Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a physicist German origin Jew , nationalized after Swiss , Austrian and American.
He is considered the most important, well-known
and popular scientist of the 20th century .
In
1905, when he was an unknown young physicist, employed at
the Bern Patent Office , he published his theory of special
relativity .
In
it, he incorporated, in a simple theoretical framework based on simple physical
postulates, concepts and phenomena previously studied by Henri
Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz . As a logical consequence of
this theory, he deduced the most popular equation of physics :
the mass-energy equivalence, E = mc² . That year he published
other works that would lay some of the foundations of statistical
physics and quantum mechanics .
In
1915, he introduced the theory of general relativity , in which he
completely reformulated the concept of gravity .
One
of the consequences was the emergence of the scientific study of the origin and
evolution of the Universe by the branch of physics
called cosmology .
In
1919, when British observations of a solar eclipse confirmed his
predictions about the curvature of light, he was idolized by the
press. Einstein became a world-famous popular icon of science, a privilege
available to very few scientists.
For
his explanations on the photoelectric effect and his numerous
contributions to theoretical physics , in 1921 he won the Nobel
Prize in Physics and not for the Theory of Relativity, since the scientist
who was entrusted with the task of evaluating it did not understand it, and
they feared run the risk of later being proven wrong. At that time it was
still considered somewhat controversial.
Faced
with the rise of Nazism , Einstein left Germany in December
1932 for the United States , where he devoted himself to teaching at
the Institute for Advanced Study . He became a US
citizen in 1940. During his last years he worked to integrate the
gravitational and electromagnetic forces into the same theory .
Although
considered by some to be the "father of the atomic bomb ,"
he advocated world
federalism , internationalism , pacifism , Zionism, and democratic
socialism , with a strong devotion to individual
freedom and freedom of expression .Octover And November he
was proclaimed "character of the twentieth century 'and the most
preeminent scientist by the magazine Time .
Biography
Childhood
He
was born in the German city of Ulm , a hundred kilometers east
of Stuttgart , into a Jewish family. His parents were Hermann
Einstein and Pauline Koch. Hermann and Pauline had married in 1876, when
Hermann was nearly twenty-nine and she was eighteen. Pauline's family
lived near Stuttgart , specifically in the city
of Cannstatt ; there his father, Julius Koch, operated a very
prosperous grain trade with his brother Heinrich .
Pauline
played the piano and passed on to her son her love
of music , among other qualities such as her "perseverance and
patience." From his father, Hermann, he also inherited certain
characters such as generosity and kindness that characterized Albert.
In
1880 the family moved to Munich , where he would grow up for fourteen
years, and his father and his brother, Jakob, who influenced Albert
intellectually, founded a company dedicated to the installation
of water and gas in October .
As
the business was going well, with the support of the whole family they decided
to open their own workshop for electrical appliances ( electrotechnical
Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie. ), Which they supplied to power plants
in Munich-Schwabing, Varese and Susa in Italy., which
would fail after putting the whole family in debt.
This
caused trauma not only to Albert but also to the rest of the family.
In
order to pay off debts and finance the move, the beloved garden of the Munich
house was sold to a property developer.
From
the beginning, he showed some difficulty in expressing himself, since he did
not begin to speak until the age of three, so he appeared to have some delay
that would cause him some problems. Unlike his younger sister Maya, who
was more lively and cheerful, Albert was patient and methodical and did not
like to show off. She used to avoid the company of other infants her age
and despite the fact that, as children, they also had differences from time to
time, she only admitted her sister in their solitudes.
He
attended his primary studies in a Catholic school; from 1888 he attended
the Luitpold secondary school (which in 1965 would receive the name Gymasium
Albert Einstein ). He got good marks in general, not so much in
the language subjects, but excellent in the natural sciences. Aaron
Bernstein's popular science books marked his interest and his future
career.
It was a difficult period that he would endure thanks to the violin lessons (starting in 1884) that his mother gave him (an instrument that he was passionate about and which he continued to play the rest of his days) and the introduction to algebra that his uncle would discover him Jacob. His time at the Gymnasium (high school), however, was not very rewarding: the rigidity and military discipline of the secondary schools of the time of Otto von Bismarck they won him a lot of controversy with the teachers: at the Luitpold Gymnasium things came to a head in 1894, when Einstein was fifteen years old. A new professor, Dr. Joseph Degen hart, told him that "he would never achieve anything in life." When Einstein replied that "he had not committed any crime," the teacher replied: "your mere presence here undermines the respect that the class owes me."
