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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."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
From Wikipedia:
like they used to.
Is it fascism yet?
Show me the "brilliant physicists" that have published four papers in one year, each individually deserving of a Nobel Prize.
This is pretty obvious. While many people were studying physics while Einstein worked, the mathematical methods they used tended to be relatively primitive. A precocious undergraduate can easily understand the state of physics up to Einstein's first few papers. This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful. He certainly was. However, we're now studying the fruits of his insights, and it takes a few years of graduate school to become an expert in even a small field. If there is a next Einstein, I foresee people studying him for years after becoming a Ph.D. before they become "experts."
After all, I am strangely colored.
What about Hawking? You can't tell me many lay people with no interest in science don't at least know of him.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
"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."
There were *many* brilliant physicists in Einstein's time as well.
...they become infinitely massive. Hawking achieved 99.99999% of Einstein's fame and he ended up in a wheelchair from the stress.
Gleick's just jealous (but Wolfram is livid and Feynman is rolling over in his grave).
an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?"
With all the parents doping up their kids on antidepressants, I'd say not likely. (We're already seeing that Generation Y can barely wipe its own nose in the workplace. )
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Einstein is also credited with a huge crossover from the theoretical to the applied aspects of physics. As a population, we tend to see the theoretical side of physics as more complex and intimidating, but the applied side as more down to earth and relevant to our day to day lives.
Einstein's work straddled this line within his lifetime, making him a figure of daunting intellectual prowess and yet still accessable (in some small manner) by the average man. Surely this combination of theory and practice has strengthened his legacy.
More over, Einstein lived at the height of the modernist movement in world history - a time when advances in technology could do no wrong. In the minds of many (and they would be wrong) he single-handedly brought about the revolution in the views society holds on technology. While Einstein is not to be entirely credited or blamed for post-modernism, he is often thought of as the turning point by the public at large.
Information technology, more than any other force, has accelerated the theoretical side of physics away from the applied aspects of the same. We are capable of manipulating mathematics with far greater precision and finess than the physical world we inhabit. As a consequence, it would seem unlikely that any physicist will straddle that line between the theoretical and applied worlds in the near future.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Yes, in the past several hundred years, at any given time, there have been brilliant physicists. I've known/worked for some of the best. There are one or two who really stand out in each era of physics, and Einstein overlapped several of these. Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Maxwell, et al are the true greats, and Einstein is in that category.
Its very easy to say today that Einstein's works are simple and obvious. Thats because they are first year teachings for most students today. However, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Someday a lot of things will seem very obvious, and those people who do the hard work of making that so will be worth of comparison with Einstein.
I would argue two points.
First, once you get an iconic person, that's it. The game is up for quite a while. Ever notice how all the caricatures of muscle-types take after Governor Arnold? Or how all psychiatrists take after Freud? This is not because we haven't had people with more muscles (we have) or analysts who have not helped larger numbers of people. When you have an icon, you might as well keep it. It's a reference that everyone already "gets".
Second, I would argue that as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to dominate a field. Look at da Vinci. He was a brilliant man to be sure. But if he were alive today, he'd never have been able to master so many fields. There is just so much research out there about the most minute aspect of any field that no one would have time to keep up. And why would we idolize the guy worked in one very small subset, when these people of past years could dominate so many fields? In a way, they had it easy. Anything they looked at represented a new area of science much the way that any explorer who sailed from Europe a thousand years ago would have been able to claim a new territory. It's much harder now; I've tried!
Also, for those of you who have read the story, I suppose the article should not have asked "Will there be another Einstein?", but rather "Will there be another ThatGeek?". And no, there won't be as I've already registered the nick.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
I think a lot of his popularity has to deal with the fact that E=mc^2 is simple enough for anyone to remember. That and his theories were used to create the atomic bomb, ending WWII.
Those 2 things make Einstein much more tangible to the average person. One can remember what he actually did, and see an enormous practical application.
I'm reasonably certain that people around the turn of the last century were also saying similar things and i'm reasonably certain a century into the future the same will be true when they look back at us. I guess one could say maturity would depend on ones perspective.
What are you, an immortal vampire or something?
Part of Einstein's fame probably has a lot to do the the impedending atomic bomb.
That, but also, he was an interesting character. He's got a catchy tagline (E=MC2). He had funny hair.
The fact that he was utterly brilliant, and revolutionized the way we see the world takes a back seat to the fact that your average person sees him as they would a cartoon character. Until we get another person with a comparable combination of brilliance and memorable traits, then no, we won't see "another Einstein."
