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Einstein Unveiled
John_Renne writes "One of the most well known scientists in the near history is Albert Einstein. Pictures of him can be found on allmost everything varying from lunchboxes to t-shirts and cartoons. On the other hand there's little knowledge of who Einstein really was and the human being behind the genius. This article tries to create a view of the inner Einstein. A nice read for everyone interested in the person inside the phenomenon."
The topic matches the topic icon!
Beautiful! This is truly a Slashdot moment to cherish.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
On the other hand there's little knowledge of who Einstein really was and the human being behind the genius
t s.asp?WRD=Einstein
You mean, aside from all the biographys written about him, the published letters to his children, the secret FBI file kept about him, etc etc.
BN returns rather a lot on the man, and a number of these items are not lunchboxes.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/resul
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
splitting beer atoms to make fizzy beer? You have to admire anyone who wants to make better beer. Oh, wait, that was just a movie. History, pop-culture, same difference. :-)
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
I recently bought a book at a library used book sale called Einstein: The Human Side. I'm not sure who it's written by, but it's basically a collection of letters that Einstein wrote to family, friends, and others. He personally responded to many of the letters written to him, and this book tends to capture the more humorous and touching ones.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
The Einstein Scrapbook is also a very good read on the life of Einstein. It is mostly just a printing of all of his personal papers/essays/letters that he left to be archived at The Hebrew University.
Today's most significant problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Some Highlights...
The very thoughtful answer...
the most mysterious thing you'll see today
Einstein unveils you!
"Einstein said that he thought in images and even muscular sensations," says John Stachel, a physicist and the founding editor of the Papers Project. "The hardest part for him was to translate his findings back into language that others could understand."
Sounds like the good man was addicted to drugs. And yes, I can image it is really hard to translate an LSD trip into language others can understand. However a real artist will be able to do so.
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." -Albert Einstein
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Mine is "Imagination is more important than knowledge".
In any case, I found this site a while back. It's somewhat of a tutorial on Einstein, allowing you to do "Easy" or "Advanced", and fairly informative.
Theory of Relativity
http://presence-pc.com/sqlforum/forum1.php3?config =&interface=0&cat=4
You will not be disappointed by the quality of the French Touch !
I read a book on Einstein's life (i think it may simply have been called 'Einstein').
Well, the article forgets a whole lot of things, unless i have totally messed recollection of that book.
First, they don't even tell us Einstein got a Nobel Prize... and not even for relativity itself ! IIRC, he got it for explaining some optical phenomena (dual particle / light nature of photons)
Second, article forgets to tell that Israel did propose him to run for presidency there, which he declined.
Third, the 1919 experiment actually had MESSED UP results (that was found later) !!! So it didn't confirm Einstein's theory... which, granted, was confirmed later.
Fourth, Einstein introduced some constant in the relativity's equations so that the universe is static, which was his deep belief.
And don't forget his fun quote: God doesn't play with dice (i do think it's from him)
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
Marilyn vos Savant's dick?
example.org - powered by Linux!
This article didn't even touch Einsteins efforts to help a good-hearted auto mechanic find love with his beautiful, spirited niece. It turns out that Einstein and his german scientist friends were actually very much preoccupied with playing cupids, which got them into a lot of mischief. I won't reveal the ending though, you'll have to read his biography (which I haven't).
But did you know that the most well known scientist in the near history was also the best known scientist in recent history? It's true! If you don't believe me, then look it up, Einstein.
An autistic Jew who liked mathematics and world peace. Enough said :)
... and he would be most impressed by your command of the english language!
"His life projects high achievement and a hope for a sane future for humanity..." I really wonder what Einstein would say today about mankind and its future, Hey Taco, how about borrowing that time machine from Celebrity Death Match and bringing him here for an exclusive /. ten question interview?
From that page:
Driving Mr. Albert chronicles the adventures of an unlikely threesome--a freelance writer, an elderly pathologist, and Albert Einstein's brain--on a cross-country expedition intended to set the story of this specimen-cum-relic straight once and for all.
