Einstein Has Left the Building

Ant writes to tell us of an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?". The author looks at why Einstein holds such a hallowed position in public opinion and why it will be so hard for any one physicist to attain the same level of fame today. From the article: "The paradoxical answer, Gleick suggested, is that there are so many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative."

Comments

They don't make 'em....

[DoraLives]

like they used to.

As modern physicists approach Einstein's fame...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they become infinitely massive. Hawking achieved 99.99999% of Einstein's fame and he ended up in a wheelchair from the stress.

Re:Show me

[toddbu]

If there weren't OTHER physicists publishing similar papers first, perhaps some physicists would. That's the point.

So is your argument that publishing quality work is a zero sum game? I bet our good friend Einstein would have loved the Internet. Then he'd have blogged about ten good papers per year.

Resume padding

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you, an immortal vampire or something?

Re:Personality, not brains

[Surt]

Indeed, and we have such a visionary among us now, with a truly revolutionary view of the universe that will shatter the existing framework:

http://www.timecube.com/

Didn't anyone see Family Guy?

[TheOtherAgentM]

Einstein worked at a patent office and stole Smith's Theory of Relativity.

Einstein was the frst slashdotter!

[Spy der Mann]

This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful

At first, he was a troll.
Then he became interesting.
But he was very underrated.
His theories were all flamebait.
But he was very informative.
And insightful.
Once in a while, funny.
And now he's getting overrated?

Wow!

Re:wrong....

[irm]

Because that 4th dimension give you the time to take that square peg over to the belt sander and trim her down.

Re:This is pretty obvious

[nmb3000]

This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful. He certainly was.

I agree.

MOD EINSTEIN UP!!!

Re: Relativity (Score:5, Insightful)
by Einstein (0) <speedoflight@gmail.com> on Tue Sept 18, 1905 12:42 PM

    E = mc^2

    Suck it.

--

    God does not play dice with the universe.

Re:Things have changed

[zerocool^]

When I was slogging through my 250 page PhD dissertation, I came across an article about disserations of such famous people as Schroedinger and other physicists of the 1920's - whose entire dissertations were about as long as Section 1.1 of my introduction.

Don't make excuses for yourself: Schroedinger's dissertation was of infinite length until observed.

~Will

Re:Uh?

[zerocool^]

While Hawking is well-known (he'd probably be less famous if he wasn't in a wheelchair)

The wheelchair and speaking device is the tradeoff for sacrificing all that DEX and CHA for the high INT.

Re:Personality, not brains

[Fred_A]

An example of Einstein explaining technical matters to the layperson (paraphrased from memory):

Reporter : Mr Einstein, can you explain to us how the wireless works ?
Einstein : Well, you know the telegraph, it's like a very long cat, it has its tail in New York and its head in Los Angeles. You pull the tail and the head mews.
Reporter : Uh, yes...
Einstein : You see, the wireless works the same except there is no cat.