Albert Einstein: Nuclear Reaction?
Albert Einstein was once introduced to the eighteen-month-old son of a young friend. The infant looked into the old physicist's wizened face and promptly began to bawl.
"You're the first person for years," Einstein declared, patting the child on the head, "who has told me what you really think of me."
Modest Einstein
One day in 1905, the prestigious Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics) published three separate papers by the 26-year old Albert Einstein. The first proposed wave-particle duality, an update of Max Planck's quantum theory of radiation; light, Einstein declared, travels simultaneously as a wave and as particles called quanta. The second explained the complexities of Brownian motion (ping pong motion at the molecular level). And the third, Einstein matter-of-factly explained in a letter to a friend, "modifies the theory of space and time." It was Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Incredibly Einstein, then working as a Swiss patent clerk, had produced the papers in his spare time and modestly sent them to the journal for publication - "if there is room."
[The physicist Louis de Broglie called Einstein's contributions "blazing rockets which in the dark of the night suddenly cast a brief but powerful illumination over an immense unknown region." Indeed, his work in that single year led to the discovery of (among other things) X-ray crystallography, DNA, the photoelectric effect, vacuum tubes, transistors, and nuclear energy.]
Relativity Explained!
Albert Einstein was often asked to explain the general theory of relativity. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour," he once declared. "Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity!"
["Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity," Einstein once remarked, "I do not understand it myself anymore."]
Albert Einstein: Stroke of Genius?
Though Albert Einstein became a passionate Zionist (partly in response to Germany's growing anti-Semitism) he also expressed concern about the rights of Arabs in any Jewish state.
He later spent the last day of his life drafting a speech to mark the anniversary of Israel's independence; perhaps fittingly, he died of a stroke.
[Einstein was offered the presidency of the new state of Israel in 1952. He declined. "Politics is for the moment," he once remarked, "while... an equation is for eternity."]
Albert Einstein: Scientific Revolution
Albert Einstein was visited one day by one of his students. "The questions on this year's exam are the same as last year's!" the young man exclaimed. "Yes," Einstein replied, "but this year all the answers are different."
[While Isaac Newton's theoretical framework provides excellent results for everyday calculations, at relativistic speeds (those approaching the speed of light) classical equations indeed yield very inaccurate results.]
Simple Question?
One day during a speaking tour, Albert Einstein's driver, who often sat at the back of the hall during his lectures, remarked that he could probably give the lecture himself, having heard it so many times. Sure enough, at the next stop on the tour, Einstein and the driver switched places, with Einstein sitting at the back in his driver's uniform.
Having delivered a flawless lecture, the driver was asked a difficult question by a member of the audience. "Well, the answer to that question is quite simple," he casually replied. "I bet my driver, sitting up at the back there, could answer it..."
[Probably apocryphal.]
Relative Weakness
Shortly after Albert Einstein fled from Germany (in 1932), one hundred Nazi professors published a book (One Hundred Authors Against Einstein) condemning his theory of relativity. "If I were wrong," Einstein said in his defense, "one professor would have been enough."
[In 1933 (the year of Hitler's formal rise to power), Jewish scientists were fired en masse. (Half of Germany's theoretical physicists lost their jobs). Hitler cared little about the consequences. "If science cannot do without Jews," he told the physicist Max Planck, "then we will have to do without science for a few years." But for Hitler's misjudgment, the Nazis would almost certainly have beaten America in the race to develop nuclear weapons.]
Particular Uncertainty
Despite Werner Heisenberg's Nobel Prize for its formulation, Albert Einstein never accepted the so-called "uncertainty principle" (which stipulates that the more carefully one measures the position of a given particle, the less certain its momentum becomes) because it threatened to wreak havoc with the strict determinism in which he believed.
Indeed, the uncertainty principle was a subject about which Einstein and Niels Bohr argued many times over the years. On one memorable occasion (at the Solvay conference in Brussels in 1930) Einstein unveiled the product of one of his famous "thought experiments": an imaginary device comprised of clocks and scales, which, he claimed, violated the principle.
Following a sleepless night, however, Bohr discovered that Einstein had made a critical error: he had neglected to take into account the fact that clocks run slower in a gravitational field... a consequence, rather ironically, of Einstein's own theory of relativity.
Einstein's Attire
Albert Einstein's wife often suggested that he dress more professionally when he headed off to work. "Why should I?" he would invariably argue. "Everyone knows me there." When the time came for Einstein to attend his first major conference, she begged him to dress up a bit. "Why should I?" said Einstein. "No one knows me there!"
["When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock," Einstein once recalled. "So I stopped wearing socks." Einstein also allegedly once declared: "Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."]
