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Quickies Science

Einstein Has Left the Building 443

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the relative-levels-of-fame dept.
Ant writes to tell us of an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?". The author looks at why Einstein holds such a hallowed position in public opinion and why it will be so hard for any one physicist to attain the same level of fame today. From the article: "The paradoxical answer, Gleick suggested, is that there are so many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative."
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Einstein Has Left the Building More

Einstein Has Left the Building

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  • As Einstein once said... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:30AM (#14382218)
    "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
    • Therefor i imagine that finding a real Einstein among 6 billion people can happen more often than you think.

        However i'm not sure that many of them Einsteins ever discovered that they are so brilliant at all...

  • Personality, not brains (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JehCt ( 879940 ) * on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:31AM (#14382225) Homepage Journal
    ScuttleMonkey's summary is bunkum. Einstein was unique because of his character, not his genius. The masses recognized that Einstein was an extraordinarily humane and humble man.

    From Wikipedia:

    Einstein himself was deeply concerned with the social impact of scientific discoveries. His reverence for all creation, his belief in the grandeur, beauty, and sublimity of the universe (the primary source of inspiration in science), his awe for the scheme that is manifested in the material universe--all of these show through in his work and philosophy.
    Albert Einstein was much respected for his kind and friendly demeanor rooted in his pacifism. He was modest about his abilities, and had distinctive attitudes and fashions--for example, he minimized his wardrobe so that he would not need to waste time in deciding on what to wear. He occasionally had a playful sense of humor, and enjoyed sailing and playing the violin. He was also the stereotypical "absent-minded professor"; he was often forgetful of everyday items, such as keys, and would focus so intently on solving physics problems that he would often become oblivious to his surroundings. In his later years, his appearance inadvertently created (or reflected) another stereotype of scientist in the process: the researcher with unruly white hair.
    After the war, though, Einstein lobbied for nuclear disarmament and a world government: "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth--rocks!"

    • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:5, Insightful)

      by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:44AM (#14382271)
      Einstein was unique because of his character

      I think that the same holds true of virtually any public figure, whether it's a singer, actor, or politician. How many times to we hear the media speak of a President of the US (past and present) working to build his legacy? I don't think that Churchill or FDR spent much time worrying about legacy, yet history counts them as great men. The more you try to secure your place in history, the more elusive it becomes.

      • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:5, Interesting)

        by grcumb ( 781340 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:56AM (#14382515) Homepage Journal

        "I don't think that Churchill or FDR spent much time worrying about legacy, yet history counts them as great men."

        Churchill cared so much about his legacy that he wrote a 6 volume memoir of his actions during the war, modestly entitled "The Second World War [amazon.com]." It's good reading, but make no mistake about its purpose. From start to finish it's an apologia for his every action during that time.

        And when talking about Roosevelts, I'm more prone to remember Eleanor Roosevelt [wikipedia.org] as the modest one. This is a woman who, in the dark days of segregation, drove through southern towns with a pistol on the seat beside her, to address groups like the NAACP. When a bunch of up uptight matrons refused to allow a black soprano to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, she arranged to have the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. 70,000 people attended.

        Eleanor Roosevelt was also the driving force behind one of the most important documents since Hammurabi - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [un.org].

        Churchill and Roosevelt were both extremely dynamic personalities who knew exactly how to present themselves to the public, and whose private faces were sometimes strikingly different from their public ones. That said, they both made important - critical, even - contributions to world history.

      • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @10:56AM (#14384244)
        "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."

        -- Winston Churchill

        Currently, we have:

        "To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States."

        -- George W. Bush, speaking at Yale University's 300th commencement ceremony

        Sorry, I don't know of any quotes that reveal much character from a US president in the last 40 years.

        Here are some others though from before then:

        "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

        -- Theodore Roosevelt

        "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

        --Abraham Lincoln

        Check out this progression:

        "Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

        -- George Washington

        to:

        "The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

        -- Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964

        • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:4, Insightful)

          by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:51PM (#14385035) Journal
          Check out this progression:

          "Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

          -- George Washington

          to:

          "The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

          -- Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964


          There isn't as much difference between those statements as you seem to imply. Consider the very next sentance in Reagan's speech:
          "Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. "

          Also consider his famous line, "Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem." There's a reason why Reagan is considered the father of the modern conservative movement, and it's not because he was pro-government.
    • Einstein was unique because of his character, not his genius. The masses recognized that Einstein was an extraordinarily humane and humble man.

