Einstein

Home > Other > Einstein > Page 85
Einstein Page 85

by Isaacson, Walter


  affine connection in, 339, 344

  bivector fields in, 512

  complexity of, 339–44

  distant parallelism in, 341, 343–44

  Einstein’s formulation of, 4, 13–14, 67, 316, 320, 336–44, 350–53, 358, 368, 371, 410, 423, 466–69, 508–9, 511–14, 537–39, 542, 543

  electromagnetism in, 338–41, 466, 512–13

  experimental verification of, 351, 352

  gravitation in, 338–41, 385, 466, 511, 512–13, 538

  Kaluza-Klein formulation for, 337–39

  mathematical approach of, 67, 337–44, 351–52, 358, 363, 368, 423, 466–67, 511–14, 538–39, 542, 543, 591n

  metric tensors in, 340–41, 512–13

  non-symmetric tensors in, 512–13

  papers published on, 338, 339–44, 357, 363, 513

  physical reality of, 337–38, 340, 342, 343–44, 511–12, 513, 537–39

  press coverage of, 339–44, 467, 468, 513

  quantum mechanics vs., 4, 315–16, 320–21, 336–38, 340, 341, 349, 453, 468–69, 538

  relativity and, 336–38

  scientific validity of, 316, 343–44, 511–14, 537–39, 628n–29n

  spacetime in, 337–38, 341, 512

  for subatomic particles, 463–64, 512, 538

  unified concept of, 3, 4, 13–14, 67, 70–71, 148, 342, 550

  Union Theological Seminary, 390–91

  “uniqueness” argument, 213

  United Jewish Appeal, 445

  United Nations, 489, 496

  Universal Studios, 374

  universe:

  alternative histories of, 459–60

  Big Bang theory of, 355

  dark energy in, 356

  expansion of, 253, 353–56, 372, 510

  galaxies of, 254, 353–56, 442

  limits of, 252–54

  metric of, 353–54

  rotation of, 510–11

  Untermyer, Samuel, 425

  Uppsala, University of, 310–11

  uranium, 469, 471–73

  Urey, Harold, 526

  Utrecht, University of, 175, 176

  Vallentin, Antonina, 441

  Variak, Vladimir, 185

  Veblen, Oswald, 297–98, 397, 426

  vectors, 194

  velocity, 107–9, 114, 118–19, 127–31, 145, 148, 189, 192, 201

  ” Venona” secret cables, 633n

  Versailles Treaty (1919), 303

  Viennese Academy, 234

  Viereck, George Sylvester, 385–87

  Villa Carlotta, 64

  Viollejules, 24, 25

  viscosity, 102, 105

  volume, 98, 101–3

  Wagner, Richard, 11–12, 38

  Waldorf Hotel, 375

  Walker, Evan, 136

  Walker Jimmy, 370

  Wallace, Henry, 504

  Walsh, David, 295

  War Bonds, 482

  Warburg, Emil, 174

  War Resisters’ International, 414–17

  War Resisters’ League, 375, 376, 400, 402, 499

  Washington, George, 529

  Washington Post, 295–96, 528

  Waste Land, The (Eliot), 280

  water waves, 92, 109–10

  Walters, Leon, 402, 436, 441, 443

  wavelengths, 65, 94–95, 97, 111, 322, 323, 331

  wave mechanics, 329–30, 331, 347, 454–55, 456

  wave theory, 1, 19, 24, 26, 34, 46, 47–48, 94–95, 97–98, 109–12, 119, 155–57, 170, 318, 323, 329, 578n

  Weber, Heinrich, 25, 32, 33–34, 47–48, 55, 60–61, 115, 169, 177

  weight and weightlessness, 145–46, 190

  Weimar Republic, 284

  Weinberg, Steven, 340–41, 356

  Weisskopf, Victor, 407

  Weizmann, Chaim, 290, 294, 295, 298–99, 300, 303, 381, 409, 413–14, 520

  Wells, H.G., 132, 377

  Wertheimer, Max, 116, 241–42

  Wesleyan University, 343

  Westmoreland, 424, 425–26

  Weyl, Hermann, 298, 337, 339, 351

  Weyland, Paul, 284–86, 287, 288–89

  “What I Believe” (Einstein), 387, 391

  “What Is the Theory of Relativity?” (Einstein), 267

  Wheeler, John Archibald, 220, 251, 325, 469, 515

  White, Theodore, 533

  Whitehead, Alfred North, 261

  “Why do They Hate the Jews?” (Einstein), 445

  “Why Socialism?” (Einstein), 504

  Wieman, Carl E., 329n

  Wien, Wilhelm, 48, 115–16, 149, 168, 310

  Wigner, Eugene, 407, 471–73, 475, 476, 480

  Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, 386

  Williams, Charles, 526

  Williams, John Sharp, 295

  Winteler, Anna, 27, 62, 231, 237, 418, 517, 540, 636n

  Winteler, Jost, 27, 29, 38, 67, 69, 205, 240

  Winteler, Maria Einstein “Maja,” 8, 11, 12, 16, 17, 23, 24, 39, 49, 50, 59, 66, 74, 75, 85, 140, 141, 234, 236–37, 268, 343, 427, 443, 517–18, 636n

