Albert Einstein

gigatos | February 18, 2022

Summary

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879, Ulm, Kingdom of Wurttemberg, Germany – April 18, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) – theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921, humanist activist. He lived in Germany (1879-1895, 1914-1933), from where he was forced to emigrate and was deprived of citizenship when the Nazis came to power; Switzerland (1895-1914); and from 1933 until the end of his life in the USA.

Honorary Doctor of about 20 leading universities of the world, member of many Academies of Sciences, including a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1926).

Einstein is the author of more than 300 scientific papers on physics, as well as about 150 books and articles in the history and philosophy of science, journalism and others. He developed several monumental physical theories:

He also predicted gravitational waves and “quantum teleportation,” predicted and measured the Einstein-de Haase gyromagnetic effect. Since 1933 he worked on problems of cosmology and unified field theory. Actively spoke out against war, against the use of nuclear weapons, for humanism, respect for human rights, mutual understanding between peoples.

Einstein played a crucial role in the popularization and introduction of new physical concepts and theories into science. First of all, this refers to the revision of the understanding of the physical essence of space and time and to the construction of a new theory of gravitation to replace the Newtonian one. Einstein also, together with Planck, laid the foundations of quantum theory. These concepts, repeatedly confirmed by experiments, form the foundation of modern physics.

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Early Years

Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879 in the southern German city of Ulm, in a poor Jewish family.

His father, Hermann Einstein (1847-1902), was at this time co-owner of a small business producing feather padding for mattresses and featherbeds. The mother, Pauline Einstein (née Koch, 1858-1920), came from the family of the wealthy corn merchant Julius Derzbacher (he changed his name to Koch in 1842) and Yetta Bernheimer.

In the summer of 1880 the family moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein together with his brother Jacob founded a small firm for the electrical equipment trade. Albert”s younger sister Maria (Maya, 1881-1951) was born in Munich.

Albert Einstein received his primary education at the local Catholic school. According to his own recollections, he experienced a state of profound religiosity as a child that broke off at age 12. Through the reading of popular science books, he came to believe that much of what was set forth in the Bible could not be true and that the state was deliberately engaged in deceiving the younger generation. All this made him a free-thinker and forever created a skeptical attitude toward authority. Of his childhood experiences, Einstein later recalled as his strongest: the compass, Euclid”s “Elements” and (around 1889) Immanuel Kant”s “Critique of Pure Reason”. In addition, at his mother”s initiative, he began studying the violin from the age of six. Einstein”s passion for music remained throughout his life. Already in the U.S. in Princeton, in 1934, Albert Einstein gave a charity concert, where he played the violin works of Mozart in favor of the emigrated from Nazi Germany scientists and cultural figures.

At the Gymnasium (now the Albert Einstein Gymnasium in Munich) he was not one of the first students (the exceptions were mathematics and Latin). The entrenched system of rote memorization of material by students (which he later said was detrimental to the very spirit of learning and creative thinking), as well as the authoritarian attitude of teachers to students was disliked by Albert Einstein, so he often entered into arguments with his teachers.

In 1894, the Einsteins moved from Munich to the Italian town of Pavia, near Milan, where the brothers Hermann and Jacob moved their firm. Albert himself remained with relatives in Munich for some time to complete all six years of high school. Without a high school diploma, he joined his family in Pavia in 1895.

In the fall of 1895 Albert Einstein arrived in Switzerland to take the entrance exams to the Polytechnic in Zurich and, upon graduation, to become a physics teacher. Although he excelled in mathematics, he also lost his botany and French exams, which prevented him from entering the Zurich Polytechnic. The headmaster, however, advised the young man to enroll in the graduate school in Arau, Switzerland, in order to obtain a diploma and repeat his enrollment.

At the Cantonal School of Arau Albert Einstein devoted his free time to the study of Maxwell”s electromagnetic theory and began to reflect on physical problems. In September 1896 he successfully passed all the school”s final examinations, with the exception of the French exam, and received a certificate, and in October 1896 he was admitted to the Polytechnic in the Faculty of Education. Here he became friends with a fellow student, the mathematician Marcel Grossman (1878-1936), and also met a Serbian student of medicine, Mileva Maric (4 years older than him), who later became his wife. In the same year, Einstein renounced his German citizenship. To get Swiss citizenship, was required to pay 1000 Swiss francs, but the poor financial situation of the family allowed him to do so only 5 years later. The company of his father in that year finally went bankrupt, Einstein”s parents moved to Milan, where Hermann Einstein, already without his brother, opened a firm for the sale of electrical equipment.

The style and methodology of teaching at the Polytechnic differed significantly from the rigid and authoritarian German school, so further training was easier for the young man. He had first-class teachers, including the remarkable geometer Hermann Minkowski (Einstein often missed his lectures, which he later sincerely regretted) and the analyst Adolf Gurwitz.