      BWHAHAHA! Is this the same Einstein who pissed off 90% of his professors in college because he was such a rogue?

      Einstein was a giant among physicists because of his extrodinary intelligence. He asked the questions no one else thought to ask, and produced the answers through nothing more than logical deduction. The answers he produced were so profound and world changing that it took decades for science to really grab ahold of them.

      But perhaps the most interesting part about Mr. Einstein is that he was heavily anti-institutional. His rogue personality not only clashed heavily with the "established" scientific community (who thought they had all the answers when they had precisely zilch), but he tore them apart and made way for a completely new breed of scientist.

      Will there ever be another Einstein? No. No more than there will be another Isaac Newton. There will be a completely new figure who will have such an incredible way of looking at the Universe that it will put everyone else to shame.

      • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:5, Funny)

        by Surt ( 22457 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:54AM (#14382318) Homepage Journal
        Indeed, and we have such a visionary among us now, with a truly revolutionary view of the universe that will shatter the existing framework:

        http://www.timecube.com/ [timecube.com]

        • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Dude, what the fuck is that? That's craziness. I had to clean my brain with a Q-tip after that, and you know what came out? Brain spooge. Sorry, I have to go, there's blood coming out my nose.

      • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:56AM (#14382322) Homepage
        I don't see how the fact that Einstein was a rogue contradicts the other traits. Gandhi was undoubtedly humane and I think we probably agree that he was humble. But he was also pretty anti-establishment. While it might be reasonable to associate the rogue trait with lack of humility, I don't think it's a given.
      • Unfortunately as time goes by, it seems more and more likely that that next figure won't be an individual but a corporation.
      • Really, I thought Euler had already deduced that space might be curved due to the properties of the universe, but was unable to find corroborating evidence and failed to publish his theories after decades of searching. At one time, he chose to try and determine the angles between three mountain peaks using techniques he developed for measurement, but was unable to establish that space was curved because the difference was within acceptable error for his equipment. Laser inferometry showed that he would have
        • Eh, Gauss did experiments to check if space was curved, not Euler. And Gauss definitely had a reason to check it out, since Gauss, together with Lobachevsky and Boylai, was the first to realise that there are other types of geometry than the Euclidian. With this knowledge it is natural to want to experimentally test what kind of geometry our space has.

          What makes Einstein so-called "intellectual superior", as if this is some kind of competition, is that Einstein connected gravity together with the geometry

      • But perhaps the most interesting part about Mr. Einstein is that he was heavily anti-institutional.

        Lemme see, he was an anti-institutional rogue when he was a young student, and became a thoughtful, humble man when he matured. Whoever heard of that happening before?

    • Re:Personality, not brains (Score:5, Informative)

      by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:06AM (#14382351) Journal
      His credo [einstein-website.de] and that fact that his humanity was revealed in the way he tried to live by it. This is what people loved and respected. Newton was at least an equally great genius but unfortunately he was also an arsehole, his work (like Einstein's), is simply admired as an acedemic artifact.

  • They don't make 'em.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DoraLives ( 622001 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:32AM (#14382227)
    like they used to.
    • Einstein is so famous because pop culture made him famous. There were lots of brilliant physicists back then, and there are many today.

      Same with Stephen Hawking. He's famous in pop culture today mostly because of his disability, which fits with the media's love of handicapped geniuses (aside from eccentric looking geniuses, like Einstein).
    • I think that all this tells us is that society has moved on (ahead) and if you want to achive the same level of fame that you have to work harder at it. For his time, Einstein still had to do a lot. Its not like it was easy. Likewise, its not easy 100 years later to achive the same level of fame. Perhaps Richard Feyman or Carl Sagan came close, but of course neither of them don't have an opera with their name in it (AFAIK).

  • Show me (Score:5, Informative)

    by brian0918 ( 638904 ) <brian0918.gmail@com> on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:32AM (#14382229)
    Show me the "brilliant physicists" that have published four papers in one year [wikipedia.org], each individually deserving of a Nobel Prize.

    • Things have changed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ogemaniac ( 841129 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:25AM (#14382417)
      Show me modern physics papers that contain math that most people with any scientific or engineering background can understand, and that are just a few pages long.

