Collected & Compiled by (Exclusive For News & Views Readers)
Collected & Compiled by (Exclusive For News & Views Readers)
Collected & Compiled by (Exclusive For News & Views Readers)
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later
the family moved to Munich and he began his schooling there at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later,
they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he
entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and
mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he
was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss
Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.
During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable
work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor
Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in
the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914
and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and
emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He
became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.
After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was
offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr.
Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination
to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way
to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.
At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and
his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with
the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and
problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the
Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low
radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.
In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory
of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the
general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of
radiation and statistical mechanics.
In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he
continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with
this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum
theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with
atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.
After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics,
taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.
Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include
Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General
Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The
Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War?
(1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.
Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from
many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and
the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific
academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work,
including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the
Franklin Institute in 1935.
Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation,
music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a
daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his
cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.
Albert Einstein (German pronunciation (help·info)) (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a
German-born theoretical physicist who is widely considered one of the greatest physicists of all
[1][2]
time. While best known for the theory of relativity (and specifically mass-energy equivalence,
2
E=mc ), he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his 1905 (Annus Mirabilis)
explanation of the photoelectric effect and "for his services to Theoretical Physics". In popular
culture, the name "Einstein" has become synonymous with great intelligence and genius. Einstein
was named Time magazine's "Man of the Century."
He was known for many scientific investigations, among which were: his special theory of
relativity which stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the
electromagnetic field, his general theory of relativity which extended the principle of relativity to
include gravitation, relativistic cosmology, capillary action, critical opalescence, classical
problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory,
leading to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules; atomic transition probabilities,
the quantum theory of a monatomic gas, the concept of the photon, the theory of radiation,
including stimulated emission; the attempt to develop a unified field theory, and the
geometrization of physics.
Biography
Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, to a Jewish family, in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. His
father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman who later ran an electrochemical works, and his
mother was Pauline née Koch. They were married in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.
At his birth, Albert's mother was reputedly frightened that her infant's head was so large and
oddly shaped. Though the size of his head appeared to be less remarkable as he grew older, it's
evident from photographs of Einstein that his head was disproportionately large for his body
throughout his life, a trait regarded as "benign macrocephaly" in large-headed individuals with no
related disease or cognitive deficits. His parents also worried about his intellectual development
as a child due to his initial language delay (see the Speculation and Controversy section below)
and his lack of fluency until the age of nine, though he was one of the top students in his
elementary school.
In 1880, shortly after Einstein's birth the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle
founded a company manufacturing electrical equipment (Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein &
Cie). This company provided the first lighting for the Oktoberfest as well as some cabling in the
suburb of Schwabing.
Albert's family members were all non-observant Jews and he attended a Catholic elementary
school. At the insistence of his mother, he was given violin lessons. Though he initially disliked
the lessons, and eventually discontinued them, he would later take great solace in Mozart's violin
sonatas.
When Einstein was five, his father showed him a small pocket compass, and Einstein realized
that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience
as one of the most revelatory events of his life. He built models and mechanical devices for fun
and showed great mathematical ability early on.
In 1889, a medical student named Max Talmud (later: Talmey), who regularly visited the
[3]
Einsteins, introduced Einstein to key science and philosophy texts, including Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason.
Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received a relatively progressive education.
In 1891, he taught himself Euclidean geometry from a school booklet and began to study
calculus; Einstein realized the power of deductive reasoning from Euclid's Elements, which
[3]
Einstein called the "holy little geometry book" (given by Max Talmud). At school, Einstein
clashed with authority and resented the school regimen, believing that the spirit of learning and
creative thought were lost in such endeavors as strict rote learning.
From 1894, following the failure of Hermann Einstein's electrochemical business, the Einsteins
moved to Milan and proceeded to Pavia after a few months. Einstein's first scientific work, called
"The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields", was written contemporaneously for
one of his uncles. Albert remained in Munich to finish his schooling, but only completed one term
before leaving the gymnasium in the spring of 1895 to join his family in Pavia. He quit a year and
a half before the final examinations, convincing the school to let him go with a medical note from
[4]
a friendly doctor, but this meant that he had no secondary-school certificate. That same year, at
age 16, he performed a famous thought experiment by trying to visualize what it would be like to
ride alongside a light beam. He realized that, according to Maxwell's equations, light waves would
obey the principle of relativity: the speed of the light would always be constant, no matter what
the velocity of the observer. This conclusion would later become one of the two postulates of
special relativity.
Rather than pursuing electrical engineering as his father intended for him, he followed the advice
of a family friend and applied at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich in 1895. Without a
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 6
school certificate he had to take an admission exam, which he – at the age of 16 being the
youngest participant – did not pass. He had preferred travelling in northern Italy over the required
preparations for the exam. Still, he easily passed the science part, but failed in general
knowledge.
After that he was sent to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school. He lodged with Professor
Jost Winteler's family and became enamoured with Sofia Marie-Jeanne Amanda Winteler,
commonly referred to as Sofie or Marie, their daughter and his first sweetheart. Einstein's sister,
[5]
Maja, who was perhaps his closest confidant, was to later marry their son, Paul. While there, he
studied Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and received his diploma in September 1896. Einstein
subsequently enrolled at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in October and moved to Zurich, while
Marie moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post. The same year, he renounced his
Württemberg citizenship to avoid military service.
In the spring of 1896, Mileva Marić started as a medical student at the University of Zurich, but
after a term switched to the Federal Polytechnic Institute. She was the only woman to study in
that year for the same diploma as Einstein. Marić's relationship with Einstein developed into
romance over the next few years, though his mother objected because she was too old, not
[6]
Jewish, and physically defective.
In 1900, Einstein was granted a teaching diploma by the Federal Polytechnic Institute. Einstein
then submitted his first paper to be published, on the capillary forces of a straw, titled
"Consequences of the observations of capillarity phenomena" ("Folgerungen aus den
[7]
Capillaritätserscheinungen") . In this paper his quest for a unified physical law becomes
apparent, which he followed throughout his life. Through his friend Michele Besso, Einstein was
presented with the works of Ernst Mach, and would later consider him "the best sounding board
in Europe" for physical ideas. Einstein and Marić had a daughter, Lieserl Einstein, born in
January 1902. Her fate is unknown; some believe she died in infancy, while others believe she
was given out for adoption.
Einstein could not find a teaching post upon graduation, mostly because his brashness as a
young man had apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate helped him
[8]
obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. His
[9]
main responsibility was to evaluate patent applications relating to electromagnetic devices. He
also learned how to discern the essence of applications despite sometimes poor descriptions,
and was taught by the director how "to express [him]self correctly". He occasionally corrected
their design errors while evaluating the practicality of their work.
His friend from Zurich, Michele Besso, also moved to Bern and took a job at the patent office, and
he became an important sounding board. Einstein also joined with two friends he made in Bern,
Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, to create a weekly discussion club on science and
philosophy, which they grandly and jokingly named "The Olympia Academy." Their readings
included Poincare, Mach, Hume, and others who influenced the development of the special
theory of relativity.
Einstein married Mileva Marić on January 6, 1903. Einstein's marriage to Marić, who was a
mathematician, was both a personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred to Mileva as "a
creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am". Ronald W. Clark, a
biographer of Einstein, claimed that Einstein depended on the distance that existed in his
marriage to Mileva in order to have the solitude necessary to accomplish his work; he required
intellectual isolation. In an obituary of Einstein Abram Joffe wrote: "The author of [the papers of
1905] was… a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern, Einstein-Marić" which has been taken as
evidence of a collaborative relationship. However, most probably Joffe referred to Einstein-Marić,
because he believed that it was a Swiss custom at the time to append the spouse's surname to
[10]
the husband's name. The extent of her influence on Einstein's work is a controversial and
debated question.
In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office had been made permanent, though he was
[11]
passed over for promotion until he had "fully mastered machine technology". He obtained his
doctorate under Alfred Kleiner at the University of Zürich after submitting his thesis "A new
determination of molecular dimensions" ("Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen") in
1905.
During 1905, in his spare time, he wrote four articles that participated in the foundation of modern
physics, without much scientific literature he could refer to or many fellow scientists with whom he
could discuss the theories. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion,
the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes. Only the paper on the
photoelectric effect would be mentioned by the Nobel committee in the award; at the time of the
award, it had the most unchallenged experimental evidence behind it, although the Nobel
committee expressed the opinion that Einstein's other work would be confirmed in due course.
Some might regard the award for the photoelectric effect ironic, not only because Einstein is far
better-known for relativity, but also because the photoelectric effect is a quantum phenomenon,
and Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would take.
Max Planck presents Einstein with the Max-Planck medal, Berlin June 28 1929
Einstein submitted this series of papers to the "Annalen der Physik". They are commonly referred
to as the "Annus Mirabilis Papers" (from Annus mirabilis, Latin for 'year of wonders'). The year
2005 has been named the World Year of Physics in recognition of the 100th anniversary of this
work.
The first paper, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation
of Light", ("Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen
Gesichtspunkt") was specifically cited for his Nobel Prize. In this paper, Einstein extended
Planck's hypothesis (E = hν) of discrete energy elements to his own hypothesis that
electromagnetic energy is absorbed or emitted by matter in quanta of hν (where h is Planck's
constant and ν is the frequency of the light), proposing a new law
to account for the photoelectric effect, as well as other properties of photoluminescence and
photoionization. In later papers, Einstein used this law to describe the Volta effect (1906), the
production of secondary cathode rays (1909) and the high-frequency limit of Bremsstrahlung
(1911). Einstein's key contribution is his assertion that energy quantization is a general, intrinsic
property of light, rather than a particular constraint of the interaction between matter and light, as
23
Planck believed. Another result of this paper was Einstein's excellent estimate (6.17 10 ) of
23
Avogadro's number (6.02 10 ). However, Einstein does not propose that light is a particle in
this paper; the "photon" concept was not proposed until 1909 (see below).