His uncle, Jacob Einstein, an engineer with great inventiveness and ideas, convinced Albert's father to build a house with a workshop , where they would carry out new projects and technological experiments of the time in order to make a profit, but, Because the gadgets and gadgets they tuned and manufactured were products for the future, they currently lacked buyers and the deal failed. Little Albert, grew up motivated by the investigations that were carried out in the workshop and all the devices that were there.
In
addition, his uncle encouraged his scientific concerns by providing him
with science books.. According to Einstein himself in his
autobiography, reading these popular science books would give rise to a
constant questioning of the claims of religion ; a determined
free thought that was associated with other forms of rejection of the state and
authority. A rare skepticism at that time, according to
Einstein himself. He was not motivated by school, and although he was
excellent in mathematics and physics , he was not
interested in other subjects.
At
the age of fifteen, without a tutor or guide, he undertook the study
of the infinitesimal calculus. The clearly unfounded idea that he was
a bad student comes from the first biographers to write about Einstein, who
confused the Swiss school grading system (6 in Switzerland is the best grade)
with German (6 is the worst note).
In
this Education Council it appears with a grade of 6 in all the
subjects: Algebra , Physics , Geometry , Analytical
Geometry and Trigonometry .
In
1894, the Hermann company was experiencing major financial difficulties and the
Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia , in Italy ,
near Milan.. Albert remained in Munich to finish his courses before
reuniting with his family in Pavia, but the separation was short-lived: before
obtaining his bachelor's degree, he decided to leave the Gymnasium.
Without
consulting his parents, Albert contacted a doctor (Max Talmud's older brother,
a medical student who went to Einstein's parents for lunch every Friday) to
certify that he was suffering from exhaustion and He needed time out of school,
and he convinced a teacher to certify his excellence in the field of
mathematics. The school authorities let him go. Just after Christmas
1894, Albert left Munich for Milan to join his parents.
Youth
Thus, the Einstein family tried to enroll Albert in the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich, but, not having a bachelor's degree, he had to take an entrance exam, which he failed because of a poor grade in an arts subject. This meant that he was initially rejected, but the director of the center, impressed by his results in science, advised him to continue his high school studies and obtain the degree that would give him direct access to the Polytechnic. His family sent him to Aarau to finish his secondary studies at the Aargau cantonal school., about 50 km west of Zurich, where Einstein obtained a German bachelor's degree in 1896, at the age of sixteen. That same year he renounced his German citizenship, presumably to avoid military service, becoming stateless. He began the procedures to become a Swiss citizen. At the end of 1896, at the age of seventeen, Einstein entered the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich (Switzerland), probably the most important center in Central Europe for studying science outside of Germany, enrolling in the School of Scientific and Mathematical Orientation , with the idea of studying physics.
During
his years in the politically vibrant Zurich , he discovered the work
of various philosophers: Henri Poincaré , Baruch
Spinoza , David Hume , Immanuel Kant , Karl
Marx and Ernst Mach . He also made contact with the
socialist movement through Friedrich Adler and with a certain
nonconformist and revolutionary thought in which his longtime
friend Michele Besso had a lot to do with it .
In
October 1896, he met Mileva Marić, a Serbian classmate, feminist and
radical, with whom he fell in love.
In
1900, Albert and Mileva graduated from the Zürich Polytechnic and in 1901, at
the age of twenty-two, they obtained Swiss citizenship. During this period
he discussed his scientific ideas with a group of close friends, including
Mileva, with whom he secretly had a daughter in January 1902,
named Lieserl..
To
this day, no one knows what happened to the girl, assuming that she was adopted
in Mileva's native Serbia, after they were both married on January 6, 1903, in
the city of Bern. However, this theory can hardly be proven, as only
circumstantial evidence is available. Einstein's parents always opposed
the marriage, until in 1902 his father fell mortally ill and
consented. But his mother never resigned herself to it.
He graduated in 1900 , obtaining the diploma of professor of mathematics and physics, but could not find work at the University, so he worked as a tutor in Winterthur, Schaffhausen and Bern . His classmate Marcel Grossmann , a man who would later play a pivotal role in the mathematics of general relativity, offered him a steady job at the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office in Bern, a patent office, where he worked. from 1902 to 1909. His personality also caused him problems with the director of the Office, who taught him to "express himself correctly."
At
this time, Einstein lovingly referred to his wife Mileva as "a person who
is my equal and as strong and independent as I am." Abram Joffe, in
his biography of Einstein, argues that during this period he was assisted in
his research by Mileva. This is contradicted by other biographers such as
Ronald W. Clark, who affirms that Einstein and Mileva had a distant
relationship that gave him the solitude necessary to concentrate on his
work.