      The unsolved problems that people are working on today are much more complex, so comparing the rates at which they are solved is meaningless.

      When I was slogging through my 250 page PhD dissertation, I came across an article about disserations of such famous people as Schroedinger and other physicists of the 1920's - whose entire dissertations were about as long as Section 1.1 of my introduction.

      Trying to compare now and then is all but irrelevant.

      • Re:Things have changed (Score:5, Funny)

        by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @02:16AM (#14382570) Homepage Journal

        When I was slogging through my 250 page PhD dissertation, I came across an article about disserations of such famous people as Schroedinger and other physicists of the 1920's - whose entire dissertations were about as long as Section 1.1 of my introduction.

        Don't make excuses for yourself: Schroedinger's dissertation was of infinite length until observed.

        ~Will

      • The unsolved problems that people are working on today are much more complex, so comparing the rates at which they are solved is meaningless.

        Or maybe it's just that nobody has found the simple solutions yet. Maybe the next Einstein will find something simple that makes string theory an embarassment in throwing brute mass math at the problem. Ya never know....
               
      • Throughout centuries numerous scientists have argued that the simple questions have all been answered, that only the niche, complex and esoteric aspects will be studied from here on out. In fact many physicists felt that way shortly before the end of the 19th century.

        Today I'm betting that, like then, there are still plenty of fundamental questions left to answer (although we might not know how to ask them yet). And the funny thing about truly fundamental questions is that they usually have pretty simple an

  • This is pretty obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by poopdeville ( 841677 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:32AM (#14382230)
    This is pretty obvious. While many people were studying physics while Einstein worked, the mathematical methods they used tended to be relatively primitive. A precocious undergraduate can easily understand the state of physics up to Einstein's first few papers. This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful. He certainly was. However, we're now studying the fruits of his insights, and it takes a few years of graduate school to become an expert in even a small field. If there is a next Einstein, I foresee people studying him for years after becoming a Ph.D. before they become "experts."

    • Re:This is pretty obvious (Score:3, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 )
      If you think about it, it makes sense that a scientist in his era would shine brightly. At the time he was in his prime, there were a lot of important discoveries being made which opened up a lot of new territory in which to make new discoveries. Now you could view science as a much more mature study... there may still be a lot of room for new discoveries but they are not the easy ones that can be expressed with 5 characters like "e=mc2". Now such similar discoveries require collaboration of teams of sc

      • Re:This is pretty obvious (Score:4, Informative)

        by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:28AM (#14382425) Homepage
        Another possible influence on this may be that at Einstein's time, there was a world war going on.

        There was a world war going on in 1905 when he published his papers? Really? Which one?

      • Now you could view science as a much more mature study... there may still be a lot of room for new discoveries but they are not the easy ones that can be expressed with 5 characters like "e=mc2"

        Are you really that sure about that?

        I'll agree that the chances of another discovery where such a profound statement (that energy and mass are convertible) can be made in so simple a form is unlikely, but by no means is it impossible. I have a suspicion that if you went to 1904 and asked someone if such a statement c
    • just diving in without spending years studying someone else's work too thoroughly. I think that his reasoning is that in this manner you will not "learn too much" and you will be more open to new ideas.
    • "However, we're now studying the fruits of his insights, and it takes a few years of graduate school to become an expert in even a small field. If there is a next Einstein,..."

      Einstien was a "big picture" type of guy, details were something he "looked up" to confirm the picture.
    • This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful

      At first, he was a troll.
      Then he became interesting.
      But he was very underrated.
      His theories were all flamebait.
      But he was very informative.
      And insightful.
      Once in a while, funny.
      And now he's getting overrated?

      Wow!

    • Re:This is pretty obvious (Score:5, Funny)

      by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @02:03AM (#14382535) Journal
      This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful. He certainly was.

      I agree.

      MOD EINSTEIN UP!!!

      Re: Relativity (Score:5, Insightful)
      by Einstein (0) <speedoflight@gmail.com> on Tue Sept 18, 1905 12:42 PM

          E = mc^2

          Suck it.

      --

          God does not play dice with the universe.

  • Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:33AM (#14382236)
    What about Hawking? You can't tell me many lay people with no interest in science don't at least know of him.
    • Homer doesn't know of him; how much more lay can you get?

      Hawking: "Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it."