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Beginning of scientific activity

In 1900, Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic with a degree in mathematics and physics. He passed his exams successfully, but not brilliantly. Many professors praised the abilities of Einstein”s student, but no one wanted to help him pursue a scientific career. Einstein himself later recalled:

I was bullied by my professors, who did not like me because of my independence and closed my path to science.

Although the following year, 1901, Einstein received Swiss citizenship, until the spring of 1902 he could not find a permanent job – even as a schoolteacher. Due to lack of earnings he literally starved, not taking food for days on end. This caused liver disease, from which the scientist suffered for the rest of his life.

Despite the hardships that haunted him in 1900-1902, Einstein found time for further study of physics. In 1901 the Berlin “Annals of Physics” published his first article “Consequences of capillarity theory” (Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen), devoted to the analysis of the forces of attraction between the atoms of liquids on the basis of capillarity theory.

A former classmate Marcel Grossman helped him overcome difficulties by recommending Einstein as a class III expert at the Federal Office for Patents and Invention (Bern) with a salary of 3,500 francs a year (during his student years he lived on 100 francs a month).

Einstein worked in the Patent Office from July 1902 to October 1909, dealing mainly with the peer review of applications for inventions. In 1903 he became a permanent employee of the Bureau. The nature of his work allowed Einstein to devote his free time to research in theoretical physics.

In October 1902, Einstein received news from Italy of his father”s illness; Herman Einstein died a few days after his son”s arrival.

On January 6, 1903, Einstein married the twenty-seven-year-old Mileva Marich. They had three children. The first, even before the marriage, was born daughter Lizerl (1902), but biographers could not find out her fate. Most likely, she died in infancy – in the last of the surviving letters of Einstein, where it is mentioned (September 1903), it is about some complications after scarlatina.

From 1904 Einstein collaborated with the leading German physics journal Annals of Physics, providing abstracts of new articles on thermodynamics for its abstract supplement. It is likely that the credibility acquired by this editorial contributed to his own publications in 1905.

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1905 – “The Year of Miracles”

1905 went down in the history of physics as the “Year of Miracles” (Latin: Annus Mirabilis). In that year, the Annals of Physics published three outstanding articles by Einstein that ushered in a new scientific revolution:

Einstein was often asked: How did he manage to create the theory of relativity? Half-jokingly, half-seriously, he answered:

Why exactly did I create the theory of relativity? When I ask myself this question, it seems to me that the reason is the following. A normal adult does not think about the problem of space and time at all. In his opinion, he already thought about this problem as a child. I, on the other hand, developed intellectually so slowly that space and time occupied my thoughts when I became an adult. Naturally, I could penetrate deeper into the problem than a child with normal inclinations.

During the entire 19th century, a hypothetical medium, the ether, was considered the material carrier of electromagnetic phenomena. However, by the beginning of the XX century it became clear that the properties of this medium are difficult to agree with classical physics. On the one hand, the aberration of light suggested that the ether was absolutely motionless; on the other hand, Fizeau”s experience indicated in favor of the hypothesis that the ether was partially entrained by moving matter. Experiments of Michelson (1881), however, showed that there is no “ether wind”.

In 1892, Lorenz and (independently of him) George Francis Fitzgerald suggested that the ether is stationary and that the length of any body contracts in the direction of its motion. The question remained open, however, as to why the length contracted in exactly that proportion to compensate for the “etheric wind” and to prevent the existence of the ether from being detected. Another serious difficulty was the fact that Maxwell”s equations did not conform to Galileo”s principle of relativity, despite the fact that electromagnetic effects depend only on relative motion. The question was investigated at which coordinate transformations Maxwell”s equations were invariant. The correct formulas were first written out by Larmor (1900) and Poincaré (1905); the latter proved their group properties and proposed to call them Lorentz transformations.

Poincaré also gave a generalized formulation of the principle of relativity, covering electrodynamics as well. Nevertheless, he continued to recognize the ether, although he was of the opinion that it could never be detected. In a report at the Congress of Physics (1900), Poincaré first suggested that the simultaneity of events was not absolute, but a conditional agreement (“convention”). It was also suggested that the speed of light is finite. Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century there were two incompatible kinematics: classical, with Galileo”s transformations, and electromagnetic, with Lorentz”s transformations.

Einstein, reflecting on these topics largely independently, suggested that the former was an approximate case of the latter for low velocities, and that what was thought to be properties of the ether were in fact manifestations of objective properties of space and time. Einstein came to the conclusion that it is ridiculous to involve the concept of ether only to prove the impossibility of observing it, and that the root of the problem lies not in dynamics, but deeper – in kinematics. In the aforementioned seminal article “Towards Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” he proposed two postulates: the general principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light; from these the Lorentz reduction, the Lorentz transformation formulae, the relativity of simultaneity, the unnecessity of ether, the new formula for addition of velocities, the increase of inertia with speed, etc., are easily derived. In another of his papers, which appeared at the end of the year, the formula E=mc2{displaystyle E=mc^{2}} also appeared, defining the relation of mass and energy.