In
May 1904, Einstein and Mileva had a son, whom they named Hans Albert
Einstein . That same year he got a permanent job at the Patent
Office. Shortly after, he finished his doctorate presenting
a thesis entitled A new determination of molecular dimensions ,
consisting of a 17-page paper that emerged from a conversation with Michele
Besso, while they had a cup of tea; As Einstein sweetened his, he asked
Besso:
Do you think that calculating the dimensions of sugar molecules could be a good PhD thesis?
In 1905, he wrote several fundamental works on small and large-scale physics. In the first one he explained the Brownian motion , in the second the photoelectric effect and the remaining two developed special relativity and mass-energy equivalence . The first of them earned him a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1906, and his work on the photoelectric effect would earn him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, for his work on Brownian motion and his interpretation of the photoelectric effect. . These articles were submitted to the journal Annals of Physics and are generally known as the articles of the miraculous year.
Maturity
In
1908, at the age of twenty-nine, he was hired at the University
of Bern , Switzerland , as a professor and lecturer ( privatdozent ). Einstein
and Mileva had a new son, Eduard , born on July 28, 1910. Shortly
afterwards the family moved to Prague , where Einstein obtained the
position of professor of theoretical physics, the equivalent
of professor, at the German University of Prague. having to adopt Austrian
nationality to be able to access the position. At this time he worked
closely with Marcel Grossmann and Otto Stern . He also
began to call the fourth dimension mathematical time".
In
1913, just before World War I , he was elected to the Prussian
Academy of Sciences. He established his residence in Berlin ,
where he stayed for seventeen years. Emperor Wilhelm invited him to head
the Physics section of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Physics .
On
February 14, 1919, at the age of thirty-nine, he divorced Mileva, after a marriage
of sixteen years, and a few months later, on June 2, 1919, he married a cousin
of hers, Elsa Loewenthal. , whose maiden name was
Einstein; Loewenthal was the last name of her first husband, Max
Loewenthal. Elsa was three years older than him and had been taking care
of him after suffering a severe state of exhaustion. Einstein and Elsa had
no children.
The
fate of Albert and Mileva's daughter, Lieserl , born before her
parents married or found work, is unknown. Of his two sons, the first,
Hans Albert, moved to California , where he became a university
professor, although with little interaction with his father; the second,
Eduard, suffered from schizophrenia and was admitted in 1932 to an
institution for the treatment of mental illnesses in Zurich. It was the
first of many entries. Einstein wanted to bring his sick son to Princeton,
but the US embassy would not admit him because of his poor record. Eduard
died in the psychiatric center in 1965.
In
Berlin in the 1920s, Einstein's fame sparked heated discussions. Editorials
attacking his theory could be read in conservative newspapers. Spectacle
conferences were called trying to argue how crazy the special theory of
relativity was. He was even attacked, in a veiled way, not openly, as a Jew. His
name appeared, along with other German intellectuals, on the lists of people
considered "a danger to the country" by the Nazi
party .
In
the rest of the world, the theory of relativity was passionately debated in
popular lectures and texts.
In
Germany, expressions of hatred towards Jews reached very high
levels. Several Nazi- ideological physicists , some as
notable as Nobel laureates in Physics Johannes
Stark and Philipp Lenard , tried to discredit his
theories. Other physicists who taught the theory of relativity, such
as Werner Heisenberg , were banned in their attempts to access
teaching positions.
In
1923 he visited Spain , establishing a relationship with José
Ortega y Gasset . Upon landing in Barcelona , and given the
socialist ideas he professed, He accepted an invitation to give a
conference at the headquarters of the CNT , where he became friends
with Ángel Pestaña . He asked what the acronym CNT (National
Confederation of Labor) meant, and when he understood it, and given the anarchist
ideas of the union, he proposed to eliminate the word "National",
which in Germany had violent connotations. During his visit he also
briefly met Santiago Ramón y Cajal and additionally received a
tribute from King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who appoints him a member of
the Royal Academy of Sciences .
Before
the rise of Nazism - Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor on
January 30, 1933 - he had left Germany in December 1932 to sail uncertainly for
the United States , where he taught at the Institute for
Advanced Study , adding to his Swiss nationality the American in
1940, at the age of sixty-one.
For the Nazi clique, Jews are not just a means that
deflects the resentment that the people experience against their
oppressors; They also see in the Jews an unadaptable element that cannot
be led to accept a dogma without criticism, and that consequently threatens
their authority - for as long as such a dogma exists - because of their
determination to enlighten the masses.