      Homer: "Wow, I can't believe someone I never heard of is hanging out with a guy like me."
      • I think the episode is trumped by the much better "Homer in 3D" segment in Treehouse of Horror VI: Homer: "I wish I'd read that book by that wheelchair guy..."
        • There's so much I don't know about astrophysics.

          Anyway just because Homer doesn't know him doesn't mean that no braindead idiots know him. Fry knew him and worked at the pizzaria he frequented.

    • Re:Uh? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:08AM (#14382364)
      Hawking has contributed to the fields of GR and cosmology, but can you tell me the major discoveries and research he's conducted? Just because he writes a pop-science book and you've heard of him doesn't make him a 'great' in physics. Of course it doesn't mean he's not 'great' either.

      So he's done some novel things within cosmology, along with Penrose, Rees, and others, but how does that compare with Einstein? Which of Hawking's discoveries do you think is worthy of a Nobel Prize, specifically why should Hawking get one over other cosmologists? Einstein should have had at least a few more Nobel prizes (special relativity itself is worthy, not to mention GR, and his study of Brownian Motion is pretty good too).

      While Hawking is well-known (he'd probably be less famous if he wasn't in a wheelchair), Einstein's research ran a much wider gamut, including opening up entirely new areas of physics.

      • Re:Uh? (Score:5, Funny)

        by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @02:18AM (#14382576) Homepage Journal

        While Hawking is well-known (he'd probably be less famous if he wasn't in a wheelchair)

        The wheelchair and speaking device is the tradeoff for sacrificing all that DEX and CHA for the high INT.

        • Re:Uh? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          The wheelchair and speaking device is the tradeoff for sacrificing all that DEX and CHA for the high INT.

          The intelligence he probably had, but there are a lot of brilliant people who never get that far. One of the reasons he's come so far is because he's had a lot of time to work on it sitting in his wheelchair. Most discoveries are made by relatively young people, often single and often without children. Cue the "geeks can't get laid" jokes, but it is much simpler than that.

          If you got up early to get the k

  • huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danielk1982 ( 868580 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:34AM (#14382240)
    "The paradoxical answer, Gleick suggested, is that there are so many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative."

    There were *many* brilliant physicists in Einstein's time as well.

  • As modern physicists approach Einstein's fame... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:35AM (#14382245)
    ...they become infinitely massive. Hawking achieved 99.99999% of Einstein's fame and he ended up in a wheelchair from the stress.
  • This isn't a Quickie.
  • Gleick's just jealous (but Wolfram is livid and Feynman is rolling over in his grave).

  • reign in the drug companies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:36AM (#14382248) Homepage
    an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?"

    With all the parents doping up their kids on antidepressants [newstarget.com], I'd say not likely. (We're already seeing that Generation Y can barely wipe its own nose [suntimes.com] in the workplace. )

  • Applied Theory? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TGK ( 262438 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:37AM (#14382252) Homepage Journal
    Einstein is also credited with a huge crossover from the theoretical to the applied aspects of physics. As a population, we tend to see the theoretical side of physics as more complex and intimidating, but the applied side as more down to earth and relevant to our day to day lives.

    Einstein's work straddled this line within his lifetime, making him a figure of daunting intellectual prowess and yet still accessable (in some small manner) by the average man. Surely this combination of theory and practice has strengthened his legacy.

    More over, Einstein lived at the height of the modernist movement in world history - a time when advances in technology could do no wrong. In the minds of many (and they would be wrong) he single-handedly brought about the revolution in the views society holds on technology. While Einstein is not to be entirely credited or blamed for post-modernism, he is often thought of as the turning point by the public at large.

    Information technology, more than any other force, has accelerated the theoretical side of physics away from the applied aspects of the same. We are capable of manipulating mathematics with far greater precision and finess than the physical world we inhabit. As a consequence, it would seem unlikely that any physicist will straddle that line between the theoretical and applied worlds in the near future.

  • The Conclusion is astonishing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by glomph ( 2644 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:39AM (#14382258) Homepage Journal
    Yes, in the past several hundred years, at any given time, there have been brilliant physicists. I've known/worked for some of the best. There are one or two who really stand out in each era of physics, and Einstein overlapped several of these. Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Maxwell, et al are the true greats, and Einstein is in that category.

  • Hindsight is 20/20 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:45AM (#14382273)
    Its very easy to say today that Einstein's works are simple and obvious. Thats because they are first year teachings for most students today. However, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Someday a lot of things will seem very obvious, and those people who do the hard work of making that so will be worth of comparison with Einstein.

