A
comparison of the early years of Newton and Einstein
Occasionally writers
struggling to find a superlative for someone of really exceptional talent use
the term genius. The term has
been overused in recent years perhaps but, two men for whom this description
was tailor made were Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
In this comparison of the two I have used the term giant
and this merits an explanation.
It was modestly stated by
Newton, not all that modest a man by nature, in the following pronouncement:
he said, "If I have seen further than most men it is because I have
stood on the shoulders of giants."
A beautiful phrase I am sure you will agree and it refers, of course,
to the use he made of the scientific advances or observations that other
great men had already made and that he had made use of and built upon.
Einstein was to repeat this same sentiment. It actually predates even Newton for Bernard of Chartres said
something very similar in the early 12th century. But, whatever the modesty, our two subjects became themselves mighty
giants for others to climb upon.
We are in awe of our geniuses:
we idolise them. But to do so we
need to have some sort of picture of them in our mind's eye.
It is here that the media, sometimes unintentionally but often
foolishly and frivolously can let us down.
Both Newton and Einstein are usually presented as middle- to old-aged
men whenever we see them and, indeed, looking at their faces, lined and
carrying the wisdom of their years, they seem to fit the bill.
The startling fact is, however, that both
of these men produced their miraculous breakthroughs in the scientific world at
an astonishingly early age!
What follows is a comparative
look at the early years leading up to their respective climactic discoveries;
their school years, their later academic progress, and, finally, the magic of
their moments of inspiration. This final revelation will, in itself, be quite
a surprise to the non-scientists among the listeners.
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Two countries with strong
cultural links, Germany and England, produced many of the worlds finest
philosopher-scientists in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
It is perhaps fitting, therefore, that our two giants should come from
these nations.
So, now we have the
nationalities of our two. Let us
look briefly at their family backgrounds and their births.
Shall we find any indications there or in later years that either owed
their genius to parents, to upbringing …. or to any other single cause?
Strangely, it was the
city-born Einstein who was to achieve his successes on the outer fringes –
some might argue completely outside – of the scientific world and of the sort of
intellectually stimulating environment that is usually considered as
conducive to producing original ideas of any kind.
On the other hand, Newton, born in the tiny Lincolnshire hamlet of
Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, was surely destined – at least his mother saw
it that way – to become a farm owner/manager.
But this son of the land had a will of his own, as had the young
Einstein, and this led him to the more intellectually stimulating atmosphere
of Cambridge University.
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Yes, Einstein was born
in the industrial city of Ulm, which lies on the river Danube about midway
between Munich and Stuttgart. The
date was March 14th 1879. His
parents were non-practising Jews living a comfortable life-style. His father, Herman, tried and ultimately failed to run a small
electrical and engineering workshop business.
He was certainly no genius,
only his affable nature might be seen in the later development of his son.
The more affluent side of the family was his mother's.
Pauline nee Koch brought into the marriage also, as did Newton's
mother, a little more cultured sophistication.
Her son inherited one aspect of this, a love of music.
Only a year after Albert's
birth the good-natured and perhaps overly optimistic Herman saw his business
collapse and the family uprooted itself and left behind the tallest cathedral
spire ever built and the town whose people were proud to say, "Ulmense
sunt mathematici" [the people of Ulm are mathematicians].
They took a small rented house in the Bavarian capital, Munich, and
Herman, this time in partnership with his brother, opened a small
electrochemical works.
By coincidence it was at the
University of Munich that one of Einstein's greatest scientific
contemporaries, then in his early twenties, had taken up a post.
This was the remarkable Max Planck.
Their lives were to become intriguingly intertwined in later years.
When Albert was two years old,
his sister Maja was born. Here
then was set the scene and the characters for the early years of the life of
the German giant. Imagine if you
will those happy childhood days. Einstein
himself later looked back fondly upon the regular Sunday excursions to the
beautiful surrounding countryside, stopping at taverns for a beer for father
and sausages for all. His
relationship with younger sister Maja was, apparently, close and she became
his confidante. Although both
sides of the family could trace their Jewish ancestry back hundreds of years,
they did not attend the synagogue or practise the taboos on what should be
eaten. In fact, in the largely
Catholic community of Munich, Albert's first school was one of that faith
simply because it was more convenient.