Proof
that this problem gets to the heart of the matter is provided by the solemn
book-burning ceremony, offered as a spectacle by the Nazi regime shortly after
seizing power.
Einstein. New York. 1938.
Before
deciding on US exile, in 1933 the government of the Second Spanish
Republic offered Einstein to join the Central University of Madrid as a
researcher. These efforts were mediated by the then ambassador to the
United Kingdom, Ramón Pérez de Ayala , at the initiative of
Minister Fernando de los Ríos . Finally, given the situation of
political instability in Europe and the rise to power of the CEDA in
Spain, Einstein declined the offer. Faced with the possibility that the
German scientist would accept the position, sectors of the Spanish right showed
their discomfort and there were some anti-Semitic reactions. The Catholic
newspaper El Debate(linked to CEDA) published an editorial on April
12 (titled Everything is relative ) where he referred to
Einstein as "the Jew"; in another article in the same newspaper
he denied that he was a victim of Hitler persecution and that his exile was
forced: “The socialist minister has rushed to offer him
protection. Judaism and Marxism are identified and confused, "he
added.
Einstein,
in 1939 decides to exert his influence by participating in political issues
that affect the world. He wrote the famous letter to Roosevelt ,
to promote the atomic project and prevent the "enemies of humanity"
from doing it earlier:
… Since given the mentality of
the Nazis , they would have consummated the destruction and
enslavement of the rest of the world.
During
his last years, Einstein worked to integrate the four fundamental
interactions into a single theory , a task that is still
unfinished.
Death
On
April 16, 1955, Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by a
ruptured aneurysm of the aorta abdominal, which had
previously been reinforced surgically by Dr. Rudolph Nissen in 1948. Einstein
refused surgery, saying: "I want to leave when I want. It is bad
taste to artificially prolong life. I've done my part, it's time to
go. I will do it with elegance. He died in Princeton Hospital early
on April 18, 1955 at the age of seventy-six.
On
the table was the draft of the speech for the seventh anniversary
of Israel's independence, which he would never pronounce, and which
began like this: "Today I speak to you not as an American citizen, nor as
a Jew, but as a human being.
Einstein
did not want to have a glittering funeral, attended by dignitaries from around
the world.
In
accordance with his wish, his body was cremated on the same afternoon, before
most of the world found out about the news.
In
the crematorium there were only twelve people, among whom was his eldest
son. His ashes were scattered in the Delaware River so that the
place of his remains would not become an object of morbid veneration. But
there was a part of his body that did not burn.
During
the autopsy , Einstein's brain was removed by
hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey to keep it, without
his family's permission, in the hope that future neuroscience would be able to
discover what made Einstein so smart. He kept it for several decades,
until he finally returned it to the Princeton laboratories when he was in his
eighties. He thought that Einstein's brain "would reveal the secrets
of his genius to him and that would make him famous." So far, the
only moderately interesting scientific data obtained from the study of the
brain is that a part of it - the part that, among other things, is related to
mathematical ability - is larger than in other brains.
Detailed
studies of Einstein's brain are recent and scarce.
In
1985, for example, Professor Marian Diamond , from
the University of California at Berkeley , reported a number
of glial cells (which nourish neurons) of higher quality in areas of
the left hemisphere, responsible for controlling mathematical abilities.
In
1999, neuroscientist Sandra Witelson reported that Einstein's lower parietal
lobe, an area related to mathematical reasoning, was 15% wider than normal.
In
addition, he found that his Silvio fissure , a groove that normally
runs from the front of the brain to the back, did not go all the way.
Scientific
trajectory
In
1901 Einstein's first scientific work appeared: it dealt with capillary
attraction . He published two works in 1902 and 1903, on the
statistical foundations of thermodynamics , experimentally
corroborating that the temperature of a body is due to the agitation of its
molecules, a theory still debated at that time.
Articles of 1905
In
1905 he finished his doctorate presenting a thesis entitled A new
determination of molecular dimensions . That same year he wrote
four seminal articles on small and large-scale physics.
In
them he explained the Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and developed
special relativity and mass-energy equivalence. Einstein's work on the
photoelectric effect would earn him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. These
articles were submitted to the journal Annals of Physics and
are generally known as the annus mirabilis articles (from Latin :
"miracle year"). The International Union of Pure and Applied
Physics, together with UNESCO , commemorated 2005 as the World
Year of Physics celebrating the centenary of publication of these works.
Photoelectric effect
The first of his 1905 articles was titled A Heuristic Point of View on the Production and Transformation of Light .
In
it, Einstein proposed the idea of "quanta" of light (now
called photons ) and showed how this concept could be used to explain
the photoelectric effect .