  • Deep vs Narrow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThatGeek ( 874983 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:45AM (#14382275) Homepage
    I would argue two points.

    First, once you get an iconic person, that's it. The game is up for quite a while. Ever notice how all the caricatures of muscle-types take after Governor Arnold? Or how all psychiatrists take after Freud? This is not because we haven't had people with more muscles (we have) or analysts who have not helped larger numbers of people. When you have an icon, you might as well keep it. It's a reference that everyone already "gets".

    Second, I would argue that as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to dominate a field. Look at da Vinci. He was a brilliant man to be sure. But if he were alive today, he'd never have been able to master so many fields. There is just so much research out there about the most minute aspect of any field that no one would have time to keep up. And why would we idolize the guy worked in one very small subset, when these people of past years could dominate so many fields? In a way, they had it easy. Anything they looked at represented a new area of science much the way that any explorer who sailed from Europe a thousand years ago would have been able to claim a new territory. It's much harder now; I've tried!

    Also, for those of you who have read the story, I suppose the article should not have asked "Will there be another Einstein?", but rather "Will there be another ThatGeek?". And no, there won't be as I've already registered the nick.

  • Einstein could be understood (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jjeff1 ( 636051 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:49AM (#14382291)
    I think a lot of his popularity has to deal with the fact that E=mc^2 is simple enough for anyone to remember. That and his theories were used to create the atomic bomb, ending WWII.

    Those 2 things make Einstein much more tangible to the average person. One can remember what he actually did, and see an enormous practical application.

    • Re:Einstein could be understood (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:49AM (#14382492)
      I don't think you appreciate the genius of Einstein completely enough. Special relativity, which has E=mc^2 as a consequence, would have been proposed by somebody real soon after 1905, had Einstein chosen to be a bullfighter instead of a physicist. I mean, the Lorentz transform was already around; Einstein just said it wasn't a device for calculation but an actual description of reality. Good idea, but not one that we needed an Einstein for.

      I think general relativity is a very different story. Without Einstein, it might have taken decades to work it out. I mean, really, it's just an amazing piece of work, and something that's hard to work up to incrementally.

      So you're right about E=mc^2 being easy for people to remember, but in a way that's a shame, because it shouldn't be taken as anything like his greatest work.

  • Before the invention of the atomic bomb, physics was a lot like mathematics: under-funded and only pursued out of love for the field itself.

    After the invention of the atomic bomb, governments realized that physicists could actually do something useful. Funding poured in and physics became a business.

    A different but similar thing happened to programming in the dotcom boom. The field got flooded with people who were in it for the money and not for the love of the game.

    • Re:The atomic bomb ruined physics in many ways (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:15AM (#14382386)
      After the invention of the atomic bomb, governments realized that physicists could actually do something useful. Funding poured in and physics became a business.

      That's right, it's not like governments ever funded people to use physics to predict the trajectory of a bullet from a large gun before the atomic bomb. And moreso, it's not like they ever decided that for large distances the Coriolis force and air resistance need to be properly accounted for and thus they never needed to fund the development of electric computers.

      Nor did they ever need to understand physics to figure out the design of aerofoil wings, or the best shape to make ship hulls, before the atom bomb.

      • The shape of ships' hulls had nothing at all to do with physics predictions. Ideal shapes were determined by a fellow named Froud(sp) in Britain several centuries ago by carving wooden models and putting them through the liquid equivalent of a wind tunnel. Completely empirical process, no mathematical modelling whatsoever beforehand (though one result, the dimensionless Froud number, is one of the most important dimensionless numbers in engineering, right up there with the Reynold's number).

        So, ye
  • In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative.

    Yeah, Isaac Newton felt the same way after the apple hit him in the head.

  • Einstein had Charisma (Score:4, Informative)

    by wass ( 72082 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:57AM (#14382323)
    Einstein did amazing research across the whole gamut of physics, that's something that is much harder to do these days. For example, his miraculous year, he posited the theory of special relativity, came up with the photoelectric effect (which was a major leap for the study of quantum mechanics), and documented Brownian Motion (which was a major proof for accepting statistical mechanics of particles, especially in fluids). But that was just one year, he made brilliant subsequent contributions to quantum mechanics and of course the theory of general relativity as well.