What the young Albert did or
thought about matters of science during these early years is unclear but a
potential catalyst or milestone came when he was only five according to a
famous anecdote. Being ill in
bed his father showed him a pocket compass.
It is said that the fact that the needle always pointed north no
matter how the compass was turned planted the seeds in his young mind of the
action of an invisible force. One
aspect of his early school years is
beyond dispute: he was extremely late in learning to speak!
From this the Dyslexic Society deduced that this impairment may have
been the reason and added his name to the illustrious number who also
suffered this setback. The signs of dormant genius, though, were conspicuous
by their absence. A concluding
anecdote on this to ram the point home states that his father asked Albert's
headmaster what profession his son should adopt.
The all-knowing headmaster replied: "It doesn't matter; he'll
never make a success of anything."
At the age of ten, after five years at his primary school, Albert made
the transition to secondary education, the Luitpold Gymnasium [this latter
name is the German equivalent of our grammar school].
How does all this compare with
Newton's start in life?
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Newton was to become known as
a difficult, perhaps prickly and argumentative, character and a rather
isolated figure. Just as we
look for signs of his latent genius in his early life we may at least discern
the signs of his darker nature.
The young Newton's father was
also called Isaac. He was a man
of the land, a typical yeoman farmer of middle England, prosperous through
the breeding of the much-valued herds of sheep in this part of the country.
He was, however, illiterate, signing his name with a cross.
Whatever ambitions drove him on or whatever fate had in store for him,
his star suddenly shone brighter when he married Hannah Ayscough.
As in the case of Einstein's parentage it was the female side of the
marriage that introduced learning and culture.
To put the marriage on a suitable footing an ambitious father (Sir
Isaac Newton's grandfather) bought for the married pair the Manor House at
Woolsthorpe and the title and duties of Lord of the Manor that went with it.
None-the-less, the Newtons, though top of the tree of working folk
were still just that … working folk, not gentry.
Their farm was simply a business as was that of Albert's father.
On Christmas Day of 1642 young
Isaac was born. But this was an
unusual 'gift' package. Firstly,
the young child was very tiny and not expected to survive.
Secondly, his father had not lived to see his son born (and perhaps to
have a pride in his achievements that were to follow).
Nevertheless, the fine stone manor house must have wrung with sounds
of joy, both seasonal and congratulationary, from servants and friends and
family. The many visitors to the
manor house today can recapture something of a feel for the occasion with a
little imagination. The fire
roaring in the huge fireplace in the kitchen and the smells of a goose
cooking. A thousand miles away
for the moment from the political turmoils of those times where roundheads
and cavaliers would soon vie for supremacy in the neighbouring fields and
towns. But, on that auspicious
day Charles was still king.
Although the young Isaac not
only survived, of course, he lived a long and healthy life.
But mentally he was to suffer probably his first and worst trauma when
still only a toddler of three years …..his mother re-married to the vicar
of a nearby parish and moved out leaving him with his grandmother Ayscough.
Perhaps slowly but surely, an
only child living comfortably but in turbulent times, the young boy found his
place in the farming world of south Lincolnshire.
His granny may have been strict but she probably had that warmth of
compassion that most such ladies bear for their grandchildren.
Just as the later Albert and his family turned away from their religious background it is likely that grandmother
Ayscough (and his mother, who no doubt visited regularly) saw to it that
young Isaac worshipped regularly and kept the faith.
In the neighbouring village of
Skillington, young Isaac had three aunts, all with children.
It is most likely, then, that the young boy was a frequent visitor and
one probable outcome was that it may have been one of these aunts who put
forward to his grandmother the name of some learned person in the village.
For it was here and in the next village of Stoke Rochford that the
small boy started his schooling, learning the basics in a so-called dame
school.
At the age of 10 Isaac was
possibly subject to some further trauma in his young life: his step-father
died and his mother returned to Woolsthorpe Manor bringing with her three
children from this second marriage. It
was to his half-sister, Hannah, that Isaac was to form what was to be maybe
his closest lasting friendship.
The next leap forward for our
two subjects was their transition to what we now call secondary education. Let us look at the comparisons in this vital part of their
lives.
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To the young German boy the
transition to higher education at the gymnasium was not a happy time.