After Thomas Harvey performed Einstein's autopsy in 1955, he made off with the key body part. His claims that he was studying the specimen and would publish his findings never bore fruit, and the doctor fell from grace. The brain, though, became the subject of many an urban legend, and Harvey was transformed into a modern Robin Hood, having snatched neurological riches from the establishment and distributed them piecemeal to the curious and the faithful around the world.
Traversing America with Harvey and his sacred specimen, Paterniti seems to be awaiting enlightenment, much as Einstein did in his last days. But just as the great scientist failed to come up with a unifying theory, Paterniti's chronicle dissolves at times into overly sincere efforts to find importance where there may be none, and it walks a fine line between postmodern detachment and wide-eyed wonderment. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the book offers an engrossing portrait of postatomic America from what may be the ultimate late-20th-century road trip.
But only almost.
The article doesn't mention that Einstein was a shocker at simple arithmatic. He had the natural genius to interpret large and complex equations, but was unable to perform simple calculations.
Ad hominem arguments never explain the 'how' of physicists just the 'who'. Still Einstein was a facinating man, but just as fascinating was Richard Feinman. I suggest reading about Feinman as well.
This is a really great article, especially for people like me. I don't understand science at all, but when I get to see the humanity behind the science it definitely peaks my interest, especially the part about Einstein being a peace activist. It never really mentions also that he was a pretty devout Jew and believer in god. He didnt really believe that spirituality and science were neccesarily very far apart. Even cooler was that he was friendly with some of the biggest philosophers at the time!
until Yahoo Serious is tried for crimes against humanity, Autrailia, that haven of criminals and retrobates, cannot clear its good name!
Is is any wonder the poor guy has been reduced to being an advertising shill for everything in sight?
On the other hand there's little knowledge of who Einstein really was and the human being behind the genius.
Please. As far as scientists go, there are none whose personality has been more revealed and documented than Einstein - except now, maybe John Nash. Lots of lay people know at least something about Einstein's personality; he's probably the only scientist ever who has been adopted by the media. By contrast, see if the lay people around you know anything about the personalities/loves/quirks of Darwin, Newton, Bohr or Freud.
I'll have to delive a quick plug for this book, sitting on my shelf at home. Last read it over a decade ago. I've pretty much forgotten, so I guess it's time for a reread. At the very least, I've kept it rather than given it to a library book sale.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
there was a time magazine article in summer 1999 (i think) that talked about tomorrow's technology. on the topic of immortality, there were a few "methods" mentioned: replace immune system with one more efficient, move brain to new body, and live on as exact replica via memories. as an example of the latter, scientists attempted to replicate albert einstein.
theoretically, at least, based on hist known reactions, the simulation of einstein would be able to answer questions as if he were still alive, even those not of his time period.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I went to grade school across the street from Cal Tech, and it was said that Einstein was often seen bicycling around on his 3-speed. Something about that lack of pretense has always charmed me, and I would think he is already one of the most human famous scientists. He spent much of the last 20 years of his life concerned with averting nuclear war.
Einstein on a bicycle. And he didn't wear a helmet.
I think current physicists would rather try to pass their work off as some sort of homage than to come right out and admit that they're chasing a pipe dream.
Another thing that irks me is the whole idea of wanting to know what people like Einstein were "really like." This always results in a deluge of personal details, the publication of which is not only disrespectful of the dead but largely useless. I mean, he was a brilliant physicist: do I really need to read his poetry from when he was 15?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I heartily recommend the book Einstein for Beginners by Schwartz and McGuinness for anyone interested in a short biography of Einstein.
It is an illustrated biography in the same spirit as the classic Lenin for Beginners and Introducing Kafka (possibly the best Kafka biography ever).
One good biography I read on Einstein was Einstein in Love. It doesn't get to heavy into scientific details, but instead is full of rich descriptions of all the people and relationships in Einstein's troubled younger years, and the time leading up to his theories. A very entertaining and interesting read. It also touches on other famous Scientists of the day.
Einstein: A Life , by Denis Brian
The book focuses more on Einsteins life and struggles, more than on his formulations and theories. It's a great and quick read. Denis Brian has great insight into what made Einstein tick.