Some scientists immediately accepted this theory, which was later called the “special theory of relativity” (Planck (1906) and Einstein himself (1907) constructed relativistic dynamics and thermodynamics. Einstein”s former teacher, Minkowski, in 1907 presented a mathematical model of relativity theory kinematics in the form of the geometry of a four-dimensional non-Euclidean world and developed the theory of invariants of this world (the first results in this direction were published by Poincaré in 1905).

However, quite a few scientists found the “new physics” too revolutionary. It abolished the ether, absolute space and absolute time, revised Newton”s mechanics, which for 200 years served as the backbone of physics and was invariably confirmed by observations. Time in the theory of relativity flows differently in different frames of reference, inertia and length depend on speed, motion faster than light is impossible, the “twin paradox” appears – all these unusual consequences were unacceptable to the conservative part of the scientific community. The matter was also complicated by the fact that the STR did not predict at first any new observable effects, and the experiments of Walter Kaufmann (1905-1909) were interpreted by many as a denial of the cornerstone of the STR – the principle of relativity (this aspect finally cleared up in favor of the STR only in 1914-1916). Some physicists tried to develop alternative theories after 1905 (e.g., Ritz in 1908), but later it became clear that these theories differed irreducibly from experiment.

Many prominent physicists remained faithful to classical mechanics and the concept of the ether, among them Lorentz, J. J. Thomson, Lenard, Lodge, Nernst, and Wien. Some of them (such as Lorentz himself) did not reject the results of the special theory of relativity, but interpreted them in the spirit of Lorentz”s theory, preferring to view the spacetime concept of Einstein-Minkowski as a purely mathematical device.

Experiments to test the General Theory of Relativity (see below) became the decisive argument in favor of the truth of the STO. Over time, the experimental confirmation of the STO itself was gradually accumulated. Quantum field theory, gas pedal theory are based on it, it is taken into account in the design and operation of satellite navigation systems (even corrections of the General Theory of Relativity are needed here), etc.

To solve the problem, which went down in history as the “ultraviolet catastrophe,” and the corresponding coordination of the theory with the experiment Max Planck suggested (1900) that the emission of light by matter is discrete (indivisible portions), and the energy of the emitted portion depends on the frequency of light. For some time this hypothesis even its author himself considered as a conditional mathematical device, but Einstein in the second of the above-mentioned articles proposed its far-reaching generalization and successfully applied it to explain the properties of the photoelectric effect. Einstein put forward the thesis that not only radiation, but also propagation and absorption of light are discrete; later these portions (quanta) were called photons. This thesis allowed him to explain two mysteries of the photoelectric effect: why the photocurrent did not occur at every frequency of light, but only from a certain threshold, depending only on the type of metal, and the energy and speed of escaping electrons did not depend on the intensity of light, but only on its frequency. Einstein”s theory of the photoelectric effect corresponded to the experimental data with high accuracy, which was later confirmed by Milliken”s experiments (1916).

Initially these views were misunderstood by most physicists, even Einstein had to convince Planck of the reality of quanta. Gradually, however, experimental data accumulated, convincing the skeptics of the discreteness of electromagnetic energy. The Compton effect (1923) put the final end to the controversy.

In 1907, Einstein published a quantum theory of heat capacity (the old theory at low temperatures diverged greatly from experiment). Later (1912) Debye, Born and Karman refined Einstein”s theory of heat capacity, and excellent agreement with experience was achieved.

In 1827 Robert Broun observed under a microscope and subsequently described the chaotic motion of flower pollen floating in water.Einstein, based on molecular theory, developed a statistical-mathematical model of such motion. On the basis of his model of diffusion it was possible, among other things, to estimate with good accuracy the size of molecules and their number per unit volume. At the same time Smoluchowski, whose paper was published a few months later than Einstein”s article, came to similar conclusions. His work on statistical mechanics, under the title “New definition of the size of molecules”, Einstein submitted to the Polytechnic as a thesis and in the same 1905 received the title of doctor (equivalent of Ph.D.) in physics. The following year Einstein developed his theory in a new article “Toward a Theory of Brownian Motion” and subsequently returned to the subject several times.

Soon (1908) Perrin”s measurements fully confirmed the adequacy of Einstein”s model, providing the first experimental proof of molecular-kinetic theory, which was under active attack by positivists in those years.

Max Born wrote (1949): “I think that these studies of Einstein convince physicists of the reality of atoms and molecules, the validity of the theory of heat and the fundamental role of probability in the laws of nature more than all other works. Einstein”s work on statistical physics is cited even more often than his work on relativity. The formula he derived for the diffusion coefficient and its relation to the dispersion of coordinates turned out to be applicable in the most general class of problems: Markovian diffusion processes, electrodynamics, etc.

Later, in the article “Toward a quantum theory of radiation” (1917) Einstein, based on statistical considerations, for the first time suggested the existence of a new type of radiation occurring under the influence of an external electromagnetic field (“induced radiation”). In the early 1950s a method of amplification of light and radio waves based on the use of induced radiation was proposed, and in the following years it formed the basis of the theory of lasers.

