Thursday, December 10, 2009

Collaboration with other scientists

In addition to long time collaborators Leopold Infeld, Nathan Rosen, Peter Bergmann and others, Einstein also had some one-shot collaborations with various scientists.

Einstein-de Haas experiment

Einstein and De Haas demonstrated that magnetization is due to the motion of electrons, nowadays known to be the spin. In order to show this, they reversed the magnetization in an iron bar suspended on a torsion pendulum. They confirmed that this leads the bar to rotate, because the electron’s angular momentum changes as the magnetization changes. This experiment needed to be sensitive, because the angular momentum associated with electrons is small, but it definitively established that electron motion of some kind is responsible for magnetization.

Schrödinger gas model

Einstein suggested to Erwin Schrödinger that he might be able to reproduce the statistics of a Bose-Einstein gas by considering a box. Then to each possible quantum motion of a particle in a box associate an independent harmonic oscillator. Quantizing these oscillators, each level will have an integer occupation number, which will be the number of particles in it.

This formulation is a form of second quantization, but it predates modern quantum mechanics. Erwin Schrödinger applied this to derive the thermodynamic properties of a semiclassical ideal gas. Schrödinger urged Einstein to add his name as co-author, although Einstein declined the invitation.[66]

Einstein refrigerator

In 1926, Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd co-invented (and in 1930, patented) the Einstein refrigerator. This Absorption refrigerator was then revolutionary for having no moving parts and using only heat as an input.[67] On 11 November 1930, U.S. Patent 1,781,541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for the refrigerator. Although the refrigerator was not immediately put into commercial production, the most promising of their patents being quickly bought up by the Swedish company Electrolux to protect its refrigeration technology from competition.[68]

Bohr versus Einstein


Einstein and Niels Bohr. Einstein’s disagreement with Bohr revolved around the idea of scientific determinism. Repercussions of the Einstein-Bohr debate have found their way into philosophical discourse as well.

In the 1920s, quantum mechanics developed into a more complete theory. Einstein was unhappy with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory developed by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. In this interpretation, quantum phenomena are inherently probabilistic, with definite states resulting only upon interaction with classical systems. A public debate between Einstein and Bohr followed, lasting on and off for many years (including during the Solvay Conferences). Einstein formulated thought experiments against the Copenhagen interpretation, which were all rebutted by Bohr. In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein wrote: "I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] does not throw dice." [69]

Einstein was never satisfied by what he perceived to be quantum theory’s intrinsically incomplete description of nature, and in 1935 he further explored the issue in collaboration with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, noting that the theory seems to require non-local interactions; this is known as the EPR paradox.[70] The EPR experiment has since been performed, with results confirming quantum theory’s predictions.[71]

Religious views

The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein’s position on theological determinism, and whether or not he believed in God, or in a god. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "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."[72]

Politics


Einstein with Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore during their widely publicized 14 July 1930 conversation

Throughout the November Revolution in Germany Einstein signed an appeal for the foundation of a nationwide liberal and democratic party,[73][74] which was published in the Berliner Tageblatt on 16 November 1918,[75] and became a member of the German Democratic Party.[76]

Einstein flouted the ascendant Nazi movement, tried to be a voice of moderation in the tumultuous formation of the State of Israel and braved anti-communist politics and resistance to the civil rights movement in the United States. He participated in the 1927 congress of the League against Imperialism in Brussels.[77] He was a socialist Zionist who supported the creation of a Jewish national homeland in the British mandate of Palestine.[78]

After World War II, as enmity between the former allies became a serious issue, Einstein wrote, “I do not know how the third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth – rocks!”[79] In a 1949 Monthly Review article entitled “Why Socialism?”[80] Albert Einstein described a chaotic capitalist society, a source of evil to be overcome, as the “predatory phase of human development” (Einstein 1949). With Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, Einstein lobbied to stop nuclear testing and future bombs. Days before his death, Einstein signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which led to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.[81]

Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups, including the Princeton chapter of the NAACP. When the aged W. E. B. Du Bois was accused of being a Communist spy, Einstein volunteered as a character witness, and the case was dismissed shortly afterward. Einstein’s friendship with activist Paul Robeson, with whom he served as co-chair of the American Crusade to End Lynching, lasted twenty years.[82]