    Einstein put Relativity on the table, which was previously unknown except to a few as something funky going on with Maxwell's equations under a Galilean transformation. This was an entirely new field. And, when extended into General Relativity, is a huge deal. Not many people get to discover a whole new field of physics like that. Newton did with mechanics. But with E&M, it was several people making discoveries, such as Ampere and Faraday and some others. And the full theory wasn't really collected nicely until Maxwell, who also corrected Ampere's Law. And that's only the classical theory, Quantum Electro-Dynamics is another huge thing. But within classical E&M, you can say Maxwell fully documented it, but it was already an explored field (no pun intended, seriously).

    Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics had many people make major contributions, specifically when thermodynamics was found to be described entirely within statistical mechanical formalism. Boltzmann made major contributions, eg coming up with entropy and statistical ensembles, but his work wasn't accepted by the community and he ultimately wound up killing himself.

    One physicist that may have come close to Einstein in breadth is my favorite, Lev Davidovic Landau. Any graduate student of physics should be familiar with at least some of his ten-volume "Course of Theoretical Physics", otherwise known as Landau-Lifshitz. Landau's grad students were known to be confused during meetings where he would shift topics from superconductivity to hadron interactions, etc. Landau made many amazing contributions, and also won a Nobel Prize, but he wasn't able to open up any entirely new fields of study like Einstein was able to. He made contributions to other fields, such as 2nd-order phase transitions, superconductivity and superfluidity, etc, but no entirely new fields.

    Finally, Einstein was also rather active politically and socially, he didn't confine his efforts to the laboratory (well, really his desk since he was a theorist). He also had quite a unique physical appearance, which also contributed to his popularity. But I think, from a popular point of view, his contribution of relativity, which is probably one of the biggest scientific blowbacks to something that was previously accepted as scientifically true and complete, was the dominant factor. Of course scientifically he made many other major contributions, but for the newspapers, trumping over Newton is a rather 'hot' story.

  • Didn't anyone see Family Guy? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheOtherAgentM ( 700696 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:57AM (#14382326)
    Einstein worked at a patent office and stole Smith's Theory of Relativity.

  • My take on this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by N1ghtFalcon ( 884555 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @12:58AM (#14382327)
    It's funny, because I actually spent quite a long time a while back thinking about this issue. In the end, I would say it's really difficult to give a certain 'yes' or 'no' answer.

    On one hand, there is the issue that information that humans possess is increasing at exponential rate, if not faster. At one point in history, you could be a painter, a sculptor, a mathematician, a philosopher, a physicist, among other things, and still be useful to the society in all of those areas. Today however, such thing is unrealistic due to the fact of how deep each area goes, and how much must be learned of the works of those who came before you in order for you to get to the level of being able to make personal contributions.

    On the other hand, you do have to remember that a century or two ago, physics was thought to be a "finished" science. As in, many physicists around the world believed that the Newtonian model has given them all that is needed, and most viewed physics as a done deal. We understand how it works, nothing more is left to learn, move along. Then came Einstein and turned the whole thing upside down.

    While on my commutes to and from university last semester, I downloaded audio lectures on particle physics. One of the very first things the professor said was "today, most particle physicists believe that we have a solid understanding of what the world is made up of, and that, unlike a few decades ago, we really have gotten to the bottom layer of the universe." He ended the lectures (which were extremely interesting btw) by saying that as good as the standard model of physics is, we still have 23 quantum numbers that are unattainable through mathematics, ideas which defy logic, and a bunch of other theories like string which may also be onto something.

    Overall, I think that if any conclusion is to be made about the state of physics today, I would say that no, Einstein hasn't left the building. In my opinion, we are still missing something crucial about the way the world operates, but we may not realize this until advances in other technology areas such as space travel. Individuals still can make great breakthroughs, but because of issues such as the amount of foundational knowledge, the number of people working on the same things, and the money needed for some of the research, it may be more likely that future discoveries will need to be left to teams of scientists, rather than individuals.

    • Re:My take on this... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 )
      The problem is all these nifty unification-type theories only have observable, testable consequences at energy levels far, far beyond that we can produce in any earth-bound laboratory, and we haven't figured out any ways to observe cosmological effects that they might predict either (probably because those energy levels only happen in the early nanoseconds of the universe).

