Abstract
My Einstein: Essays by Twenty-four of the World's Leading Thinkers on the Man, His Work, and His Legacy, edited by John Brockman, Pantheon, 288 pages, 2006, $25.
Albert Einstein has a name recognition that is as great or greater than Mick Jagger, Billy Graham, or Bill Clinton. Einstein represents in the public view the epitome of a scientist: wild hair, no socks, disheveled appearance. It was said that only a select few individuals could comprehend his theories. (The lore goes that when astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington was told that only three people understood Einstein's general relativity, Eddington replied “Who is the third?”) This popular image is not the one shared by physicists. These individuals have a view of Einstein that stretches back to his early years, from 1900 to 1920, when his contributions to physics covered a vast range of subject matter. The significance of his work was immediately recognized by his scientific peers and was understood by all working at the forefront of physics at the time.
Most practicing physicists such as myself encountered Einstein well before their formal education began. And in most cases, it was becoming aware of Einstein's special relativity. I recall reading about it in George Gamow's book, One, Two, Three … Infinity, while in high school. Although the consequences of the special theory of relativity are totally at odds with normal experience, the consequences easily follow from the assumption that the speed of light measured in any frame moving at constant velocity is the same as in the frame at rest. More sophisticated reasoning in which Einstein modified Newtonian mechanics to make it compatible with Maxwell's equations on the properties of electromagnetism led to the same result. In either case, only simple algebra–familiar to any high school student–was necessary to arrive at the consequences. And what consequences they were! Clocks in systems moving with respect to an observer run more slowly than a clock at rest with the observer. A length in a moving frame recorded by an observer at rest appears shorter than it does for an observer in a moving frame. Additional consequences led to the famous equation E=Mc2, demonstrating that energy can be converted to mass and vice versa.
Most practicing physicists such as myself encountered Einstein well before their formal education began. And in most cases, it was becoming aware of Einstein's special relativity
The noted science author John Brockman (who once said, “Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody”) has edited a collection of essays by outstanding physicists, astrophysicists, and science journalists. The essays cover a diversity of subjects, but most describe how Einstein influenced the authors' formation. Theoretical physicist John Wheeler, the only author included in the volume who actually knew and interacted with Einstein, writes: “I was impressed by Einstein's stubbornness in pursuing his dream and by the clarity of his exposition, but not impressed by the dream itself: a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism.”
Variations on this view are expressed by nearly all of the essayists. By the time Einstein took up his position at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1933, his productive scientific career was finished. As such, all the essays focus on some aspect of Einstein's early career. There are roughly four identifiable themes: anecdotes, didactic essays explaining the consequences of Einstein's theories, essays about Einstein's “blunder” (the cosmological constant), and those that are essentially autobiographic. The latter are the most interesting, and among this group, the essays by Lee Smolin, Peter Galison, and Jeremy Bernstein stand out.
WHAT I'M READING
Christopher Chyba
Professor of astrophysics and international affairs at Princeton University, Chyba directs the Program on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School.
Lee Smolin, a high school dropout, was stimulated to pursue theoretical physics due to a chance encounter with Einstein's brief autobiographical notes in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Schilpp. (Incidentally, I recommend many of the essays in this volume to any serious reader.) Smolin writes that “with the reckless clarity of adolescence … I decided to dedicate my life to continuing his search for the laws of nature.” As Smolin's career advanced he was determined to learn more of Einstein's character through those he met while at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was essentially rebuffed by Freeman Dyson, Robert Bergman, Abraham Pais, and even Helen Dukas, Einstein's caretaker and secretary during his days at Princeton. Smolin recounts, “I never found out who Einstein was. Perhaps there was a deliberate attempt to suppress impressions that would interfere with the myth that his heirs wanted to last for ages.”
Echoing the sentiment of many of the essays, Peter Galison, professor of the history of science and of physics at Harvard, writes, “Much as I admire the older Einstein–much as I find him an admirable figure for his political courage in opposing McCarthyism, nuclear escalation, and racism, much as I see the bravery behind his pursuit of a unified field theory–it is the young Einstein that I admire.” Galison is fascinated with Einstein's engagement with detailed discussions of inventions and patents and uses Einstein's work on the gyro compass to show how technological concerns lay behind some of Einstein's most abstract thought experiments.
Jeremy Bernstein, who has graced us with his beautiful books and articles on scientists and science, writes about how understanding Einstein was central to his becoming a physicist. Bernstein has charming vignettes of Einstein's interactions with Max Herzberger, Bernard Cohen, and Phillip Frank, who had replaced Einstein as professor at the University of Prague in 1912.
Contemporary physics opens the door to other commentaries. A surprising recent discovery in cosmology is that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating. Rocky Kolb, Paul Davies, Lawrence Krauss, and Paul Steinhardt provide excellent essays on this subject, addressing the cosmological constant that Einstein added to his equations to produce a solution of a steady universe. With the discovery in 1929 that the universe was expanding, the cosmological constant was unnecessary. Now with the acceleration, a cosmological constant is needed! The collective theme of these essays is that the tidy model of the Big Bang may not be the last word in cosmology.
Of the 24 authors represented in My Einstein, only two are women. I wonder what theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, cosmologist Wendy Freeman, astronomer Vera Rubin, and astrophysicists Sandra Faber and Angela Olinto would have written.
Despite this gender gap, all of the essays have something interesting to say and serve as an engaging introduction to Einstein the scientist. I hope it will prompt the reader to read one of the excellent Einstein biographies that probe deeper into his life and theories, such as Abraham Pais' Subtle is the Lord.