Young Einstein
Albert Einstein was a very late talker. At the dinner table one evening, he finally broke his long silence: "The soup is too hot," he complained. His parents, greatly relieved, asked him why he had never spoken before. "Because," he replied, "up to now everything has been in order."
[Though Einstein (whose teacher described him as a slow thinker and an antisocial daydreamer) was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read, according to the mathematical historian Otto Neugebauer, this story is apocryphal.]
Egghead?
Albert Einstein once declared that his second greatest idea (after the theory of relativity) was to add an egg while cooking soup in order to produce a soft-boiled egg without having an extra pot to wash!
Classic Einstein
One day Albert Einstein and an assistant found themselves searching for a paper clip with which to bind a newly-finished physics paper. Though they soon found one, it proved too badly misshapen to be used. While searching for a tool which could be used to straighten it they came across... a large box of paper clips.
Incredibly, Einstein opened the box, removed a new clip and promptly began to shape it into such a tool (to straighten the bent clip). His assistant, considerably puzzled, asked him why he was bothering to do this.
"Once I am set on a goal," Einstein replied, "it becomes difficult to deflect me."
[Einstein himself once told a Princeton colleague that this was the most representative anecdote which could be told about him.]
Mystery of the Universe?
"There is a wonderful photograph of Albert Einstein [taken in 1953] by Ernst Haas which shows him rubbing his chin in a pensive mood, apparently contemplating the mystery of the universe. In fact the picture was taken immediately after Haas had asked Einstein where he had shelved a particular book."
Human Stupidity
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity," Einstein once remarked, "and I'm not sure about the former."
Einstein at Princeton
"At Princeton, Albert Einstein was more like a kindly uncle. When he arrived in 1935, and was asked what he would require for his study, he replied: 'A desk, some pads and a pencil, and a large wastebasket - to hold all of my mistakes.'"
[To avoid embarrassment, Einstein's salary request was raised by Princeton administrators.]
Albert Einstein spent his last two decades trying to reconcile quantum physics with relativity. His holy grail - a so-called "Unified Field Theory" - eluded him. He once casually mentioned to a colleague that he was on the verge of his "greatest discovery ever," before admitting that "it didn't pan out" just two weeks later.
Albert Einstein: Vegas, Baby
While attending a physics symposium in Las Vegas one year, Albert Einstein, to the astonishment of many of his sober-minded colleagues, spent a fair amount of time at the craps and roulette tables.
"Einstein is gambling as if there were no tomorrow," an eminent physicist remarked one day.
"What troubles me," another replied, "is that he may know something!"
["As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain," Einstein once remarked, "and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."]
[Trivia: In April 2004, Ashley Revell sold everything he owned, went to Las Vegas, and bet his life savings ($135,000) on one spin of a roulette wheel. "Never again," he later remarked. "It was mad!" (He won.)]
Relativity
Scientific American once ran a competition offering several thousand dollars for the best explanation of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity in three thousand words.
"I'm the only one in my entire circle of friends who is not entering," Einstein ruefully remarked. "I don't believe I could do it."
Einstein's Phonebook
When one of Albert Einstein's colleagues asked the eminent physicist for his telephone number one day, he reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, understandably startled. "No," Einstein replied with a shrug. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?"
[Though this story is likely apocryphal, Einstein did claim never to memorize anything which could be looked up in less than two minutes.]
Relativity
One day, one of Albert Einstein's assistants expressed his joy that experimental results had confirmed the General Theory of Relativity. "But I knew that the theory was correct," Einstein calmly remarked.
The assistant then asked what he would have done had his predictions not been confirmed. "Then," Einstein replied, "I would have felt sorry for our dear Lord - the theory is correct."
Universal Notion?
Albert Einstein once attended a scientific conference at which an eminent astronomer declared that "to an astronomer, man is nothing more than an insignificant dot in an infinite universe." "I have often felt that," Einstein replied. "But then I realize that the insignificant dot who is man is also the astronomer."
Technically Stupid?
In 1898, young Albert Einstein applied for admission to the Munich Technical Institute - and was turned down. The reason? The young man, the Institute declared, "showed no promise" as a student.
By 1905, he had formulated his special theory of relativity.
Einstein's Wife
Albert Einstein's wife was once given a guided tour of the Mount Wilson Observatory (in California), whose giant optical telescope was among the largest in the world.
"One of the principal functions of all this sophisticated machinery," an astronomer explained, "is to determine the extent and shape of the universe."
"Oh," she replied, "my husband does that on the back of an old envelope."
[Einstein's second wife, Elsa, was once asked whether she understood her husband's theory of relativity. "No," she replied, "but I know my husband and I know he can be trusted."]
Cosmic Blooper
Shortly after the publication of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity (in 1915), Alexander Friedmann (a Russian mathematician) was surprised to discover that Einstein had failed to notice a remarkable prediction made by his equations: that the universe is expanding (a prediction later confirmed by observations made by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s).