He balked at the discipline and at the way teaching did nothing to
encourage free thought or any challenge to the accepted wisdoms of the day.
All this was retrospective opinion by the much older Einstein,
however. But, the younger
Einstein's mind certainly became set on challenging received
wisdom even in his mid teens. Surprisingly,
at the time of this educational move young Albert Einstein was still somewhat
backward, however.
The boy had two favourite
uncles in his family circle, Uncle Jacob, who may have had some influence on
his learning, and Uncle C(e)asar, no intellectual, who he became particularly
fond of. The anecdote concerning the former which suggests a
connection with Albert's mathematical learning is that he is reputed to have
said, "Algebra is a merry science.
We go hunting for a little animal whose name we do not know, so we
call it x. When we bag our game
we pounce on it and give it its right name."
Uncle Casar was a prosperous
grain merchant who had returned from Russia at the time of the boy's last
primary school year. He gave his
nephew a gift, a model steam engine, perhaps to commemorate the coming
educational move. Later, at the
age of 16, Albert Einstein asked this uncle for his comments on his first
scientific paper …. a remarkable effort for a boy of that age concerning a
major scientific puzzle of that time, the relationship between electricity,
magnetism and the ether. In this
he suggested certain experimental methods to resolve some of the problems.
Whatever his feelings about
the teaching environment at the school, equating it to the typical German
militaristic character, the somewhat introspective young boy must have made
great strides forward to have tackled the subject matter of his paper to
Uncle Casar. Certainly his maths had improved considerably and, as this
period drew to a conclusion, he was already grappling with the mysterious
scientific phenomena which were to dominate his thinking in forthcoming
years. Before these final years
were reached, however, there was another family crisis, again due to the
failure of his father's business. This
entailed the family leaving for Milan and Italy in 1894 leaving Albert, still
with three years to go before he could get the diploma which would guarantee
him a university place, to board. However,
the now rather cocky and self-willed young fifteen-year-old had different
ideas – as had, apparently, his school.
After six months he left the hated gymnasium and followed his family
over the Alps. There is some
doubt but it is quite likely that he was expelled!
All this presented great
problems for our young giant. In
Germany a gymnasium certificate was an essential entrance paper to a
university. A parallel with
Newton's life also now brought a bearing on what was to occur.
His father put pressure on his son to 'forget philosophical nonsense'
and to take up a more practical career – in electrical engineering, of
course. To do this it was
decided to send Albert to the fine Swiss Federal Polytechnic School over the
border in Switzerland at Zurich. Albert
needed no diploma for this but he was
required to pass an entrance exam. After
some investigation it was decided he was too young at 16 (entrance was
usually at 18) and would require some preparatory schoolwork.
Given the thought that this path led to a career that would suit his
father but would be anathema to him, is it to be wondered at that the
iron-willed Albert would ill-prepare himself and then fail the entrance exam? What now?
Perhaps fortunately, the
principal of the ETH (to give the college its equivalent German designation)
recognised Einstein's mathematical talents - and perhaps made appropriate
allowances for his awkward character too.
The outcome was that he again prepared in a local school for his
entrance examination and this
time passed!
The school at which he made
this final preparation was in the picturesque Swiss town of Aarau.
The teaching here was friendly and all-embracing in contrast with the
rigid discipline of the gymnasium.
A look at Einstein's character
at this time compares very unfavourably with his later gentle and benign
popular image. He was without
doubt arrogant and, even, impudent, not just with his peer group but with his
teachers. One thing his moves to
Italy and now to Switzerland had
shown him, however, was that other nationalities held an appeal to him much
more than did his fellow Germans. This
was to have a sudden and startling result.
At the age of only 16 he shocked his father by firmly stating that he
was renouncing his German citizenship and, as if that wasn't enough, he would
sever any formal links with the Jewish faith.
Yielding to this determined stance, Herman wrote to the German
authorities and, in January of 1896, the deed was done.
Albert Einstein was stateless.
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Reaching back almost two
hundred and fifty years before this, our other subject, having reached his
twelfth year, now climbed onto the second rung of his schooling ladder.
This was to the Free Grammar School at Grantham.
This already ancient school was approximately eight miles north of
Woolsthorpe along the Great North Road.
