Einstein's Masterwork
Page 17
Also in 1939, Einstein played his famous part in alerting the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the prospect of an atomic bomb. The historic letter to Roosevelt was actually drafted by other scientists, concerned that Hitler’s Germany might develop atomic weapons, but Einstein was persuaded to sign the letter and send it to the President since his name would carry more weight. Very little happened as a result of the letter before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, but this was the first step in the United States towards the development of the atomic bomb, although Einstein (who became a US citizen on 1 October 1940) played no part in the Manhattan Project itself. This was partly because the authorities involved had doubts about his discretion and were concerned about the left-wing and pacifist sympathies he had expressed earlier in his life. But Einstein had long been aware of the possibility of using nuclear energy as a source of power to replace coal and oil. In 1920, he discussed Ernest Rutherford’s then recent work on ‘splitting the atom’ with Alexander Moszkowski, and commented: ‘It seems feasible that, under certain conditions, Nature would automatically continue the disruption of the atoms, after a human being had intentionally started it, as in the analogous case of a conflagration which extends, although it may have started from a mere spark.’ This is what became known as a ‘chain reaction’.
Einstein’s contribution to the American war effort was limited to acting as a consultant for the US Navy, assessing various schemes put forward for new weapons. This was an ideal job for a former Technical Expert in the Swiss patent office, but perhaps did not make full use of his abilities.
After the war, Einstein experienced another bout of serious illness and was never fully fit. He officially retired in 1945, but kept his office at the Institute and continued to work there whenever he wanted to and felt up to it. Maja had intended to go back to Switzerland when the war ended, but she suffered a stroke and became bedridden; Einstein read to her every day until her death in 1951. By then, Mileva had already died, in Zurich in 1948. It’s hardly surprising that when the famous offer of the presidency of Israel came in November 1952, Einstein, now 73, felt unable to accept. In his formal letter turning down the invitation he said: ‘I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and exercise official functions … even if advancing age was not making increasing demands on my strength.’6
In spite of his physical deterioration, however, he remained mentally fit, and tried to use the power of his name to nip the nuclear arms race in the bud. After the announcement of the American hydrogen bomb programme in 1950, Einstein made a televised broadcast in which he warned that unless the continuing development of bigger and ‘better’ bombs were stopped:
Radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and, hence, annihilation of all life on Earth will have been brought within the range of what is technically possible. The weird aspect of this development lies in its apparently inexorable character. Each step appears as the inevitable consequence of the one that went before. And at the end, looming ever clearer, lies general annihilation.7
Right to the end of his life, Einstein continued to speak out against the nuclear arms race and in defence of the civil liberties attacked in the early 1950s by the McCarthy witch hunts. But that end was not far off. He became ill again in April 1955, not long after his 76th birthday. A month after the 50th anniversary of the completion of the first paper of his annus mirabilis (the paper for which he received the Nobel Prize), and seven months short of the 40th anniversary of the presentation of his masterwork, Einstein was taken to hospital. He refused any treatment to prolong his life, describing such intervention as ‘tasteless’.8 A little after 1am on 18 April 1955, with only a nurse in attendance, he muttered few words of German and died. The nurse knew no German.
Footnotes
a This was before the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan; Dhaka is now the capital of Bangladesh.
b Not least because the wavelengths of electrons had been measured by George Thomson in 1927.
1. Einstein’s mother, Pauline Einstein
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem Albert Einstein Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
2. Einstein’s father, Hermann Einstein
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem Albert Einstein Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
3. Albert as a boy, circa 1893
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem Albert Einstein Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
4. Albert and Maja Einstein
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem Albert Einstein Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
5. Marcel Grossmann, Albert Einstein, Gustav Geissler and Eugen Grossmann in Thalwil, near Zurich
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem Albert Einstein Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
6. The house in which Einstein lived in Bern, 49 Kramgasse
(AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
7. Albert with Mileva and Hans Albert
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem Albert Einstein Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
8. Albert, circa 1912
(ETH-Bibliothek Zurich, Image Archive/J.F. Langhans)
9. First Solvay Congress, Brussels, 1911
(L–R seated at table) Nernst, Brillouin, Solvay, Lorentz, Warburg, Perrin, Wien, Curie, Poincarè
(L–R standing) Goldschmidt, Planck, Rubens, Sommerfeld, Lindemann, De Broglie, Knudsen, Hasenohrl, Hostelet, Herzen, Jeans, Rutherford, Kamerlingh-Onnes, Einstein, Langevin
(Benjamin Couprie, Institut International de Physique Solvay, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
10. Albert and Elsa Einstein aboard the SS Rotterdam en route to the US, 1921
(Library of Congress, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
11. (Front) Eddington and Lorentz
(Back) Einstein, Ehrenfest and de Sitter, at the Leiden Observatory
(AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Willem de Sitter)
Further Reading
Most of these books are accessible at about the level of the present volume but go into more detail about Einstein’s life or work. Titles marked with an asterisk require a little more scientific background. Quotes in the text, unless otherwise indicated, are from the collected works or the Princeton archive. See The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, volumes 1–10, published by Princeton University Press between 1987 and 2006. These take the story up to 1920, covering the major part of the story told in this book.