Execute? [Y/N] _
First, they don't even tell us Einstein got a Nobel Prize... and not even for relativity itself ! IIRC, he got it for explaining some optical phenomena (dual particle / light nature of photons)
Actually, the photoelectric effect was one of the basis of "old" QM and is well-deserving of a Nobel all by itself.
In fact, A.E. deserved at least 3 seperate Nobels : photo-electric effect, SRT, GRT (in reverse order of importance) are all Nobel-worthy just by themselves.
These are the ones I know of , very probably there are more.
However since they never give the Nobel more than once, indeed the Nobel should have been given to relativity theory.
Working for necessity's mother.
Tripping on nitrous oxide, 19th-century psychologist William James glimpsed the Secret Of The Universe ("Overall there is a smell of fried onions");
-- ac at work
This book is far better than the lesser known "Einstien Undressed", although there's more words, fewer pictures.
A committed socialist, he distrusted capitalism and communism in equal measure and believed that "world government" was the only way to control nuclear weapons and eventually abolish war entirely.
Seems like Einstein would like to see UN weapons inspections for all countries. Personally I'd sleep better if all weapons of mass destruction were banned and all countries were subject to inspection. Let's not wait for millions of people to die before we consider this!
Don't forget his fun quote: God doesn't play with dice
And don't forget this little uncertainty gem either:
"A mouse cannot change the universe just by looking at it." -A.E.
Or this beauty from his wife (Speaking with an astronomer boasting about his new telescope with which he "examines the workings of the universe"):
"Really? My husband uses the back of an old envelope."
I would have voted for "[kin_korn_karn] do me now"
Check out the Eistein! link from MiniTorr.
Looks like FRANCE is ahead of the curve, then!
A 2-page article is hardly going to make you a know-it-all on this man. It's a good overview, but please don't go away from it thinking you're an expert on his life. (That's just a pet peeve of mine, like people who saw a Ken Burns series and now think they're Civil War experts).
What the article barely touches on, for example, is that (like Russell) he turned from science and philosophy to political activism later in life, complete with a heaping FBI file. Read his own words if you want to. There's also an interesting story about Einstein's brain!
Anagrams in EINSTEIN UNVEILED:
...
Viagra Ad:DE SENILE VEIN UNIT
Anti MS:IE DE EVILEST IN NUN
Teen Nun sex:DE TEEN LEI IS IV NUN
> Second, article forgets to tell that Israel did
> propose him to run for presidency there, which
> he declined.
Is this important???
Afterall the right of existance of the state of Israel is still debated, depending on who you are listening to.
I just recently bought this book at a book sale. Very good, and the imagery is amazing. It documents Einstein's thoughts in novel form and interjects with meetings he had with his friend Besso, wherein he tried to explain his want for understanding.
What made me cry the most was the realization that Einstein thought very much the way I did. If only people understood how simple -- yet dedicated -- true genius is, fewer people would be afraid of science and technology.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
"Your brain would have to be prepared first.
Prepared?
Diced.
DICED?!!
We'd provided you with a suitable substitute, an electronic brain. You wouldn't notice the difference.
I'd notice the difference!
No, you'd be programmed not to.
"I read a book on Einstein's life (i think it may simply have been called 'Einstein')."
Shit! I was wondering why my Einstein book entitled "Debussy - a life in music" didn't have much about Quantum Physics in it!
Without a single additional comment.
Guess we should all start doing that. What a forum it would be.
In order to make the world a better place. I think we all need to get in touch with our inner Einstein.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." ~ Albert Einstein
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Where are all the privacy activists? I guess we all only care about our own privacy huh.
Fourth, Einstein introduced some constant in the relativity's equations so that the universe is static, which was his deep belief.
This is the cosmological constant, which he later abandoned (I think because it was realised that the Universe is expanding - previously they didn't think it was). It's now thought that this constant, which is associated with the energy density of vacuum, is associated with the dark matter (the existence of which has recently been verified) which is slowing the expansion of the Universe.
His abandoning of this idea is often called his greatest mistake.