Clearly a daily journey was out of the question so young Isaac took
lodgings with a Mrs Clark at an apothecary's shop.
Bear in mind that even as late as Einstein's days, young boys of 12 in
the labouring classes were starting work.
The young Isaac probably had
no greater enthusiasm for the disciplines of his new school than did the
young Albert. He is known to
have been bullied and to have found it difficult to form friendships with his
peer group. What sort of things
did this strong-willed but isolated young boy get up to?
Unlike our other subject,
Isaac was strongly religious and, in his later teens he compiled a document
which throws a beacon of light upon his teen years.
During a period of intense religious feeling he suffered remorse for
supposed sins he had committed and he listed these as follows …"Making
a mouse trap on Thy day (Sunday). Idle
discourse on Thy day and at other times.
Missing Chapel (at school). Having
unclean thoughts, words and actions and dreams.
Falling out with servants. Peevishness
with my mother. Refusing to go
to the close (field) at my mother's command.
Punching my younger sister. Squirting
water on Thy day. Robbing my
mother's box of plums and sugar. Calling Dorothy Rose a jade.
Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother though I knew of it.
Peevishness at Mr Clarks for a piece of bread and butter.
Eating an apple in church. Stealing
cherry cobs from Edward Storer. Using
a fellow student's towel to spare my own.
Setting my heart on money, learning and pleasure more than Thee."
And, a more frightening one …"Threatening my father and mother
Smith to burn them and the house over them."
He may have not got on with his step-father.
One can detect his strong nature in the above list (there were many
other 'sins' listed) but they indicate a pretty normal childhood for any boy,
I would have thought!
In addition to this document,
Isaac purchased at 16 a small notebook for two-and-a-half pence in which he
listed all sorts of information such as 'a bait to catch fish', 'a salve for
sores' and 'a water to clear sight', etc.
As well as a clever mind Isaac
proved very good with his hands, both at drawing and at making models.
The walls at Woolsthorpe Manor still bear evidence of his skill in the
former art scratched into the plaster work.
So, the young English giant
progressed. But, just as
Einstein's progress stuttered during this period, so did Isaac's …
His mother withdrew him from school to concentrate on running the
farm. However, wiser heads were
to prevail. His headmaster,
Stokes – perhaps allayed with Isaac's Uncle William Ayscough, who had been
to Cambridge and was the rector of a nearby parish – persuaded Hannah to
let him return to the grammar school to make his final preparation for
university. On 5th June 1661, a young man of 18-and-a-half, Isaac Newton was accepted into
Trinity College at Cambridge.
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At the ETH Einstein, in
apparent contrast with the lonely path that Newton was to take, developed
friendships. His young manhood saw him develop into the sort of powerful,
magnetic male figure that was attractive to the opposite sex.
His looks did not let him down. He
had a thick crop of dark, wavy hair and sported a wide moustache which
drooped down slightly at the sides of a firm, sensuous mouth.
He had a rounded face with a short cleft chin.
But above all these attributes was the gaze of his dark and
penetrating eyes.
On the down side was a growing
forgetfulness which would often see him forget his key.
Also, a carelessness in dress. Perhaps
his mind was already burying itself in the important things in life, to him
the mysteries of nature.
One of the friendships he
developed was with a female student four years his senior.
She was Hungarian and of peasant origins.
Her name was Mileva Maric.
In August of 1900, Albert
Einstein finally graduated. His
mark was 4.91 out of 6.00 … not quite that of a genius, one might think.
All his class-mates except the unfortunate Mileva passed too.
But the cocky young graduate was now to receive a severe jolt to his
pride. The hoped-for teaching
job at the ETH was not forthcoming and suddenly the young man was in rather
desperate straits for the Koch family, who had kindly sent him a regular
allowance, decided it was time he fended for himself and stopped the
payments.
In a sudden flurry of writing
off for jobs, citizenship now assumed more importance.
The outcome was that, with some effort, he obtained Swiss citizenship
– which, incidentally, placed on him the obligation to do three months
National Service. The year was
1901. A temporary job helped him
through this difficult period until his hopes of a permanent job were at last
realised. To anyone not familiar
with Einstein's life, it would seem that this must be his much sort after
teaching post, perhaps at some university.