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Bern – Zurich – Prague – Zurich – Berlin (1905-1914)

The work of 1905 brought Einstein, though not immediately, worldwide fame. On April 30, 1905, he sent to the University of Zurich the text of his doctoral thesis on “A New Definition of the Dimensions of Molecules. Professors Kleiner and Burckhardt were the reviewers. On January 15, 1906, he received his Ph.D. in physics. He corresponds and meets with the world”s most famous physicists, and Planck in Berlin includes the theory of relativity in his course. He is called “Mr. Professor” in his letters, but four more years (in 1906 he was promoted (he became a Class II expert with an annual salary of 4,500 francs).

In October 1908, Einstein was invited to teach an elective at the University of Bern, but without any payment. In 1909 he visited the Naturalist Congress in Salzburg, where the elite of German physics gathered, and met Planck for the first time; in 3 years of correspondence they quickly became close friends.

After the convention, Einstein finally got a paid position as Extraordinary Professor at the University of Zurich (December 1909), where his old friend Marcel Grossman taught geometry. The pay was small, especially for a family with two children, and in 1911 Einstein did not hesitate to accept an invitation to head the physics department at the German University in Prague. During this period, Einstein went on to publish a series of papers on thermodynamics, relativity theory, and quantum theory. In Prague he intensifies his research on gravitation theory, aiming to create a relativistic theory of gravitation and to realize the long-held dream of physicists to eliminate Newtonian long-range interaction from this field.

In 1911, Einstein participated in the First Solvay Congress (Brussels), dedicated to quantum physics. There he had his only meeting with Poincaré, who did not support the theory of relativity, although he personally had great respect for Einstein.

A year later, Einstein returned to Zurich, where he became a professor at his home Polytechnic and lectured there in physics. In 1913 he visited the Congress of Naturalists in Vienna, visited the 75-year-old Ernst Mach; once Mach”s criticism of Newtonian mechanics had made a huge impression on Einstein and ideologically prepared him for the innovation of relativity theory. In May 1914 he received an invitation from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, signed by the physicist P. P. Lazarev. However, impressions of the pogroms and the “Beilis affair” were still fresh, and Einstein refused: “I find it disgusting to go unnecessarily to the country, where my countrymen are so violently persecuted.

At the end of 1913, on the recommendation of Planck and Nernst, Einstein was invited to head the physics research institute being established in Berlin; he also enrolled as professor at Berlin University. In addition to proximity to his friend Planck, this position had the advantage of not obliging him to be distracted by teaching. He accepted the invitation, and in the year before the war, 1914, the convinced pacifist Einstein arrived in Berlin. Mileva and her children remained in Zurich, their family broken up. In February 1919 they officially divorced.

The citizenship of Switzerland, a neutral country, helped Einstein to withstand militaristic pressure after the outbreak of war. He did not sign any “patriotic” proclamations; on the contrary, he co-authored with the physiologist Georg Friedrich Nicolai an anti-war “Appeal to Europeans” in opposition to the chauvinistic “Manifesto of Ninety-Three”, and in a letter to Romain Rolland he wrote

Will future generations thank our Europe, where three centuries of the most intense cultural work has resulted only in a religious madness replaced by a nationalistic madness? Even the scientists of various countries behave as if their brains had been amputated.

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The General Theory of Relativity (1915)

Descartes declared that all processes in the Universe are explained by local interaction of one kind of matter with another, and from the point of view of science this thesis of proximity was natural. However, Newton”s theory of universal gravitation sharply contradicted the thesis of proximity – in it the force of attraction was transferred incomprehensibly through a completely empty space, and infinitely fast. Essentially, the Newtonian model was purely mathematical, without any physical content. For two centuries attempts were made to correct the situation and to get rid of mystical long-range action, to fill the gravitation theory with real physical content, especially since after Maxwell gravitation remained the only harbor of long-range action in physics. The situation became particularly unsatisfactory after the approval of the special theory of relativity, since Newton”s theory was incompatible with the Lorentz transformations. Before Einstein, however, no one had been able to correct the situation.

Einstein”s basic idea was simple: the material carrier of gravitation is space itself (more precisely, space-time). The fact that gravitation can be considered as a manifestation of geometry properties of four-dimensional non-Euclidean space, without involving additional concepts, is a consequence of the fact that all bodies in the gravitational field receive the same acceleration (“equivalence principle” of Einstein). Four-dimensional space-time in this approach is not a “flat and indifferent scene” for material processes, it has physical attributes, first of all – metrics and curvature, which affect these processes and depend on them themselves. If the special theory of relativity is a theory of noncurved space, the general theory of relativity, according to Einstein”s plan, was to consider a more general case, the space-time with variable metrics (pseudo-Riemannian manifold). The cause of space-time curvature is the presence of matter, and the greater its energy, the stronger the curvature. Newton”s theory of gravitation is an approximation of the new theory, which is obtained by taking into account only the “time curvature,” that is, the change in the temporal component of the metric (space is Euclidean in this approximation). The propagation of gravitational perturbations, i.e. changes of the metric during the motion of gravitating masses, occurs with a finite speed. The long-range action from this moment disappears from physics.

