Albert Einstein
From Metapedia
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, E = mc 2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."[1]
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Youth and Schooling
Albert Einstein was born into a Jewish family in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer. His mother was Pauline Einstein (née Koch). Although Albert had early speech difficulties, he was a top student in elementary school.[1] Einstein's native language was German, and he later learned Italian and English.
In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded a company, Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie that manufactured electrical equipment, providing the first lighting for the Oktoberfest and cabling for the Munich suburb of Schwabing. The Einsteins were not observant of Jewish religious practices, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school. At his mother's insistence, he took violin lessons, and although he disliked them and eventually quit, he would later take great pleasure in Mozart's violin sonatas.[2]
When Albert was five, his father showed him a pocket compass. Albert realized that something in empty space was moving the needle and later stated that this experience made "a deep and lasting impression".[2] As he grew, Albert built models and mechanical devices for fun, and began to show a talent for mathematics.
In 1889, family friend Max Talmud (later: Talmey), a medical student,introduced the ten-year-old Albert to key science and philosophy texts, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid's Elements (Einstein called it the "holy little geometry book"). From Euclid, Albert began to understand deductive reasoning (integral to theoretical physics), and by the age of twelve, he learned Euclidean geometry from a school booklet. Soon thereafter he began to investigate calculus.[1]
In his early teens, Albert attended the new and progressive Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Albert clashed with authorities and resented the school regimen. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning.[2]
In 1894, when Einstein was fifteen, his father's business failed, and the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, after a few months, to Pavia. During this time, Albert wrote his first scientific work, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields". Albert had been left behind in Munich to finish high school, but in the spring of 1895, he withdrew to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note.[1]
Rather than completing high school, Albert decided to apply directly to the ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Without a school certificate, he was required to take an entrance examination. He did not pass. Einstein wrote that it was in that same year, at age 16, that he first performed his famous thought experiment, visualizing traveling alongside a beam of light.[2]
The Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school. While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with the family's daughter, Sofia Marie-Jeanne Amanda Winteler, called "Marie". (Albert's sister, Maja, his confidant, later married Paul Winteler.) In Aarau, Albert studied Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. In 1896, he graduated at age 17, renounced his German citizenship to avoid military service (with his father's approval), and finally enrolled in the mathematics program at ETH. On February 21, 1901, he gained Swiss citizenship, which he never revoked. Marie moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post.[1]
Family Life
In 1896, Einstein's future wife, Mileva Marić, also enrolled at ETH as the only woman studying mathematics. During the next few years, Einstein and Marić's friendship developed into romance. Einstein appeared to latch onto his first wife, a much more talented student three years his senior, to compensate for his own limited abilities.[3] Einstein's mother objected to the relationship because she thought Marić "too old", a "Shiksa", and "physically defective".[4] A year before they married, Maric gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl, born in early 1902, while Einstein was away.[2] Her fate is unknown-she is presumed to have been given up for adoption, perhaps under pressure from Einstein, who is thought to have never seen his first born.
Einstein used and eventually discarded his first wife, Mileva, who was a much more brilliant student than Einstein and is suspected of writing much of Einstein’s early work. [4][5] (She may have been reluctant to expose Einstein since he was still the father of her children.) After the marriage, Mileva bore two sons but the family was not to stay together.
Einstein was far from the ideal husband. He began an affair with his cousin Elsa Lowenthal while on a trip to Berlin in 1912, leaving Mileva and his family two years later. Einstein and Mileva finally divorced in 1919, but not until after Einstein sent his wife a list of ‘conditions’ under which he was willing to remain married. The list included such autocratic demands as ‘You are neither to expect intimacy nor to reproach me in any way’.[6] Einstein married Elsa soon after the divorce, but a few years later began an affair with Betty Neumann, the niece of a friend. After the divorce, he saw little of his sons. The elder, Hans Albert, later reflected ‘Probably the only project he ever gave up on was me.’ [6] The younger, Eduard, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and died in an asylum.
The Patent Office
Einstein graduated in 1900 from ETH with a degree in physics.[2] That same year, Einstein's friend Michele Besso introduced him to the work of Ernst Mach. The next year, Einstein published a paper in the prestigious Annalen der Physik on the capillary forces of a straw (Einstein 1901).