However, the job offer, which
he quickly accepted, was as a civil servant in the Patents Office at Berne.
It wasn't even at the class two grade for which he had applied.
In view of his lack of engineering skills and knowledge of reading
technical drawings and specifications, it was only at grade three.
The starting salary was a modest 3,500 francs per year.
Yet he was to stay in this job for seven long years and while sorting
through and recommending applications for a variety of patents by day he was
to launch into the world of science a theory that would stand the regular
denizens of that world on their heads. How
could he possibly achieve this miracle?
Before we look at how and why
this came to pass we must slip back into the life of our other subject, for
it would be partly on the results of Newton's own achievements that
Einstein's would be built and measured.
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Newton probably took to his
university life very well yet, initially, his circumstances may have been
just as fraught as were Einstein's. For
a start, although agreeing to her eldest son's departure and one can imagine
her misgivings and, perhaps, annoyance, Hannah Newton did not provide the
financial support which her wealth would have permitted.
Isaac began his days at
Trinity College as a sizar, a sort of fag for the wealthier students.
Many of these had commenced their university careers as young as
fifteen. Isaac was already a
grown man by the standards of those times.
All this would not have sat well with a young man of his sensitive and
introspective nature but he had an iron resolve to learn and in learning to
find the answer to many of Nature's riddles.
This resolve was surely one he shared with the later genius of our
tale. But, let us consider for a
moment the times in which he lived ….
The mid 1600s was a time of
strong religious beliefs … but, also, strong beliefs in the supernatural,
the forces of the dark. Where a
phenomenon could not be explained by logic, it was assigned to either divine
or unknown dark forces. The new
breed of observer and experimental scientists was only slowly and warily
emerging. These scientist/philosophers had to be careful not to cross
the teachings of the Church.
Let us look briefly at some of
the unknowns.
Another remarkable
contemporary of Newton's was Robert Hook
This slightly older man was into everything. With some squeamishness he dissected a living dog to try to
find out just what function the lungs served, for it was not known then that
a vital constituent of air was oxygen and that animals had to extract this
and feed it into their bloodstream. He
was also pushing forward the accuracy of chronometers, barometers and
weighing machines. He found time
to speculate about the nature of light and it was on this particular theme
that he was to clash unpleasantly with Newton.
There was so much to discover and scattered around the country was an
army of amateur scientists trying to do just that.
The answers they sort might
lie anywhere and to a man like Newton it was worth exploring any possible
path to discover these truths about Nature.
One way he tried was through
alchemy. At the college, Isaac
Newton used the roaring fires of a laboratory he built, spending months in
mixing metals and other substances, hoping to reveal … something.
He also looked for truths
which he believed may have been discovered by the ancients and which might
again be revealed if one studied the old biblical texts.
One outcome, maybe, of this was that he came to dispute the idea of a
Holy Trinity. His scientific
mind could not accept that an almighty God could somehow share His power and
he also claimed to have discovered proof that the Catholic Church had
fraudulently altered documents to maintain this doctrine.
This was to remain his dark secret, for revealing his thoughts would
have put him into direct conflict with the established Church and Isaac was
to become a very ambitious political man.
To many people, perceiving Newton as, almost, the very embodiment of a
scientist it would perhaps be surprising to learn just how religious he was.
Nothing illustrates this more than the fact that a quarter
of a million words written by him on this subject were auctioned at
Sothebys long after his death. In
any matter which seriously interested him, however, he went to
extreme lengths to explore that subject and to then write prolifically about
his conclusions. Newton would
rate as one of the most thorough scientists of all time.
A continuing curse on the
people of seventeenth century England was the so-called Black Death.
Brought to the island's shores many centuries before Newton was born,
this terrible killer plague waxed and waned over the years.
A sudden outbreak at Cambridge in 1665 saw the colleges close their
doors and send students and teachers home for two years.
It must have seemed an annoying inconvenience for Isaac, now getting
into his stride, to have to return to the idyllic or, perhaps, boring life at
Woolsthorpe Manor.
Arriving back home for this
long spell, Newton probably resolved not to let his scientific studies be
side-tracked by farming affairs. We
can picture this young man, maybe, after he had unloaded his belongings.