His second article in 1905, named "On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of
Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", ("Über die von der
molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten
suspendierten Teilchen") covered his study of Brownian motion, and provided empirical evidence
for the existence of atoms. Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but
physicists and chemists debated whether atoms were real entities. Einstein's statistical
discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an
ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school, later told
Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to belief in atoms by Einstein's complete
[12]
explanation of Brownian motion. Brownian motion was also explained by Louis Bachelier in
1900.
Einstein's third paper that year, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ("Zur Elektrodynamik
bewegter Körper"), was published in June 1905. This paper introduced the special theory of
relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy which was consistent with
electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity. While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to
Mileva about "our work on relative motion", and this has led some to speculate that Mileva played
a part in its development.
A few historians believe that Einstein was aware that Henri Poincaré had already published the
equations of relativity, a few weeks before Einstein submitted his paper. Most believe their work
was independent and varied in many crucial ways, namely, regarding the "ether" (Einstein denied
ether, Poincaré considered it superfluous). Similarly, it is debatable if he knew the 1904 paper of
Hendrik Lorentz which contained most of the theory and to which Poincaré referred. Most
historians, however, believe that Einsteinian relativity varied in many key ways from other
theories of relativity which were circulating at the time, and that many of the questions about
priority stem from the misleading trope of portraying Einstein as a genius working in total
[13]
isolation. Although Einstein discussed physics with Mileva, there is no solid evidence that she
made any significant contribution to his work.
In a fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", ("Ist die
Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?"), published late in 1905, he showed
that from relativity's axioms, it is possible to deduce the famous equation which shows the
equivalence between matter and energy. The energy equivalence (E) of some amount of mass
2
(m) is that mass times the speed of light (c) squared: E = mc . However, it was Poincaré who in
2
1900 first published the "energy equation" in slightly different form, namely as: m = E / c — see
also relativity priority dispute.
Middle years
In 1906, Einstein was promoted to technical examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was
licensed in Bern, Switzerland, as a Privatdozent. During this time, Einstein described why the sky
is blue in his paper on critical opalescence, which shows the cumulative effect of scattering of
[14]
light by individual molecules in the atmosphere. In 1911, Einstein became first associate
professor at the University of Zurich, and shortly afterwards full professor at the German section
of the Charles University of Prague. While at Prague, Einstein published a paper calling on
astronomers to test two predictions of his developing theory of relativity: a bending of light in a
gravitational field, measurable at a solar eclipse; and a redshift of solar spectral lines relative to
spectral lines produced on Earth's surface. A young German astronomer, Erwin Freundlich
worked with Einstein and made other astronomers around the world aware of Einstein's
[15]
astronomical tests. In 1912, Einstein returned to Zurich in order to become full professor at the
ETH Zurich. At that time, he worked closely with the mathematician Marcel Grossmann, who
introduced him to Riemannian geometry. In 1912, Einstein started to refer to time as the fourth
dimension (although H.G. Wells had done this earlier, in 1895 in The Time Machine).
In 1914, just before the start of World War I, Einstein settled in Berlin as professor at the
University of Berlin and became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He took
German citizenship. From 1914 to 1933, he served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Physics in Berlin. He also held the position of extraordinary professor at the Leiden University
from 1920 until 1946, where he regularly gave guest lectures.
In 1917, Einstein published "On the Quantum Mechanics of Radiation" ("Zur Quantentheorie der
Strahlung," Physkalische Zeitschrift 18, 121–128). This article introduced the concept of
stimulated emission, the physical principle that allows light amplification in the laser. He also
published a paper that year that used the general theory of relativity to model the behavior of the
entire universe, setting the stage for modern cosmology. In this work Einstein created the
[16]
cosmological constant, which he later considered his "biggest blunder".
On May 14, 1904, Albert and Mileva's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born. Their second son,
Eduard Einstein, was born on July 28, 1910. Hans Albert became a professor of hydraulic
engineering at University of California, Berkeley, having little interaction with his father, but
sharing his love for sailing and music. Eduard, the younger brother, intended to practice as a
Freudian analyst but was institutionalized for schizophrenia and died in an asylum. Einstein
divorced Mileva on February 14, 1919, and married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal (born Einstein:
Löwenthal was the surname of her first husband, Max) on June 2, 1919. Elsa was Albert's first
cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally). She had nursed him after he had suffered
a partial nervous breakdown combined with a severe stomach ailment; there were no children
from this marriage.
General relativity
In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of
Sciences on a new theory of gravity, known as general relativity. The final lecture ended with his
[17]
introduction of an equation that replaced Newton's law of gravity, the Einstein field equation.
This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed.
In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's law of gravity) but is a
consequence of the curvature of space-time.
Einstein's published papers on general relativity were not available outside of Germany due to the
war. News of Einstein's theory reached astronomers in England and America via Dutch physicists
Hendrik Lorentz, Paul Ehrenfest and Willem de Sitter. Fascinated with the new theory Arthur
[18]
Stanley Eddington became a leading proponent and popularizer of relativity. Most astronomers
did not like Einstein's geometrization of gravity and believed that his light bending and
gravitational redshift predictions would not be correct. In 1917, astronomers at Mount Wilson
observatory in southern California published results of spectroscopic analysis of the solar
[19]
spectrum that seemed to indicate that there was no gravitational redshift in the Sun. In 1918,
astronomers at Lick Observatory in northern California obtained photographs of a solar eclipse.
After the end of the war, they announced results claiming that Einstein's general relativity
prediction of light bending was wrong; but they never published their results due to large probable
[20]
errors.
"Einstein theory triumphs," declared the New York Times on November 10, 1919.
In May 1919, during British solar eclipse expeditions (carried out in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil and
Principe, an island of the west coast of Africa) Arthur Eddington took measurements of the
bending of star light as it passed close to the Sun, resulting in star positions appearing farther
away from the Sun. This effect is called gravitational lensing and the positions of the stars
[21]
observed were twice that which would be predicted by Newtonian physics. These observations
match the Field Equation of general relativity. Eddington announced that the results confirmed
Einstein's prediction and The Times reported that confirmation on November 7 of that year, with
the headline: "Revolution in science – New theory of the Universe – Newtonian ideas
overthrown". Nobel laureate Max Born viewed General Relativity as the "greatest feat of human
thinking about nature"; fellow laureate Paul Dirac called it "probably the greatest scientific
[22]
discovery ever made". These comments and resulting publicity cemented Einstein's fame. He
became world-famous – an unusual achievement for a scientist.
Many scientists were still unconvinced for various reasons ranging from the scientific
(disagreement with Einstein's interpretation of the experiments, belief in the ether or that an
absolute frame of reference was necessary) to the psycho-social (conservatism, anti-Semitism).
In Einstein's view, most of the objections were from experimentalists with very little understanding
[23]
of the theory involved. Einstein's public fame which followed the 1919 article created
[24]
resentment among these scientists, some of which lasted well into the 1930s.
On April 2 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture on his new Theory of Relativity, the
same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Though he is now most famous for his work on
relativity, it was for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the Prize, as his
work on general relativity was still disputed. The Nobel committee decided that citing his less-
contested theory in the Prize would gain more acceptance from the scientific community.
Copenhagen interpretation
Einstein and Niels Bohr sparred over quantum theory during the 1920s. Photo taken by Paul
Ehrenfest during their visit to Leiden in December 1925
In 1909, Einstein presented a paper "The Development of Our Views on the Composition and
Essence of Radiation" ("Über die Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die
Konstitution der Strahlung") on the history of luminiferous aether and, more importantly, on the
quantization of light. In this and an earlier 1909 paper, Einstein showed that the energy quanta
introduced by Max Planck also carried a well-defined momentum and acted in many respects as
if they were independent, point-like particles. This paper marks the introduction of the modern
"photon" concept (although the term itself was introduced much later, in a 1926 paper by Gilbert
N. Lewis). Even more importantly, Einstein showed that light must be simultaneously a wave and
a particle, a revolutionary idea at the time. However, his own proposal for a solution - that
Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic fields be modified to allow wave solutions that are bound
to singularities of the field - was never developed, although it may have influenced Louis de
Broglie's pilot wave hypothesis for quantum mechanics.
Determinism
Beginning in the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new theory of
quantum mechanics, Einstein voiced his objections to the Copenhagen interpretation of the new
equations. His opposition in this regard would continue all his life. In a 1926 letter to Max Born,
Einstein made the following remark:
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing.
The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at
any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
To this, Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on quantum theory, retorted, "Stop telling God what He
[25]
must do!" Einstein's deterministic point of view is manifested in the 1935 EPR paradox .
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 14
There is a case to be made, however, for a quite different view of Einstein's objections to
quantum orthodoxy. An emphatic comment on the matter was made by his contemporary
[26]
Wolfgang Pauli.
…I was unable to recognize Einstein whenever you talked about him in either your letter or your
manuscript. It seemed to me as if you had erected some dummy Einstein for yourself, which you
then knocked down with great pomp. In particular Einstein does not consider the concept of
'determinism' to be as fundamental as it is frequently held to be (as he told me emphatically many
times) …he disputes that he uses as a criterion for the admissibility of a theory the question "Is it
rigorously deterministic?"… he was not at all annoyed with you, but only said that you were a
person who will not listen.