Following graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. After almost two years of searching, a former classmate's father helped him get a job in Bern, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant examiner. His responsibility was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".[7]
Einstein's college friend, Michele Besso, also worked at the patent office. With friends they met in Bern, they formed a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy, jokingly named "The Olympia Academy".[2] Their readings included Poincaré, Mach and Hume, whom Einstein heavily "borrowed" from to craft his own scientific and philosophical outlook.
While this period at the patent office has often been cited as a waste of Einstein's talents, or as a temporary job with no connection to his interests in physics, the historian of science Peter Galison has argued that Einstein's work there was connected to his later interests.[8] His work was not quantum mechanics or theoretical physics, but was reviewing technical documents for patents of every day items relating to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time.
In 1905, while working in the patent office, without the aid of university colleagues, a staff of graduate students, a laboratory, or any of the things normally associated with an academic setting, Einstein in his spare time wrote four ground-breaking essays in the field of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics that were published in the Annalen der Physik, the leading German physics journal.
Many people have recognized the impossibility of such a feat, including Einstein himself, and therefore Einstein has led people to believe that many of these ideas came to him in his sleep, out of the blue,[2]because indeed that is the only logical explanation of how an admittedly inept bureaucrat could have written such documents at the age of 26 without any real education.
These are the papers that history has come to call the Annus Mirabilis Papers:
His paper on the particulate nature of light put forward the idea that certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect, could be simply understood from the postulate that light interacts with matter as discrete "packets" (quanta) of energy, an idea that had been introduced by Max Planck in 1900[9] as a purely mathematical manipulation, and which seemed to contradict contemporary wave theories of light. The only difference in his work of 1900 and Einstein's work of 1905 was that Einstein limited himself to talking about one particular type of energy -- light energy. But the principles and equations governing the process in general had been deduced by Planck in 1900. Einstein himself admitted that the obvious conclusion of Planck's work was that light also existed in discrete packets of energy. Thus, nothing in this paper of Einstein's was original. This was the only work of Einstein's that he himself pronounced as "revolutionary".
His paper on Brownian motion explained the random movement of very small objects as direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory. The movement had first been observed by the Scottish botanist Robert Brown in 1827.[10] The explanation of this phenomenon has to do with the Kinetic Theory of Matter, and it was the American Josiah Gibbs and the Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann who first explained this occurrence,[11]not Albert Einstein. In fact, the mathematical equation describing the motion contains the famous Boltzmann constant, k.[12] Between these two men, they had explained by the 1890s everything in Einstein's 1905 paper regarding Brownian motion.
His paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies proposed the radical theory of special relativity, cribbed from Lorentz and Poincaré,[13] which showed that the independence of an observer's state of motion on the observed speed of light requires fundamental changes to the notion of simultaneity. The consequences of this include the time-space frame of a moving body slowing down and contracting (in the direction of motion) relative to the frame of the observer. This paper also argued that the idea of a ‘luminiferous ether’- one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time- was superfluous.
In his paper on the equivalence of matter and energy (previously considered to be distinct concepts), Einstein published the equations of special relativity that later became the most famous expression in all of science: E = mc2, suggesting that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy. That there was an equivalence between mass and energy had been shown in the laboratory in the 1890s by both J. J. Thomson of Cambridge and by W. Kaufmann in Göttingen.[14] In 1900, Poincaré‚ had shown that there was a mass relationship for all forms of energy, not just electromagnetic energy.[15] Yet, the most probable source of Einstein's plagiarism was Friedrich Hasenöhrl, one of the most brilliant, yet unappreciated physicists of the era.[16]
All four papers are today recognized as tremendous achievements—and hence 1905 is known as Einstein's "Wonderful Year". At the time, however, they were not noticed by most physicists as being important, and many of those who did notice them rejected them outright. Some of this work—such as the theory of light quanta—remained controversial for years. At the age of 26, having studied under Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics, Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. His dissertation was entitled "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions."