But that doesn't mean we'll never make any more progress in physics.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Actually, not one of them is considered to be in Einstein's class of intellect. The 'smartest' man in physics is supposedly Edward Witten, founder of M-theory. If you listen to the top theoretical physicists talk about him, he seems to be in the running for most brilliant physicist of all time.
Einstein put Relativity on the table, which was previously unknown except to a few as something funky going on with Maxwell's equations under a Galilean transformation. This was an entirely new field. And, when extended into General Relativity, is a huge deal. Not many people get to discover a whole new field of physics like that. Newton did with mechanics. But with E&M, it was several people making discoveries, such as Ampere and Faraday and some others. And the full theory wasn't really collected nicely until Maxwell, who also corrected Ampere's Law. And that's only the classical theory, Quantum Electro-Dynamics is another huge thing. But within classical E&M, you can say Maxwell fully documented it, but it was already an explored field (no pun intended, seriously).
Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics had many people make major contributions, specifically when thermodynamics was found to be described entirely within statistical mechanical formalism. Boltzmann made major contributions, eg coming up with entropy and statistical ensembles, but his work wasn't accepted by the community and he ultimately wound up killing himself.
One physicist that may have come close to Einstein in breadth is my favorite, Lev Davidovic Landau. Any graduate student of physics should be familiar with at least some of his ten-volume "Course of Theoretical Physics", otherwise known as Landau-Lifshitz. Landau's grad students were known to be confused during meetings where he would shift topics from superconductivity to hadron interactions, etc. Landau made many amazing contributions, and also won a Nobel Prize, but he wasn't able to open up any entirely new fields of study like Einstein was able to. He made contributions to other fields, such as 2nd-order phase transitions, superconductivity and superfluidity, etc, but no entirely new fields.
Finally, Einstein was also rather active politically and socially, he didn't confine his efforts to the laboratory (well, really his desk since he was a theorist). He also had quite a unique physical appearance, which also contributed to his popularity. But I think, from a popular point of view, his contribution of relativity, which is probably one of the biggest scientific blowbacks to something that was previously accepted as scientifically true and complete, was the dominant factor. Of course scientifically he made many other major contributions, but for the newspapers, trumping over Newton is a rather 'hot' story.
make world, not war
Einstein worked at a patent office and stole Smith's Theory of Relativity.
It's funny, because I actually spent quite a long time a while back thinking about this issue. In the end, I would say it's really difficult to give a certain 'yes' or 'no' answer.
On one hand, there is the issue that information that humans possess is increasing at exponential rate, if not faster. At one point in history, you could be a painter, a sculptor, a mathematician, a philosopher, a physicist, among other things, and still be useful to the society in all of those areas. Today however, such thing is unrealistic due to the fact of how deep each area goes, and how much must be learned of the works of those who came before you in order for you to get to the level of being able to make personal contributions.
On the other hand, you do have to remember that a century or two ago, physics was thought to be a "finished" science. As in, many physicists around the world believed that the Newtonian model has given them all that is needed, and most viewed physics as a done deal. We understand how it works, nothing more is left to learn, move along. Then came Einstein and turned the whole thing upside down.
While on my commutes to and from university last semester, I downloaded audio lectures on particle physics. One of the very first things the professor said was "today, most particle physicists believe that we have a solid understanding of what the world is made up of, and that, unlike a few decades ago, we really have gotten to the bottom layer of the universe." He ended the lectures (which were extremely interesting btw) by saying that as good as the standard model of physics is, we still have 23 quantum numbers that are unattainable through mathematics, ideas which defy logic, and a bunch of other theories like string which may also be onto something.
Overall, I think that if any conclusion is to be made about the state of physics today, I would say that no, Einstein hasn't left the building. In my opinion, we are still missing something crucial about the way the world operates, but we may not realize this until advances in other technology areas such as space travel. Individuals still can make great breakthroughs, but because of issues such as the amount of foundational knowledge, the number of people working on the same things, and the money needed for some of the research, it may be more likely that future discoveries will need to be left to teams of scientists, rather than individuals.
I can't say much in regards to Einstein, but I know that it is getting harder to point out musical geniuses, because the bar is constantly being raised. There are thousands of violinists, who are perfectly happy to practice all day to produce perfect performances. Anything less and they simply won't be noticed. I heard a professional musician comment, some years ago, that nobody stands out any more, because so many are at the level of Heifitz.