The
quantum theory of light was a strong indication of wave-corpuscle duality and
that physical systems can display both wave and corpuscular
properties. This article was one of the basic pillars of quantum
mechanics . A full explanation of the photoelectric effect could only
be worked out when quantum theory was more advanced. For this work, and
for his contributions to theoretical physics, Einstein received
the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics .
Brownian movement
His
second article, entitled On the Motion Required by the Molecular
Kinetic Theory of Heat of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid ,
covered his studies on Brownian motion .
The
article on Brownian motion, the fourth in importance, is closely related to the
article on molecular theory. It is a very elaborate piece of statistical
mechanics, notable for the fact that Einstein had not heard of Robert
Brown's measurements of the 1820s until the end of that same year
(1905); So he wrote this article, titled On The Theory of
Brownian Motion .
The
article explained the phenomenon using the statistics of the thermal movement
of the individual atoms that make up a fluid. The Brownian motion had
puzzled the scientific community since its discovery a few decades
ago. Einstein's explanation provided incontestable experimental evidence
for the actual existence of atoms. The article also provided a strong
impetus for statistical mechanics and the kinetic theory of
fluids , two fields that remained controversial at the time.
Before
this work, atoms were considered a useful concept
in physics and chemistry , but contrary to legend, most
contemporary physicists already believed in atomic theory and statistical
mechanics developed
by Boltzmann , Maxwell, and Gibbs. ; moreover,
fairly good estimates of the radii of the nucleus and Avogadro's
number had already been made . Einstein's article on atomic
motion gave experimentalists a simple method for counting atoms by looking
through an ordinary microscope .
Wilhelm
Ostwald , one of the leaders of the anti-atomic school, communicated
to Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been transformed into a believer in
atoms by Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion.
Special relativity
Einstein's
third article of that year was titled On the Electrodynamics of
Moving Bodies.
In
this article Einstein introduced the theory of special relativity by studying
the motion of bodies and electromagnetism in the absence of the force
of gravitational interaction .
Special
relativity solved the problems opened by the Michelson and Morley
experiment in which it had been shown that the electromagnetic waves that
make up light moved in the absence of a medium. The speed of light is
therefore constant and not relative to motion. As early as
1894, George Fitzgerald had studied this question by showing that the
Michelson and Morley experiment could be explained if bodies contract in the
direction of their motion.
In
fact, some of the fundamental equations in Einstein's paper had been introduced
earlier (1903) by Hendrik Lorentz , Dutch physicist, giving
Fitzgerald's conjecture mathematical form.
This
famous publication is questioned as Einstein's original work, because in it he
omitted to cite any reference to the ideas or concepts developed by these
authors as well as the works of Poincaré .
In
reality Einstein developed his theory in a totally different way than these
authors deducing experimental facts from fundamental principles and not giving
a phenomenological explanation to puzzling observations. Einstein's merit
was therefore in explaining what happened in the Michelson and Morley
experiment as the final consequence of a complete and elegant theory based on
fundamental principles and not as an ad-hoc or
phenomenological explanation of an observed phenomenon.
His
reasoning was based on two simple axioms: In the first, he reformulated the
principle of simultaneity, introduced by Galileo Galilei centuries
before, by which the laws of physics must be invariant for all
observers moving at constant speeds between them, and the second, that the
speed of light is constant for any observer. This second, revolutionary
axiom goes beyond the consequences foreseen by Lorentz or Poincaré, who simply
related a mechanism to explain the shortening of one of the arms of the Michelson
and Morley experiment.
This
postulate implies that if a flash of light is launched when two observers in
relative motion cross, both will see the light move away, producing a perfect
circle with each of them in the center. If a detector were placed on both
sides of the observers, neither observer would agree on which detector was
activated first (the concepts of absolute time and simultaneity are
lost).
The
theory was called the "special theory of relativity" or
"restricted theory of relativity" to distinguish it from the
general theory of relativity , which was introduced by Einstein in
1915 and in which the effects of gravity are considered.
and acceleration .
Mass-energy equivalence
The
fourth article of that year was entitled Ist the inertia of a
body depends on its energy contentand showed a deduction of
the formula of relativity that relates mass and energy.
In this article it was stated that the mass variation of an object that emits an energy L is:
where V was the notation for the speed of light used by Einstein in 1905.
This formula implies that the energy E of a body at rest is equal to its mass m times the speed of light squared:
It shows how a particle with mass possesses a type of energy, "energy at rest", different from the classical kinetic energy and potential energy. The mass-energy relationship is commonly used to explain how nuclear energy is produced; By measuring the mass of atomic nuclei and dividing by the atomic number, the binding energy trapped in the atomic nuclei can be calculated.
