circles and
few members knew that the new violinist directed a
famous German institute and was being constantly
nominated for the Nobel Prize of Physics.
Read the testimony of the
novelist, George Duhamel, on Einstein’s participation
during his first rehearsal. "Einstein was a good
violinist. He played with clarity and rigour, entering
with total precision but never trying to standout from
the rest. During moments of inactivity, he lifted his
noble face, with an expression of candour and
intelligence. He was well dressed but everything about
him denoted simplicity. It seemed he did not care much
for clothing. Music, however, represented an enormous
value to his spirit. There was such devotion, such
modesty in the personality of that master. Most of all,
I remember some rehearsals in which we read and studied
Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. To me, this symphony became
a symbol of remembrance of Einstein.”.
THE
SAILOR
When he was not working, he liked the contact with
nature and was a fervent sailor. He loved solitude and
isolated himself in a sailboat or took long walks in the
mountains.
He
adored a place called Caputh
(a small village near Berlin), where he had a
summerhouse at the margins of a lake. The house was a
gift from municipal authorities of Berlin to the
scientist in acknowledgement of his great international
prestige. He
considered the house “a paradise” and spent all his
summers there, sailing in his boat his friends had given
him on his 50th birthday. Though it bore the
name "Tümmler" Einstein called it lovingly
his "thick sailing ship".
Einstein spent a lot of time with his ship on the
bordering Havel lakes. He preferred sailing alone
and though he couldn’t swim he refused it to
put on a life-jacket. This led to his family worrying
ever more when he was out with his ship. Often he took
also guests out to his sailing trip.
Nothing,
however, is perfect. The scientist had to abandon his
paradise, fleeing from the Nazis, and was driven to
exile in the United States.
German
shock troops searched his country house for guns and
ammunition. They had information that he had given
communist militants permission to store military
equipment in his property. Nothing was found, besides a
bread knife! Einstein had foreseen such occurrences.
When he closed his house in Caputh, he presumably told
Elsa "Dreh dich um. Du siehst's nie wieder"
(Look around you. You will never see it again).
At the "public burning of ungerman writings"
on May 10 in 1933, organised by Goebbels, Einstein’s
writings were also burnt. In August 1933 Einstein’s
sailing ship and in 1935 his summer house and his garden
house were confiscated. In July 1933 Einstein lost the
German citizenship and his fortune was seized.
Einstein
declared on March 10 in 1933, shortly before his return
to Europe, to the public that it was impossible for him
to come back to Germany. His exact words were: "As
long as it is possible for me I only will stay in a
country in which political freedom, tolerance and
equality of all citizens are stated in the law. (…)
These conditions are nowadays not fulfilled in
Germany.”
On
the lake in Princeton, with his wild white hair and free
imagination, he continued to sail and let his mind
wander to other worlds.
THE
INGENIOUS MAN
Albert liked games
that required certain patience and tenacity and that
could preferably be played individually. Instead of
playing infant games with the other children at
kindergarten, he preferred to build complicated
structures with wooden cubes and huge castles with cards
on his own. At the age of seven, he demonstrated the
Pythagoras Theorem to his stunned uncle, who had taught
him the fundamentals of geometry a few days before.
He loved mind experiences, like
what would happen if one travelled alongside a ray of
light? This type of mental experience was important in
the development of restricted and general relativity.
At school,
Albert
found it very difficult to adapt to the rigid standards
of study. The teachers were too authoritarian and
demanded that the students memorize everything.
Geography, History and French were real torture. Greek
was an almost insurmountable obstacle; to memorize the
verb conjugations was horrific to Einstein. Ultimately,
in the set of his childhood
abilities nothing would attest the genius he
would become. His family believed that he might have
some sort of dyslexia. He preferred subjects that
demanded comprehension and reasoning, like mathematics.
As a consequence of his difficulties in memorizing, he
lost interest in classes that demanded such abilities,
provoking violent reaction from his teachers.
On one occasion, the school principle,
coincidentally his Greek teacher, called him to a
meeting in which he announced, amongst other things,
that his disinterest in Greek denoted a lack of respect
towards his teacher and that his presence in class was a
terrible example to the other students. He closed the
meeting by saying that Einstein would never be useful
for anything (Fölsing, p. 28)
Educated in the military environment of Germany in 1880,
the young Einstein never wanted to be a solider. Once,
during a military parade, his parents told him that he
could also use one of those beautiful uniforms one day.
The boy, of about seven, answered that he would
"hate to be one of those poor men ". He also
avoided competitive activities, including chess. At the
age of 16, he applied for Swiss citizenship to avoid
military service in Germany.
In his autobiographical notes, Einstein writes that he
was so badgered by scientific matters that soon after
graduating, he spent an entire year without reading
specialized magazines. This probably occurred because he
had already read the work of all the great scientists of
the period during his course, especially Helmholtz,
Hertz and Boltzmann, anticipating the established
programme of the Faculty. He preferred to read at home
than attend class.
One of his mathematics professors, Hermann Minkowski,
who later was the first to geometrically interpret the
Theory of Restricted Relativity, was dumbstruck when he
read Einstein’s paper in the Annalen der Physik, in
1905. "Could it be the same Einstein?" he
asked a colleague. “And who was the student of mine a
few years back? At that time, he seemed to know so
little of what was being taught!”
TO
WEAR SHOES WITHOUT SOCKS?
