Einstein Unveiled 261
John_Renne writes "One of the most well known scientists in the near history is Albert Einstein. Pictures of him can be found on allmost everything varying from lunchboxes to t-shirts and cartoons. On the other hand there's little knowledge of who Einstein really was and the human being behind the genius. This article tries to create a view of the inner Einstein. A nice read for everyone interested in the person inside the phenomenon."
Errr...yeah (Score:-1, Informative)
Einstein couldn't do it, therefore it couldn't be done? But we're going to try anyway, "in his memory"? What kind of stupid BS is this? We've gotten light-years (heh) ahead of where Al was back then, some of it despite his "help" (God does not play dice.)
Related Book (Score:3, Informative)
The Einstein Scrapbook (Score:5, Informative)
Favorite Einstein quotes?? (Score:5, Informative)
In any case, I found this site a while back. It's somewhat of a tutorial on Einstein, allowing you to do "Easy" or "Advanced", and fairly informative.
Theory of Relativity [thinkquest.org]
Re:"unknown"? Light article... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the article forgets a whole lot of things, unless i have totally messed recollection of that book.
First, they don't even tell us Einstein got a Nobel Prize... and not even for relativity itself ! IIRC, he got it for explaining some optical phenomena (dual particle / light nature of photons)
Second, article forgets to tell that Israel did propose him to run for presidency there, which he declined.
Third, the 1919 experiment actually had MESSED UP results (that was found later) !!! So it didn't confirm Einstein's theory... which, granted, was confirmed later.
Fourth, Einstein introduced some constant in the relativity's equations so that the universe is static, which was his deep belief.
And don't forget his fun quote: God doesn't play with dice (i do think it's from him)
Another book reccomendation (Score:2, Informative)
From that page:
Driving Mr. Albert chronicles the adventures of an unlikely threesome--a freelance writer, an elderly pathologist, and Albert Einstein's brain--on a cross-country expedition intended to set the story of this specimen-cum-relic straight once and for all.
After Thomas Harvey performed Einstein's autopsy in 1955, he made off with the key body part. His claims that he was studying the specimen and would publish his findings never bore fruit, and the doctor fell from grace. The brain, though, became the subject of many an urban legend, and Harvey was transformed into a modern Robin Hood, having snatched neurological riches from the establishment and distributed them piecemeal to the curious and the faithful around the world.
Traversing America with Harvey and his sacred specimen, Paterniti seems to be awaiting enlightenment, much as Einstein did in his last days. But just as the great scientist failed to come up with a unifying theory, Paterniti's chronicle dissolves at times into overly sincere efforts to find importance where there may be none, and it walks a fine line between postmodern detachment and wide-eyed wonderment. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the book offers an engrossing portrait of postatomic America from what may be the ultimate late-20th-century road trip.
Einstein for Beginners (Score:2, Informative)
It is an illustrated biography in the same spirit as the classic Lenin for Beginners and Introducing Kafka (possibly the best Kafka biography ever).
A Good Biography (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"unknown"? Light article... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the photoelectric effect was one of the basis of "old" QM and is well-deserving of a Nobel all by itself.
In fact, A.E. deserved at least 3 seperate Nobels : photo-electric effect, SRT, GRT (in reverse order of importance) are all Nobel-worthy just by themselves.
These are the ones I know of , very probably there are more.
However since they never give the Nobel more than once, indeed the Nobel should have been given to relativity theory.
Re:"unknown"? Light article... (Score:5, Informative)
And don't forget this little uncertainty gem either:
"A mouse cannot change the universe just by looking at it." -A.E.
Or this beauty from his wife (Speaking with an astronomer boasting about his new telescope with which he "examines the workings of the universe"):
"Really? My husband uses the back of an old envelope."
Read more (Score:4, Informative)
What the article barely touches on, for example, is that (like Russell) he turned from science and philosophy to political activism later in life, complete with a heaping FBI file [fbi.gov]. Read his own words [amazon.com] if you want to. There's also an interesting story about Einstein's [echonyc.com] brain [amazon.com]!
Re:"unknown"? Light article... (Score:3, Informative)
This is the cosmological constant [uchicago.edu], which he later abandoned (I think because it was realised that the Universe is expanding - previously they didn't think it was). It's now thought that this constant, which is associated with the energy density of vacuum, is associated with the dark matter (the existence of which has recently been verified [man.ac.uk]) which is slowing the expansion of the Universe.
His abandoning of this idea is often called his greatest mistake.
Nobel (Score:2, Informative)
Re:LSD? (Score:5, Informative)
Devout Jew? Believer? NOT! (Score:4, Informative)
[from Albert Einstein - The Human Side,Selected and Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1979]
This certainly doesn't make Einstein a devout Jew - the Jewish religion is very much about a personal god. His god is the same as Spinoza's, and Spinoza was excommunicated by his fellow Jews.