  Winteler, Marie, 27, 28, 40–42, 43, 44, 46, 51, 52

  Winteler, Paul, 27, 234, 236–37, 443, 517, 518, 636n

  Winteler, Rosa, 27

  Wise, Stephen, 430, 431, 436, 520

  Witelson, Sandra, 547–48

  Woman Patriot Corporation, 399–401, 420, 477–78

  World Antiwar Congress (1932), 379, 478

  world government, 209, 301, 479, 487–500, 541, 631/2

  World Peace Council, 524–25, 531

  World War 1, 188, 204, 205–9, 224, 227, 233, 239–40, 250, 251, 256–57, 274, 277, 283–84, 290, 376, 377, 408, 539

  World War II, 386, 475, 491, 539

  World Without Time (Yourgrau), 511

  World Zionist Organization, 290

  Wright, Orville, 618/2

  X-rays, 111, 435

  Yearbook of Radioactivity and Electronics, 144, 145, 148, 189

  Yeshiva University, 636/2

  Young, Thomas, 329

  Yourgrau, Palle, 511

  Youth Peace Foundation, 376, 404–5

  Ypres, Battle of, 206

  Zackheim, Michele, 86, 88

  Zangger, Heinrich, 170, 175–76, 177, 180, 184, 185, 201, 202, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 217, 220–21, 228, 229, 231, 233, 234, 236–37, 266, 272, 277, 316

  Zionism, 281–84, 289–301, 302–3, 306, 307–8, 376, 381, 409, 412–14, 520–23, 526, 541

  Zürcher, Emil, 236

  Zurich, University of, 101–3, 150–53, 158–63, 167, 239, 365

  Zurich Notebook, 196–98, 214, 592n, 594n

  Zurich Polytechnic, 2, 24, 25–26, 30, 31, 32–49, 54–56, 60, 115, 150–51, 158, 175–83, 239, 276–77, 372

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Walter Isaacson is the CEO of the Aspen Institute. He has been chairman and CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Kissinger: A Biography, and he is the coauthor with Evan Thomas of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives with his wife and daughter in Washington, D.C.

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  Numbers in roman type refer to illustrations in the insert; numbers in italics refer to book pages.

  AP/Wide World Photos: 1

  The Granger Collection, New York: 2, 4, 14

  © Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 2007: 3, 23

  Private Collection: 5, 18, 22, 33, 76, 90, 123, 336

  Courtesy of: The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel: 6, 13, 16, 281, 309

  © Bettmann/Corbis: 7, 10, 24, 225

  Besso Family, courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives: 8

  © Corbis: 9, 19

  Photo Deutsches Museum: 11, 20

  AFP/Getty Images: 12, 508

  © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis: 15

  Couprie/Hulton Archive/Getty Images: 17

  Photograph by Willem J. Luyten, Academische Historisches Museum, Leiden, courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives: 21

&nbs
p; Ullstein Bilderdienst/The Granger Collection, New York: 25, 26, 27, 50, 249

  E. O. Hoppe/Mansell/Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images: 28

  New York Times Co./Getty Images: 29

  Erika Britzke: 30

  American Stock/Getty Images: 31, 35

  Hulton Archive/Getty Images: 32, 37, 8

  Keystone/Getty Images: 34

  Alan Richards, Princeton University Library: 36, 535

  Esther Bubley/Getty Images: 38, 425

  Courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology: ix

  Photo: akg-images, London: 107

  Imagno/Getty Images: 263 The New York Times: 264, 265

  Akademie der Kunst Baukunstarchiv: 357

  Santa Barbara Historical Society: 384

  Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images:394

  March of Time/Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images: 471

  Photo by Philippe Halsman © Halsman Estate: 487

  Alfred Eisenstaedt, Time–Life Pictures/Getty Images: 524

  © The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel: 543

  Ralph Morse, Time–Life Pictures/Getty Images: 544

  Luke Frazza, AFP/Getty Images:605

  1 His parents, Pauline and Hermann Einstein

  2 In a Munich photo studio at age 14

  3 Bottom left at the Aarau school, 1896

  4 With Mileva Mari, ca. 1905

  5 With Mileva and Hans Albert, 1905

  6 Eduard, Mileva, and Hans Albert, 1914

  7 With Conrad Habicht, left, and Maurice Solovine of the “Olympia Academy,” ca. 1902

  8 Anna Winteler Besso and Michele Besso

  9 At the patent office in Bern during the miracle year, 1905

  10 In Prague, 1912

  11 Marcel Grossmann, who helped with math at college and for general relativity

  12 Hiking in Switzerland with Madame Curie, 1913

  13 With the chemist Fritz Haber, assimilationist and marriage mediator, July 1914

  14 Watched over by Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in New York, April 1921

  15 Meeting the press in New York, 1930

  16 With Elsa at the Grand Canyon, February 1931

  17 The 1911 Solvay Conference

  18 The 1927 Solvay Conference

  19 Receiving the Max Planck medal from its namesake, 1929

  20 In Leiden: Einstein, Ehrenfest, de Sitter in back; Eddington and Lorentz in front; September 1923

  21 With Paul Ehrenfest and Ehrenfest’s son in Leiden

  22 Niels Bohr and Einstein discussing quantum mechanics at Ehrenfest’s home in Leiden, 1925, in a photo taken by Ehrenfest