:)
I played the violin for about 15 years, and had to stop, because for me the strain of a performance + the need for constant practice overshadows the joy received from playing. I now play quite happily at the back of the second violins in an orchestra - room for fun, and mistakes are rarely heard
Anyway, my point is, perhaps something similar is happening in the field of science.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
I'm having trouble parsing this one; if it's radical, it can hardly be common place, no?
XML causes global warming.
Einstein's brilliance stems from his ability to think outside of the box, in a practical way; and before "thinking outside of the box" was a tagline and not an actual concept.
I'm no Einstein, but I do think in a Bergeronian way. I take a concept, invert it entirely, and think - Why has traditional thinking prevented this from working? and Could it actually work (contrary to popular accepted practice)? Ignore the existing reasoning for why it doesn't work. You will either a) confirm that it doesn't work; b) have an epiphany and a resultant breakthrough or c) something else
Traditional thinking dictates that a square peg can't fit into a round hole. Of course traditional thinking doesn't consider that obscure 4th Dimension - which makes it possible to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Hm, I don't think I can agree with that. Newton was unquestionably one of the most brilliant mathematicians of all time. (Most historians will put him in the three-way tie for first with Gauss and Archimedes.) As a scientist, Newton had a sort of mixed track record once you factor out his mathematical breakthroughs. A lot of the things he did were sitting around waiting to be connected up by the math, once the Calculus arrived on the scene. (For example, the inverse-square law of gravity was generally suspected to apply to gravity by many scientists of the day, include Hooke, Wren, and Halley. But none of them could actually prove that it gave the right behaviors for orbits without Newton's mathematical skills.) If you read the works of Galileo, a generation before Newton (and who Newton almost certainly must have read, although I don't have a source on that), you can see that the man was so close with his physical principles, but lacked the mathematical tools to put it all together. (And he lacked the mathematical genius to create the tools.)
Einstein, on the other hand, was NOT mathematically gifted by any stretch (although he wasn't stupid, either), but had an amazing ability to understand the physical principles and their general consequences. Plus, he was far more loveable than the cold, often caustic Newton.
That's right, it's not like governments ever funded people to use physics to predict the trajectory of a bullet from a large gun before the atomic bomb. And moreso, it's not like they ever decided that for large distances the Coriolis force and air resistance need to be properly accounted for and thus they never needed to fund the development of electric computers.
Nor did they ever need to understand physics to figure out the design of aerofoil wings, or the best shape to make ship hulls, before the atom bomb.
make world, not war
It's not just a matter of that Einstein is more recent, it's that Newton is wrong. Even though from my understanding Newton's work was a much bigger jump at the time than was Einstein's at his (which is somewhat of a biased view as just yesterday I read most of Feynman's "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces" so am more familiar with the working leading up to special relativity, while I don't know much about the giants Newton stood upon), the fact that its Einstein's, and not Newton's, that marks our best understanding of the universe I think is a major factor in Einstein's fame.
This is, of course, related to the fact that Einstein is more recent, but still deserves mention.
(And on a side note, let me just say that learning about aspects of relativity, even as much as I can, has convinced me that if there is a god, He has quite the sense of humor and creativity.)
Show me modern physics papers that contain math that most people with any scientific or engineering background can understand, and that are just a few pages long.
The unsolved problems that people are working on today are much more complex, so comparing the rates at which they are solved is meaningless.
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.
Trying to compare now and then is all but irrelevant.
There can't ever be another Einstein. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem holds the trademark and they'd never allow it.
I think that all this tells us is that society has moved on (ahead) and if you want to achive the same level of fame that you have to work harder at it. For his time, Einstein still had to do a lot. Its not like it was easy. Likewise, its not easy 100 years later to achive the same level of fame. Perhaps Richard Feyman or Carl Sagan came close, but of course neither of them don't have an opera with their name in it (AFAIK).
Not to denigrate Einstein's prodigious achievements but general relativity would have been impossible were it not for Riemann's (and Gauss before him) work setting up differential geometry. Not to mention, the contributions by Lorentz, Minkowski and other contemporaries who we forget in our quest to annoint a scientific messiah. It seems that the public *needs* a quaint ubermensch to worship with rather than accepting the more mundane truth that scientific advances occur from the concerted work of many very bright people.
On a scientific level, had Einstein not existed, someone else would have done the work eventually - the tools and conditions were in place for these discoveries to be made. But on a societal level, it probably would have been necessary to invent him...
Newton was a prodigious asshole, but he was also the most profound physicist, and among the best mathematicians, of all time.