Many of Einstein's comments indicate his belief that quantum mechanics is 'incomplete'. This was
[27]
first asserted in the famous 1935 Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen (EPR paradox) paper, and it
[28]
appears again in the 1949 book Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist. The "EPR" paper —
entitled "Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?" —
concluded: "While we have thus shown that the wave function does not provide a complete
description of the physical reality, we left open the question of whether or not such a description
exists. We believe, however, that such a theory is possible."
Rather than considering a system which comprises only a radioactive atom (and its process of
transformation), one considers a system which includes also the means for ascertaining the
radioactive transformation — for example, a Geiger-counter with automatic registration
mechanism. Let this include a registration-strip, moved by a clockwork, upon which a mark is
made by tripping the counter. True, from the point of view of quantum mechanics this total system
is very complex and its configuration space is of very high dimension. But there is in principle no
objection to treating this entire system from the standpoint of quantum mechanics. Here too the
theory determines the probability of each configuration of all coordinates for every time instant. If
one considers all configurations of the coordinates, for a time large compared with the average
decay time of the radioactive atom, there will be (at most) one such registration-mark on the
paper strip. To each co-ordinate- configuration must correspond a definite position of the mark on
the paper strip. But, inasmuch as the theory yields only the relative probability of the thinkable
coordinate-configurations, it also offers only relative probabilities for the positions of the mark on
the paperstrip, but no definite location for this mark.
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 15
Einstein continues:
If we attempt [to work with] the interpretation that the quantum-theoretical description is to be
understood as a complete description of the individual system, we are forced to the interpretation
that the location of the mark on the strip is nothing which belongs to the system per se, but that
the existence of that location is essentially dependent upon the carrying out of an observation
made on the registration-strip. Such an interpretation is certainly by no means absurd from a
purely logical point of standpoint; yet there is hardly anyone who would be inclined to consider it
seriously. For, in the macroscopic sphere it simply is considered certain that one must adhere to
the program of a realistic description in space and time; whereas in the sphere of microscopic
situations, one is more readily inclined to give up, or at least to modify, this program."
(emphasis due to Einstein)
Einstein never rejected probabilistic techniques and thinking, in and of themselves. Einstein
[30]
himself was a great statistician, using statistical analysis in his works on Brownian motion and
photoelectricity and in papers published before 1905; Einstein had even discovered Gibbs
ensembles. According to the majority of physicists, however, he believed that indeterminism
constituted a criteria for strong objection to a physical theory. Pauli's testimony contradicts this,
and Einstein's own statements indicate a focus on incompleteness, as his major concern.
More recent times have given us another twist to this business. John Stewart Bell discovered
further interesting results (Bell's Theorem and Bell's inequality) in his researches on the Einstein,
Podolsky, and Rosen paper. There is a divergence in thinking as to the conclusions derivable
from this, in conjunction with the EPR analysis. According to Bell, quantum nonlocality has been
established, while others see the death of determinism.
Summary
Whatever his inner convictions, Einstein agreed that the quantum theory was the best
[citation needed]
available, but he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e., either more
deterministic or one that could more fundamentally explain the reason for probabilities in a logical
way. He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things",
nor could he abandon the belief that there are no explanations that contain contradictions, which
had driven him to his successes explaining photons, relativity, atoms, and gravity.
Bose-Einstein statistics
In 1924, Einstein received a short paper from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath
Bose describing light as a gas of photons and asking for Einstein's assistance in publication.
Einstein realized that the same statistics could be applied to atoms, and published an article in
German (then the lingua franca of physics) which described Bose's model and explained its
implications. Bose-Einstein statistics now describe any assembly of these indistinguishable
particles known as bosons. The Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon was predicted in the
1920s by Bose and Einstein, based on Bose's work on the statistical mechanics of photons,
which was then formalized and generalized by Einstein. The first such condensate in alkali gases
was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder,
though Bose-Einstein Condensation has been observed in superfluid Helium-4 since the
[citation needed]
1930s. Einstein's original sketches on this theory were recovered in August 2005 in the
[31]
library of Leiden University.
Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in the development of the Boltzmann distribution, a
mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model although he realized that this was less
significant than the Bose-Einstein model and declined to have his name included on the paper.
Bohr-Einstein debates
Niels Bohr with Albert Einstein at Paul Ehrenfest's home in Leiden (December 1925)
The Bohr-Einstein debates is a popular name given to what was actually a series of
epistemological challenges presented by Albert Einstein against what has come to be called the
standard or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Since Einstein's closest friend
and primary interlocutor in the "school" of Copenhagen was the physicist Niels Bohr, and since it
was Bohr who provided answers to most of the challenges presented by Einstein, what was
actually a friendly and fruitful series of exchanges of ideas has taken on the label of a "debate".
Einstein's position with respect to quantum mechanics is significantly more subtle and open-
minded than it has often been portrayed in technical manuals and popular science articles. Be
that as it may, his constant and powerful criticisms of the quantum "orthodoxy” compelled the
defenders of that orthodoxy to sharpen and refine their understanding of the philosophical and
scientific implications of their own theory.
Einstein's natural reference point, as mentioned above, was always Niels Bohr, as the person
who, more than other members of the School of Copenhagen, was animated by a particular
interest for the philosophical and epistemological aspects of the theory and drew inspiration from
the surprising aspects of the microscopic world in order to present daring hypotheses about
reality and about knowledge, such as his idea of complementarity. These two giants of scientific
thought nurtured a profound respect for each other and they were both extremely attentive to the
acute and penetrating observations of the other. The debate is not only of historical interest: as
we will see Einstein's attacks often provoked reactions on the part of Bohr which called into
question the crucial elements of the formalization of QM and of its interpretation. This articulated
process, in which many other important scientists, from Ehrenfest and Heisenberg to Born and
from Schrödinger to John von Neumann, took part, brought more and more detailed attention on
certain particularly problematic points of the theory.
First stage
As mentioned above, Einstein's position underwent significant modifications over the course of
the years. In the first stage, Einstein refuses to accept quantum indeterminism and seeks to
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 17
demonstrate that the principle of indeterminacy can be violated, suggesting ingenious thought
experiments which should permit the accurate determination of incompatible variables, such as
position and velocity, or to explicitly reveal simultaneously the wave and the particle aspects of
the same process.
The first serious attack by Einstein on the "orthodox" conception took place during the Fifth
Conference of Physics at the Solvay Institute in 1927. Einstein pointed out how it was possible to
take advantage of the (universally accepted) laws of conservation of energy and of impulse
(momentum) in order to obtain information on the state of a particle in a process of interference
which, according to the principle of indeterminacy or that of complementarity, should not be
accessible.
Figure A. A monochromatic beam (one for which all the particles have the same impulse)
encounters a first screen, diffracts, and the diffracted wave encounters a second screen with two
slits resulting in the formation of an interference figure on the background F. As always, it is
assumed that only one particle at a time is able to pass the entire mechanism. From the measure
of the recoil of the screen S1, according to Einstein, one can deduce from which slit the particle
has passed without destroying the wave aspects of the process.
In order to follow his argumentation and to evaluate Bohr's response, it is convenient to refer to
the experimental apparatus illustrated in figure A. A beam of light perpendicular to the X axis
which propagates in the direction z encounters a screen S1 which presents a narrow (with
respect to the wavelength of the ray) slit. After having passed through the slit, the wave function
diffracts with an angular opening that causes it to encounter a second screen S2 which presents
two slits. The successive propagation of the wave results in the formation of the interference
figure on the final screen F.
At the passage through the two slits of the second screen S2, the wave aspects of the process
become essential. In fact, it is precisely the interference between the two terms of the
superposition corresponding to states in which the particle is localized in one of the two slits
which implies that the particle is "guided" preferably into the zones of constructive interference
and cannot end up in a point in the zones of destructive interference (in which the wave function
is nullified). It is also important to note that any experiment designed to evidence the
"corpuscular" aspects of the process at the passage of the screen S2 (which, in this case,
reduces to the determination of which slit the particle has passed through) inevitably destroys the
wave aspects, implies the disappearance of the interference figure and the emergence of two
concentrated spots of diffraction which confirm our knowledge of the trajectory followed by the
particle.
At this point Einstein brings into play the first screen as well and argues as follows: since the
incident particles have velocities (practically) perpendicular to the screen S1, and since it is only
the interaction with this screen that can cause a deflection from the original direction of
propagation, by the law of conservation of impulse which implies that the sum of the impulses of
two systems which interact is conserved, if the incident particle is deviated toward the top, the
screen will recoil toward the bottom and vice-versa. In realistic conditions the mass of the screen
is so heavy that it will remain stationary, but, in principle, it is possible to measure even an
infinitesimal recoil. If we imagine taking the measurement of the impulse of the screen in the
direction X after every single particle has passed, we can know, from the fact that the screen will
be found recoiled toward the top (bottom), if the particle in question has been deviated toward the
bottom (top) and therefore we can know from which slit in S2 the particle has passed. But since
the determination of the direction of the recoil of the screen after the particle has passed cannot
influence the successive development of the process, we will still have an interference figure on
the screen F. The interference takes place precisely because the state of the system is the
superposition of two states whose wave functions are non-zero only near one of the two slits. On
the other hand, if every particle passes through only the slit b or the slit c, then the set of systems
is the statistical mixture of the two states, which means that interference is not possible. If
Einstein is correct, then there is a violation of the principle of indeterminacy.