Amir Aczel, God’s Equation, New York: Random House, 1999.
Jeremy Bernstein, Albert Einstein and the Frontiers of Physics, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Alice Calaprice, editor, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2010.
Ta-Pei Cheng, Einstein’s Physics, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973.
Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, New York: Random House, 1954.
Albert Einstein, Relativity, New York: Crown 1961 (reprint in English of Einstein’s only ‘popular’ book; originally published by Holt, New York, 1921).
Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited and translated by P. A. Schilpp, La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1979.
*Albert Einstein, The Collected Papers, Princeton University Press, 1987–2006 (see especially Volumes 1, 2 and 6, 1987, 1990 and 1997).
Lewis Carroll Epstein, Relativity Visualized, San Francisco: Insight Press, revised edition 1987.
Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein, translated by Ewald Osers, New York: Viking, 1997.
George Gamow, Mr Tompkins in Paperback, Cambridge University Press, 1965.
John Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, New York: Bantam, 1984.
John Gribbin, In Search of the Edge of Time, London: Bantam, 1992.
Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin, Time Travel for Beginners, London: Hodde
r, 2008.
Tony Hey and Patrick Walters, Einstein’s Mirror, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Walter Isaacson, Einstein, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Thomas Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, New York: Bantam, 2003.
Robert Millikan, The Autobiography, London: Macdonald, 1951.
Alexander Moskowski, Conversations with Einstein, translated by Henry Brose, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970 (reprint of 1921 edition).
Dennis Overbye, Einstein in Love, New York: Viking, 2000.
*Abraham Pais, Subtle is the Lord, Oxford University Press, 1982.
Jürgen Renn and Robert Schulmann, ed., Albert Einstein, Mileva Maric: The Love Letters, translated by Shawn Smith, Princeton University Press, 1992.
John Rigden, Einstein 1905, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Carl Seelig, Albert Einstein, translated by Mervyn Savill, London: Staples Press, 1956.
John Stachel, ed., Einstein’s Miraculous Year, Princeton University Press, 1998.
Russell Stannard, The Time and Space of Uncle Albert, London: Faber, 1989.
Michael White and John Gribbin, Einstein: A Life in Science, London: Simon & Schuster, revised edition 2005.
Clifford Will, Was Einstein Right?, New York: Basic Books, 1986.
Other biographies by John and Mary Gribbin
Richard Feynman: A Life in Science, London: Penguin, 1998.
FitzRoy: The Remarkable Story of Darwin’s Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock, London: Penguin, 2009.
Endnotes
Chapter One: In the Beginning
1. Collected Papers.
2. Quoted by, for example, Dennis Overbye.
3. See Seelig.
4. See Overbye.
5. Collected Papers.
6. Collected Papers.
7. Albert Einstein, Mileva Maric: The Love Letters.
8. Collected Papers. See also Fölsing.
9. See Fölsing.
10. Article in the New York Post, 25 February 1931.
11. Collected Papers.
12. See Overbye.
13. Collected Papers.
14. See Overbye.
Chapter Two: The Annus Mirabilis
1. See Seelig.
2. See, for example, Fölsing.
3. Collected Papers; Kleiner translation from Fölsing, Burkhardt translation from Stachel.
4. Tony Cawkell and Eugene Garfield, ‘Assessing Einstein’s impact on today’s science by citation analysis’ in Einstein: The First Hundred Years, edited by Maurice Goldsmith, Alan Mackay and James Woudhuysen, Oxford: Pergamon, 1980.
5. In the Philosophical Magazine.
6. Quoted by John Heilbron in his biography of Planck: The Dilemmas of an Upright Man, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
7. Interview quoted by Fölsing.
8. Collected Papers.
9. Physikalishel Zeitschrift, vol. 17, p. 217, 1916.
10. Collected Papers.
11. Collected Papers.
Chapter Three: The Long and Winding Road
1. Quoted by Fölsing.
2. Comment made to Max Born; see, for example, Fölsing.
3. See Pais.
4. See Clark.
5. See Isaacson.
6. See Ideas and Opinions.
7. Collected Papers.
8. See Isaacson.
9. See Calaprice.
Chapter Four: Legacy
1. Physical Review, vol. 56, pp. 455–9.
2. Science, 26 April 2013, vol. 340, no. 6131.
Chapter Five: The Icon of Science
1. See Janos: The Story of a Doctor, by John Plesch, London Books, 1947.
2. See my book Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution, London: Bantam, 2012.
3. Quoted by Philipp Frank, in Einstein: His Life and Times, translated by George Rosen, New York: Knopf, 1947.
4. Albert Einstein and Max Born, The Born-Einstein Letters, London: Macmillan, 1971.
5. See my book Computing with Quantum Cats, London: Bantam, 2013.
6. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden, ed., Einstein on Peace, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960.
