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Einstein: His Life and Times
Robert Damrauer
Chemistry Department
University of Colorado at Denver
Denver, Colorado, 80217
UHL Seminars: October 24 and 31, 2008
Chronology: 1889-1884
1879 March 14, born in Ulm, Germany, von Laue and Hahn born, James Clerk Maxwell dies, Planck receives doctorate
1880 Family moves to Munich, von Baeyer synthesizes indigo
1881 Sister Maja born
1882 Darwin dies
1883 Curie effect discovered, Mach published “The Science of Mechanics”
Chronology: 1884-1888
1886 Enters public school
1888 Transfer to Luitpold Gymnasium
1884 Enchantment with pocket compass, Mendel dies
1885 Niels Bohr born
1887 Hertz generates electromagnetic waves, Mach photographs shock wave in front of missile, Schrödinger born
1889-1895
1889 First encounters with Max Talmey, who recommends books on science and mathematics, Eiffel builds tower
1892 Reads works of Kant and becomes interested in the calculus, de Broglie born
1894 Family moves to Italy, he remains in Munich alone
1895 Fails entrance exams to the Polytechnic (ETH) at 16
1895-1896
1896 Renounces German citizenship, completes year at Aarau, enters ETH, Meets Mileva Maric, Becquerel discovers radioactivity, Wien formulates radiation law
1895 Roentgen discovers X-rays, Ramsey isolates helium, Nobel endows prizes
1898-1900
1898 Curies isolate radium
1900 Receives “Mathematics Teacher” degree, fails in application for assistantship at ETH, first paper (on capillarity) is published in Annalen der Physik, Planck formulates quantum law
1899 Formally applies for Swiss citizenship, Rutherford discovers alpha and beta rays
1901-1902
1901 Receives Swiss citizenship, gets temporary work as teacher/tutor in Winterthur, Fermi born
1902 Employed at Swiss Patent Office in Bern, begins work on classical statistical mechanics
1902-1904
1902 Birth of daughter Lieserl, Fischer shows proteins made up of amino acids, Nobel Prize to Lorentz and Zeeman for splitting of spectral lines in magnetic fields
1903 Marries Mileva, Nobel to Becquerel and Curies
1904 First son, Hans Albert, born, discusses special relativity with Michael Besso for first time, Rutherford and Soddy understand radioactivity as atomic disintegration
Miracle Years: 1666
1666 City of London survives great fire
1666 British Fleet defeats Dutch (Treaty in 1667 gives Britain New Netherland)
Miracle Years: 1666
And by the way
Laid the foundation of his Calculus
Propounded his theory of color
Propounded his law of gravitation
At 24 years old
Newton
Miracle Years: 1905
1905 AE publishes five papers in Annalen der Physik
1905 Philipp Lenard wins Nobel Prize in Physics
Miracle Years: 1905
The nature of light = photoelectric effect
Determination of molecular dimensions
Motion of small particles: Brownian motion
Electrodynamics of moving bodies (special relativity)
Equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc2)
At 26 years old
Published on:
Annus Mirabilus 1905
Equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc2)
“One more consequence of the paper on electrodynamics has also occurred to me. The principle of relativity, in conjunction with Maxwell’s equations, requires that mass be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body….
The argument is amusing and seductive; but for all I know the Lord might be laughing over it and leading me around by the nose.”
Annus Mirabilus 1905
To Carl Seelig in 1952: “Between the conception of the idea for the special relativity and the completion of the relevant publication, five or six weeks elapsed.”
Special Relativity
1906-1909
1906 AE earns doctorate at U of Zurich on “New Determination of Dimensions in Molecules”, promotion to Technical Expert, Second Class, Planck accepts special relativity, Ludwig Boltzmann dies, Nobel to J.J. Thomson
1908 AE becomes lecturer at U of Bern, begins work refining relativity, Becquerel dies, Minkowski gives lecture on space and time, Kamerlingh Onnes liquifies helium
1909 Receives first honorary doctorate at U of Geneva, becomes Associate Professor at U of Zurich, Haber process patented, Wright builds Robie House
1907 Nobel Prize to Michelson, Picasso and Braque invent Cubism
1910-1912
1910 Second son, Eduard, born
1911 Professorship at German University in Prague, has first important ideas for a formulation of general theory (gravity deflecting light), 1st Solvay Conference, Nobel to Wien
1912 Returns to Zurich as Professor at Polytechnic
Student Petition to Retain EA at U of Zurich
This is so simple, God could not have passed it up.
Nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.
I had violin lessons from age 6 to 14, but had no luck with my teachers for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing.
For science something can be said, no violinist is so well fed.
To the Department of Education
We hear that Prof. Einstein has been proposed for the soon to be vacant professorship of theoretical physics at the University of Prague.