Figure B. Bohr's representation of Einstein's thought experiment described above. The mobile
window is evidenced in order to underscore the fact that the attempt to know which slit a particle
passes through destroys the interference pattern.
Bohr's response was to illustrate Einstein's idea more clearly via the diagrams in Figures B and
C. Bohr observes that extremely precise knowledge of any (potential) vertical motion of the
screen is an essential presupposition in Einstein's argument. In fact, if its velocity in the direction
X before the passage of the particle is not known with a precision substantially greater than that
induced by the recoil (that is, if it were already moving vertically with an unknown and greater
velocity than that which it derives as a consequence of the contact with the particle), then the
determination of its motion after the passage of the particle would not give the information we
seek. However, Bohr continues, an extremely precise determination of the velocity of the screen,
when one applies the principle of indeterminacy, implies an inevitable imprecision of its position in
the direction X. Before the process even begins, the screen would therefore occupy an
indeterminate position at least to a certain extent (defined by the formalism). Now consider, for
example, the point d in figure A, where there is destructive interference. It's obvious that any
displacement of the first screen would make the lengths of the two paths, a-b-d and a-c-d,
different from those indicated in the figure. If the difference between the two paths varies by half a
wavelength, at point d there will be constructive rather than destructive interference. The ideal
experiment must average over all the possible positions of the screen S1, and, for every position,
there corresponds, for a certain fixed point F, a different type of interference, from the perfectly
destructive to the perfectly constructive. The effect of this averaging is that the pattern of
interference on the screen F will be uniformly grey. Once more, our attempt to evidence the
corpuscular aspects in S2 has destroyed the possibility of interference in F which depends
crucially on the wave aspects.
Figure C. In order to realize Einstein's proposal, it is necessary to replace the first screen in
Figure 1 (S1) with a movable diaphragm which can move vertically such as this proposed by
Bohr.
This argument is correct and convincing. Nevertheless it should be noted that, as Bohr
recognized, for the understanding of this phenomenon "it is decisive that, contrary to genuine
instruments of measurement, these bodies along with the particles would constitute, in the case
under examination, the system to which the quantum-mechanical formalism must apply. With
respect to the precision of the conditions under which one can correctly apply the formalism, it is
essential to include the entire experimental apparatus. In fact, the introduction of any new
apparatus, such as a mirror, in the path of a particle could introduce new effects of interference
which influence essentially the predictions about the results which will be registered at the end."
Further along, Bohr attempts to resolve this ambiguity concerning which parts of the system
should be considered macroscopic and which not:
Bohr's argument about the impossibility of using the apparatus proposed by Einstein to violate the
principle of indeterminacy depends crucially on the fact that a macroscopic system (the screen
S1) obeys quantum laws. On the other hand, Bohr consistently asserted that, in order to illustrate
the microscopic aspects of reality it is necessary to set off a process of amplification which
involves macroscopic apparatuses, whose fundamental characteristic is that of obeying classical
laws and which can be described in classical terms. This ambiguity would later come back in the
form of what is still called today the measurement problem.
Figure D. A wave extended longitudinally passes through a slit which remains open only for a
brief interval of time. Beyond the slit, there is a spatially limited wave in the direction of
propagation.
In many textbook examples and popular discussions of quantum mechanics, the principle of
indeterminacy is explained by reference to the pair of variables position and velocity (or angular
momentum). It is important to note that the wave nature of physical processes implies that there
must exist another relation of indeterminacy: that between time and energy. In order to
comprehend this relation, it is convenient to refer to the experiment illustrated in Figure D, which
results in the preparation of a wave which is limited in spatial extension. Assume that, as
illustrated in the figure, a ray which is extremely extended longitudinally is propagated toward a
screen with a slit furnished with a shutter which remains open only for a very brief interval of time
∆t. Beyond the slit, there will be a wave of limited spatial extension which continues to propagate
toward the right.
A perfectly monochromatic wave (such as a note which cannot be divided into harmonics) is
infinitely spatially extended. In order to have a wave which is limited in spatial extension (which is
technically called a wave packet), several waves of different frequencies must be superimposed
and distributed continuously within a certain interval of frequencies around an average value,
such as ν0;. It then happens that at a certain instant, there exists a spatial region (which
translates with time) in which the contributions of the various fields of the superposition add up
constructively. Nonetheless, according to a precise mathematical theorem, as we move far away
from this region, the phases of the various fields, in any specified point, are distributed casually
and destructive interference is produced. The region in which the wave is non-zero is therefore
spatially limited. It is easy to demonstrate that if the wave has a spatial extension equal to ∆x
(which means, in our example, that the shutter has remained open for a time ∆t = ∆x / v where v
is the velocity of the wave), then the wave contains (or is a superposition of) various
monochromatic waves whose frequencies cover an interval ∆ν which satisfies the relation:
Remembering that in the universal relation of Planck, frequency and energy are proportional:
it follows immediately from the preceding inequality that the particle associated with the wave
should possess an energy which is not perfectly defined (since different frequencies are involved
in the superposition) and consequently there is indeterminacy in energy:
Figure E. Einstein's thought experiment of 1930 as designed by Bohr. It was supposed to prove
the violation of the indeterminacy relation between time and energy.
At the sixth Congress of Solvay in 1930, the indeterminacy relation just discussed was Einstein's
target of attack. His idea contemplates the existence of an experimental apparatus which was
subsequently designed by Bohr in such a way as to emphasize the essential elements and the
key points which he would use in his response.
Einstein considers a box (figure E) containing electromagnetic radiation and a clock which
controls the opening of a shutter which covers a hole made in one of the walls of the box. The
shutter uncovers the hole for a time ∆t which can be chosen arbitrarily. During the opening, we
are to suppose that a photon, from among those inside the box, escapes through the hole. In this
way a wave of limited spatial extension has been created, following the explanation given above.
In order to challenge the indeterminacy relation between time and energy, it is necessary to find a
way to determine with an adequate precision the energy that the photon has brought with it. At
this point, Einstein turns to his celebrated relation between mass and energy of special relativity:
. From this it follows that knowledge of the mass of an object provides a precise
indication about its energy. The argument is therefore very simple: if one weighs the box before
and after the opening of the shutter and if a certain amount of energy has escaped from the box,
the box will be lighter. The variation in mass multiplied by will provide precise knowledge of the
energy emitted. Moreover, the clock will indicate the precise time at which the event of the
particle’s emission took place. Since, in principle, the mass of the box can be determined to an
arbitrary degree of accuracy, the energy emitted can be determined with a precision ∆E as
accurate as one desires. Therefore, the product ∆E∆t can be rendered less than what is implied
by the principle of indeterminacy.
The idea, like all of those advanced by Einstein, is particularly acute and the argument seemed
unassailable. It's important to consider the impact of all of these exchanges on the people
involved at the time. Leon Rosenfeld, a scientist who had participated in the Congress, described
the event several years later:
It was a real shock for Bohr...who, at first, could not think of a solution. For the entire
evening he was extremely agitated, and he continued passing from one scientist to
another, seeking to persuade them that it could not be the case, that it would have been
the end of physics if Einstein were right,; but he couldn't come up with any way to resolve
the paradox. I will never forget the image of the two antagonists as they left the club:
Einstein, with his tall and commanding figure, who walked tranquilly, with a mildly ironic
smile, and Bohr who trotted along beside him, full of excitement...The morning after saw
the triumph of Bohr.
The "triumph of Bohr" consisted in his demonstrating, once again, that Einstein's subtle argument
was not conclusive, but even more so in the way that he arrived at this conclusion by appealing
precisely to one of the great ideas of Einstein: the principle of equivalence between gravitational
mass and inertial mass. Bohr showed that, in order for Einstein's experiment to function, the box
would have to be suspended on a spring in the middle of a gravitational field. In order to obtain a
measurement of weight, a pointer would have to be attached to the box which corresponded with
the index on a scale. After the release of a photon, weights could be added to the box to restore it
to its original position and this would allow us to determine the weight. But in order to return the
box to its original position, the box itself would have to be measured. The inevitable uncertainty of
the position of the box translates into an uncertainty in the position of the pointer and of the
determination of weight and therefore of energy. On the other hand, since the system is
immersed in a gravitational field which varies with the position, according to the principle of
equivalence the uncertainty in the position of the clock implies an uncertainty with respect to its
measurement of time and therefore of the value of the interval ∆t. A precise evaluation of this
effect leads to the conclusion that the relation , cannot be violated.
Second stage
The second phase of Einstein's "debate" with Bohr and the orthodox interpretation is
characterized by an acceptance of the fact that it is, as a practical matter, impossible to
simultaneously determine the values of certain incompatible quantities, but the rejection that this
implies that these quantities do not actually have precise values. He rejects the probabilistic
interpretation of Born and insists that quantum probabilities are epistemic and not ontological in
nature. As a consequence, the theory must be incomplete in some way. He recognizes the great
value of the theory, but suggests that it "does not tell the whole story," and, while providing an
appropriate description at a certain level, it gives no information on the more fundamental
underlying level:
I have the greatest consideration for the goals which are pursued by the physicists of the
latest generation which go under the name of quantum mechanics, and I believe that this
theory represents a profound level of truth, but I also believe that the restriction to laws of
a statistical nature will turn out to be transitory....Without doubt quantum mechanics has
grasped an important fragment of the truth and will be a paragon for all future
fundamental theories, for the fact that it must be deducible as a limiting case from such
foundations, just as electrostatics is deducible from Maxwell's equations of the
electromagnetic field or as thermodynamics is deducible from statistical mechanics.