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But Einstein is the posterboy of scientific brilliance *because* standard physics of the time had so many blindspots. There has to be some unoccupied intellectual ground in for a super genius to make "a huge and profound leap." In other words, once the wheel has already been invented, it's harder to make so much progress so quickly. When intellectual fields and/or society maintain large blindspots, it's easier for an individual to make significant leaps by seeing what others can't. Maybe today physicists maintain fewer blindspots. If a clone of Einstein came onto the physics scene today, it's not clear that Einstein 2 would be all that noticable. It seems like a lot of brilliant minds are already tackling all the problems within physics, and I have to doubt there's so much room for more "huge and profound leaps."
On what grounds?
This is completely false. There are many tests that could confirm string theory. Whether there are any (below the Planck scale an accessible to human experiments) that can falsify it is another matter.
This is also far from true. The foundations are speculative but there are many physical reasons why those foundations were postulated. Polchinski gives a good overview.
I did get past graduate QM, and graduate quantum field theory, general relativity, and string theory as well, and I would respectfully suggest that you do some reading about its motivations and accomplishments before you dismiss it. You will note that Glashow doesn't even call it rubbish, let alone "patent" rubbish (implying that it is obviously wrong). He merely says that it has not yet suceeded in making any new predictions that have been confirmed by experiment — which is true, but does not make a theory "rubbish".
Personally, I think it is rather overhyped relative to its accomplishments, but the fact remains that it is the best candidate we have for either a "theory of everything" or even just for a theory of quantum gravity (and I am saying this from the perspective of someone who has worked on a competing theory).
Back in 1900 there were a few Unexplained Phenomena such as the Michaelson-Morley experiment, spectral lines, what held the positive and negative kinds of matter apart.
In retrospect we realize that these were major problems that required fundamental new theories.
There are also some Unexplained Phenomena today, it's just a question whether these are misinterpreted experiments or something new that existing theory can't explain.
When there comes to be too much unexplained stuff, people start thinking outside the box, and we get another Feynman. Or Einstein.
I'll agree that if you're using physical laws to do calculations and you use Einstein instead of Newton to calculate the flight of a baseball, you're doing way too much work.
But that doesn't make Newton right.
I'm gonna quote Feynman because he expresses my feelings very well. This is from Six Easy Pieces (p3 in my copy; you can also find it in the "atoms in motion" chapter of Lectures), but I should say that this is a thought I've had long before reading this:
Duh! I wasn't putting him in the same class as Einstein. I just said that he might come close in terms of how many people know about him. Quick ask someone to name as many scientists as they can. I bet in 5 out of 10 respondants that Carl Sagan and Richard Feyman will be in the list. And I was talking about Scientists in general. Not just physicists.
But of course leave it to someone on Slashdot to nit pick my comments.
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!
In most cases, the major advances in physics were preceded by the discovery and measurement of new phenomena, or old phenomena to a new & unprecedented level of accuracy. A great deal of Galileo's insights were inspired by the telescope, which allowed him to see, in great detail, that the old "imperfect earth/perfect heavens" dichotomy of Aristotle and Official Church Dogma were patiently not so. This led to rapid-fire advances in astronomy, which in turn gave Newton the crucial data to test his theory of gravitation; it's easy to assume big things attract other big things - it is the exact AMOUNT that was crucial, and when he first compared the acceleration at the Earth's surface vs. the acceleration the Moon was undergoing to keep in orbit around the Earth, he found that his inverse square force assumption was way off. He stayed quiet for a decade, when new and much more accurate data came in, correcting the previous estimates of the size, and therefore the distance of the moon. And then the acceleration of the moon towards the earth was exactly right to fit the acceleration of objects near the earth's surface and the assumption of fall off of force by the square. Then he started talking about Universal Gravitation a bit more.
Einstein, and the rest of the quantum physicists, were following up on the recent discovery of both radioactivity and the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell.
The point I am (longwindedly) making is that ultimately new data drove the physics. We are at a point right now where it is so expensive to probe in areas we have not looked that we have an embarrassing richness of theories to match a paucity of data. The only clear-cut result that I know of that is outside the bounds of the Standard Model of particle physics is the recent revelation that neutrinos seem to change their type (electron, mu, and tau) as time passes, based on the distribution of neutrinos received on opposite sides of the Earth from the Sun (Sci-Am, I think about a year or two ago). In biology, OTOH, we have just recently been able (due to computer horsepower) to sequence massive numbers of genes, as well as make crude computer simulations of what kind of proteins these genes would construct. It is a new tool, the computer, that is allowing biology to seize the spotlight.