Zionism
Einstein was a cultural Zionist. In 1931, The Macmillan Company published About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein. Querido, an Amsterdam publishing house, collected eleven of Einstein's essays into a 1933 book entitled Mein Weltbild, translated to English as The World as I See It; Einstein's foreword dedicates the collection "to the Jews of Germany". In the face of Germany's rising militarism Einstein wrote and spoke for peace.[16]
Einstein was one of the authors of a 1948 letter to the New York Times criticizing Menachem Begin's Revisionist Herut (Freedom) Party for the Deir Yassin massacre.[18] Einstein served on the Board of Governors of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In his Will of 1950, Einstein bequeathed literary rights to his writings to The Hebrew University, where many of his original documents are held in the Albert Einstein Archives.[18] When President Chaim Weizmann died in 1952, Einstein was asked to be Israel's second president but he declined. He wrote: "I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it."[19]
The Nobel Prize
In 1921 Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". This refers to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect: On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, which was well supported by the experimental evidence by that time. The presentation speech began by mentioning "his theory of relativity [which had] been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles [and] also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time."[18] As per their divorce settlement, Einstein gave the Nobel prize money to his first wife, Mileva Marić.
Einstein traveled to New York City in the United States for the first time on April 2, 1921. When asked where he got his scientific ideas, Einstein explained that he believed scientific work best proceeds from an examination of physical reality and a search for underlying axioms, with consistent explanations that apply in all instances and avoid contradicting each other. He also recommended theories with visualizable results.
Static Universe vs. the Big Bang
Albert Einstein believed in the Static Universe Theory enough that he incorporated a made-up “cosmological constant” in his Theory of Relativity that would supposedly keep the universe from collapsing.[20] His theory otherwise predicted that gravity should pull everything in the universe together, faster and faster, until the eventual crash caused total destruction.[21]
Einstein’s convenient constant was intended to represent an unknown force that was somehow pushing the universe apart, overpowering the effects of gravity. Unfortunately, there was no logical justification for the constant other than to ensure the status quo of an eternally unchanging universe.
In 1922, Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann tried to challenge Einstein’s constant. He suggested the universe of Einstein’s theory wouldn’t need the constant if it were expanding instead of static.[22] The hugely over-rated Einstein publicly ridiculed this idea, and Friedmann was ignored and soon forgotten- especially after he died abruptly of typhoid fever in 1925 before he could fully publicize and defend his ideas.
However, a few years later, Georges Lemaître of Belgium independently came up with a similar, better-developed theory of an expanding universe. Lemaître embodied a surprising combination of science and religion- he was both a physicist and a priest- and explained: “There were two ways of arriving at the truth. I decided to follow them both.”[23]
Lemaître’s concept started with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (though eliminating the bogus constant) and stated that for Einstein’s theory to work there must have been a moment of creation. In Lemaître’s model, the universe started as a compact mass that exploded outward, and it explained the radioactive decay that had already been observed in the cosmos.[23]
When the priest-physicist told Einstein about it at a 1927 physics conference in Brussels, Einstein publicly rebuked him: “Your calculations are correct, but your physics are abominable.”[7] Einstein actually coined the term ‘Big Bang’ as he lengthily derided the idea- like most scientists at the time he still couldn’t accept the idea of an evolving universe. Lemaître was so disheartened by Einstein’s out-of-hand remarks that he stopped circulating his idea.
By 1929 astronomer Edwin Hubble provided concrete physical proof that most galaxies so far observed were retreating from the Milky Way.[24] Reversing the movement of the retreating galaxies suggested that at some point in the past all galaxies were right on top of each other- and Hubble’s measurements suggested that the universe must have started in a condensed state that expanded outward, and continues to do so.
In 1931 Einstein visited Hubble at his Mount Wilson Observatory in California, and on February 3rd, he admitted publicly to journalists covering the event that he had been wrong about the static universe and that Lemaître and Friedmann had been right.[7] He now backed the expanding universe model, and later said his “cosmological constant” had been the biggest blunder of his career, while intimating that he was the original author of the “Big Bang Theory.”[14]
Plagiarism Charges
In some cases, plagiarism can be explained away as a simple slip-up. For Albert Einstein, however, lifting the ideas of others seemed to be second nature.