These thoughts of Einstein’s would set off a line of research into so-called hidden variable
theories, such as the Bohm interpretation, in an attempt to complete the edifice of quantum
theory. If quantum mechanics can be made complete in Einstein's sense, it cannot be done
locally; this fact was demonstrated by John Stewart Bell with the formulation of Bell's inequality in
1964.
Third stage
In 1935 Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen developed an argument, published in the
magazine Physics Review with the title Is the quantum description of physical reality complete?,
based on an entangled state of two particles. Before coming to this argument, it is necessary to
formulate another hypothesis that comes out of Einstein's work in relativity: the idea of locality.
The elements of physical reality which are objectively possessed cannot be influenced
instantaneously at a distance.
1) Consider a system of two photons which at time t are located, respectively, in the spatially
distant regions A and B and which are also in the entangled state of polarization described
above:
2) At time t the photon in region A is tested for vertical polarization. Suppose that the result of the
measurement is that the photon passes through the filter. According to the reduction of the wave
packet, the result is that, at time t+dt, the system becomes:
3) At this point, the observer in A who carried out the first measurement on photon 1, without
doing anything else that could disturb the system or the other photon, can predict with certainty
that photon 2 will pass a test of vertical polarization. From assumption (R), it follows that photon 2
possesses an element of physical reality: that of having a vertical polarization.
4) According to the assumption of locality, it cannot have been the action carried out in A which
created this element of reality for photon 2. Therefore, we must conclude that the photon
possessed the property of being able to pass the vertical polarization test before and
independently of the measurement of photon 1.
5) At time t, the observer in A could have decided to carry out a test of polarization at 45°,
obtaining a certain result, for example, that the photon passes the test. In that case, he could
have concluded that photon 2 turned out to be polarized at 45°. Alternatively, if the photon did not
pass the test, he could have concluded that photon 2 turned out to be polarized at 135°.
Combining one of these alternatives with the conclusion reached in 4, it seems that photon 2,
before the measurement took place, possessed both the property of being able to pass with
certainty a test of vertical polarization and the property of being able to pass with certainty a test
of polarization at either 45° or 135°. These properties are incompatible according to the
formalism.
6) Since natural and obvious requirements have forced the conclusion that photon 2
simultaneously possesses incompatible properties, this means that, even if it is not possible to
determine these properties simultaneously and with arbitrary precision, they are nevertheless
possessed objectively by the system. But quantum mechanics denies this possibility and it is
therefore an incomplete theory.
Bohr's response
Bohr's response to this fascinating and elegant argument was published, five months later than
the original publication of EPR, in the same magazine Physical Review and with the exact same
title as the original. The crucial point of Bohr's answer is distilled in a passage which he later had
republished in Paul Arthur Schilpp's book Albert Einstein, scientist-philosopher in honor of the
seventieth birthday of Einstein. Bohr attacks assumption (R) of EPR by stating:
the statement of the criterion in question is ambiguous with regard to the expression
"without disturbing the system in any way". Naturally, in this case no mechanical
disturbance of the system under examination can take place in the crucial stage of the
process of measurement. But even in this stage there arises the essential problem of an
influence on the precise conditions which define the possible types of prediction which
regard the subsequent behaviour of the system...their arguments do not justify their
conclusion that the quantum description turns out to be essentially incomplete...This
description can be characterized as a rational use of the possibilities of an unambiguous
interpretation of the process of measurement compatible with the finite and uncontrollable
interaction between the object and the instrument of measurement in the context of
quantum theory.
As John Bell later pointed out, this passage is almost unintelligible. What does Bohr mean, Bell
asks, by the specification "mechanical" that is used to refer to the "disturbances" that Bohr
maintains should not be taken into consideration? What is meant by the expression "an influence
on the precise conditions" if not that different measurements in A provide different information on
the system in B? This fact is not only admitted but is an essential part of the argument of EPR.
Lastly, what could Bohr have meant by the expression "uncontrollable interaction between the
object and the measuring apparatus", considering that the central point of the argument of EPR is
the hypothesis that, if one accepts locality, only the part of the system in A can be disturbed by
the process of measurement and that, notwithstanding this fact, this process provides precise
information on the part of the system in B? Is Bohr already contemplating the possibility of
"spooky action at a distance?" If so, why not declare it explicitly? If one abandons the assumption
of locality, the argument of EPR obviously collapses immediately.
In any case, very few among the illustrious protagonists of the debate on the foundations of
quantum theory were able to grasp the true sense of the profound analysis of Einstein. Pauli
dismissed it with a few words and Born completely misinterpreted it. But Einstein's defeat (and it
really was a defeat) represents one of the highest points of scientific research in the first half of
the twentieth century because it called attention to an element of quantum theory, quantum non-
locality, which is absolutely central to our modern understanding of the physical world.
Fourth stage
In his last writing on the topic, Einstein further refined his position, making it completely clear that
what really disturbed him about the quantum theory was the problem of the total renunciation of
all minimal standards of realism, even at the macroscopic level, that the acceptance of the
completeness of the theory implied. Although the majority of experts in the field seem to accept
the Copenhagen interpretation, there are a growing number of critics who, like Einstein, believe
that it has failed to provide a sensible and acceptable representation of reality (see Interpretation
of quantum mechanics).
See also
• Afshar's experiment
• Complementarity
• Copenhagen interpretation
• Double-slit experiment
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 25
• EPR paradox
• Quantum eraser
• Schrödinger's cat
• Uncertainty principle
• Wheeler's delayed choice experiment
References
Einstein refrigerator
[32]
In 1926, Einstein and former student Leó Szilárd co-invented the Einstein refrigerator. . The
patent covered a thermodynamic refrigeration cycle providing cooling with no moving parts, at a
constant pressure, with only heat as an input.
World War II
When Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, Einstein was a guest professor at Princeton
University, a position which he took in December 1932, after an invitation from the American
educator, Abraham Flexner. In 1933, the Nazis passed "The Law of the Restoration of the Civil
Service," which forced all Jewish university professors out of their jobs. Throughout the 1930s, a
campaign to label Einstein's work as "Jewish physics"-in contrast with "German" or "Aryan
physics"-was led by Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. With the assistance of
the SS, the Deutsche Physik supporters worked to publish pamphlets and textbooks denigrating
Einstein's theories and attempted to politically blacklist German physicists who taught them,
notably Werner Heisenberg. Einstein renounced his German citizenship and stayed in the United
States, where he was given permanent residency. He accepted a position at the newly founded
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he concentrated on developing a
unified field theory (see below). Einstein became an American citizen in 1940, though he still
retained Swiss citizenship.
In 1939, under the encouragement of Szilárd, Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt urging the study of nuclear fission for military purposes, under fears that the Nazi
government would be first to develop nuclear weapons. Roosevelt started a small investigation
into the matter which eventually became the massive Manhattan Project. Einstein did not work on
[33]
the bomb project, and, according to Linus Pauling, he later regretted having signed this letter.
The International Rescue Committee was founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein to
assist opponents of Adolf Hitler.
For more information, see the section below on Einstein's Political views.
Einstein's research efforts after developing the theory of general relativity consisted primarily of a
long series of attempts to generalize his theory of gravitation in order to unify and simplify the
fundamental laws of physics, particularly gravitation and electromagnetism. In 1950, he described
this work, which he referred to as the Unified Field Theory, in a Scientific American article.
Einstein was guided by a belief in a single origin for the entire set of physical laws.
Einstein's two-story house, white frame with front porch in Greek revival style, in Princeton (112
Mercer Street).
Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation and
his attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. In particular, his pursuit of a unification of the
fundamental forces ignored work in the physics community at large (and vice versa), most notably
the discovery of the strong and weak nuclear forces, which were not understood independently
until around 1970, fifteen years after Einstein's death. Einstein's goal of unifying the laws of
physics under a single model survives in the current drive for the grand unification theory.
When the equivalent of Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism is formulated within the
framework of Einstein's theory of general relativity, the electromagnetic field energy (being
2
equivalent to mass as one would expect from Einstein's famous equation E=mc ) contributes to
the stress tensor and thus to the curvature of space-time, which is the general-relativistic
representation of the gravitational field; or putting it another way, certain configurations of curved
space-time incorporate effects of an electromagnetic field. This suggests that a purely geometric
theory ought to treat these two fields as different aspects of the same basic phenomenon.
However, ordinary Riemannian geometry is unable to describe the properties of the
electromagnetic field as a purely geometric phenomenon.
Einstein tried to form a generalized theory of gravitation that would unify the gravitational and
electromagnetic forces (and perhaps others), guided by a belief in a single origin for the entire set
of physical laws. These attempts initially concentrated on additional geometric notions such as
vierbeins and "distant parallelism", but eventually centered around treating both the metric tensor
and the affine connection as fundamental fields. (Because they are not independent, the metric-
affine theory was somewhat complicated.) In general relativity, these fields are symmetric (in the
matrix sense), but since antisymmetry seemed essential for electromagnetism, the symmetry
requirement was relaxed for one or both fields. Einstein's proposed unified-field equations
(fundamental laws of physics) were generally derived from a variational principle expressed in
terms of the Riemann curvature tensor for the presumed space-time manifold.
In field theories of this kind, particles appear as limited regions in space-time in which the field
strength or the energy density are particularly high. Einstein and coworker Leopold Infeld
managed to demonstrate that, in Einstein's ultimate theory of the unified field, true singularities of
the field did have trajectories resembling point particles. However, singularities are places where
the equations break down, and Einstein believed that in an ultimate theory the laws should apply
everywhere, with particles being soliton-like solutions to the (highly nonlinear) field equations.
