![]() "Science was dinner-table conversation in the Einstein household," explains Galison. "At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason."Īlthough Einstein's five papers were published in a single year, he had been thinking about physics, deeply, since childhood. "I believe in intuition and inspiration," he wrote in 1931. Disdaining caution, Einstein adopted the intuitive leap as a basic tool. How can light be both? Einstein had no idea. This bizarre duality baffles Physics 101 students today just as it baffled Einstein in 1905. He wasn't beholden to a thesis advisor or any other authority figure." His mind was free to roam accordingly. "In 1905," notes Galison, "Einstein had just received his Ph.D. Contrary to urban legend, Albert did well in school. (Degenhart also predicted that Einstein "would never get anywhere in life.") This character flaw was to be a key ingredient in Einstein's discoveries. "Your mere presence here undermines the class's respect for me," spat his 7th grade teacher, Dr. Even as a child he was constantly doubting and questioning. He didn't resist being told what to do, not so much, but he hated being told what was true. Maxwell was an Authority Figure.Įinstein didn't give a fig for authority. Maxwell had proved beyond any doubt that light was an electromagnetic wave. ![]() Maxwell's equations were enormously successful, unifying the physics of electricity, magnetism and optics. "In Einstein's day, if you tried to say that light was made of particles, you found yourself disagreeing with physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Other physicists like Max Planck (working on a related problem: blackbody radiation), more senior and experienced than Einstein, were closing in on the answer, but Einstein got there first. ![]() Indeed, this is the solution Einstein proposed in 1905 and won the Nobel Prize for in 1921. The solution seems simple-light is particulate. A spread-out wave wouldn't do the photoelectric trick. This can happen only if light comes in little packets concentrated enough to knock an electron loose. When light hits a metal, like zinc, electrons fly off. What's remarkable about 1905 is that a single person authored all five papers, plus the original, irreverent way Einstein came to his conclusions.įor example: the photoelectric effect. "If Einstein hadn't been born, would have been written in some form, eventually, by others," Galison believes.Ībove: Bushy-haired superthinker. "He was a man of his time." All of his 1905 papers unraveled problems being worked on, with mixed success, by other scientists. "Einstein was no space alien," laughs Harvard University physicist and science historian Peter Galison. He must have come from some other planet-maybe the same one Newton grew up on. His ideas, we're told, were improbably far ahead of other scientists. Modern pop culture paints Einstein as a bushy-haired superthinker. (Nobel prize winners and other top scientists will meet with the public next month to discuss Einstein's work. The United Nations has declared 2005 "The World Year of Physics" to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's annus mirabilis. With nothing better to do, he developed his Theory of Universal Gravitation.įor centuries historians called 1666 Newton's annus mirabilis, or "miracle year." Now those words have a different meaning: Einstein and 1905. It happened in 1666 when Newton secluded himself at his mother's farm to avoid an outbreak of plague at Cambridge. He described his theory of special relativity: space and time were threads in a common fabric, he proposed, which could be bent, stretched and twisted.īefore Einstein, the last scientist who had such a creative outburst was Sir Isaac Newton. He argued that light came in little bits (later called "photons") and thus laid the foundation for quantum mechanics. Before 1905, scientists weren't sure about that. In 1905, at the age of 26 and four years before he was able to get a job as a professor of physics, Einstein published five of the most important papers in the history of science-all written in his "spare time." He proved that atoms and molecules existed. ![]() Right: Young Albert Einstein at the patent office. ![]()
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