      Unless and until somebody can work around that rather fundamental set of issues, it seems like these more aesthetically pleasing models

  • General improvement? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Twisted64 ( 837490 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:01AM (#14382337) Homepage
    I can't say much in regards to Einstein, but I know that it is getting harder to point out musical geniuses, because the bar is constantly being raised. There are thousands of violinists, who are perfectly happy to practice all day to produce perfect performances. Anything less and they simply won't be noticed. I heard a professional musician comment, some years ago, that nobody stands out any more, because so many are at the level of Heifitz.

    I played the violin for about 15 years, and had to stop, because for me the strain of a performance + the need for constant practice overshadows the joy received from playing. I now play quite happily at the back of the second violins in an orchestra - room for fun, and mistakes are rarely heard :)

    Anyway, my point is, perhaps something similar is happening in the field of science.
    • ...so many are at the level of Heifitz.

      Not that I, by any stretch of imagination or schooling have the right to comment, but, I will.

      No, there aren't many who are at the level of Heifitz.

      As an aside, your post and profession provide me with an opportunity to ask if you know whether an anecdote I've heard is apocryphal. I was told Fritz Kreisler loved the night life and hated to practise. On occasion he shared the stage with Sergei Rachmaninov who would request Kreisler put in some audition time only to be

  • wrong.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:07AM (#14382361) Homepage
    Einstein's brilliance stems from his ability to think outside of the box, in a practical way; and before "thinking outside of the box" was a tagline and not an actual concept.

    I'm no Einstein, but I do think in a Bergeronian way. I take a concept, invert it entirely, and think - Why has traditional thinking prevented this from working? and Could it actually work (contrary to popular accepted practice)? Ignore the existing reasoning for why it doesn't work. You will either a) confirm that it doesn't work; b) have an epiphany and a resultant breakthrough or c) something else

    Traditional thinking dictates that a square peg can't fit into a round hole. Of course traditional thinking doesn't consider that obscure 4th Dimension - which makes it possible to fit a square peg into a round hole.

    • Re:wrong.... (Score:3, Funny)

      by irm ( 759254 )
      Because that 4th dimension give you the time to take that square peg over to the belt sander and trim her down.

    • Re:wrong.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jim_Callahan ( 831353 )
      If you use a fourth dimension, then you're moving a square peg _around_ a round hole, because you're displacing it from the space in which the hole exists.

      Sorry, kid, your brilliant physics was trumped by your incorrect use of basic vocabulary. Don't get too hopeful about that philosophy degree, eh.
  • I always felt that Einstein's (like Newton's) brilliance was due to his work's insight and ability to portray the world reasonably precisely where it hadn't been done before. Einstein, like Newton came up with a way of explaining how the universe worked based on scientific observations that hadn't been explained up to that point in time. In both cases (and probably others where a breakthrough has been made in some branch of science) other scientists have carried on this work, enhanced it and created produ

  • We don't need another hero... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hung_himself ( 774451 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:31AM (#14382437)
    Not to denigrate Einstein's prodigious achievements but general relativity would have been impossible were it not for Riemann's (and Gauss before him) work setting up differential geometry. Not to mention, the contributions by Lorentz, Minkowski and other contemporaries who we forget in our quest to annoint a scientific messiah. It seems that the public *needs* a quaint ubermensch to worship with rather than accepting the more mundane truth that scientific advances occur from the concerted work of many very bright people.

    On a scientific level, had Einstein not existed, someone else would have done the work eventually - the tools and conditions were in place for these discoveries to be made. But on a societal level, it probably would have been necessary to invent him...

  • Unexplained Phenomena (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Keith McClary ( 14340 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @01:54AM (#14382506)
    Back in 1900 there were a few Unexplained Phenomena such as the Michaelson-Morley experiment, spectral lines, what held the positive and negative kinds of matter apart.

    In retrospect we realize that these were major problems that required fundamental new theories.

    There are also some Unexplained Phenomena today, it's just a question whether these are misinterpreted experiments or something new that existing theory can't explain.

    When there comes to be too much unexplained stuff, people start thinking outside the box, and we get another Feynman. Or Einstein.