Further, the large-scale topology of the universe should impose restrictions on the solutions, such
as quantization or discrete symmetries.
The degree of abstraction, combined with a relative lack of good mathematical tools for analyzing
nonlinear equation systems, make it hard to connect such theories with the physical phenomena
that they might describe. For example, it has been suggested that the torsion (antisymmetric part
of the affine connection) might be related to isospin rather than electromagnetism; this is related
to a discrete (or "internal") symmetry known to Einstein as "displacement field duality".
Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation, and
most physicists consider his attempts ultimately unsuccessful. In particular, his pursuit of a
unification of the fundamental forces ignored developments in quantum physics (and vice versa),
most notably the discovery of the strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force.
Final years
In 1948, Einstein served on the original committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis
University. In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he take the post of second
president. He declined the offer, and is believed to be the only United States citizen ever to have
been offered a position as a foreign head of state.
[34] [35]
He died at 1:15 AM in Princeton hospital in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955 at the
age of 76 from internal bleeding, which was caused by the rupture of an aortic aneurism, leaving
the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. He was cremated without ceremony on the same
day he died at Trenton, New Jersey, in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at
an undisclosed location.
An autopsy was performed on Einstein by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, who removed and
preserved his brain. Harvey found nothing unusual with his brain, but in 1999 further analysis by a
team at McMaster University revealed that his parietal operculum region was missing and, to
[36]
compensate, his inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal. The inferior parietal region
is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.
Einstein's brain also contained 73% more glial cells than the average brain.
Beliefs
Religious views
Rabindranath Tagore sits with Einstein during their widely-publicized July 14, 1930 conversation.
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and
[37]
was an admirer of Ethical Culture. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist
[38][39]
Society of New York.
Nature Paper
He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his considered
[40]
views on the subject.
In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to
the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied
with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value
... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for
otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities.
Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of
those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational
foundation...In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and
completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects."
He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors."
However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off
from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies"... "science without
religion is lame, religion without science is blind ...a legitimate conflict between science and
religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and
suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural
events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be
refuted...by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot."
[45]
As an adult, he called his religion a "cosmic religious sense".
You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar
religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man.
For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose
punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a
being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may
be tinged with awe.
But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is
every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about
morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous
amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such
superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings
[46]
is an utterly insignificant reflection.
In response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in 1929: "Do
you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied in only 25 (German) words: "I
believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God
Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
Scientific philosophy
In the "Copenhagen Interpretation" above, reference was made to the disagreement regarding
Einstein's actual position regarding the quantum theory. The famous quotation "God does not
play dice" is often used to support the majority view that he disliked the theory due to its
indeterminism.
Others make the case for a different view. They note that the 1926 "Dice" quotation occurred
when the quantum theory was just in its first year of discovery and in the subsequent 30 years of
his life, one would be hard pressed to find a similar comment from the man. Instead Einstein
focused on the conceptually independent subject of 'incompleteness'. This attention is shown
both in his 1935 "EPR" paper, and in his 1949 Geiger counter registration strip thought-
experiment. Further evidence against the "Einstein-determinist" view is W. Pauli's quotation: "he
(Einstein) disputes that he uses as a criterion for the admissibility of a theory the question 'Is it
rigorously deterministic?'".
The following general assessment was given by his colleague Nathan Rosen:
I think that the things which impressed me most were the simplicity of his thinking and his
faith in the ability of the human mind to understand the workings of nature. Throughout
his life, Einstein believed the human reason was capable of leading to theories that would
provide correct descriptions of physical phenomena. In building a theory, his approach
had something in common with that of an artist; he would aim for simplicity and beauty
(and beauty for him was, after all, essentially simplicity). The crucial question that he
would ask, when weighing an element of a theory was: "Is it reasonable?" No matter how
successful a theory appeared to be, if it seemed to him not to be reasonable (the German
word that he used was "vernünftig"), he was convinced that the theory could not provide
[47]
a really fundamental understanding of nature.
Political views
Einstein and Solomon Mikhoels, the chairman of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, in
1943.
[48] [49]
Einstein considered himself a pacifist and humanitarian, and in later years, a committed
democratic socialist. He once said, "I believe Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the
political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting
for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil." Deeply influenced by
Gandhi, Einstein once said of Gandhi, "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one
as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth." Einstein's views were sometimes
[50]
controversial. In a 1949 article entitled "Why Socialism?", Albert Einstein described the
"predatory phase of human development", exemplified by a chaotic capitalist society, as a source
of evil to be overcome. He disapproved of the totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere, and argued in favor of a democratic socialist system which would combine a planned
economy with a deep respect for human rights. Einstein was a co-founder of the liberal German
Democratic Party and a member of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union the American Federation of
Teachers.
Einstein was very much involved in the Civil Rights movement. He was a close friend of Paul
Robeson for over 20 years. Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups (including the
Princeton chapter of the NAACP) many of which were headed by Paul Robeson. He served as
co-chair with Paul Robeson of the American Crusade to End Lynching. When W.E.B. DuBois was
frivolously charged with being a communist spy during the McCarthy era while he was in his 80s,
Einstein volunteered as a character witness in the case. The case was dismissed shortly after it
was announced that he was to appear in that capacity. Einstein was quoted as saying that
"racism is America's greatest disease".
The U.S. FBI kept a 1,427 page file on his activities and recommended that he be barred from
immigrating to the United States under the Alien Exclusion Act, alleging that Einstein "believes in,
advises, advocates, or teaches a doctrine which, in a legal sense, as held by the courts in other
cases, 'would allow anarchy to stalk in unmolested' and result in 'government in name only'",
among other charges. They also alleged that Einstein "was a member, sponsor, or affiliated with
thirty-four communist fronts between 1937 and 1954" and "also served as honorary chairman for
[51]
three communist organizations". Many of the documents in the file were submitted to the FBI,
mainly by civilian political groups, and not written by the FBI.
[52]
In 1939, Einstein and Leó Szilárd writing a letter to President Roosevelt.
Einstein opposed tyrannical forms of government, and for this reason (and his Jewish
background), opposed the Nazi regime and fled Germany shortly after it came to power. Einstein
initially favored construction of the atomic bomb, in order to ensure that Hitler did not do so first,
and even sent a letter to President Roosevelt (dated August 2, 1939, before World War II broke
out, written in collaboration with Leó Szilárd) encouraging him to initiate a program to create a
nuclear weapon. Roosevelt responded to this by setting up a committee for the investigation of
using uranium as a weapon, which in a few years was superseded by the Manhattan Project.
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 World War IV will be fought with sticks and
[53]
stones."
While Einstein was a supporter of Zionism in the cultural sense, he often expressed reservations
regarding its application in terms of nationalism. During a speech at the Commodore Hotel in New
York, he told the crowd "My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a
Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I
am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain. - especially from the development of a
narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly,
[54]
even without a Jewish state." He also signed an open letter published in the New York Times
condemning Menachem Begin and his nationalistic Herut party, especially for the treatment of the
indigenous Arabs at Deir Yassin by Herut’s predecessor Irgun.
Despite these reservations, he was active in the establishment of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, which published (1930) a volume titled About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by
Professor Albert Einstein, and to which Einstein bequeathed his papers. In later life, in 1952, he
was offered the post of second president of the newly created state of Israel, but declined the
offer, saying that he lacked the necessary skills. However, Einstein was deeply committed to the
welfare of Israel and the Jewish people for the rest of his life.
Albert Einstein was closely associated with plans for what the press called "a Jewish-sponsored
non-quota university," from August 19, 1946, with the announcement of the formation of the
Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc. until June 22, 1947, when he withdrew
support and barred the use of his name by the foundation. The university opened in 1948 as
Brandeis University.
Einstein, along with Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, fought against nuclear tests and
bombs. As his last public act, and just days before his death, he signed the Russell-Einstein
Manifesto, which led to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Citizenship
Albert Einstein receiving from Judge Phillip Forman his certificate of American citizenship.
Einstein was born a German citizen. At the age of 17, on January 28, 1896, he was released from
his German citizenship by his own request and with the approval of his father. He remained
stateless for five years. On February 21, 1901, he gained Swiss citizenship, which he never
revoked. Einstein obtained German citizenship in April 1914 when he entered the German civil
service, but due to the political situation and the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany,
he left civil service in March 1933 and thus also lost the German citizenship. On October 1, 1940,
Einstein became an American citizen. He remained both an American and a Swiss citizen until
[55]
his death on April 18, 1955.
According to "A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", Einstein is "the greatest
[56]
scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time". His popularity
has also led to widespread use of Einstein's image in advertising and merchandising, including
the registration of "Albert Einstein" as a trademark.
Einstein is commonly credited with supporting causes or making claims for which there is no
evidence of his having done so, such as the claim that compound interest was the greatest
discovery of the 20th Century, which first appeared in a New York Times article some 28 years
after his death.
Entertainment
Albert Einstein sticks his tongue out for UPI photographer Arthur Sasse
Albert Einstein has been the subject of and inspiration for a number of novels, films and plays,
including Jean-Claude Carrier's 2005 French novel, Einstein S'il Vous Plait (Please Mr Einstein),
Nicolas Roeg's film Insignificance, Fred Schepisi's film I.Q. (where he was portrayed by Walter
Matthau), Alan Lightman's collection of short stories Einstein's Dreams, and Steve Martin's
comedic play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. He was the subject of Philip Glass's groundbreaking
1976 opera Einstein on the Beach. His humorous side is also the subject of Ed Metzger's one-
man play Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian.