The mathematical formulation of these ideas was quite laborious and took several years (1907-1915). Einstein had to master tensor analysis and create its four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian generalization; he was helped in this by consultations and joint work first with Marcel Grossman, who co-authored Einstein”s first articles on tensor theory of gravity, and then with David Hilbert, the “king of mathematicians” of those years. In 1915, the field equations of Einstein”s general relativity theory (GTR), generalizing the Newtonian ones, were published almost simultaneously in articles by Einstein and Hilbert.

The new theory of gravitation predicted two previously unknown physical effects, quite confirmed by observations, and also accurately and completely explained the age-old perihelion shift of Mercury, which had long perplexed astronomers. After that, the theory of relativity became almost universally accepted as the foundation of modern physics. Besides astrophysics, GR has found practical application, as already mentioned above, in global positioning systems (Global Positioning Systems, GPS), where coordinate calculations are made with very significant relativistic corrections.

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Berlin (1915-1921)

In 1915, in a conversation with the Dutch physicist Vander de Haase, Einstein proposed a scheme and calculation of the experiment, which after its successful implementation was called the “Einstein-de Haase effect. The result of the experiment inspired Niels Bohr, who two years earlier had created a planetary model of the atom, because it confirmed that there are circular electron currents inside atoms, and that electrons in their orbits do not emit radiation. Bohr based his model precisely on these provisions. In addition, it was discovered that the total magnetic moment is twice as large as expected; the reason for this was clarified when spin, the intrinsic moment of momentum of the electron, was discovered.

In June 1916, in the article “Approximate Integration of the Equations of the Gravitational Field,” Einstein first outlined the theory of gravitational waves. Experimental verification of this prediction was not possible until one hundred years later (2015).

At the end of the war, Einstein continued his work in the former fields of physics and also pursued new fields – relativistic cosmology and the “Unified Field Theory”, which, according to his plan, was to unite gravitation, electromagnetism and (preferably) the theory of the microcosm. His first article on cosmology, “Cosmological Considerations for a General Theory of Relativity,” appeared in 1917. After that, Einstein experienced a mysterious “invasion of disease” – in addition to serious liver problems, he discovered a stomach ulcer, then jaundice and general weakness. For several months he did not get out of bed, but continued to work actively. It was not until 1920 that the illness receded.

In June 1919, Einstein married his maternal cousin Elsa Loewenthal (née Einstein) and adopted her two children. At the end of the year, his seriously ill mother Pauline moved in with them; she died in February 1920. Einstein, judging by her letters, took her death hard.

In May 1920 Einstein, along with other members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, was sworn in as a civil servant and by law became a German citizen. However, he retained his Swiss citizenship until the end of his life. In the 1920s, receiving invitations from everywhere, he traveled extensively throughout Europe (with a Swiss passport), lecturing to scientists, students and the curious public. He also visited the United States, where a special welcoming resolution of Congress (1921) was adopted in honor of the distinguished guest. At the end of 1922 he visited India, where he had a long communication with Rabindranath Tagore, and China. Einstein met the winter in Japan, where he received the news of the Nobel Prize.

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Nobel Prize (1922)

Einstein was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. The first such nomination (for the theory of relativity) took place, at the initiative of Wilhelm Ostwald, already in 1910, but the Nobel Committee found the experimental evidence for the theory of relativity insufficient. Then the nomination of Einstein”s candidacy was repeated annually, except in 1911 and 1915. Among the recommenders in different years were such major physicists as Lorenz, Planck, Bohr, Wien, Hwolson, de Haase, Laue, Zeeman, Kamerlingh Onnes, Adamar, Eddington, Sommerfeld and Arrhenius.

However, the members of the Nobel Committee have long hesitated to award the prize to the author of such revolutionary theories. Finally a diplomatic solution was found: the prize for 1921 was awarded to Einstein (in November 1922) for the theory of the photoelectric effect, that is, for the most indisputable and experimentally well-tested work; however, the decision text contained a neutral addition: “… and for other works in theoretical physics”.

On November 10, 1922, Christopher Aurivillius, secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences:

As I have already informed you by telegram, the Royal Academy of Sciences at its meeting yesterday decided to award you a prize in physics for the past year, thus noting your work in theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the photoelectric effect, without considering your work on relativity and gravitation theory, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future.

Since Einstein was away, the prize was accepted on his behalf on 10 December 1922 by Rudolf Nadolny, the German Ambassador to Sweden. Beforehand, he asked for confirmation whether Einstein was a German or Swiss citizen; the Prussian Academy of Sciences officially assured that Einstein was a German national, although his Swiss nationality was also recognized as valid. Einstein received the insignia accompanying the prize personally from the Swedish ambassador upon his return to Berlin.

