Einstein For Dummies

Carlos I. Calle

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764583483
• eBook ISBN: 9781118054482
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Genius demystified, the Dummies way!

In 1905, Albert Einstein revolutionized modern physics with his theory of relativity. He went on to become a twentieth-century icon-a man whose name and face are synonymous with "genius." Now, at last, ordinary readers can explore Einstein's life and work in this new For Dummies guide. Physicist Carlos Calle chronicles Einstein's career and explains his work-including the theories of special and general relativity-in language that anyone can understand. He shows how Einstein's discoveries affected everything from the development of the atom bomb to the theory of quantum mechanics. He sheds light on Einstein's personal life and beliefs, including his views on religion and politics. And he shows how Einstein's work continues to affect our world today, from nuclear power to space travel to artificial intelligence.

Part I

A Genius Awakens

In this part . . .

If you don’t know much about Einstein, this part gives you an overview of who he was and what he did.

In this part, I discuss Einstein’s life as a young boy growing up in Germany, as an independently minded young man keeping to himself in school, and as a rebellious college student getting in trouble with his professors. I also introduce you to the incredible explosion of ideas during his miracle year, when he made most of the discoveries that changed the science of physics forever.

Chapter 1

Who Was Einstein?

In This Chapter

Introducing Einstein

Describing his work and why it was important

A bout a hundred years ago, an unknown civil servant in Switzerland decided that existing theories in the field of physics were not quite right, and he decided to fix them. What he did was so important that Time magazine selected him as the person of the 20th century, ahead of kings, queens, presidents, artists, movie stars, and religious leaders.

Who was Einstein, and what did he do? In this chapter, I introduce you to Einstein’s genius, what he discovered, and the importance of his work — topics that get much more detailed attention in subsequent chapters.

Dissecting That Famous Brain

After giving birth to her only son in 1879, Albert Einstein’s young mother thought for a moment that he was “a monster.” The baby had a strangely shaped and large head. The doctor calmed her down, explaining that it’s not uncommon for a baby to have a misshapen head right after birth, and assuring her that the size of his head was going to be just fine. The doctor was right about the size — in just a few weeks, the proportions evened out. But the angular shape of Einstein’s head would remain for the rest of his life.

The unusual shape of Einstein’s head didn’t make him different than other boys. But his brain did. The way his brain worked was anything but ordinary.

When Einstein was alive, many people wondered if his brain was different than other people’s. Einstein actually left instructions to make his brain available for research after his death. When Einstein died in 1955, pathologist Thomas Harvey preserved the brain and later performed studies of several tissue samples. Harvey didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. However, in 1999, Sandra Witelson of McMaster University in Canada discovered that Einstein’s brain lacked a specific wrinkle that is found on most people’s brains. The wrinkle is located in the region of the brain that’s related to mathematical thinking and visual imagery.

Touring Einstein’s Life

Einstein was apparently better equipped for mathematical and abstract thinking than most people, but it’s likely that some other people have had similar native abilities. The shape of his brain alone doesn’t explain Einstein’s genius. The environment in which he grew up most certainly played a role.

Recognizing his own gifts

As I explain in Chapter 2, Einstein grew up as a fairly normal boy. He was not a child prodigy. He was, instead, a gifted and very independent student. He disliked the strict teaching methods used in the German schools he attended, which caused some friction with his teachers. His independence became teenage rebellion during his high school and college years. Several teachers and professors told him that he wasn’t going to amount to anything.

Einstein knew that he was smarter than most people and, while in college, became arrogant and cocky. A couple of his high school teachers and at least one college professor recognized his brilliance. But as has been the case with all great men and women in history, no one ever predicted what he was going to become.

In college, Einstein lived the life of a normal European college student of the late 1800s, hanging out with friends at the local bars. (Some things don’t change!) He was popular with women, who found him handsome and charming. He enjoyed being in their company, which caused trouble later in life, when he was married.

Surviving professional disappointment

“A happy man is too comfortable with the present to think much about the future,” wrote Einstein in a high school paper for a French class. “If I were lucky enough to pass my college admission tests,” he continued in very poor French, “I would attend the Polytechnic Institute to study mathematics and physics. I imagine myself becoming a teacher in those branches.”

As I discuss in Chapter 2, when Einstein graduated as a physics major from the Polytechnic in Zurich, he had changed his mind somewhat. He wanted to be a university professor. However, one of the professors he clashed with at the Polytechnic was able to close all the academic doors for Einstein. So instead of becoming a professor, he became a clerk in a Swiss patent office.

From this position, alone and isolated from the academic world, Einstein burst into the world of physics and changed it forever. And he did so mostly in one year. That year, 1905, became known as his year of miracles (see Chapter 3).