  • Experiments and Focus (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Starker_Kull ( 896770 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @02:12AM (#14382560)
    In most cases, the major advances in physics were preceded by the discovery and measurement of new phenomena, or old phenomena to a new & unprecedented level of accuracy. A great deal of Galileo's insights were inspired by the telescope, which allowed him to see, in great detail, that the old "imperfect earth/perfect heavens" dichotomy of Aristotle and Official Church Dogma were patiently not so. This led to rapid-fire advances in astronomy, which in turn gave Newton the crucial data to test his theory of gravitation; it's easy to assume big things attract other big things - it is the exact AMOUNT that was crucial, and when he first compared the acceleration at the Earth's surface vs. the acceleration the Moon was undergoing to keep in orbit around the Earth, he found that his inverse square force assumption was way off. He stayed quiet for a decade, when new and much more accurate data came in, correcting the previous estimates of the size, and therefore the distance of the moon. And then the acceleration of the moon towards the earth was exactly right to fit the acceleration of objects near the earth's surface and the assumption of fall off of force by the square. Then he started talking about Universal Gravitation a bit more.

    Einstein, and the rest of the quantum physicists, were following up on the recent discovery of both radioactivity and the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell.

    The point I am (longwindedly) making is that ultimately new data drove the physics. We are at a point right now where it is so expensive to probe in areas we have not looked that we have an embarrassing richness of theories to match a paucity of data. The only clear-cut result that I know of that is outside the bounds of the Standard Model of particle physics is the recent revelation that neutrinos seem to change their type (electron, mu, and tau) as time passes, based on the distribution of neutrinos received on opposite sides of the Earth from the Sun (Sci-Am, I think about a year or two ago). In biology, OTOH, we have just recently been able (due to computer horsepower) to sequence massive numbers of genes, as well as make crude computer simulations of what kind of proteins these genes would construct. It is a new tool, the computer, that is allowing biology to seize the spotlight.

    There will be more Einsteins, but perhaps in biology rather than physics for a while....

    (DISCLAIMER: IANA scientist, but sometimes wish I was....)

  • strange viewpoint (Score:4, Insightful)

    by abes ( 82351 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @02:25AM (#14382592) Homepage
    First, it's a bit weird he compared Einstein to Watson and Crick. It's true, that Watson and Crick are known for discovering DNA, but stole heavily from Rosalind Frankin [schoolnet.co.uk]. Additionally, they published a single finding. Einstein wrote *several* groundbreaking papers: brownian motion, photoelectrical effect, special theory of relativity, general theory of relativity. The photoelectric effect showed that light is a packet, or quanta, giving birth to quantum mechanics.

    Second, why should we expect another Einstein, or Newton? Given that anyone's accomplishments must be measured relative to the common populace, we would expect people of such stature to be rare.

    There are many factors that go into what makes someone great. Part of it is certainly being in the right time and place. Another is the social climate. Is Einstein the equal of Newton, or vice versa? That is difficult to say. They lived in completely different times. Could one do the same accomplishments as the other? One common element that appears between the two is that they were both fairly prolific (Newton did calculus, physics, and ironically enough, why light is a wave). I'd be curious if other people could come up with other historical science figure that also had several major findings. Feynman? Turing?

  • I cannot believe it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wilson_6500 ( 896824 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @02:57AM (#14382693)
    Nobody has mentioned the late Richard Feynman?

    A humoristic and personable genius figure--or at least he comes off as such in his books. Maybe it's all crap--I don't know. I seriously think that his image could bolster the reputation of physicists the world over.

  • The building is now a Walmart (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @06:48AM (#14383344) Journal
    The article misses out on a couple of things, perhaps. Einstein also stands out because he was an intensely moral man who had interesting and brave things to say on the sheer mystery of life. He was a highly gifted communicator who wrote well on a wide range of subjects far beyond his own field.

    Even if you don't subscribe to the "myth of genius", men of such rounded accomplishment are very rare. Knowledge has expanded so rapidly that it is hard enough to know your own field, let alone know enough worth saying about other fields. Perhaps Einstein's was the last generation that could span, if not all knowledge, then a substantial part of it. We are all specialists these days.

    Besides, we now live in a world in which enterprise and individuality of the Einsteinian kind are less appreciated. Since his heyday, so much has been subordinated to the dismal science of economics, the realm where the beancounter is king and inspiration is seen as a shocking waste of tax dollars or corporate profits. Arguably, the closest equivalent to Einstein today is not a scientist but the Dalai Lama, another gifted communicator who understands that knowledge alone is not enough.

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