In parallel, the amount of energy produced in the fission of an atomic nucleus is calculated as the difference in mass between the initial nucleus and the products of its decay, multiplied by the speed of light squared.
General relativity
In November 1915, Einstein delivered a series of lectures at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described the theory of general relativity. The last of these talks concluded with the presentation of the equation that replaces Isaac Newton's law of gravity .
In this theory all observers are considered equivalent and not only those that move with a uniform speed. Gravity is no longer a force or action at a distance , as it was in Newtonian gravity, but a consequence of the curvature of space-time . The theory provided the basis for the study of cosmology and made it possible to understand the essential characteristics of the Universe., many of which would not be discovered until after Einstein's death.
General relativity was obtained by Einstein from mathematical reasoning, hypothetical experiments ( gedanken experiment ) and rigorous mathematical deduction without actually having an experimental basis. The fundamental principle of the theory was the so-called equivalence principle . Despite the mathematical abstraction of the theory, the equations made it possible to deduce verifiable phenomena.
On May 29, 1919, Arthur Eddington was able to measure, during an eclipse , the deflection of light from a star as it passed near the Sun., one of the predictions of general relativity. When this confirmation was made public, Einstein's fame increased enormously and he was considered a revolutionary step in physics . Since then the theory has been verified in each and every one of the experiments and verifications carried out so far.
Despite its popularity, or perhaps precisely because of it, the theory had significant detractors among the scientific community who could not accept a physics without an absolute reference system.
Bose-Einstein statistics
In 1924 Einstein received an article from a young Indian physicist , Satyendranath Bose , called Plank's Law and the Light Quantum Hypothesis , describing light as a photon gas and requesting Einstein's help for its publication. Einstein realized that the same kinds of statistics could be applied to groups of atoms and published the article, together with Bose, in German, the most important language in physics at the time. Bose-Einstein statistics explain the behavior of basic types of elementary particles called bosons .
Bohr-Einstein debate
The Bohr-Einstein debate was a popular name given to a series of friendly public discussions between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr about quantum physics . His discussions are highly remembered due to their importance in the philosophy of science . The meaning and significance of these debates are poorly understood, but their great importance was taken into account by Bohr himself and written in his article Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics published in a volume dedicated to Einstein.
Einstein's position regarding quantum mechanics is significantly more subtle and more open-minded than what has sometimes been presented in technical manuals and popular scientific articles. His powerful and constant criticisms of quantum mechanics forced its defenders to sharpen and refine their understanding of the philosophical and scientific implications of their own theories.
The unified field theory
Einstein spent his last years searching for one of the most important theories in physics, the so-called unified field theory . This search, after his general theory of relativity, consisted of a series of attempts to generalize his theory of gravitation in order to unify and summarize the fundamental laws of physics, specifically gravitation and electromagnetism.
In 1950, he presented his unified field theory in an article entitled " On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation" in Scientific American .
Although Albert Einstein was world famous for his work in theoretical physics, he gradually became isolated in his research, and his attempts were unsuccessful. Pursuing the unification of the fundamental forces, Albert ignored some important developments in physics, being notably visible on the subject of the strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces , which were not well understood until fifteen years after Einstein's death (about the year 1970), through numerous experiments in high-energy physics. The attempts proposed by string theory or M theory , show that their impetus still lasts to prove the great theory of the unification of the laws of physics.
Political activity
The Zionist cause
The events of the First World War pushed Einstein to compromise himself politically, taking sides. He had contempt for violence, bravado, aggression, and injustice.
Originally from an assimilated Jewish family, Einstein noticed the rise of anti - Semitism during World War I and partially advocated for the Zionist cause .Einstein was one of the best known members of the German Democratic Party (DDP). Between 1921 and 1932 he gave various speeches, with the purpose of helping to raise funds for the Jewish community and support the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , founded in 1918, and as proof of his growing commitment to the Zionist cause. However, although he was in favor of Palestine being a "home" for Jews, as stated in the Balfour Declaration, was against the creation of a Jewish state. Thus, in January 1946, in a statement before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that questioned various personalities about the creation of a Jewish state, Einstein said:
The idea of a (Jewish) state does not coincide with what I feel, I cannot understand why it is necessary. It is linked to a lot of difficulties and is typical of closed minds. I think it's bad.
Einstein advocated for a binational state where Jews and Palestinians had the same rights: “We, that is, Jews and Arabs, must come together and reach a reciprocal understanding regarding the needs of the two peoples, as regards the satisfactory directives for a profitable coexistence ».
