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100 Years of Einstein
spacerabbits writes "A century after Einstein's miracle year, most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did. The Economist tries to elucidate what AE did in a recent article."
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It's not surprising that you had a professor who hated Einstein. Scientists are notorious for hating one another- often for absurd reasons- but also often out of jealousy or simply from a difference of "professional" opinion. I once knew two research engineering professors, from the same department, who would try to get each others research grants cancelled simply because they disagreed on some theories.
> If you really want to get a handle on what Einstein did and what his work has influenced, I
> would recommend buying The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. Somehow it found it's way onto my
> Amazon wishlist a few years ago (I don't remember putting it there), and my mom bought it for me for
> xmas. I've read about half of it so far and it's amazing stuff. It's about the (super)string theory,
> which essentially ties together Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics. I can feel my
> brain get bigger as I read it.
And I would recommend that you also take what Green says about string theory with a grain of salt. While he's a good scientist, he like all string theorists, tend to paste over the cracks in string theory. There is no experimental evidence to support string theory, at the moment it just isn't science. He also tends to handwave away difficulties with multiple theories. He is clearly biased towards string theory, and at points I'd say unreasonably biased.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
it's not that physicists hate Einstein, it's more they hate how people view Einstein. it's mostly because Einstein became the poster-boy for the media about modern physics. as we know, the media tends to simplify things and so it suggests that Einstein did relativity, photoelectric effect, etc. by himself.
given that Newton said he had seen far only because he stood on the shoulders of giants, Einstein is even more indebted to others before and during his time.
look, i'm not saying that he wasn't a remarkable physicist- when i read some of his papers, i do feel like i'm reading something that's very close to 'god'- so clear, so elegant, so beautiful.
yes, i am a physicist. and yes, i do find myself using Einstein's results. i'm glad when it happens, because i *feel* i'm close to reality.
First off, I'm a physics grad student with nothing but the utmost respect for Einstein's work, and I make use of it's consequences frequently. He did some of the most beautiful stuff in the history of physics. Nonetheless, I think that his mythos may have arguably had a detrimental effect on theoretical physics and its public perception.
When asked what he would have thought if solar eclipse had not confirmed general relativity, Einstein famously responded something like he "would have been sorry for the dear Lord - the theory is correct!". The general picture people have is that Einstein sat in a room, thought really hard, and figured out how the world was supposed to be without ever needing to go out and LOOK at it. This idea has inspired generations of young physicists to think that the "real" route to truth about the world is mathematical insight. Over the ensuing century, however, this has essentially never been the case - the biggest breakthroughs generally come when an experiment sees something weird (i.e. discovers new particles or behaviors) and a theorist comes up with a mathematical picture that makes all the weird observations fit together. Experiments are still important - it's not just Plato sitting in his cave imagining how the world ought to be. Beautiful mathematical models of fundamental physics very frequently turn out to be experimentally wrong!
Outside of physics, the public image of Einstein has arguably breathed life into the legions of crackpots who think they know the theory of everything, claim that quantum mechanics is "obviously" wrong, etc. Everyone learns in school that Einstein was terrible at mathematics growing up and that he did his best work as a patent clerk, not at a university. Many people are encouraged by this, thinking that the best work comes from "outside the system" and need not involve a thorough understanding of the details of current science.
Unfortunately, this is not true. Einstein was quite good at mathematics (had he been a bit more versed in fancy Reimannian geometry, however, general relativity might have happened faster). He had a Ph.D. from one of the world's most prestigious grad schools. He was working as a patent clerk to pay the bills simply because he hadn't yet gotten a teaching job (they were scarce, and even in later years Einstein never did much teaching).
The point is that he knew his stuff (experimental results and current theory). Too many people think they can walk in off the street with no substantial knowledge of physics or mathematics and give a "common sense" alternative to modern physics that doesn't involve any of the "hard stuff". It usually turns out that their work contradicts some experimental result that they never bothered to learn about. I often see e-mails about such ideas that cite Einstein as an example of how an outsider with no knowledge can change a field. In principle, a gifted outsider with a new insight can change any field. In practice (as Einstein shows), it's good to know what others know first.