He is often used as a model for depictions of mad scientists and absent-minded professors in
works of fiction; his own character and distinctive hairstyle suggest eccentricity, or even lunacy,
and are widely copied or exaggerated. TIME magazine writer Frederic Golden referred to Einstein
[57]
as "a cartoonist's dream come true."
On Einstein's 72nd birthday in 1951, the UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade
him to smile for the camera. Having done this for the photographer many times that day, Einstein
[58]
stuck out his tongue instead. The image has become a pop icon for its contrast of the genius
scientist displaying a moment of levity. Yahoo Serious, an Australian film maker, used the photo
as an inspiration for the intentionally anachronistic movie Young Einstein. The image is also used
in a poster used in the UK as part of dyslexia education, which has a string of posters showing
great scientists, thinkers and artists and talks about the unfounded (not specified within the
posters) claims that they had/have dyslexia.
A remarkable aspect of Einstein's childhood is the fact that he spoke much later than the average
child. Einstein claimed that he did not begin speaking until the age of three and only did so
hesitantly, even beyond the age of nine. Because of Einstein's late speech development and his
later childhood tendency to ignore any subject in school that bored him - focusing intensely on
things he was interested in - some observers at the time suggested that he might be "retarded",
such as one of the Einstein family's housekeepers. This latter observation was not the only time
in his life that controversial labels and pathology would be applied to Einstein.
There is speculation that Einstein was a poor student, a slow learner, or had a form of autism,
dyslexia, and/or ADHD. According to the biography by Pais (page 36, among others), such
[59]
speculations are unfounded. Some researchers have periodically claimed otherwise, but most
historians and doctors are skeptical of retrospective medical diagnoses, especially for complex
and, in the case of ADHD, diagnostically-controversial conditions.
The recurring rumor that Einstein failed in mathematics during his education is untrue. On the
contrary, Einstein always showed great talent at mathematics; when he obtained his matura, he
got the best mark (6/6) in algebra, geometry, physics and history, among all of the classes that he
[60]
took. The grading system of Switzerland, where 6 is the best mark, may have been confused
with the German system, in which 1 is the best mark. As can be seen from his Matura grades,
indicated in the graphic to the right (also found in "Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity" by W.
Andrew Robinson, p.27), Albert Einstein failed French (3/6) and received poor grades (4/6) in
drawing, (both artistic- and technical) and geography. His performance (5/6) in all other subjects
studied in high school, namely Natural history, German literature and Italian literature as well as
chemistry, was significantly above average. Furthermore, Robinson states on pages 33 through
to 35 that Einstein's interests mainly spanned in science and mathematics and that he disliked
"games and physical training". Einstein also had problems with the heavy emphasis on the
humanities; that is on classical studies and to a "lesser extent German history and literature, to
the detriment of modern foreign languages." Robinson states that this explains Einstein's lack of
competence in French literature and English studies, for instance. In 1920 Einstein told a Berlin
interviewer that the school of matriculation exam should be abolished. "Let us return to Nature,
which upholds the principle of getting the maximum amount of effect from the minimum effort,
whereas the matriculation test does exactly the opposite."
As for Einstein's childhood trait of delayed speech development, a few have speculated that
Einstein had elective mutism and may have refused to speak until he could do so in complete
sentences. Though this concept fits with a profile of a sensitive perfectionist (when Einstein did
begin to speak, he would often softly "rehearse" what he meant to say before uttering the
statement outright), it is somewhat dated insofar as selective mutism- as it is now known- is no
longer considered to be a matter of willful silence: it presently refers to individuals with verbal
[61]
ability who cannot speak in certain social circumstances. This would not apply to Einstein, who
could not speak at all until the time that he did.
According to neuroscientist Steven Pinker, the autopsy of Einstein's brain exhibited a more likely
possibility that Einstein, as a child, had been displaying a lesser known type of language delay
relating to extraordinary and rapid prenatal development of areas of the brain responsible for
spatial and analytical reasoning which, in competing for "brain real estate", had temporarily
[62][63]
robbed resources from functions of the brain responsible for speech development. Pinker
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 35
and others have extended this speculation to explain the asynchronous development of other
famously gifted late-talkers, such as mathematician Julia Robinson, pianists Arthur Rubinstein
and Clara Schumann, and physicists Richard Feynman and Edward Teller, who were also said to
have shared several of Einstein's other childhood peculiarities, such as monumental tantrums,
rugged individualism and highly selective interests. A syndrome — the "Einstein syndrome" —
was even coined by journalist and economist Thomas Sowell as a non-pathologizing means to
describe this series of traits seen in a small percentage (though how small is debatable) of late-
talking children who go on to develop into analytically advanced and socially conscious adults
[64]
without (or in spite of) intense therapeutic intervention.
Personal relations
Letters written by Einstein to his relatives and kept at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have
[65]
revealed that during the course of his life, he had a dozen lovers, two of whom he married.
Barbara Wolff of the Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives has made public about 3,500
pages of correspondence including letters to his first and second wives and children between the
years 1912–1955. In letters to his second wife Elsa and her daughter Margot he claimed that he
had been showered with unwanted attention from women. One of his lovers, a Berlin socialite
Ethel Michanowski, "followed me [to England], and her chasing me is getting out of control." His
son Eduard's schizophrenia troubled Einstein greatly, and he often expressed the idea that it
would have been better if Eduard had not been born. He adored his stepdaughter and in a letter
to Elsa in 1924, he writes: "I love her [Margot] as much as if she were my own daughter, perhaps
even more so, since who knows what kind of brat she would have become [had I fathered her]."
The letters have been claimed as evidence to dispel myths that Einstein was cold toward his
family.
Licensing
Einstein bequeathed his estate, as well as the use of his image (see personality rights), to the
[66]
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Einstein actively supported the university during his life and
this support continues with the royalties received from licensing activities. The Roger Richman
Agency licences the commercial use of the name "Albert Einstein" and associated imagery and
likenesses of Einstein, as agent for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As head licensee the
agency can control commercial usage of Einstein's name which does not comply with certain
[67]
standards (e.g., when Einstein's name is used as a trademark, the ™ symbol must be used).
As of May, 2005, the Roger Richman Agency was acquired by Corbis.
Honors
Works by Einstein
Einstein published over fifty scientific papers during his lifetime. He also published several non-
scientific works, including About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933, co-authored by Sigmund
Freud), The World As I See It (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950).
• "Bemerkung zu meiner Arbeit: 'Eine Beziehung zwischen dem elastischen Verhalten ...'"
Annalen der Physik. 1911.
• "Berichtigung zu meiner Arbeit: 'Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen'"
Annalen der Physik. 1911.
• "Elementare Betrachtungen über die thermische Molekularbewegung in festen Körpern"
Annalen der Physik. 1911.
• "Über den Einfluß der Schwerkraft auf die Ausbreitung des Lichtes" ("On the Influence of
Gravity on the Propagation of Light") Annalen der Physik. 1911.
• "Thermodynamische Begründung des photochemischen Äquivalentgesetzes" Annalen
der Physik. 1912.
• "Lichtgeschwindigkeit und Statik des Gravitationsfeldes" Annalen der Physik. 1912.
• "Zur Theorie des statischen Gravitationsfeldes" ("On the Theory of the static gravitational
Field") Annalen der Physik. 1912.
• "Nachtrag zu meiner Arbeit: 'Thermodynamische Begründung des photochemischen
Äquivalentgesetzes'" Annalen der Physik. 1912.
• "Antwort auf eine Bemerkung von J. Stark: 'Über eine Anwendung des Planckschen
Elementargesetzes ...'" Annalen der Physik. 1912.
• "Relativität und Gravitation. Erwiderung auf eine Bemerkung von M. Abraham"
("Relativity and Gravitation. Reply to a Comment by M. Abraham") Annalen der Physik.
1912.
• "Bemerkung zu Abrahams vorangehender Auseinandersetzung 'Nochmals Relativität und
Gravitation'" Annalen der Physik. 1912.
• "Einige Argumente für die Annahme einer molekularen Agitation beim absoluten
Nullpunkt" Annalen der Physik. 1913 (with O. Stern).
• "Die Nordströmsche Gravitationstheorie vom Standpunkt des absoluten
Differentialkalküls" Annalen der Physik. 1914 (with A. D. Fokker).
• "Antwort auf eine Abhandlung M. v. Laues 'Ein Satz der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung
und seine Anwendung auf die Strahlungstheorie'" Annalen der Physik. 1915.
• "Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" Annalen der Physik. 1916.
• "Über Friedrich Kottlers Abhandlung 'Über Einsteins Äquivalenzhypothese und die
Gravitation'" Annalen der Physik. 1916.
• "Prinzipielles zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" Annalen der Physik. 1918.
• "Bemerkung zu der Franz Seletyschen Arbeit 'Beiträge zum kosmologischen System'"
Annalen der Physik. 1922.
• The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields, 1895.
• "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Annalen der Physik. June 30, 1905
• "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" Annalen der Physik.
September 27, 1905.
• "Inaugural Lecture to the Prussian Academy of Sciences." 1914. (PDF format)
• "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity ." Annalen der Physik, 49. 1916.
• "Aether and the theory of relativity" (1920) translated in Sidelights on relativity (Dover,
NY, 1983), pp.1-24 (ed. "May 5th, 1920", inaugural address in the University of Leyden
but actually delivered on 27 October of that year; classes general relativity as a form of
(nonparticulate) aether theory)
• Relativity: The Special and General Theory. 1920, revised edition, 1954, ISBN 0-517-
88441-0 (Project Gutenberg E-text) Einstein Reference Archive (HTML and PDF format)
• "Fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity." 1921 Nobel Lecture in
Physics. Nordic Assembly of Naturalists at Gothenburg, 11 July 1923.