John Bardeen of the University of Illinois won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice, once in 1956 with William Bradford Shockley and Walter Houser Brattain for inventing the transistor, and again in 1972 with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a theory of superconductivity.
One thing about Einstein that is often omitted is what he was intellectually bad at. Sure, we know he wasn't good at math, but an even more important point was that he couldn't memorize details to save his life. I remember reading a story about how he called the telephone operator from a pay phone to ask what his phone number and address were -- he couldn't remember them.
Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but not much of one, because this isn't unheard of. The crux of this boils down to this: One has only a certain amount of cognitive processing power; if the majority is dedicated to one particular type of reasoning, then others will suffer.
So Einstein, as we know, was immensely brilliant at dealing with abstract ideas, but at the same time, he was also miserable at dealing with concrete things, like memorizing a bit of text or some numbers, or for that matter, being able to take in the full sensory experience of a walk in the park, without distraction from other ideas in his head.
I do believe that he was certainly of above average intelligence, but it's important to realize that his total brainpower may not have been AS FAR beyond us as we are taught. As far as he was greater than us in abstract reasoning, he was equally lousy at many of the cognitive things that most people take for granted.
In fact, Einstein was not a fluke or a freak of nature. There are other people like him in the world. They are rare, but they are otherwise normal humans. Rather than being brilliant at Physics, many are brilliant socially or amazing at understanding the thoughts and motivations of other people. Some of them are geeks.
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
[from Albert Einstein - The Human Side,Selected and Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1979]
This certainly doesn't make Einstein a devout Jew - the Jewish religion is very much about a personal god. His god is the same as Spinoza's, and Spinoza was excommunicated by his fellow Jews.
For more about Einstein and religion, see this.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Hum, isn't it rather his addition of this idea what he considers his greatest mistake ?
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
todo:
1. Automatically spell/grammar check on the story submission form.
2. Automatically cache any linked pages to avoid the slashdot effect
DUH!
Silly asses.
and there are UN inspectors in the office. Oh shit...
...and don't forget Linus Pauling (Chemistry '54, Peace '62)
.siggy
And don't forget his fun quote: God doesn't play with dice
I've heard this was his argument against Niels Bohr and quantum theory.
It's also important to rememer that his quote, "God does not play dice," was famous, fun, and mostly wrong. That was his opinion on the study of quantum mechanics, which has its limitations, but is widely accepted and has predicted experimental outcomes.
Einstein made a few interesting mistakes. That was one of them. Another was mucking up the theory of relativity when one of its implications was too incredible. Don't get me wrong. He was huge, and that is measured by the fact that he admitted his mistakes.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Ummm... didn't he win the Nobel for his paper on Brownian motion (random thermal motion)?
Richard Feynman was another physicist with Einstein's absolute brilliance, wit, and ability to reduce complicated things to their essentials. Read his Lectures on Physics which he gave at Caltech (the math is too advanced for my AP calculus mind...partial derivatives. I'll try and understand the math in around a year) and collections of his anecdotes. He was an amazing man. Did anyone here see his Challenger thing?
My favorite part of the article is where it mentions how Einstein has become a kind of "scientific santa".
It's true, in a way his face has become like the face of science, and the persona of "Einstein" is already mostly myth to most people. This might be a neat insight into how other famous figures in history developed into the over-simplified cultural icons that they are today (genghis khan, siddhartha gautama, moses, alexander the great, joan of arc, etc).
My grandpa wrote Einstein a while back. Grandpa was leading a Great Books discussion on something of Einsteins, and he asked for a clarification of one of the problems in the book. Einstein wrote back. It's in English, which means he either dictated it, or someone translated it for him, since he didn't write in English.
Either way, we're pretty sure he was wrong... hehe. Makes me happy every time I think about it.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I was waiting for someone else to post this, but they didn't (so far). Einstein cribbed most of his work. He didn't discover so much as he restated what other's did. His "leaps of imagination" was actually failure to document his sources. All his deficiencies are seen by his supporters as even more of a sign of his genius rather than red flags to show that he's a common conman. Most of his work was all ready done by: Poincarre and Laplace including nearly all his equations (which is really the meat of a phycics paper).