When his second wife, Elza, asked him to adopt healthier
habits, he answered that he preferred to "sin
cheerfully, smoke like a chimney, work like a beaver,
eat without thought or choice, and walk only in
agreeable company, in other words, rarely.”
In his everyday life, he hated formalities, starting
from the rules of correct dressing. When he commenced
his career as a university professor in Switzerland,
1909, he was considered as someone who dressed beneath
the elegance of the position. After the death of his
second wife, in 1936, his standards became even more
unconventional. He lived in Princeton, in the United
States, at the time. This wrinkled sweaters and the way
he wore shoes without socks turned him into a folk
figure on campus.
Although
he had a very scruffy appearance, against any rules, he
was far from the myth of scrappy scientist. ''He was
very interested in historical and political matters. In
times of war, he always gave his opinion. During the
First World War, he engaged in anti-war propaganda,
defending the dialogue between nations while also
dedicated to his studies on gravity. In the 20’s, work
overload brought on a physical collapse and his cousin
Elsa Lowental, whom he would later marry, treated him.
THE
PACIFIST WITHOUT PEACE
In 1933, Leo Szilard, a
Jewish physicist , fled to London to escape Nazi persecution. While
in London, he read an article written by Ernest Rutherford,
after which he conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction.
In the following year, he filed a patent on the nuclear chain
reaction. He first attempted to create a chain reaction using
Beryllium and Indium, but neither yielded the reaction he
deliberated. In 1936, he assigned the chain-reaction patent to
the British Admiralty to ensure secrecy of the patent. In
1938, he moved to New York. After
learning about fission in 1939, he concluded that uranium
would be the element capable of the chain reaction.
The splitting of the uranium atom in Germany in December 1938
plus continued German aggression led some physicists to fear
that Germany might be working on an atomic bomb. Among those
concerned were physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner. But
Szilard and Wigner had no influence with those in power. So in
July 1939 they explained the problem to someone who did:
Albert Einstein. According to Szilard, Einstein said the
possibility of a chain reaction "never occurred to
me", altho Einstein was quick to understand the concept
("Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts").
After consulting with Einstein, Szilard wrote a letter to
President Roosevelt, in consultation with fellow Hungarian
physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, with Einstein's signature on
it,
The letter warned that:
In
the course of the last four months it has been made probable
— through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and
Szilard in America — that it may become possible to set up a
nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which
vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium like
elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain
that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This
new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs,
and it is conceivable — though much less certain — that
extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be
constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and
exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port
together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such
bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation
by air.
The letter was written on August 2, and
delivered to Roosevelt by economist Alexander Sachs
who was an unofficial adviser to President on October 11,
1939.
Notice the timeline, nearly
two months passed since a message from Einstein got to president. During
the interim, Nazi Germany started World War II by invading
Poland on September 1. Britain and France responded by
declaring war on Germany on September 3. Germany had already
annexed Austria, the Sudetland and later on the rest of
Czechoslovakia.
After hearing Sachs' summary of the letter, Roosevelt
authorized the creation of the Advisory Committee on Uranium.
The letter has often been seen as the origins of the Manhattan
Project, the successful wartime nuclear weapons project which
produced the bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.
The atomic bombings of Japan occurred three months after the
surrender of Germany, whose potential for creating a Nazi atomic
bomb had led Einstein
to push for the development of an atomic bomb
for the Allies. Einstein
withheld public comment on the atomic bombing of Japan until a
year afterward. A short article on the front page of the New
York Times contained his view: "Prof. Albert ...
said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have
forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive
and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war
before Russia could participate." ("Einstein
Deplores Use of Atom bomb",
New York Times, 8/19/46). Einstein
later wrote, "I have always condemned the use of the
atomic bomb against Japan." (Otto Nathan & Heinz Norden, editors,
"Einstein
on Peace", ).
After the war, Einstein joined with other scientists in a call for world harmony to
avoid the future use of nuclear weapons.
In November 1954, five months before his death, Einstein summarized his feelings about his role in the creation of the
atomic bomb: "I made one great mistake in my life... when
I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that
atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the
danger that the Germans would make them." (Ronald Clark, Einstein:
The Life and Times.
Unified
field theory
In
March 1905 , Einstein created the quantum theory of light, the
idea that light exists as tiny packets, or particles, which he
called photons.
Einstein always had a distaste for modern quantum theory -
largely because its probabilistic nature forbids a complete
description of cause and effect. But still, he recognized many
of the fundamental implications of the idea of the quantum
long before the rest of the physics community did.
After the quantum mechanical revolution of 1925 through 1927,
Einstein spent the bulk of his remaining scientific career
searching for a deeper theory to subsume quantum mechanics and
eliminate its probabilities and uncertainties. He generated
pages of equations, geometrical descriptions of fields
extending through many dimensions that could unify all the
known forces of nature, particularly
gravitation and electromagnetism.
In
1950 he described this work, which he referred to as the
Unified field theory - sometimes called the Theory of
Everything - in a Scientific American article. Einstein
was guided by a belief in a single origin for the entire set
of physical laws.
He did not manage to find a
theory that would comprise all the gravitational and
electromagnetic phenomena in a single logical structure.
He tried. He isolated himself in deep meditation but did
not reach his goal.
He died without Peace
Without the peace of conceiving an idea of Unification
of the Universe
BUT
life goes on, doesn’t it?
WHAT
DO EINSTEIN AND PICASSO HAVE IN COMMON?
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HERE TO FIND OUT
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