There will be more Einsteins, but perhaps in biology rather than physics for a while....
(DISCLAIMER: IANA scientist, but sometimes wish I was....)
Second, why should we expect another Einstein, or Newton? Given that anyone's accomplishments must be measured relative to the common populace, we would expect people of such stature to be rare.
There are many factors that go into what makes someone great. Part of it is certainly being in the right time and place. Another is the social climate. Is Einstein the equal of Newton, or vice versa? That is difficult to say. They lived in completely different times. Could one do the same accomplishments as the other? One common element that appears between the two is that they were both fairly prolific (Newton did calculus, physics, and ironically enough, why light is a wave). I'd be curious if other people could come up with other historical science figure that also had several major findings. Feynman? Turing?
YES, IMHO. Provided we have the same ENVIRONMENT, ECONOMIC and SOCIAL conditions. They seed and stimulate the right individual.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
So then would it be wrong of me to point out that you spelled Richard Feynman's name incorrectly for a second time, even after I oh so subtly pointed out that fact in my last response? Or perhaps you were speaking of an alternate reality in which a low level government official inadvertently dropped the "n" when transcribing Feynman's last name on his birth certificate? :-)
Quick ask someone to name as many scientists as they can.
I really doubt that your average Joe could come up with these guys. You'd be more likely to hear Bill Nye, or Dr. Jekyll, or that dude who created Frankenstein. Seriously, when we live in an era when fewer than 1/2 the people in this country can name the sitting VP, do you really expect them to come up with either of these guys? I'd be really surprised if 1 in 10 could even name a real scientist. In my unscientific poll of our household, everyone came up with Einstein. For a second scientist, I got Edison, Galileo, and Bill Nye.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Nobody has mentioned the late Richard Feynman?
A humoristic and personable genius figure--or at least he comes off as such in his books. Maybe it's all crap--I don't know. I seriously think that his image could bolster the reputation of physicists the world over.
The shape of ships' hulls had nothing at all to do with physics predictions. Ideal shapes were determined by a fellow named Froud(sp) in Britain several centuries ago by carving wooden models and putting them through the liquid equivalent of a wind tunnel. Completely empirical process, no mathematical modelling whatsoever beforehand (though one result, the dimensionless Froud number, is one of the most important dimensionless numbers in engineering, right up there with the Reynold's number).
So, yeah, as another fellow stated, it was an engineering problem, not a physics problem. Even today, the use of physics directly applied to the problem of ship's hulls will break your computer if you attempt to solve for a limit on something like speed or overall drag resistance. (Not that it can't be solved, in a way, but it imvolves what my professors call "engineering approximations", i.e. assumptions that are maybe true in limited circumstances).
Ballistics, I'm told, was similarly empirical, though I don't know anyone specializing in Aero so verifying your assertion regarding airplane wings would take more work than I'm willing to exert.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Throughout centuries numerous scientists have argued that the simple questions have all been answered, that only the niche, complex and esoteric aspects will be studied from here on out. In fact many physicists felt that way shortly before the end of the 19th century.
Today I'm betting that, like then, there are still plenty of fundamental questions left to answer (although we might not know how to ask them yet). And the funny thing about truly fundamental questions is that they usually have pretty simple answers. But getting there through established theories and avenues of experimentation is often impossible; it takes a major shift in thought.
But the results can still be simple. While the mathematics that Einstein ultimately employed to describe the theory are complex, the general relativity theory itself is so simple in concept that high school kids can grasp it by simple analogy--the rubber mat with heavy objects on it.
And in fact Einstein himself struggled with the math--but that did not prevent him from formulating the theory. The theory came first, then with help he found the math that could describe it. Einstein's problems with advanced math did not keep him from making major breakthroughs, and I doubt it will stop the "next Einstein" either.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I dunno. One of the things that made Einstein great, from the scientific point of view, is that he cleared away a great deal of 19th-century complexity in optics and mechanics and replaced it with a theoretical framework of such dazzling simplicity that anyone could grasp its basic principles, but of such power that understanding its full implications demands high intelligence and decades of sustained study.
It's like the way Copernicus swept away the huge complexity of the Ptolemaic astronomer's theory of planetary orbits, all those cycles and epicycles, with the simple and powerful idea of the elliptical orbit. Or how Mendeleev replaced the 18th century's bewildering lists of correlations between chemical properties of substances with the simple and powerful organizational principles of the Periodic Table.
Even in my own experience as a theoretician I find the truly brilliant ideas are not complex. They're insights that drastically simplify and clarify. They're the kind of things that, when you understand them, make you slap your head in awe and envy.