For more about Einstein and religion, see this [infidels.org].
Re:Repeat Nobel Winners (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Einstein on a bicycle (Score:4, Informative)
There are some interesting memories of Einstein in John Archibald Wheeler's Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics [amazon.com]. Wheeler was also Feynman's thesis adviser.
Re:Repeat Nobel Winners (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the Peace Prize granted to Pauling could have just as easily gone to Einstein, as they were both very active in ensuring that mankind did not nuke himself. Both were very strong advocates of peace. However, the noble prize is not awarded posthumorously.
Re:Einstein on a bicycle (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A Good Biography (Score:3, Informative)
The book I mentioned does discuss this issue, and while I have nothing to use to prove its validity, the author gives the feeling that's it's much more complicated than just 'how much'.
Mileva was involved at varying degrees throughout their realationship. She was at times (especially early on) heavily involved in development, doing calculations for Einstein and serving as a person to bounce ideas off of. However, both in the early stages of the idea forming in his head, and later on, Mileva was not involved at all. But she was definitely not just a muse.
She also was hardly ignored because of her gender or race among her peers. Remember, this was during the time of Marie Curie and Serbia had a wealth of scholars.
It seems as if she was forced to distance herself afterwards by the pressure from her family and her children, and the moving around with her husband (who was trying to make enough money to get by while the theory was being worked on).
Well, I've rambled myself out. You may wish to read the book for a more detailed version of this. ;-)
Exhibit (Score:4, Informative)
Variety of Men by C.P.Snow (Score:1, Informative)
The best piece in this book is the bio sketch of G.H.Hardy
Re:"unknown"? Light article... (Score:1, Informative)
Einstein's greatest mistake, the Cosmological constant, is currently under debate again after observations of NASA's deep space probes and for example supernovae [lbl.gov].
Re:Finally (Score:1, Informative)
http://mbbnet.umn.edu/doric/icons/einstein.jpeg
Anders Eg
The God who plays with dices (Score:5, Informative)
No, Einstein never denied that Quantum Mechanics fits the known experimental data perfectly or claimed that further experiments would show that QM was wrong. Einstein was himself one of the founding fathers of QM and a master in using the predicting powers of the theory, predicting QM-phenomena like LASERs and Bose-Einstein condensation, decades before they were seen in any lab.
What Einstein never accepted was the interpretation given to the mathematical framework of QM by Bohr, Heisenberg, Born and others. Einstein was not alone in resisting the philosophical/physical interpretation by the "Copenhagen school" , he was joined by people like Planck, Schroedinger, and de Broglie who all knew a bit about QM. (But as always, the old generation dies out and the new generation have gotten used to the new world view.)
Einstein believed in a deterministic universe (just as Newton, Laplace and the other classic mechanics guys before), where when you knew the starting conditions perfectly, you could calculate what happened. This is how to understand the statement "God does not play with dices". "God" knows what is going to happen, He does not only know the odds are for something to happen. This is contrary to Bohr who claim that "God" (or the physicist) can only know the different possible outcomes from some given starting condition and the probability of the different outcomes. According to the uncertainty principle "God" can not even hope to know the starting conditions perfectly.
The answer to QM by Einstein was the so-called "hidden variables" theory, variables that behave in a deterministic way but lead to behaviour that looks random in the experiments that were used to "prove" QM. Einstein also made famous thought experiments to show the inconsistency in the logic of the Copenhagen school, like the EPR [wolfram.com] paradox.
Today most physicist believe Einsteins objections to QM has been shown to be wrong, and Bohr's interpretation has become the dogma. But who knows? Newton thought light consisted of particles, but was proven wrong. Then Einstein showed that light can be seen as both waves and photon-particles. So, maybe in some hundred years Einstein's objections to QM can be shown to be a "bit" correct :-).
Re:LSD? (Score:3, Informative)
I can tell you for certain that it is definitely not autism that triggers this. When I'm solving complex problems, I don't think in any language, or anything that could be understood by someone outside of my mind. For a long time I thought that was normal process.
Sometimes writing it down helps me, but only so that I can see the individual points to any problem.
A lot of people ask bilingual people, "What language do you think in?" The answer for a lot of people is none. Why put something into the constructs and rigidness of a language when you already know exactly what it is that you are going to think?
As for what you wrote, I do not believe you are describing (or understanding of) Einstein's methodologies. He's not speaking purely of words, for math uses no words, in essence. Einstein was very well-spoken, and after he parsed the information out into an easier-understood form he could deliver with with eloquence. He believed children should be able to understand the most advanced concepts of the universe. He knew very well the subtleties and nuances of language, just read any of his papers, quotes, or speeches.
Just because one chooses to solve problems without using the constructs of a language, or numbers, does not mean they are without capacity to do so. It is merely the more efficient approach for that individual. True genius does not come from the mind, but the minds presenter.