Today, Albert Einstein is revered as the greatest genius of the 20th century. His wrinkled countenance and frazzled gray hair have become the symbol of scientific brilliance, and the equation E=mc2 has become the apogee of scientific and intellectual perfection. Over the years, he built a career both physicists and laymen admired -- teaching awards, a long list of publications, a Nobel Prize and a lecture series named in his honor.[25] Yet, there seems to be ample evidence that the “Father of Modern Science” was nothing but a very intelligent con man, embroidering his achievements and plagiarizing the work and research of many others.[26]
The most appalling evidence against Einstein is that one of the most famous mathematical equations in the world, E=mc2, was not originally published by Einstein. According to Umberto Bartocci, a professor at the University of Perugia and a historian of mathematics, this famous equation was first published by Olinto De Pretto two years prior to Einstein’s publishing of the equation.[27] In 1903 De Pretto published his equation in the scientific magazine Atte[28] and in 1904 it was republished by the Royal Science Institute of Veneto. Einstein’s research was not published until 1905.[29] Einstein was well versed in Italian and even lived in Northern Italy at the time.[2]
Einstein’s many supporters and contacts conspired to pass over the original inventor of the equation and to give credit to someone who claims to have derived it after the equation and its derivation had been published.[26] The equation “E=mc2″ should rightfully be called the “De Pretto Equation” not the “Einstein Equation.”
This was not the end of his plagiarism. Einstein heavily borrowed from the work of Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré in formulating the theory of special relativity. Elements of Einstein’s 1905 paper paralleled parts of a 1904 paper by Lorentz and a contemporary paper by Poincaré. Among the most blatant borrowings is a 180-word passage from the Lorentz paper that is appropriated almost verbatim, down to the random examples, the conjunctions, and the commas. Einstein never cites the paper.[29] Einstein doesn't stop there. On the following page, he takes more than 350 words from the Poincaré paper. Later in the same essay, along with copying still more sentences from Poincaré, Einstein pilfers a good-size paragraph from De Pretto’s 1903 Atte article.[28]
Although Einstein admitted to reading earlier papers by the two, he claimed not to have seen these later works before writing the 1905 paper.[2] One very irregular fact is that the 1905 paper on special relativity had no references or citations at all, suggesting that Einstein was consciously misleading his peers.[29]
On November 20, 1915, David Hilbert submitted an article containing the field equations for general relativity with proofs in Göttingen, Germany.[31] On November 25, 1915, Einstein presented his paper in Berlin, Germany.[30] On November 18, Hilbert received a letter from Einstein thanking him for sending him a copy of the draft of the treatise Hilbert was to deliver on the 20th.[32] So, in fact, Hilbert had sent a copy of his work, at least two weeks in advance, to Einstein before either of the two men delivered their lectures, however, Einstein did not send Hilbert an advance copy of his. Incredibly, Hilbert’s work was soon to become “Einstein’s work.”
The idea that light had a finite speed was proven by Michelson and Morley decades before Einstein.[33] Hendrik Lorentz determined the equations showing relativistic time and length contractions which become significant as the speed of light is approached. These gentlemen along with David Hilbert and Olinto De Pretto have been erased from history so that Einstein could be given the credit for what they had done.
In 1927, H. Thirring wrote ‘H. Poincaré had already completely solved the problem of time dilation several years before the appearance of Einstein’s first work in 1905.’[34] Sir Edmund Whittaker, in his detailed physics survey, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Volume II, (1953), included a chapter entitled "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz". Whittaker thoroughly documented the development of the theory, documenting the authentic history and demonstrating through reference to primary source that Einstein deserved no credit for the vast majority of the theory. When questioned, Einstein offered no counterpoint to the facts published in Whittaker’s famous book.[35]
De Pretto published his equation twice before Einstein and was ignored each time. David Hilbert’s work on the equations for Special Relativity was submitted for publication before Einstein and was, in fact, sent to Einstein as correspondence. Einstein later claimed credit for the equations which Hilbert derived.
Einstein’s long list of literary transgressions is troubling enough, but even more worrisome is his ability to get away with it for so long. He did write a personal note to Hilbert in 1943, just before his death, claiming that, “It is not my intention to claim the work of others…”.[2] [36]
Death
References
[1] Clark, R.W. (1984), Einstein: The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York.