  23 Werner Heisenberg

  24 Erwin Schrödinger

  25 Max Born

  26 Philipp Lenard

  27 Vacationing on the Baltic Sea, 1928

  28 Connecting to the cosmos

  29 With Elsa and her daughter Margot, Berlin 1929

  30 Margot and Ilse Einstein at the house in Caputh, 1929

  31 In Caputh with his son Hans Albert and grandson Bernhard, 1932

  32 At the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Caltech, discovering that the universe is expanding, January 1931

  33 Sailing against the prevailing currents, Long Island Sound, 1936

  34 Welcoming Hans Albert to America, 1937

  35 Margot, Einstein, and Helen Dukas being sworn in as U.S. citizens, October 1940

  36 Receiving a telescope in the backyard of 112 Mercer Street, underneath the picture window built for his study

  37 With Kurt Gödel in Princeton, 1950

  38 Princeton, 1953

  * The official name of the institution was the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule. In 1911, it gained the right to grant doctoral degrees and changed its name to the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, referred to as the ETH. Einstein, then and later, usually called it the Züricher Polytechnikum, or the Zurich Polytechnic.

  * The phrase “valiant Swabian,” used often by Einstein to refer to himself, comes from the poem “Swabian Tale” by Ludwig Uhland.

  * The letters were discovered by John Stachel of the Einstein Papers Project among a cache of four hundred family letters that were stored in a California safe deposit box by the second wife of Einstein’s son Hans Albert Einstein, whose first wife had brought them to California after she went to Zurich to clean out Mileva Mari’s apartment following her death in 1948.

  * Once married, she usually used the name Mileva Einstein-Mari. After they were divorced, she eventually resumed using Mileva Mari. To avoid confusion, I refer to her as Mari throughout.

  * A person “at rest” on the equator is actually spinning with the earth’s rotation at 1,040 miles per hour and orbiting with the earth around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. When I refer to these observers being at a constant velocity, I am ignoring the change in velocity that arises from being on a rotating and orbiting planet, which would not affect most common experiments. (See Miller 1999, 25.)

  * More precisely, 186,282.4 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters per second, in a vacuum. Unless otherwise specified, the “speed of light” is for light in a vacuum and refers to all electromagnetic waves, visible or not. This is also, as Maxwell discovered, the speed of electricity through a wire.

  * If the source of sound is rushing toward you, the waves will not get to you any faster. However, in what is known as the Doppler effect, the waves will be compressed and the interval between them will be smaller. The decreased wavelength means a higher frequency, which results in a higher-pitched sound (or a lower one, when the siren passes by and starts moving away). A similar effect happens with light. If the source is moving toward you, the wavelength decreases (and frequency increases) so it is shifted to the blue end of the spectrum. Light from a source moving away will be red-shifted.

  * Later, upon his father’s death, he became Max von Laue.

  * The German phrase he used was “der glücklichste Gedanke,” which has usually been translated as “happiest” thought, but perhaps in this context is more properly translated as “luckiest” or “most fortunate.”

  * Added to her 1903 physics prize, she thus became the first person to win Nobels in two different fields. The only other person to do so was Linus Pauling, who won for chemistry in 1954, and then won the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against nuclear weapons testing.

  * She was born Elsa Einstein, became Elsa Löwenthal during her brief marriage to a Berlin merchant, and was referred to as Elsa Einstein by Albert Einstein even before they married. For clarity, I refer to her as Elsa throughout.

  * Although the school had been renamed, Einstein continued to call it the Polytechnic (“Polytechnikum”) and, for clarity, I will continue to use this name.

  * See chapter 7. For purposes of this discussion, we are referring to a uniformly and rectilinearly accelerated reference frame and a static and homogeneous gravitational field.

  * I am using the numbers in Einstein’s original calculations. Subsequent data caused it to be revised to about 0.85 second of arc. Also, as we shall see, he later revised his theory to predict twice the bending. An arc-second, or second of arc, is an angle of 1?3,600 of a degree.

  * Here’s how it works. If you are at some point in curved space and want to know the distance to a neighboring point—infinitesimally close—then things can be complicated if you have just the Pythagorean theorem and some general geometry to use. The distance to a nearby point to the north may need to be computed differently from the distance to one to the east or to one in the up direction. You need something comparable to a little scorecard at each point of space to tell you the distance to each of these points. In four-dimensional spacetime your scorecard will require ten numbers for you to be able to deal with all the questions pertaining to spacetime distances to nearby points. You need such a scorecard for every point in the spacetime. But once you have those scorecards, you can figure out the distance along any curve: just add up the
distances along each infinitesimal bit using the scorecards as you pass them. These scorecards form the metric tensor, which is a field in spacetime. In other words, it is something defined at every point, but that can have differing values at every point. I am grateful to Professor John D. Norton for helping with this section.

 

‹ Prev