Marie Curie has also won two Nobel Prizes (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911)
Also, the Peace Prize granted to Pauling could have just as easily gone to Einstein, as they were both very active in ensuring that mankind did not nuke himself. Both were very strong advocates of peace. However, the noble prize is not awarded posthumorously.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
[Dave is in the middle of painting a front porch and Kevin walks up. You only see his body but not who it is.]
Kevin: So, you're doing a little painting.
Dave: That's right Einstein. How'd ya guess? I mean, I was trying so hard to hide it. Huh Einstein?
[Kevin's face is shown and we that he is really Einstein.]
Kevin: Listen, not everything that comes out of my mouth is the theory of relativity. So can the sarcasm.
Dave: Sorry, did I hurt your genius feelings?
[Kevin starts to leave and reassure himself.]
Kevin: Walk away, walk away... you're the genius, he's a painter... you're clearly the winner here. [etc.]
Source
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
there is an exibition in AMNH in NY. The article is just a review of this exibition.
<spelling=nazi>No, they tend to only have fun after the (Nobel) prize has been awarded.</spelling>
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
Didn't he mean that the principles of quantum mechanics are not a fundamental truth but rather that there may be another underlying set of rules governing the apparent behavior of subatomic particles?
I agree with many of the posts on this thread: this article will not tell you much you didn't already know or couldn't find out googling for 10 minutes. However, there was a recent NY Times article, (relegated to the pay-per-archives on nytimes.com, but still available on GoogleNews) that summarized the material of a new comprehensive Einstein exhibit in New York. The article is a better read than the US News one, and it tells about the exhibit, which should be great. Obviously, a newspaper article is NOT a substitute for an educated and well-written biography. This exhibit might come closer however. Happy reading.
There is right now a huge exhibit on Einstein at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Worth checking out if you're in the area over the next few months.
Huh. Maybe. My understanding was that when he said this, he felt that quantum mechanics was wrong, and due to be disproven. Maybe not. I don't have a good source for this.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
(an OT english usage comment)
it's kind of ironic that his name gets invoked in a sarcastic sense to denigrate someone. i.e. "What do you mean you didn't think we'd need it? Nice move, Einstein."
A friend of mine says that if I named a famous man, he could name something humble about him, so he challenged me, and he's one of those high energy guys, so he says "GO!", like we're starting a race or something. So I say Thomas Edison, and he says "Thomas Edison always remembered the names of everyone he met". And I'm thinking, okay, this is fun, so I say Albert Einstein, and he says "Albert Einstein personally answered all of his own telephone calls".
So I'm thinking it over, and I'm just awesomely impressed with the humility of the man, so important and famous, to answer all of his own calls, but then I think: Wait a second! Who called Einstein?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
I did a book report of his Biography in school. I think it was very sad that the nurse who was attending him @ his deathbed was unable to speak German, so his last words were a mystery.
Subject says it all. Yes, it really does.
C.P.Snow's book "Variety of Men" has a good biographical sketch of Einstien. It is different than what one usually gets to read and provides insights about the days when Einstien was not yet known (famous) and also about his later days where he carried his activitism against nuclear wars.
The best piece in this book is the bio sketch of G.H.Hardy
I always loved that quote, but when I was studying E&M and QM in college in the late 80's, I coined my own response:
"God does not play dice." - Einstein
"God may or may not play dice, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't use a pocket calculator." - G. Steve Arnold (me) c.1988
My point was that the universe does not know equations -- it just is. The photons are not sitting there with QED books and Feynman diagrams trying to figure out what they are supposed to be doing next. Every bit of it is accounted for in itself quite automatically and the ultimate goal of the physics we do is not understanding, but only description. Understanding requires you to answer "why?", and that is beyond the scope of science.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Einstein's greatest mistake, the Cosmological constant, is currently under debate again after observations of NASA's deep space probes and for example supernovae.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
A fact we ALL can appreciate.
Beside that, the article does not tell us about Einsteins' coolest invention - refrigirator.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
I'll take just the facts, thank you very much, Mr. Hayden, and save your smartass writing style for that Great American Novel you'll never finish.
that would be "piques my interest", Einstein.