He was not then the dignified man with the wig and flowing robes as
depicted in the paintings and statues that his later years and his legacy
would produce. He probably
strode about energetically in a loose shirt with white stockings on strong
young calves. His death mask now
displayed at Woolsthorpe Manor shows a strong face with a large chin and a
wide, down-turned mouth below a long nose.
By repute, the mouth rarely turned in a smile.
His gaze in his paintings shows a steady, haughty gaze. Then, at 22, he must have been quite a handsome young man and
those eyes would have flashed with purpose.
But bored he did not intend to
be and it is more than likely that the belongings he unpacked included many
books together with instruments with which to experiment.
These were placed in his study, a large room above the kitchen. One in ignorance might be forgiven for thinking that his
major discoveries, to be enshrined in the later published work to be known in
short as the 'Pincipia', would be revealed to him or by him over a period of
several years and back in the more conducive environment of Trinity College.
Astonishingly, this was not to be so.
In this comparatively short period, while still at Woolsthorpe, Isaac
Newton was to produce a breath-taking array of scientific discoveries,
observations and laws which would propel his fellow men firmly into the
scientific age. What was the
gist of these?
First, he had "the theory
of colours". Using prisms
and sunlight shining through one of the study windows Newton split light into
its colours and then re-constituted the white light.
He also formulated his laws of motion and invented calculus to work
out the paths of elliptical orbits such as the planets take.
Perhaps he gazed out of the study window at the orchard below or
simply took a contemplative stroll among the apple trees for some fresh air. It
was at such a moment that his brilliant mind, now in overdrive, linked up the
fall of an apple with the circling planets and derived from this his theory
of a gravitational force. But,
whatever the achievement in the theory it was a gigantic further step to then
calculate the exact motions of those planets plus, later, visiting comets.
In all its splendour this total effort was labelled his anni
mirabulis. He himself
put it another way, thus …
"I was in the prime of my
age for invention and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time
since."
Wow!
But, Newton was not the cocky
young man that our other subject was to become at a comparable age.
Sensitive as always to criticism and challenge, Isaac Newton was to
keep his writings to himself for many years so, all this would not burst upon
the world for many more years until his Philosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematica and the later Opticks were published.
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It was to be exactly 230 years later that our second subject was to stake his
claim as a giant. The years
leading up to this are very different from those lived through by Isaac
Newton.
We have seen that the young
Einstein, now a Swiss citizen, has at last got himself a job, be it one that
sits oddly with his ambitions to teach and to discover the underlying forces
of nature and the way they operate.
He himself was to say, "I
want to know how God created this world.
I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of
this or that element. I want to
know his thoughts." Perhaps
only the arrogance of youth could deliver such a statement but, he was to
come as near to achieving this as any other man or woman.
The days leading up to his
triumph were inauspicious. He
was a much more social animal than Newton and, starting with a young private
student to whom he taught physics to supplement his income, he formed a small
group of friends around him that would discuss with him some of his ideas.
But they were not quite the intellectual group that he might have had
at a university despite the name they gave themselves, the Olympia Academy!
It is more than likely that they fitted in a fair amount of drinking
and general merriment as would any other group of young people.
During the years from 1900 to
1905 Einstein produced five minor dissertations concerning molecular forces. But his thinking was not altogether
about matters of science.
In 1903 he married Mileva.
Two of his Academy friends witnessed the quiet wedding and there was
no honeymoon. Whatever his
motives he was to settle down in a new apartment in Berne and, by the end of
that year, his son Hans Albert was born.
Einstein seemed able to compartmentalise his mind, simultaneously
scribbling notes while dangling his young son on his knee.
The setting for an earth-shattering miracle seems almost as remote as
that of Newton unpacking his bags amid the cluttering hens at Woolsthorpe.
Einstein was an unknown in the scientific world as well he might be.
But, in 1905 he sent three papers for publication to the German
scientific journal Annalen der Physik.
One of these tied in with his
previous papers. It was to do
with molecular forces and it concerned an oddity that had been observed for
some time but which had defied explanation.
The odd effect had been named after a Scottish scientist and was
called Brownian Motion. If, for
example, pollen dust is scattered onto water, its tiny particles zigzag about
randomly and without any apparent decrease in their energy.