With the rise of Nazism in Germany , Einstein left his country and decided to reside in the United States . A group of enemies of his theories in Nazi Germany created an association against him, and a man was even accused of promoting his murder.
In addition, a book entitled One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was published , to which Einstein simply said, "Why a Hundred? If I was wrong, just one would suffice. '
The State of Israel was created in 1948. When Chaim Weizmann , Israel's first president and longtime friend of Einstein, died in 1952, Abba Eban , the Israeli ambassador to the United States , offered him the presidency.. Einstein rejected the offer saying: “I am deeply moved by the offer of the State of Israel and at the same time saddened and ashamed that I could not accept it.
All my life I have dealt with objective matters, so I lack the natural aptitude and experience to deal properly with people and to perform official functions. I am the most distressed by these circumstances, because my relationship with the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.
The socialist cause
In May 1949, the Monthly Review published (in New York) an article of his entitled " Why Socialism? " in which he reflects on the history, conquests and consequences of the" economic anarchy of capitalist society ", an article that is still valid today. A much-cited part of it speaks of the role of private media in relation to the democratic possibilities of countries:
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the true source of evil. (…)
The pacifist cause
Albert Einstein was a convinced pacifist .
In 1914 , 93 prominent German intellectuals signed the Manifesto for the Civilized World to support the Kaiser and challenge the "hordes of Russians allied with Mongols and blacks who seek to attack the white race", justifying the German invasion of Belgium ; but Einstein refused to sign along with three other intellectuals, who wanted to promote a counter manifesto, exclaiming later:
It is incredible what Europe has unleashed with this madness. (…)
During World War II , Einstein partially renounced pacifism by proposing to the United States that they make a nuclear bomb before Nazi Germany, but he publicly warned of the dangers of nuclear war and proposed international control of such weapons.
In 1939 his most important participation in world affairs took place. The Smyth Report, albeit with subtle cuts and omissions, tells the story of how physicists tried, unsuccessfully, to interest the Navy and Army in the atomic project. But it was Einstein's famous letter to Roosevelt written on August 2 that broke the rigidity of the military mentality. However, Einstein, who has contempt for violence and war, is considered the "father of the atomic bomb ." At the height of World War II, he supported an initiative by Robert Oppenheimer to start the nuclear weapons development program known as the Manhattan Project .
In his speech in New
York in December of 1945 , he stated:
Today, the physicists who participated in
the construction of the most tremendous and dangerous weapon of all time are
overwhelmed by a similar sense of responsibility, not to mention
guilt. (…)
We help to build the new weapon to prevent
the enemies of humanity from doing it before, since given the mentality of the
Nazis they would have consummated the destruction and slavery of the rest of
the world. (…) We
must hope that the spirit that drove
Alfred Nobel when he created his great institution, the spirit of solidarity
and trust, of generosity and brotherhood among men, prevail in the minds of
those who depend on the decisions that will determine our
destiny. Otherwise, civilization would be doomed.
Einstein promoted the
well - known Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955 ,
an appeal to scientists to unite in favor of the disappearance of nuclear
weapons. This document served as inspiration for the subsequent founding
of the Pugwash Conferences , which in 1995 were awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize .
Ethic and religion
Einstein declared himself an agnostic , and on occasions he also declared himself anatheist although some historians deny this point.
On one occasion, in a meeting, Einstein was asked whether or not he believed in a god to which he replied: "I believe in the god of Spinoza , who is identical to the mathematical order of the Universe." He said that he believed in Baruch Spinoza's " pantheistic " God , but not in a personal god , a belief that he criticized.
Einstein distinguishes three styles that tend to intermingle in the practice of religion. The former is motivated by fear and misunderstanding of causality and therefore tends to invent supernatural beings. The second is social and moral, motivated by the desire for support and love. They both have an anthropomorphic concept of God. The third - which Einstein considers the most mature - is motivated by a sense of wonder at Nature.
In a letter to the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, in 1920, he wrote:
I am not a German citizen, nor is there anything in me that can be defined as "Jewish faith." But I am Jewish and I am proud to belong to the Jewish community, although I do not consider them the chosen of God at all.