The cause of Einstein's oversight? He had, incredibly, made an elementary error in his calculations: In effect, he had divided by zero (a cardinal sin in mathematics)!
Typical Male?
"Time named Albert Einstein 'Man of the Century,'" Jay Leno reported one day in December 1999. "It turns out his wife caught him cheating and divorced him. Even Einstein couldn't pull it off..."
WWIII
"I don't know how the third world war will be fought," Albert Einstein once remarked, "but I do know that the fourth one will be fought with sticks and stones."
[Einstein knew what his work had wrought; after the war he made a tearful apology to visiting Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa.]
All Relative
Shortly after his formulation of the general theory of relativity in 1915, Albert Einstein (a German-born Jew) delivered an address at the Sorbonne in Paris. "If my theory of relativity is proven successful," he declared, "Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
[In 1919, Einstein's theory was confirmed by observations made from the island of Principe during an eclipse. Fifteen years later, he left Germany for the United States (after Adolf Hitler's rise to power).]
Consider Betelgeuse
Albert Einstein was among the notable guests who attended the premiere of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights in 1931. While visiting Hollywood, the famed physicist attempted to explain his theories to a studio executive. "For instance, consider Betelgeuse," he remarked at one point. "Betelgeuse, one of the greatest stars in the whole system, can be photographed merely by means of one ray of light..."
Sometime after Einstein left, the executive called his casting director. "Say," he shouted. "I want you should go out and sign up this feller Betelgeuse, and I want you should sign him up quick. Einstein, who knows everything, says he's one of the greatest stars in the business!"
Albert Einstein: Duet
Young Albert Einstein once played a duet in a German salon. At one point the amateur musician struck a wrong note on his violin, prompting Ferenc Molnar, the witty Hungarian playwright, to burst out laughing. The gentle Einstein stopped playing to address the interruption. "Why do you laugh, Molnar?" he asked. "Have you ever seen me laugh when I was sitting through one of your comedies?"
Stellar Student?
At a dinner party one evening, Albert Einstein found himself conversing with a neighbour’s daughter. "What are you, by profession?" she asked. "I devote myself to the study of physics," Einstein replied. "You mean to say you study physics at your age?" the girl exclaimed. "I finished mine a year ago!"
Luminaries
Albert Einstein was among the luminaries invited by Charlie Chaplin to attend the premiere of City Lights. Fans welcomed both men with wild applause. "They cheer me because they all understand me," Chaplin remarked, "and they cheer you because no one understands you."
Genius
Albert Einstein perfected a technique for getting rid of unwanted guests. After some time, a maid would enter the room with a bowl of soup. If Einstein accepted it, his guest would feel that he was interrupting a meal and be obliged to leave. On the other hand, if Einstein wished to continue talking, he would simply wave the soup away, as if he couldn't imagine why it had even arrived.
Albert Einstein's Last Words
"We shall never know what wonders Albert Einstein revealed on his deathbed," one biographer remarked however, "since his last words were overheard by a clueless American nurse who mistook his High German for low babbling."
[Fearful that his grave would be a magnet for mischief, Albert Einstein's executors had his body cremated before secretly scattering his ashes. A pathologist kept his brain, however, hoping to discover the secret of his genius. Canadian researchers later found that he had shorter connections between the frontal and temporal lobes and a larger inferior parietal lobe - a locus of mathematical and spatial cognition - than average men (though no larger, perhaps, than average mathematicians).]
Always Thinking...
Before visiting the Berlin Astrophysical Observatory one day, Albert Einstein and fellow physicist Philipp Frank agreed to meet on a certain bridge in Potsdam. When Frank expressed concern about being late, Einstein told him not to worry; he would simply wait on the bridge.
Frank then expressed concern about wasting his colleague's time. "The kind of work I do can be done anywhere," Einstein replied. "Why should I be less capable of reflecting about my problems on the Potsdam Bridge than at home?"
[Trivia: "The hardest thing in the world to understand," Einstein once remarked, "is the income tax."]
Einstein's Future
Albert Einstein was once asked about predictions for the future. "I never worry about the future," he replied. "It comes soon enough."
Human Problems
Albert Einstein was once offered the presidency of Israel. He declined. He had no head, he said, for human problems. Perhaps he was right...
While his physical theories and experiments were an impenetrable mystery to his second wife, Elsa, she often expressed a desire to learn. "Couldn't you tell me a little about your work?" she asked one day. "People talk a lot about it, and I appear so stupid when I say I know nothing." Einstein, after a moment's thought, produced a curious solution to her human problem: "If people ask," he advised, "tell them you know all about it, but can't tell them, as it is a great secret!"
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