Naturally, Einstein dedicated his traditional Nobel speech (in July 1923) to the theory of relativity.

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Berlin (1922-1933)

In 1923, completing his journey, Einstein spoke in Jerusalem, where it was soon (1925) planned to open the Hebrew University.

In 1924, the young Indian physicist Shatyaendranath Bose, in a brief letter, asked Einstein for help in publishing an article in which he put forward the assumption that forms the basis of modern quantum statistics. Bose proposed that light be considered a gas of photons. Einstein concluded that the same statistics could be used for atoms and molecules in general. In 1925, Einstein published an article by Bose in a German translation, and then his own article, in which he outlined a generalized Bose model applicable to systems of identical particles with integer spin, called bosons. Based on these quantum statistics, now known as Bose-Einstein statistics, both physicists theoretically substantiated the existence of a fifth aggregate state of matter – the Bose-Einstein condensate – in the mid-1920s.

The essence of the Bose-Einstein “condensate” consists in the transition of a large number of ideal bose gas particles into a zero momentum state at temperatures approaching absolute zero, when the de Broglie wavelength of thermal motion of particles and the average distance between these particles are reduced to one order. Since 1995, when the first such condensate was obtained at the University of Colorado, scientists have practically proved the possibility of existence of Bose-Einstein condensates of hydrogen, lithium, sodium, rubidium, and helium.

As a person of enormous and universal authority Einstein was constantly involved in these years in all kinds of political actions, where he advocated social justice, internationalism and cooperation between countries (see below). In 1923, Einstein participated in the organization of the cultural relations society “Friends of New Russia”. Repeatedly called for disarmament and unification of Europe, for the abolition of compulsory military service.

In 1928, Einstein bid farewell to Lorenz, with whom he had become very close friends in his last years. It was Lorenz who nominated Einstein for the Nobel Prize in 1920 and supported it the following year.

In 1929, the world noisily celebrated Einstein”s 50th birthday. Einstein did not take part in the celebrations and hid in his villa near Potsdam, where he was passionately growing roses. Here he hosted friends – figures of science, Rabindranath Tagore, Emanuel Lasker, Charlie Chaplin and others.

In 1931, Einstein visited the United States again. In Pasadena he was very warmly welcomed by Michelson, who had four months to live. Returning in the summer to Berlin, Einstein in a speech to the Physical Society honored the remarkable experimenter, who laid the first foundation stone of the theory of relativity.

During and after World War I, as a result of the development of anti-Semitic sentiments, Einstein”s theories were constantly attacked. An anti-Einstein organization was formed. One man is known to have been convicted of inciting the murder of Einstein, with a fine of six dollars. One result of the campaign against the scientist was the publication in 1931 of the book One Hundred Authors Against Einstein, to which Einstein replied “If I were wrong, one would be enough!”.Until about 1926, Einstein worked in so many areas of physics, from cosmological models to investigating the causes of river crinkles. He then, with few exceptions, concentrated his efforts on quantum problems and the Unified Field Theory.

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Inventive activity

Einstein, already a world-renowned theoretical physicist, was actively engaged in design and invention. Together with various co-authors he had about twenty patents. Einstein and Goldschmidt own the patent for the magnetostrictive loudspeaker. In the first issue of the Soviet magazine “Inventor” in 1929, Einstein”s article “Masses instead of units” was published on the organizational and economic aspects of inventive activity.

Among other inventions:

Einstein was also involved in the examination of patents. For example, Einstein”s review of I. N. Kechezhdan”s invention application from the USSR in 1930 is known.

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Interpretation of quantum mechanics

The birth of quantum mechanics took place with the active participation of Einstein. In publishing his seminal papers, Schrödinger admitted (1926) that he was greatly influenced by “Einstein”s brief but infinitely prescient remarks.

In 1927, at the Fifth Solvay Congress, Einstein strongly opposed the “Copenhagen interpretation” of Max Born and Niels Bohr, which interpreted the mathematical model of quantum mechanics as essentially probabilistic. Einstein said that the supporters of this interpretation “out of necessity make a virtue,” and the probabilistic nature indicates only that our knowledge of the physical essence of microprocesses is incomplete. He remarked smilingly, “God does not play dice” (Der Herrgott würfelt nicht), to which Niels Bohr countered, “Einstein, don”t tell God what to do.

Einstein accepted the “Copenhagen interpretation” only as a temporary, incomplete version, which as physics progresses should be replaced by a complete theory of the microcosm. He himself attempted to create a deterministic nonlinear theory, an approximate consequence of which would be quantum mechanics. In 1933, Einstein wrote:

The real goal of my research has always been to achieve a simplification of theoretical physics and to unify it into a coherent system. I was able to satisfactorily accomplish this goal for the macrocosm, but not for quanta and the structure of atoms. I think that in spite of considerable progress, modern quantum theory is still far from satisfactorily solving the latter group of problems.