So, from this point of view, the hideous complexity of modern high-energy physics theories could well be a sign that they lack brilliance, that another Einstein is needed to clear away all the baroque epicycles, so to speak, and replace it all with something beautifully simple and far more powerful.
Of course, this might not be true -- it might instead be the case that the basic structure of the universe is simply too complex for ordinary humans to understand even its principles. But I find this hard to believe (for no logical reason, I admit).
So I personally disagree with Mr. Horgan. I think he's just channeling Albert Michelson in 1896 ("The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered....Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.") Like Michelson, Horgan thinks that because no revolution has happened in 50 years one will never happen. But it was almost 300 years between Newton and Einstein. So I'd give it another century or two before giving up.
recognized. Some scientists from this generation will stand out in retrospect, just as some from previous generations did. The fact that the general american public no longer knows who is at the forefront of scientific innovation merely speaks to the sad state of scientific education in the United States. If the situation does not change, we will all suffer the consequences.
and wish in the other...
I agree to that comment in the article such that we (the applied physics community) are somewhat wrapped with the theoretical clan of Einstein wannabes. Physics back in 1905 was not separated into 2 styles (theoretical & experimental/applied). You created a theory, then a gedanke experiment, then a physical experiment and finally provide an application--doesn't happen currently. In addition, quantum mechanics and following software OOD has completely turned our thought process on its head. From that and the computer, a lot of the other disciplines (Math, Biology, Chemistry and others) are using so many physics-derived concepts that the category "physics" has become blurred aside from pure theoretical studies. Then again, most cultures nowadays are so wrapped up into politics or $profiting$ that the real science is missed to be rediscovered years later--as Einstein found.
I think the next revolutionary discoveries that are "categorized under physics" will either be in Biophysics or non-linear science (aka Chaos Theory). Lots of interesting applications and major shifts in our 'thought processes' are evident in those studies. Cynically, the next Einstein will likely come after we all are convinced that Intelligent Design is fact and Math&Science are not requirements in High School anymore (J/K)--nah, really, there will be another "Einstein" from the TFA's context... in due time.
The article misses out on a couple of things, perhaps. Einstein also stands out because he was an intensely moral man who had interesting and brave things to say on the sheer mystery of life. He was a highly gifted communicator who wrote well on a wide range of subjects far beyond his own field.
Even if you don't subscribe to the "myth of genius", men of such rounded accomplishment are very rare. Knowledge has expanded so rapidly that it is hard enough to know your own field, let alone know enough worth saying about other fields. Perhaps Einstein's was the last generation that could span, if not all knowledge, then a substantial part of it. We are all specialists these days.
Besides, we now live in a world in which enterprise and individuality of the Einsteinian kind are less appreciated. Since his heyday, so much has been subordinated to the dismal science of economics, the realm where the beancounter is king and inspiration is seen as a shocking waste of tax dollars or corporate profits. Arguably, the closest equivalent to Einstein today is not a scientist but the Dalai Lama, another gifted communicator who understands that knowledge alone is not enough.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
1. Einstein became famous and a household name in the year 1919, when during a solar eclipse, it was found and experimentaly proved, how gravity of the Sun bends light (which was predicted and measured by Einstein about 15 years back (1905))
2. Einstein became famous when he redefined Newton's definition of gravity, proving that "action of a distance" is wrong.
3. From Einstein's theory of gravity we know (and in fact we are now trying to measure it now a days) why a distant supernova changes the height of Empire State building.
4) Einstein's is famous because of the nature of his invention, we have been living in a Universe which is defined by him; for example: the concept of relativity, which is highly unintuitive concept, but the moment we understand it, we say "how the hell he understood/guess it".
5) Einstein is famous because of his definition of time-space relationship is more than a science fiction.
5) Einstein is famous for his look; he just looks like a genius; and on the top of that he is humble.
Now question is would there be another Einstein? Yes, of course, but not in our lifetime.
However, there are lots of inventions in the area of particle physics, as Richard Feynman once said, "Now I can say nobody understand particle physics", it's a extremely complicated area to understand any behaviors of those sub atomic particles; so it has little meaning to ordinary people.
Anyone can get Einstein like fame, by answering and proving one of the following questions,1. What is gravity?
2. Why is the Universe so large and so old?
3. (How) did the universe begin?
4. (How) will the universe end?
We will know at least one answer of the above within next 500 years. A new Einstein will born.
Every time I read that, the content changes into an unpredictiable state.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)