Death

On 17 April 1955, Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been reinforced surgically by Dr. Rudolph Nissen in 1948.[83] He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the State of Israel’s seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live long enough to complete it.[84] Einstein refused surgery, saying: "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."[85] He died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end. Einstein’s remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered around the grounds of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.[86][87] During the autopsy, the pathologist of Princeton Hospital, Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein’s brain for preservation, without the permission of his family, in hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.[88]

Legacy

While travelling, Einstein had written daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters, Margot and Ilse, and the letters were included in the papers bequeathed to The Hebrew University. Margot Einstein permitted the personal letters to be made available to the public, but requested that it not be done until twenty years after her death (she died in 1986[89]). Barbara Wolff, of The Hebrew University’s Albert Einstein Archives, told the BBC that there are about 3,500 pages of private correspondence written between 1912 and 1955.[90]

The United States’ National Academy of Sciences commissioned the Albert Einstein Memorial, a monumental bronze and marble sculpture by Robert Berks, dedicated in 1979 at its Washington, D.C. campus adjacent to the National Mall.

Einstein bequeathed the royalties from use of his image to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Corbis, successor to The Roger Richman Agency, licenses the use of his name and associated imagery, as agent for the Hebrew University.[91][92]

In popular culture

In the period before World War II, Albert Einstein was so well-known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory." He finally figured out a way to handle the incessant inquiries. He told his inquirers "Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein."[93]

Albert Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films, and plays. Einstein is a favorite model for depictions of mad scientists and absent-minded professors; his expressive face and distinctive hairstyle have been widely copied and exaggerated. Time magazine’s Frederic Golden wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist’s dream come true."[94]

Einstein’s association with great intelligence has made the name Einstein synonymous with genius.

Awards


Max Planck presents Albert Einstein with the Max-Planck medal of the German Physical Society, 28 June 1929, in Berlin, Germany

In 1922, Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics,[95] "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". This refers to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", which was well supported by the experimental evidence by that time. The presentation speech began by mentioning "his theory of relativity [which had] been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles [and] also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time." (Einstein 1923)

It was long reported that Einstein gave the Nobel prize money directly to his first wife, Mileva Marić, in compliance with their 1919 divorce settlement. However, personal correspondence made public in 2006[96] shows that he invested much of it in the United States, and saw much of it wiped out in the Great Depression.

Einstein traveled to New York City in the United States for the first time on 2 April, 1921. When asked where he got his scientific ideas, Einstein explained that he believed scientific work best proceeds from an examination of physical reality and a search for underlying axioms, with consistent explanations that apply in all instances and avoid contradicting each other. He also recommended theories with visualizable results (Einstein 1954).[97]

In 1999, Albert Einstein was named Person of the Century by Time magazine,[94][98] a Gallup poll recorded him as the fourth most admired person of the 20th century in the U.S.[99] and according to The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Einstein is "the greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time."[100]

Honors

Albert Einstein has been recognized many times over for his achievements. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics named 2005 the “World Year of Physics” in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Annus Mirabilis Papers.[101]

The Albert Einstein Memorial in central Washington, D.C. is a monumental bronze statue depicting Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. The statue is located in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue, near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The chemical element 99, einsteinium, was named for him in August 1955, four months after Einstein’s death.[102][103]

In 1999 Time magazine named him the Person of the Century, beating contenders like Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt, and in the words of a biographer, “to the scientifically literate and the public at large, Einstein is synonymous with genius.”[104]

2001 Einstein is an inner main belt asteroid discovered on 5 March 1973.[105]

The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes called the Albert Einstein Medal because it is accompanied with a gold medal) is an award in theoretical physics, that was established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein’s 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and included a prize money of $ 15,000,[106][107] which was later reduced to $ 5,000.[108][109] The winner is selected by a committee (the first of which consisted of Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann and Weyl[110]) of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administers the award.[107] Lewis L. Strauss used to be one of the trustees of the institute.[111]

The Albert Einstein Peace Prize is an award that is given yearly by the Chicago, Illinois-based Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation. Winners of the prize receive $50,000.

In 1990, his name was added to the Walhalla temple, east of Regensburg, in Bavaria, Germany.

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