However since they never give the Nobel more than once, indeed the Nobel should have been given to relativity theory.
Interestingly, when Einstein and his first wife were divorced, he was so sure about winning the Nobel that he included half the prize money in the settlement.
Mrs. Taylor: What was Einstein _REALLY_ like?
Prof. Hathaway: Dead.
No, Einstein never denied that Quantum Mechanics fits the known experimental data perfectly or claimed that further experiments would show that QM was wrong. Einstein was himself one of the founding fathers of QM and a master in using the predicting powers of the theory, predicting QM-phenomena like LASERs and Bose-Einstein condensation, decades before they were seen in any lab.
What Einstein never accepted was the interpretation given to the mathematical framework of QM by Bohr, Heisenberg, Born and others. Einstein was not alone in resisting the philosophical/physical interpretation by the "Copenhagen school" , he was joined by people like Planck, Schroedinger, and de Broglie who all knew a bit about QM. (But as always, the old generation dies out and the new generation have gotten used to the new world view.)
Einstein believed in a deterministic universe (just as Newton, Laplace and the other classic mechanics guys before), where when you knew the starting conditions perfectly, you could calculate what happened. This is how to understand the statement "God does not play with dices". "God" knows what is going to happen, He does not only know the odds are for something to happen. This is contrary to Bohr who claim that "God" (or the physicist) can only know the different possible outcomes from some given starting condition and the probability of the different outcomes. According to the uncertainty principle "God" can not even hope to know the starting conditions perfectly.
The answer to QM by Einstein was the so-called "hidden variables" theory, variables that behave in a deterministic way but lead to behaviour that looks random in the experiments that were used to "prove" QM. Einstein also made famous thought experiments to show the inconsistency in the logic of the Copenhagen school, like the EPR paradox.
Today most physicist believe Einsteins objections to QM has been shown to be wrong, and Bohr's interpretation has become the dogma. But who knows? Newton thought light consisted of particles, but was proven wrong. Then Einstein showed that light can be seen as both waves and photon-particles. So, maybe in some hundred years Einstein's objections to QM can be shown to be a "bit" correct :-).
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Wolfgang Pauli. The Pauli exclusion principle? No two electrons in an atom can have identical
quantum numbers? Bells ringing? Yeah.
Essentially, he was not Jewish. That was the big myth the Americans created so they could get him from overseas. He was actually the son of a poor Armenian (yet Syrian othodox) shepherd who migrated to Germany to start wool business. Then they got culturally mixed up in the big metropolis Berlin and startedt to celebrate Oktoberfest, mitsvah, tannenbaum, and other German rites. At least that is the story I heard down at the pub.
..since, by the above description, practically every genius in history was autistic. Yeah, Goethe must have been a real basket case, then. Or maybe we shouldn't class mnemonic thought processes as autism, since autism is characterized also by the inability to interact with one's environment, since autistics are necessarily introverts.
By the way, what you're describing isn't autism. It's synesthesia. It has nothing to do with autism. Ask Richard James.
Now, maybe you do have synesthesia, and maybe you do think mnemonically. I do. But you must be some kind of hypochondriac to consider yourself autistic. Autism isn't ADD. It's not a condition to blame for genius. Autism is a condition that really exists, and your description of it is false. ADD is a condition that does not really exist, and was invented by the paranoid (who, of course, don't have it) and capitalized on by the pharmaceutical companies. A convenient way to justify overmedicating one's children.
The bottom line is: spoken language sucks unless you're trying to explain something that has a lot of precedent. That's probably why people can generally think of more curse words than words that describe how they feel in a good mood.
Einstein: God does not play dice.
Bohr: Don't tell God what to do!
You know who else was fascinating? Richard Phillips Feynman. Yeah. Born May 11th, 1918. Son of Melville Feynman and Lucille Phillips. Chief investigator of the Challenger explosion. (That happened on my 3rd birthday -- to the hour!) Maybe you can read about him after you read about this "Feinman" fellow.
I am autistic! You don't know what you're talking about.