7. See Einstein on Peace.
8. See Pais.
Index
Aarau 11–14, 36
Adler, Friedrich 121, 125
algebra 6, 142
America 158, 205
Annalen der Physik 29, 35, 40–1, 54–5, 66, 83, 94, 109, 137, 153
Antwerp 199
Arecibo radio telescope 170
atom, -ic, -s
and molecules 60, 111, 114
‘atom smashing’ machines 108
behaviour of 19–20, 49
bomb 206
clocks 165–6
hydrogen 60
hypothesis 20–1, 75
model of 186
oxygen 60
photons 47, 69, 85–6, 91–2, 186, 197
properties of 197
reality of 17–18, 21, 47, 60–1, 67, 75
splitting 206
true size of 46
Avogadro, Amadeo 18
Avogadro’s ‘constant’ 49fn
Avogadro’s number 49–55, 65–7
Bell, John 203–4
Berlin 126, 128, 130, 134, 138, 141, 149, 151, 183, 185, 187, 192, 199–201
University of 10, 74, 76, 114, 133, 137
Physical Society 77, 80
Bern 2, 31, 34–8, 40, 42, 101, 113, 118–21
University of 36, 113, 119–20
Besso, Michele 12, 17, 20, 30, 40–5, 94, 129, 135, 149, 187
black-body
curve 74–6, 85, 107
radiation 73, 76, 79, 84, 107, 195–6
black holes 143, 155–60
blueshift 162–7
Bohm, David 203
Bohr, Niels 186, 193
Boltzmann, Ludwig 19, 28, 41, 75–8, 86
Bolyai, János 140
Bose, Satyendra 195, 198
Bose gas 198
Bose-Einstein statistics 195–6
bosons or ‘bose condensates’ 196
Broglie, Louis de 196–8
Brown, Robert 57–8
Brownian molecular movement 46, 57
Brownian motion 57–63, 66–8, 83, 94, 110–11
Brownian rotation 66–7
Burkhardt, Heinrich 54
California 199–200
Caltech 199–201
Cambridge
Philosophical Society 144
Cannizaro, Stanislao 18
cathode rays 75, 82, 92, 98
Cavendish Laboratory 75
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan 157
Chavan, Louis 36
Clifford, William 144–5
colour 69–74, 79–80, 85, 87
cosmic egg 180
cosmological constant 178–83
cosmological models 177–9
Curie, Marie and Pierre 43, 109, 132
Dalén, Niles 193
Dalton, John 18
dark energy/matter 181–3. See also matter
Debye, Peter 132
Democritus 17
dimensions
four 116, 144, 146
three 115–16, 142, 144
Doppler Effect 163, 166, 171. See also redshift
Drude, Paul 54, 57
Dukas, Helen 202
dynamic equilibrium 77–8
E = h 80, 88, 114
E = mc2 110–12, 146, 153
Eddington, Arthur 190
Ehrat, Jakob 15
Ehrenfest, Paul 128
Einstein, Albert
ability as a lecturer 120–1, 125, 149, 200
annus mirabilis 17, 54–5, 68, 93, 110–13, 119, 208
Autobiographical Notes 21
awarded honorary degree by University of Geneva 120, 122
awarded Nobel Physics Prize 33, 47, 81, 91, 188–9, 192–4, 197, 208
>
becomes Privatdozent 119–20
citizenship 8–9, 17, 29, 127, 202, 206
completes first scientific paper 29
compulsory military service 8, 29, 32, 197
consultant for the US Navy 206
deteriorating health 134, 187–8
divorce 134, 188–9
doctoral dissertation 28, 34–5, 43, 47–8, 53–7, 60–3
friendship with the Wintelers 11–2
honorary doctorates 122, 199
offered presidency of Israel 207
‘On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light’ 83, 87
‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’ 48, 94
‘On the Theory of the Brownian Motion’ 66
‘photoelectric paper’ 81, 83, 90, 93
Princeton University 3, 160, 200–5
relationship with Marie Winteler 11–12, 21, 38
relationship with Mileva Maric, see Maric, Mileva
religious faith 4–7, 39, 127–8
Swiss Patent office 2, 31, 34–42, 112–3, 117–21, 136, 206–7
‘The Field Equations of Gravitation’ 153
visiting fellow at Christ Church Oxford 200
Einstein, Eduard 124–6, 147, 205
Einstein, Elsa 130–4, 149, 185, 187–9, 201–3
Einstein, Hans Albert 42–5, 125, 187, 205
Einstein, Hermann 3–10, 14, 39
Einstein, Jakob 3, 8, 14
Einstein, Lieserl 35, 40–5
Einstein, Maja 3–4, 12, 39, 48, 205–7
Einstein, Pauline 3–6, 39
electromagnetic
radiation 71, 75, 77, 80, 86, 88, 91, 199