In 1947 he formulated his position once again in a letter to Max Born:

Einstein polemicized on this topic until the end of his life, although few physicists shared his point of view. Two of his articles contained descriptions of mental experiments, which, in his opinion, clearly showed the incompleteness of quantum mechanics; the so-called “Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox” (May 1935) received the greatest resonance. The discussion of this important and interesting problem continues to this day. Paul Dirac in his book “Memories of an Extraordinary Era:

I do not exclude the possibility that in the end Einstein”s point of view may be correct, because the present stage of quantum theory cannot be regarded as final.<…> Modern quantum mechanics is a great achievement, but it is unlikely to exist forever. It seems to me very probable that sometime in the future there will be an improved quantum mechanics, in which we will return to causality, and which will justify Einstein”s point of view. But such a return to causality may be possible only at the cost of abandoning some other fundamental idea that we now unreservedly accept. If we are going to revive causality, we will have to pay the price, and right now we can only guess which idea must be sacrificed.

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Princeton (1933-1945). Fighting Nazism

As the economic crisis in Weimar Germany intensified, political instability intensified, contributing to radical nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Insults and threats against Einstein intensified, and one flyer even offered a large bounty (50,000 marks) for his head. After the Nazis came to power, all of Einstein”s work was either attributed to “Aryan” physicists or declared a distortion of true science. Lenard, who headed the “German Physics” group, proclaimed: “The most important example of the dangerous influence of Jewish circles on the study of nature is Einstein with his theories and mathematical chatter made up of old information and arbitrary additions… We must understand that it is unworthy of a German to be the spiritual follower of a Jew. An uncompromising racial cleansing took place in all scientific circles in Germany.

In 1933, Einstein had to leave Germany, to which he was very attached, forever. Together with his family he left for the United States with visitor”s visas. Soon, in protest against the crimes of Nazism, he renounced his German citizenship and membership in the Prussian and Bavarian Academies of Sciences and stopped communicating with the scientists who remained in Germany – in particular with Max Planck, whose patriotism was hurt by Einstein”s harsh anti-Nazi statements.

After moving to the United States, Albert Einstein was appointed professor of physics at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study (he later became a recognized expert on hydraulics and professor at the University of California (1947). Einstein”s youngest son, Edward (1910-1965), fell ill with a severe form of schizophrenia around 1930 and ended his days in a Zurich psychiatric hospital. Einstein”s cousin Lina died at Auschwitz, another sister, Bertha Dreyfus, died in Theresienstadt concentration camp.

In the United States, Einstein instantly became one of the most famous and respected people in the country, earning a reputation as the most brilliant scientist in history as well as the embodiment of the “absent-minded professor” and human intellectual capabilities in general. The following January, 1934, he was invited to the White House to see President Franklin Roosevelt, had a heart-to-heart talk with him and even spent the night there. Every day Einstein received hundreds of letters of varying content, to which (even to children) tried to respond. As a world-renowned naturalist, he remained an accessible, modest, undemanding and affable man.

In December 1936, Elsa died of heart disease; three months earlier, Marcel Grossman had died in Zurich. Einstein”s loneliness was brightened up by his sister Maya, stepdaughter Margot (Elsa”s daughter from his first marriage), secretary Ellen Dukas, cat Tiger and white terrier Chico. To the surprise of Americans, Einstein never got a car or a television set. Maya was partially paralyzed after a stroke in 1946, and every evening Einstein read books to his beloved sister.

In August 1939, Einstein signed a letter written at the initiative of the Hungarian emigrant physicist Leo Szilárd to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The letter drew the president”s attention to the possibility that Nazi Germany was capable of building an atomic bomb. After several months of reflection, Roosevelt decided to take the threat seriously and in 1941 launched his own project to build atomic weapons. The first test took place at the Los Alamos Test Site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was nuked by U.S. aircraft. Einstein himself did not participate in these works. He later regretted the letter he signed, realizing that for the new US leader Harry Truman, nuclear energy served as a tool of intimidation. Later he criticized the development of nuclear weapons, their use in Japan and the Bikini Atoll test (1954), and he considered his involvement in accelerating the American nuclear program the greatest tragedy of his life. His famous aphorisms were: “We won the war, but not the world”; “If World War III will be fought with atomic bombs, then World War IV will be fought with stones and sticks.

During the war, Einstein advised the U.S. Navy and helped solve various technical problems.

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Princeton (1945-1955). The Struggle for Peace. Unified Field Theory.