I doubt you have any real understanding of your condition beyond your superficial misinterpretation of autism. Your desperite cry to "trust you, because you have it", makes it perfectly clear that you obviously don't value the standard of evidence required to seperate hypothesis of your condition from stringently rationalized insight of your condition.
IE, If you want to stop acting like a parrot, stop squalking and start applying constructive self-criticism to yourself.
I should hope that it piques your interest as well. You'd also be a peace activist if you accidentally convinced the president that it was feasable to invent an atom bomb.
I'll thank you not to call Freud a scientist. That's highly abusive of the word, and highly insulting to us scientists. Replace Freud with Jung, and all will be well. Anna was more of a scientist than her father ever was. And she generally just continued his work. As for Sigmund, he was simply a sociopath with a few good ideas and a fixation on sex, and probably had an Oedipus complex. His ideas would earn him the title of philosopher long before scientist, and his philosophy wasn't particularly appealing or explanative of human behavior in general.
I don't know, it sounds like Einstein was more of a synaesthesiac (someone who perceives stimuli by non-normal or extranormal channels) than either an autistic or a drug addict, although I've never heard of someone experiencing thought as muscle sensation.
I can't tell you what it's like to experience flavours as colours, sounds as colours, smells as sounds, or the like, though (or thoughts as colours, smells, you name it) -- but if you know what I'm talking about, you'll recognize what I mean immediately.
In fact, I would argue against Einstein's having Asperger's Syndrome or other high-function autism disorders simply because he was so social and had so much affect (affect, not effect, though he had that, too) -- the photogenicity, the celebrity, and the overall social skills which he exhibited in spades during most of his life are traits which most high-function autistics never manifest. In fact, the DSM-IV specifically mentions "Qualitative impairment in social interaction." Somehow, a guy who can come up with snappy retorts like that isn't suffering from any impairment in social interaction at all. In fact, considering ordinary mortals' abilities to come up with the right zinger at the right time, he's probably got us beat.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Let's have young, studly Einstein instead of old fogey Einstein.
Another intersting link for the masses, this one with some details on his brain and the studies that they've been doing on it. Turns out he really was a bit different then the rest of us.
Einstein's Brain
AE only had one suit of cloths, yet "Pictures of him can be found on almost everything varying from lunchboxes to t-shirts". He was so intelligent that he could mot make a choice like "what to ware today" with out forming a theory about it.
Peace, Love, And Oreo cookies
I wonder what drugs Bach was on when he wrote "The Well-Tempered Clavier"...
Seven levels, indeed.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"God doesn't play with dice"
To which Niels Bohr retorted:
"Don't tell God what to do!"
Unfortunately the most humorous alleged Einstein quote is in fact from George Bernard Shaw, who, asked by a strange lady: `You have the greatest brain in the world, and I have the most beautiful body; so we ought to produce the most perfect child.' just replied `What if the child inherits my body and your brains?'
What's more is that it was the adsorbtion refridgerator.
What I'm sure was meant is that one cannot win the same nobel prize twice, but can win more than one for different things, as Marie Curie did in physics and then later in chemistry.
Einstein was a patent clerk when he published many of his greatest papers
No wonder the current patent clerks are such idiots: God accidentally assigned all the brains to a *single* clerk. Probably forgot to increment an index pointer or something when dolling out the smarts to future patent clerks.
Table-ized A.I.
Relativity theory was still very controversial and unconfirmed at the time that the Academy was feeling the need to honor someone who was a truly great theorist.
So, to avoid irritating those who still questioned relativity, they awareded him the prize for another remarkable work on which there was fairly uniform agreement in the physics community.
JD
Last month there was a pretty decent article about the problems with attempting to diagnose dead celebrities with medical/learning problems:
The famous dead yield only murky diagnoses
Unfortunately, the article in question doesn't seem to be available on the internet, but here is the reference:
Thomas, Marlin. "Albert Einstein and LD: An Evaluation of the Evidence." Journal of Learning Disabilities No. 2, Vol. 33 (March 1, 2000): 149.