Becoming famous

The publication of the special theory of relativity, of the famous formula E = mc ², and especially of the general theory of relativity made Einstein famous. (I discuss these revolutionary ideas in detail in Parts III and IV of this book.)

Einstein became an icon. When people imagine a scientist, most think of him. Even the Hollywood portrayals of a scientist often show a middle-aged man, usually in a lab coat, who has disheveled hair, is unconcerned with his clothes, and is engrossed in the task at hand.

Does the stereotype reflect its model? Almost. But Einstein never wore a lab coat. He was a theoretical physicist, which means that he needed only a pen and paper — and his mind — to do his job.

Fame made Einstein mellow. He was very aware of his status as the greatest scientist in the world. But he never pulled rank. Most people who knew him found him to be kind and caring. As a physicist, I would’ve loved to have met him, but my life didn’t overlap with his. However, I know a few scientists who were fortunate enough to meet him. The arrogance of his youth was long gone, and the Einstein they met was a gentle man who made them feel at ease.

Even people who were his professional equals, like Niels Bohr and Wolfgang Pauli, were in awe of him. In the late 1940s, Abraham Pais, then a young physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey (where Einstein worked after he immigrated to the United States), noticed a different attitude in both Bohr and Pauli whenever Einstein was around.

Lacking fortune

Einstein’s fame didn’t translate into wealth. He was never much interested in material things, but he did have a love for both music and sailing.

Even as late as 1922, Einstein couldn’t put together the money to buy a weekend cottage on the water near Berlin and a sailboat. His salary as a professor at the University of Berlin wouldn’t stretch enough to pay for these luxuries. He settled for renting a small house in the country.

For his 50th birthday, a group of friends bought Einstein a 21-foot mahogany-fitted boat. But Einstein would enjoy sailing it for only a few years. The threat of Nazi Germany forced him to leave Europe for the United States in 1933. His beloved boat was confiscated and sold by the Nazi regime as the property of an enemy of the state.

Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922. The prize brought with it a considerable amount of money, which he gave to his former wife for the care of their children.

After Einstein came to the United States, his fortunes improved. His initial salary at the Institute for Advanced Studies was $16,000 a year, about twice that of a full professor at the time. (Because other recognized scientists also made high salaries, a few people commented that the institute was not just for “advanced study” but for “advanced salaries.”) But Einstein’s lifestyle continued to be modest. His house at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton was an average house in a middle class neighborhood.

Playing peaceful politics

Einstein used his fame to speak out on political causes that he felt strongly about. “My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized,” he wrote in 1931. “It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration . . . through no fault, and no merit, of my own.”

His two main political concerns were pacifism and the creation of a world government that would enforce disarmament. He long swore that he would never support wartime activities. But the rise of Nazi Germany changed his perspective somewhat, and he became what he called a “militant activist.”

Although Einstein played no direct role in developing the atomic bomb, his E = mc ² equation opened the door to its creation (but didn’t lead directly to it). And Einstein did encourage the United States government to pursue an atomic weapon, out of fear that the Nazis might be doing the same. As I explain in Chapter 17, Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939, bringing the threat of a Nazi atomic bomb to his attention. The letter didn’t lead to the bomb’s development, but nonetheless Ein...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : A Genius Awakens
• Chapter 1: Who Was Einstein?
• Chapter 2: Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Man
• Chapter 3: 1905: Einstein’s Miracle Year
• Part II : On the Shoulders of Giants: What Einstein Learned in School
• Chapter 4: A Clockwork Universe
• Chapter 5: The Arrow of Time
• Chapter 6: Einstein’s Most Fascinating Subject
• Chapter 7: And There Was Light
• Part III : The Special Theory of Relativity
• Chapter 8: Relativity Before Einstein
• Chapter 9: Riding on a Beam of Light
• Chapter 10: Clocks, Trains, and Automobiles: Exploring Space and Time
• Chapter 11: The Equation
• Part IV : The General Theory of Relativity
• Chapter 12: Einstein’s Second Theory of Relativity
• Chapter 13: “Black Holes Ain’t So Black”
• Chapter 14: Was Einstein Right about Relativity?
• Part V : The Quantum and the Universe
• Chapter 15: Atoms Before Einstein
• Chapter 16: Quantum Leap: God Plays Dice
• Chapter 17: Einstein and the Bomb
• Chapter 18: Einstein’s Greatest Blunder
• Chapter 19: Not a Blunder After All
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 20: Ten Insights into Einstein’s Beliefs on Religion and Philosophy
• Chapter 21: Ten Women Who Influenced Einstein
• Appendix A: Glossary
• Appendix B: Einstein Timeline