A longer quote from Einstein appears in Science,
Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium , published by the
Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Relation to the Democratic
Way of Life:
The more imbued a man is in the orderly regularity of
events, the stronger will be his conviction that there is no place — on the
side of this orderly regularity — for a cause of a different nature. For
that man, neither human rules nor "divine rules" will exist as
independent causes of natural events. For sure, science can never refute
the doctrine of a god who interferes in natural events, because that doctrine
can always take refuge in that scientific knowledge cannot set foot on that
issue. But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of religious
people is not only inappropriate but also fatal. A doctrine that is held
not in bright light but in darkness, which has already done incalculable damage
to human progress, will necessarily lose its effect on humanity. In their
struggle for ethical good, religious people should renounce the doctrine of the
existence of God, that is, renounce the source of fear and hope, which in the
past put great power in the hands of priests. In their work, they must
rely on those forces that are capable of cultivating good, truth and beauty in
humanity itself. This is surely a more difficult task but incomparably
more worthy and admirable.
In a letter dated March 1954, which was included in
the book Albert Einstein: His Human Side (in English), edited
by his faithful secretary Helen Dukas and his collaborator Banesh Hoffman and
published by Princeton University Press, Einstein says:
Of course, what has been read about my religious
convictions was a lie; a lie that is systematically repeated. I do
not believe in a personal god and I have never denied it but have expressed it
clearly. If there is something in me that can be called religious, it is the
unlimited admiration for the structure of the world, as far as our science can
reveal it.
The letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated
January 3 of that same year, auctioned in May 2008, apparently makes
things clearer. Einstein says:
The word god for me is nothing more than the
expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible, a collection of
honorable but still primitive legends that are nevertheless quite
childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change
this ...
There is also a little-known letter from Einstein,
sent to Guy H. Raner Jr, on July 2, 1945, in response to a rumor that
a Jesuit priest had converted him to Christianity, in which
Einstein directly declares himself an atheist (cited by Michael R.
Gilmore in Skeptic Magazine , v. 5, No.2)
I have received your letter of June 10th. I have
never spoken to a Jesuit priest in my life and am amazed at the audacity of
such lies about me. From the point of view of a Jesuit priest, I am, of
course, and have always been an atheist.
William Hermanns , a veteran survivor
from Verdun , professor of German literature, interviewed Einstein
several times, the first in Berlin in 1930.
On that occasion he raised the idea of a cosmic
religion, an idea he had referred to in the conversation about the reality that
he had had with Rabindranath Tagore and later developed and titled "Religion
and Science" published in the New York Times in
1930.
Einstein continued to develop this idea and Herrmanns,
who considered it compatible with traditional beliefs, set out to found a
movement that integrate Jewish,
Christian, Vedist , Buddhist and Islamic traditions. He
was willing to get concise and accurate statements about God. Einstein
could not have been more:
With regard to God, I cannot accept any concept based
on the authority of the Church. For as long as I can remember, the
indoctrination of the masses has bothered me. I do not believe in the fear
of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove that there
is no personal god, but if I spoke about him, I would be lying. I do not
believe in the god of theology, in the god who rewards good and punishes
evil. My god created the laws that take care of that. His universe is
not governed by chimeras, but by immutable laws.
For Einstein, his cosmic religion and his Jewishness
were unrelated to each other. When asked if there was a Jewish point of
view, he replied:
In the philosophical sense there is, in my opinion, no
specifically Jewish point of view. For me, Judaism has to do almost
exclusively with the moral attitude in life and towards life […] Judaism is
not, therefore, a transcendental religion; it has to do with how we live
life and, to a certain extent, with how we understand it […], and nothing
else. I have doubts if it can be called religion in the accepted sense of
the word, or considered not as a "faith", but as the sanctification
of life in the suprapersonal sense that is required of the Jews.
Einstein said that the moral was not
dictated by God, but by mankind:
I do not believe in the immorality of the individual, and I consider ethics an exclusively human concern over which there is no superhuman authority.
In popular culture
Albert Einstein has been the subject and inspiration for many works of popular culture.
On Einstein's 72nd birthday, March 14, 1951, United Press photographer Arthur Sasse tried to persuade him not to smile at the camera, but on that day, having smiled at photographers many times, Einstein took it out of him. language. This photograph became one of the most popular ever taken. Einstein enjoyed this photo and asked UPI to give him nine copies for personal use, one of which he signed for a reporter.
On June 19, 2009, the original signed photograph sold at auction for $ 74,324, a record for a photo of Einstein.
Einstein is a favorite model for depictions of mad scientists or geniuses ; Her expressive face and distinctive hairstyles have been widely copied and exaggerated. Frederic Golden of Time magazine wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist's dream come true."
The name "Einstein" has become synonymous with an extremely intelligent person. It can also be used sarcastically when someone says the obvious or shows a lack of wisdom or intelligence.
Einstein has also been the subject of many quotes that have become especially popular on the Internet and have been falsely attributed to him, including "the definition of insanity."
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