The conclusion? Well, the author pretty tightly defines "Learning Disability" within the realm of the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual IV(defining mental disorders) and US law (IDEA 1997) so he concludes that "Due to the paucity of evidence supporting the claim that Einstein had a learning disability, and due to the abundance of evidence disputing such a claim, the claim should be withdrawn until convincing evidence supports it."
The article makes the following claim:
But no confirmation was as spectacular, and tragic, as the one that came on Aug. 6, 1945, when the destruction of Hiroshima testified to E=mc^2, nature's profligate exchange of mass for energy.
...And that is simply incorrect. E=mc^2 was confirmed when the first atomic bomb was tested at the Trinity Site in New Mexico at 5:29:45am on July 16, 1945, about three weeks prior to the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. One more example of a lightweight journalist with no background on what he's writing about, or maybe he just ignored Trinity because it seems more dramatic to write about Hiroshima.
I might be mistaken, but I think once a year or so the public is allowed onto the Trinity Site (anything radioactive has been removed) where they can find shards of glass that were blasted from sand into that form by the intense heat of the bomb going off.
However, the noble prize is not awarded posthumorously.
Scientific aspirants beware! Telling a joke can cost you your Nobel prize!
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
It's actually very probable... [...] However since they never give the Nobel more than once, indeed the Nobel should have been given to relativity theory. [...] Try telling that to John Bardeen...
Is that he skipped school to play violin... I mean, probably the genius icon of the century skips school!
If I ever have kids, that will be the only excuse for them to skip school: Taking after Einstein.
Sadly my parents never listened to that excuse...
He had lovers throughout his life, leading some critics to label him a misogynist....He also held several patents himself, including one for a refrigeration system without moving parts
He is just like Zeffrin Cockrin: All he ever wanted was lots of babes and a cold, quiet beer.
Table-ized A.I.
Pop culture was attracted to Einstein because he played along. He did most of his useful work as a physicist when he was very young. After his theories were finally accepted, he started schmoozing with intellectuals (ask your average history professor about what he knows about relativity or macroeconomics...for a laugh), celebrities, political figures, and the press. Anyone in any of those cliques knows that the best way to promote yourself is to be seen with other famous people. When WWII broke out, he was sought after as the most important scientist around and a Jew to take public stands on political issues, and in doing so, he attracted more attention to himself. He had unique experiences (living in a collapsing Germany before the war) with which to draw his opinions from, but he also was first and foremost a well-funded researcher who never had a job outside of a university or a government patent office. Nevertheless, his more naive musings were taken as gospel as well because that's how "fame" works. There's been a steady stream of short-lived celebrity physicists over the years, many with far less talent, but Einstein had a knack for it. He probably couldn't change many quirky aspects of his personality if he tried, but the "big hair" and whatnot fit in with the public's stereotype, and that's why we have spaced out skateboarders with the odd 9 or 11 ear-piercings on their faces wearing Albert Einstein TM tee shirts.
Take a look further up in the thread and you'll see that Bardeen got both of his in Physics, although I don't know of any others who got two in the same category.
"God not only plays dice, but he throws them where he can't see them"?
Alfred Hitchcock, the filmmakers, said in his interview with Truffaut that he used to have a dream about the most perfect story for a film. Unfortunately he would never remember it the next morning.
His wife suggested he tried to wake up and write down the thrust of the dream in the middle of the night. Hitchcock did just that, woke up the next morning in the same frustrated state, then saw his scribbling on the notepad next to the bed:
`Boy meets girl'
That was the end of the dreams.
God does not play dice." - Einstein
"God may or may not play dice, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't use a pocket calculator." - G. Steve Arnold (me) c.1988
Ummm... not quite as catchy. Don't go into advertising... kay?
However, the noble prize is not awarded posthumorously.
Ahh crap! I've told too many jokes to get the nobel prize now.
Nice Marmot
Linus Pauling. The Nature of the Chemical Bond? Chemistry 1954, Peace 1962?
Are you deaf?
An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed the Managing Director's
chance to kiss the tea-girl. It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the
Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone
who has seen the Managing Director face on).
-- Katherine Whitehorn, "Roundabout"
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