• Einstein A., Lorenz H. A., Weyl H. and Minkowski H. The Principle of Relativity. Trans. W.
Perrett and G. B. Jeffery. New York: Dover Publications, 1923.
• The World As I See It, 1934, ISBN 0-8065-0711-X
• Einstein, Albert; Leopold Infeld (1938). The Evolution of Physics. ISBN 0-671-20156-5.
• "Why Socialism?" Monthly Review. May 1949 (original manuscript).
• On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation. April, 1950.
Collected & Compiled by Shashank A Sinha/GTS/CSC
Exclusive for our News & Views Readers
Albert Einstein 39
• Einstein, A. (1956). The Meaning of Relativity. 5th ed.. Princeton Univ. Press.
• Ideas & Opinions ISBN 0-517-00393-7 (writings from 1919 – 1954, containing material
from The World As I See It (1934) and Out of My Later Years (1950) and Mein Weltbild
(Zurich 1953))
See also
• Theory of Everything
• History of special relativity
• History of general relativity
• Relativity priority dispute
• List of things named after Einstein
• Photoelectric effect
• EPR paradox
• Lambdavacuum solution
• Sticky bead argument
• Annus Mirabilis Papers
Notes
Einstein to Gottingen. Thorne goes on to say "Quite naturally, and in accord with Hilbert's
view of things, the resulting law of warpage was quickly given the name the Einstein field
equation rather than being named after Hilbert. In fact without Einstein, the general
relativistic laws of gravity might not have been discovered until several decades later."
See Relativity priority disputes for more details.
18. ^ Crelinsten, Einstein's Jury, pp. 94–98.
19. ^ Crelinsten, pp. 103–108.
20. ^ Crelinsten, pp. 114–119, 126–140.
21. ^ It is ironic that later examinations of the photographs taken on that expedition showed
their measurement error to be comparable to the effect they were trying to measure. The
light deflection has, however, been accurately confirmed by a number of later
observations.
22. ^ ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879 - 1955) and the "Greatest Scientific Discovery Ever" by J.
Schmidhuber:. Retrieved on 4 October, 2006.
23. ^ See esp. Albert Einstein, "My Reply. On the Anti-Relativity Theoretical Co., Ltd. [August
27, 1920," in Klaus Hentschel, ed. Physics and National Socialism: An anthology of
primary sources (Basel: Birkhaeuser, 1996), pp.1-5.
24. ^ There is a good discussion of resentment towards Einstein's fame, especially among
those German physicists who would later start the Deutsche Physik anti-Einsteinian
movement, in the Introduction to Klaus Hentschel, ed. Physics and National Socialism:
An anthology of primary sources (Basel: Birkhaeuser, 1996), on p.lxxi. For a discussion
of astronomers' attitudes and debates about relativity, see Jeffrey Crelinsten, Einstein's
Jury: The Race to Test Relativity (Princeton University Press, 2006), esp. chapters 6, 9,
10 and 11.
25. ^ A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, Phys. Rev. 47, 777 (1935)
26. ^ M. Born (editor), The Born-Einstein-Letters, p. 221 (Macmillan, London (1971)).
27. ^ A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, N. Rosen, Phys. Rev. 47 777 (1935)
28. ^ P.A. Schilpp, Ed. Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, Tudor, N.Y. (1949).
29. ^ Schilpp, p. 671
30. ^ The Economist - Miraculous visions - 100 years of Einstein
31. ^ Einstein archive at the Instituut-Lorentz. Retrieved on 21 November, 2005.
32. ^ Einstein's Refrigerator. Retrieved on 21 November, 2005. On November 11, 1930, U.S.
Patent 1,781,541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for the refrigerator
33. ^ Scientist Tells of Einstein's A-bomb Regrets. The Philadelphia Bulletin, 13 May 1955.
(PDF document from the Swiss Federal Archives.)
34. ^ Neuroscience for Kids - "What Became of Albert Einstein's Brain?"
35. ^ Historical Society of Princeton - "Einstein in Princeton"
36. ^ BBC News : Sci/Tech : Why size mattered for Einstein. Retrieved on 21 November,
2005.
37. ^ The Humanist Way: An Introduction to Ethical Humanist Religion. Retrieved on 25
February, 2006.
38. ^ Charles Francis Potter. Retrieved on 14 May, 2006.
39. ^ Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto. Retrieved on 14 May, 2006.
40. ^ Nature 146:605-607 Einstein, A. Science and religion
41. ^ EinsteinAndReligion.COM/freethink.html.
42. ^ Peter A. Bucky, et. al., The Private Albert Einstein (Kansas City, 1992), p. 85.
43. ^ Peter A. Bucky, et. al., The Private Albert Einstein (Kansas City, 1992), p. 87.
44. ^ Albert Einstein, 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas
and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
45. ^ Science and cosmic religion.
46. ^ Einstein and religion.
47. ^ Nathan Rosen p. 649 in Einstein: The Life and Times Avon Books, New York 1971.
48. ^ Einstein : American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved on 21 November, 2005.
49. ^ Ibid.
50. ^ Einstein, Albert. "Why Socialism?", Monthly Review, May 1949. Retrieved on 2006-01-
16.
51. ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation - Freedom of Information Privacy Act. Retrieved on 21
November, 2005.
52. ^ This picture taken in 1946 was a recreation of their 1939 meeting in Peconic, Long
Island.
53. ^ Calaprice p. 173. Other versions of the quote exist.
54. ^ Algemeiner.com - "The Death of Modern Zionism?", by Simon Jacobson
55. ^ Einstein's nationalities at einstein-website.de. Retrieved on 4 October, 2006.
56. ^ e.g. Hart, Michael H. [1978] (1992). The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons
in History. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-1350-0. p. 52, "Albert Einstein, the greatest
scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time..."
57. ^ TIME 100: Person of the Century - Albert Einstein
58. ^ neatorama. Retrieved on 21 January, 2007.
59. ^ See, i.e., Einstein and Newton 'had autism' Page accessed 16 September 2006. See
also: People speculated to have been autistic
60. ^ Reproduction of Albert Einstein's matura in Rosenkranz, p. 29. His only failing mark
was in French, where he obtained 3/6.
61. ^ Johnson, Maggie (2001). The Selective Mutism Resource Manual. Speechmark. ISBN
0-86388-280-3.
62. ^ Pinker, Steven (June 1999). His Brain Measured Up. Retrieved on 2006-10-15.
63. ^ Sandra F. Witelson, Debra L. Kigar, Thomas Harvey. The Exceptional Brain of Albert
Einstein. Original Publication: The Lancet, 1999. Retrieved on 2006-12-09.
64. ^ Sowell, Thomas (2001). The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late. Basic
Books, 89-150. ISBN 0-465-08140-1.
65. ^ Letters reveal Einstein love life, BBC News (11 July 2006).
66. ^ http://aip.org/history/esva/einuse.htm. Retrieved on 21 November, 2005.
67. ^ ALBRT EINSTEIN BRAND LOGO. Retrieved on 21 November, 2005.
68. ^ the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Retrieved on 21
November, 2005.
69. ^ Albert Einstein Medical Center. Retrieved on 21 November, 2005.
References
• Highfield, Roger; Carter, Paul (1993). The Private Lives of Albert Einstein. Faber and
Faber, London, Boston. ISBN 0-571-17170-2 (US ed. ISBN 0-312-11047-2).
• Holt, Jim (February 2005). Time Bandits. Retrieved on 2006-03-18.
• Levenson, Thomas (June 2005). Genius Among Geniuses. Retrieved on 2006-02-25.
• Dan Levitt (Producer). (2003) Brilliant Minds: Secrets of the Cosmos [TV-Series]. Boston:
Veriscope Pictures.
• Martínez, Alberto A. (April 2004). Arguing about Einstein's wife. Physics World. Retrieved
on 2005-11-23.
• Arthur I. Miller (2002). Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes
Havoc. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-01860-2.
• Pais, Abraham (1982). Subtle is the Lord. The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520438-7. This is the definitive scientific
biography.
• Pais, Abraham (1994). Einstein Lived Here. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-
853994-0. This book discusses non-science aspects of Einstein; marriages, affairs,
illegitimate daughter, public image.
• Pickover, Clifford A. (2005-09-09). Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics,
Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence. Smart Publications. ISBN 1-
890572-17-9. Discusses the final disposition of Einstein's brain, hair, and eyes as well as
the importance of Einstein and his work in the shaping of science and culture.
• Robinson, Andrew (2005). Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity. Palazzo Editions.
ISBN 0-9545103-4-8.
• Rosenkranz, Ze'ev (2005). Albert Einstein — Derrière l'image. Editions NZZ, Zürich.
ISBN 3-03823-182-7. Copies of many of Einstein's original personal documents.
• Smith, Peter D. (2000). Einstein (Life & Times Series). Haus Publishing. ISBN 1-904341-
15-2.
• Stachel, John (1998-03-30). Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the
Face of Physics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05938-1.
• Stern, Fritz (1999). Einstein's German World. Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press,.
ISBN 0-691-05939-X.
• Thorne, Kip (January 1, 1995). Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous
Legacy, Reprint edition, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31276-3.
• Hawking, Stephen; Mlodinow Leonards [October 2005]. “6”, A Briefer History of Time, 1st
(in English), New York: Bantam Books, 44. Retrieved on 03.