einstein, playful genius - subroto mukerji

8/9/2019 Einstein, Playful Genius - Subroto Mukerji

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ALBERTEINSTEIN

(1879 1955)

Albert Einstein notonly didnt complete high school, he tried toenter college without a high school diploma.He then slipped away from his boarding school inMunich to join his family who had recentlymoved to northern Italy, using a fake doctorsnote.

He later applied to ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology but failed the entrance examination! After finallygraduating from college, and for two years afterwards, he wasunable to find an opening in his field, teaching physics. So hetook a job as a clerk in a Berne, Switzerland patent office in 1902.Nineteen years later, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for hisdiscovery of the law of photoelectric effect.

By the time of his death in 1955, he had irretrievably changedour view of reality, introduced several critical theories of relativity

and on gravitation, published additional concepts onintermolecular forces, quantum mechanics, and the motions ofcelestial bodies and what we now call the Big Bang Theory.Einstein published over fifty scientific papers and is considered tobe the greatest physicist of all time. By the end of his life, he wasconsidered by many to be one of the greatest geniuses everborn.

Einsteins final words, spoken inGerman, allegedly died with him, as it is

reported that the nurse at his side didntunderstand a word of German. After his death,his brain was preserved at Princeton Hospital inhope that in the future,scientists could determine what made Einsteinso brilliant. In 1999, he was named Timemagazines Person of the Century. Einstein was

an intensely human, utterly lovable human being, full of humourand pithy sayings.


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This theoretical physicist introduced his Special Theory ofRelativity in 1905 and his General Theory of Relativity in 1915.

The first showed that Newton's Three Laws of Motion were onlyapproximately correct, breaking down when velocitiesapproached that of light. The second showed that Newton's Law

of Gravitation was also only approximately correct, breakingdown when gravitation becomes very strong.

Special Relativity

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is valid for systems that arenot accelerating. Since from Newton's second law an accelerationimplies a force, special relativity is valid only when no forces act.

Thus, it cannot be used generally when there is a gravitationalfield present (as we shall see below in conjunction with the

Principle of Equivalence, it can be used over a sufficientlylocalized region of spacetime).

We have already discussed some of the important implications ofthe Special Theory of Relativity. For example, the most famous isprobably the relationship between mass and energy. Otherstriking consequences are associated with the dependence ofspace and time on velocity: at speeds near that of light, spaceitself becomes contracted in the direction of motion and thepassage of time slows. Although these seem bizarre ideas

(because our everyday experience typically does not includespeeds near that of light), many experiments indicate that theSpecial Theory of Relativity is correct and our "common sense"(and Newton's laws) do not apply at speeds approaching that oflight.

General Relativity

The General Theory of Relativitywas Einstein's stupendous effort

to remove the restriction onSpecial Relativity that noaccelerations (and therefore noforces) be present, so that hecould apply his ideas to the force of gravity. It is a measure of thedifficulty of the problem that it took even the great Einsteinapproximately 10 years to fully understand how to do this. Thus,the General Theory of Relativity is a new theory of gravitationproposed in place of Newtonian gravitation.


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observed indirectlyin the binary pulsar. Because the arrivaltime of pulses from the pulsar can be measured veryprecisely, it can be determined that the period of the binarysystem is gradually decreasing. It is found that the rate ofperiod change (about 75 millionths of a second each year) is

what would be expected for energy being lost togravitational radiation, as predicted by the Theory ofGeneral Relativity.

The Modern Theory of Gravitation

Our best current theory ofgravitation is the General Theoryof Relativity. However, only ifvelocities are comparable to that

of light, or gravitational fields aremuch larger than thoseencountered on the Earth, do theRelativity theory and Newton's theories differ in their predictions.Under most conditions, Newton's three laws and his theory ofgravitation are adequate.

The portrait on the cover is by legendary photographer PhilippeHalsman.

einstein, playful genius - subroto mukerji

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