The undersigned auditors of Prof. Einstein’s lectures request you herewith to do your utmost to keep this outstanding researcher and teacher at our university.
Prof. Einstein has an amazing talent for presenting the most difficult problems of theoretical physics so clearly and so comprehensibly that it is a great delight for us to follow his lectures; and he is so good at establishing a perfect contact with his audience that we are convinced that his teaching activity would be of great advantage to our university.
1913-1915
1913 Draft of generalized relativity published with Grossmann, Bohr publishes “The Constitution of Atoms”
1914 Move to U of Berlin, becomes full-time member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics
1915 Explains perihelion of mercury, finds bending of light is twice as great as previously thought, signs “Manifesto to Europeans”
1916-1918
1916 Publishes General Theory of Relativity, first paper on gravitational waves, returns to quantum mechanics: induced spontaneous emission and absorption phenomena
1917 Establishes first relativistic model of the universe, introducing the cosmological constant, illnesses
1918 Planck and Haber win Nobel Prizes
1919-1921
1919 Divorces Mileva, marries cousin Elsa, two British expeditions confirm deflection of light in a gravitational field, Nobel Prize to Stark
1920 AE meets Bohr for the first time in Berlin, Lenard and Stark force AE to Leyden
1921 Visits US with Weizmann to raise money for Hebrew University, delivers lectures at Princeton, visit Newton’s grave in London on return
1919 !!!! INSTANT WORLD FAME !!!!
Chaim Weizmann, 1921
Weizmann commenting on the trip across the Atlantic:
“Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it.”
Quote to Weizmann
“If we do not find the path to honest cooperation and honest negotiations with the Arabs, then we have learned nothing from our 2000 years of suffering and we deserve the fate that will befall us. Above all, we should be careful not to rely too heavily on the English. For if we don’t get to a real cooperation with the leading Arabs, then the English will drop us, if not officially, then de facto. And they will lament our debacle with traditional, pious glances toward heaven, with assurances of their innocence, and without lifting a finger for us.”
1922-1924-2001
1922 first paper on Unified Field Theory, wins Physics Nobel Prize retroactively for 1921, visits, France, Japan, Palestine, Spain, Bohr wins 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics
1924 Satyendranath Bose sends AE a paper, which AE generalizes, producing a new kind of quantum statistics called the Bose-Einstein statistics-- they also predict “a new form of matter”
2001 Carl Wieman, Eric Cornell, and Wolfgang Ketterle win Nobel Prize in Physics “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensate.”
1925-1928
1925 Promotes duality principle of matter by emphasizing ideas of Louis DeBroglie, Heisenberg, Born, and Jordon publish on quantum mechanics
1928 Fleming discovers penicillin
1926 Fermi-Dirac statistics created
1927 attended 5th Solvay Conference, “locks horns” with Bohr on the foundations of quantum mechanics begins, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Lindbergh flight, Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs
Einstein and Bohr: bikes
EA wrote in 1949: “that this insecure and contradictory foundation (of physics) was sufficient to enable a man of Bohr’s unique instinct and tact to discover the major laws of the spectral lines and of the electron shells of the atoms together with their significance for chemistry appeared to me a miracle -- and it appears to me as a miracle even today.”
Einstein
Bohr
1929-1936
1929 AE is fifty years old, first visit with Belgian royal family, Nobel Prize to de Broglie
1933 Nazis come to power in January, visits Cal Tech, property is confiscated as his German citizenship is revoked, resigns from Prussian Academy, returns to US never to return to Europe, begins work at the Institute for Advanced Study
1934 Violin concert in NYC raises $6,500 for German refugee scientists, Madame Curie dies
1936 Wife Elsa dies
Quot: Madame Curie On Madame Curie following her death:
“It was my good fortune to be linked with Madame Curie though 20 years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment—all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual.”
1939-1952
1939 EA writes first letter to FDR on August 2nd, Nobel to Lawrence
1944 Handwritten copy of EA’s 1905 Special Relativity paper auctioned for $6,000,000-- proceeds to for U.S. war bonds
1948 Mileva dies
1952 After death of Weizmann, AE is asked to become 2nd president of Israel, but declines1954 Writes letter in support of Oppenheimer, last meeting with Bohr
1945 Atomic bomb explosions
Quote: (1) one thing have learned and (2) concern for
man 2
“One thing I have learned in a long life. All science measured against reality is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
“The concern for man and his destiny must always be the chief interest of all technical efforts. Never forget it among your diagrams and equations.”
Quote: God/Nature
“This is so simple, God could not have passed it up.”
“Nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.”
Quote:Violins “I had violin lessons from age 6 to 14, but had no luck with my teachers for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing.”
“For science something can be said, no violinist is so well fed.”
Einstein/ Newton Quote
Compare this Newton quote: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all uncovered before me.”
On his 70th birthday: “You can imagine that I look back on my life’s work with a calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.”