[2] Einstein, A. (1945). Albert Einstein Autobiographical Notes, Open Court, Chicago, (1979).
[3] Goodman, Ellen, “Out from the Shadows of 'Great' Men”, The Boston Globe, Op-Ed Page 15, March 15, 1990.
[4] Toremel-Ploetz, Senta, "Mileva Einstein Maric, the woman who did Einstein's mathematics", Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 13, no. 5 (1990).
[5 ] “Mileva Einstein Maric is the coauthor of "The Theory of Relativity"with Albert Einstein”. http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/mileva.htm
[6] Pais, Abram, "Subtle is the Lord…- The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein", Oxford University Press, 1982.
[7] "Albert Einstein," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007, http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
[8] Lightman, Alan and Cohen, Jesse, The Best American Science Writing 2005 , ISBN-13: 9780641829918, Harper Collins Publishers, September 2005
[9] Planck, Max, And Wills, A P (Translated By), Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics, Dover Publications,03/1998 ISBN-13: 9780486697307 ISBN: 0486697304
[10] "Brown, Robert Brown." WordNet 1.7.1. Princeton University, 2001. Answers.com 20 Oct. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/brown-robert-brown
[11] Wheeler, Lynde, Phelps. “Josiah Willard Gibbs - the History of a Great Mind.” Ox Bow Press. ISBN 1-881987-11-6. (1951)
[12] Boltzmann, Ludwig, Lectures on Gas Theory, Dover Publications, 1995, ISBN-13: 9780486684550 ISBN: 0486684555
[13] Keswani, G.H. (1965), "Origin and Concept of Relativity", Brit. J. Phil. Soc. 15:286-306.
[14] http://nobelprize.org/physics/educational/laureates/1906.html
[15] Poincaré, J.H. (1905), "The Principles of Mathematical Physics", The Monist, vol. XV, no. 1, January 1905; from an address delivered before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences, St Louis, September 1904
[16] Einstein, A., Nathan, A., Norden, H., “Einstein on Peace”, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1960
[17] Rowe, D. E., “Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb”, Rowe & Schulmann, 2007, ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12094-2
[18] Albert Einstein Archives Online, 2007, http://www.alberteinstein.info/
[19] Princeton Online, 1995, http://www.princetonhistory.org/museum_alberteinstein.cfm
[20] Einstein, A. (1908). In Albert Einstein, Vol. 2, J. Stached, Ed., Princeton University Press, (1989).
[21] Hawking, S., "Person of the Century", Time Magazine, December 31, 1999.
[22] Ridpath Ian, “Friedmann Universe”, A Dictionary of Astronomy, 1997, originally published by Oxford University Press 1997.
[23] "Big Bang Theory," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
[24] Who's Who in the Twentieth Century, “Edwin Powell Hubble”, Oxford University Press, 1999.
[25] Khoon, Koh Aik, College Student Journal, March 1, 2007.
[26] Bjerknes, C.J. (2002), Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, XTX Inc., Dowers Grove.
[27] http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/st/depretto.htm
[28] DePretto, O. (1903). Atti (Atte).
[29] Einstein, A. (1905). Ann. Physik 17:639.
[30] Clark, R.W. (1984), Einstein: The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York.
[31] http://nobelprize.org/physics/educational/relativity/history-1.html
[32] Mosley, Ian (2006), Albert Einstein: Plagiarist and Fraud, European Unity and Rights Organization, Civil Rights
[33] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/morley.html
[34] http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0406/0406009v1.pdf
[35] Carroll, R., "Einstein's E = mc2 'was Italian's idea'", The Guardian, November 11, 1999.
[36] Moody, R., Jr (2001), "Plagiarism Personified", Mensa Bull. 442(Feb):5.
[37] O'Connor, J.J. & Robertson, E.F. (1997), "Albert Einstein", The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews
External links
- Einstein Archives Online
- The Other Einstein by Joe Sobran
- Albert Einstein: Plagiarist and Fraud
- "A. Einstein: Image and Impact"
- "Einstein's Big Idea" NOVA television documentary
- Nobelprize.org: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
- Works of Albert Einstein