This was a baffling phenomenon but our cocky young patents clerk, from
some unknown backwater, not only showed in his paper how this could occur but
along the way proved a fact that was hardly credited by most scientists of
his day - that atoms and
molecules truly exist. This was
amazing stuff yet this was the least important paper of the three.
What else did he come up with?
One of his other two papers
was to be rated so important that several years later it would be awarded the
coveted Nobel Prize. Ah, some
might say; that would be his paper on Relativity.
Amazingly that revolutionary and controversial paper which would turn
accepted theory on its head was not the award-winning paper.
The one that achieved that distinction was one laboriously entitled
"On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation
of Light." What on earth
was this all about, you may wonder?
Another unexplained riddle of
science at this time was concerning a phenomenon to do with light.
Let us briefly look at what was believed about the nature of this
incredible form of radiation at the turn of the century.
Newton had favoured a view that light was made up of small particles
of energy fired out almost like little bullets but even he was not too sure
about this. Recent observations
on light seemed to indicate strongly that it had a wave form like sound
travelling through air or, simply, waves upon the sea.
But this latter demanded a transmitting medium and for light this was
thought to be a luminiferous ether, a so far undetected entity surrounding
the Earth. Surely, whichever it turned out to be, light had to be in one
camp or the other.
Other scientists were
struggling to explain an observed phenomenon – that light striking
metal receivers was strangely affected if a sheet of glass was
interposed. There was not a convincing explanation from the greatest scientific minds of
the day of why this should be so. Einstein
proposed that it was due to light being discharged in certain packets of
energy. These were called
quanta. He then showed that the
reception of these would explain why electrons were ejected by the receiving
metal and he further went on to calculate the kinetic energy of the electrons
which were ejected. The
phenomenon had been given the name photoelectric
effect. Einstein gave a
complete explanation of the whole process.
So, in just one year our giant
had emerged from nowhere to explain two weird puzzles and to win himself a
Nobel Prize. This should have
been enough to establish himself as an intellectual wonder but, more – far
more – was to come in his third paper.
Newton had, at the beginning
of his Pincipia defined both space and time. These would be the definitions that would meet with our every
day, common sense perspective of reality.
They were the underpinning of his extremely accurate laws of motion:
of everything. There may have been some brilliant philosophers who were to
doubt these but Einstein went one better.
In his Special Theory of Relativity (not the name he gave to his third paper), Einstein proposed a revolutionary
concept of space and time which linked the two together and made them
dependant upon the speed of the travelling body associated with them.
At the age of only 26, this giant was to make even top scientists
boggle at what he was saying. Because
it seemed an affront to common sense, many thought the difficult to grasp
arguments must be totally wrong but Newton had had to overcome the same sort
of scepticism.
Einstein was to become one of
the first of a new breed of scientist (of which our own Stephen Hawking is a
modern exponent). Instead of
observing and experimenting and, only then, providing a logical explanation
for the experimental results, this new breed was to use their powers of
imagination plus some very sophisticated maths to produce a theory.
The experiments would then follow
to confirm the theory.
Some of the experiments to
verify the new concepts of the Theory of Relativity were going to be very
difficult to perform due to the accuracy required.
One outcome upon which the Theory insisted was that light passing near
to a powerful gravitational source such as a star would be bent. It wasn't until the next solar eclipse that this could be and
was verified. A cocksure
Einstein was in no doubt himself that it would be!
Other predictions were more
bizarre but all have been confirmed by our incredible modern technology.
As to this Theory, why Special
you may wonder? This is because
it was limited to objects moving at a constant velocity. But, Einstein knew instinctively that it could also be
extended to, say, accelerating bodies. This
would take him another ten long years of slogging work to finalise for,
unlike Newton who was as creative with the tool of maths as he was with
anything else, Einstein needed to be shown
which complex branch of maths he should adopt to get the correct results.
But, his earlier 9,000 word
dissertation on a special form of relativistic movement entitled "On the
Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" must rank alongside the
"Principia" in its innovative brilliance.
……….
This astonishingly early
flowering of two mighty intellects, one at only 22 and the other at 26,
surely places them worthily as Giants of Science, though the paths they each
took to the moments of insight were, as shown in the above, on the whole so
very different.
THE
END
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