In the postwar years, Einstein was one of the founders of the Pugwash movement of scientists for peace. Although its first conference was held after Einstein”s death (1957), the initiative to create such a movement was expressed in the widely acclaimed Russell-Einstein Manifesto (written jointly with Bertrand Russell), which also warned of the danger of creating and using the hydrogen bomb. Within the framework of this movement, Einstein, who was its chairman, together with Albert Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell, Frederic Joliot-Curie and other world-renowned figures of science fought against the arms race, the creation of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

In September 1947 in an open letter to the delegations of UN member states, he proposed to reorganize the UN General Assembly, turning it into a continuous world parliament with greater powers than the Security Council, which (according to Einstein) is paralyzed in its actions because of the veto, to which in November 1947 the largest Soviet scientists (S. I. Vavilov, A. F. Ioffe, N. N. Semyonov, A. N. Frumkin. I. Vavilov, A. F. Ioffe, N. N. Semenov, A. N. Frumkin) in an open letter disagreed with the position of A. Einstein (1947). In a reply letter to Soviet scientists, Einstein explained his position: understanding the vices and advantages of capitalism and socialism; the danger of fanatical intolerance of the supporters of these systems toward each other; the danger of mutual destruction of humanity in the war between the two systems.

Until the end of his life, Einstein continued to work on the problems of cosmology, but his main efforts were directed toward the creation of a unified field theory. He was assisted in this by professional mathematicians, including (at Princeton) John Kemeny. Formally, there were some successes in this direction – he even developed two versions of a unified field theory. Both models were mathematically elegant, from them derived not only the general theory of relativity, but also the entire electrodynamics of Maxwell, but they did not give any new physical consequences. And pure mathematics, in isolation from physics, Einstein was never interested, and he rejected both models.First (1929) Einstein tried to develop the ideas of Kaluza and Klein that the world has five dimensions, with the fifth having micro dimensions and therefore invisible. It failed to get new physically interesting results, and the multidimensional theory was soon abandoned (to be revived later in the superstring theory). The second version of the Unified Theory (it also organically included GR and Maxwell”s theory, but it was not possible to find the final version of the equations, which would describe not only the macrocosm, but also the microcosm. And without it, the theory remained no more than a mathematical superstructure over a building, which did not need this superstructure at all.

Weil recalled that Einstein once told him, “You cannot construct physics speculatively, without a guiding visual physical principle.

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The last years of his life. Death

In 1955, Einstein”s health deteriorated sharply. He wrote his will and told friends: “I have fulfilled my task on Earth. His last work was an unfinished proclamation calling for the prevention of nuclear war.

At this time, Einstein was visited by historian Bernard Cohen, who recalled:

I knew that Einstein was a great man and a great physicist, but I had no idea of the warmth of his friendly nature, his kindness and great sense of humor. During our conversation, there was no sense that death was near. Einstein”s mind remained lively, he was witty, and he seemed very cheerful.

Margot”s stepdaughter recalled her last meeting with Einstein in the hospital:

He spoke with profound calm, of doctors even with mild humor, and awaited his demise as an impending “phenomenon of nature. How fearless he had been in life, so quiet and peaceful he met death. Without any sentimentality or regret, he left this world.

Albert Einstein died in Princeton on April 18, 1955, at 1:25 a.m. in his 77th year; the cause of death was an aortic aneurysm. Before his death he uttered a few words in German, but an American nurse was unable to reproduce them afterwards. Not accepting any form of personality cult, he forbade a pompous burial with loud ceremonies, for which he wished the place and time of the burial to be kept secret. On April 19, 1955 the funeral of the great scientist took place without much publicity, which was attended by only 12 closest friends. His body was burned in the Ewing Cemetery and the ashes scattered in the wind.

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Human qualities

Close acquaintances describe Einstein as a sociable, friendly, cheerful man, they note his kindness, readiness to help at any moment, the complete absence of snobbery, the conquering human charm. His superior sense of humor is often noted. When Einstein was asked where his laboratory was, he smilingly showed a fountain pen.

Einstein had a passion for music, especially works of the eighteenth century. In different years his preferred composers included Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Haydn and Schubert, and in recent years Brahms. He played the violin well, with which he never parted. From fiction he admired the prose of Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Brecht”s plays. He was also fond of philately, gardening, yachting (he even wrote an article about the theory of yacht management). In private life he was unpretentious, at the end of his life he invariably appeared in his favorite warm sweater.

Despite his tremendous scientific authority, he did not suffer from excessive egotism, was willing to admit that he could be wrong, and if it happened, he publicly admitted his error. This happened, for example, in 1922, when he criticized Alexander Friedman”s article predicting the expansion of the universe. After receiving a letter from Friedman explaining the controversial details, Einstein said in the same journal that he had been wrong and that Friedman”s results were valuable and “shed new light” on possible models of cosmological dynamics.

Injustice, oppression, and lies always provoked his angry reaction. From a letter to Sister Maya (1935):

The most hated word in the German language for him was Zwang – violence, coercion.

Einstein”s doctor, Gustav Buckey, said that Einstein could not stand posing for the artist, but as soon as he said he hoped to get out of hardship with his portrait, Einstein immediately agreed and patiently sat in front of him for long hours.

At the end of his life, Einstein summed up his system of values: “The ideals that illuminated my path and gave me courage and bravery were goodness, beauty and truth.

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Political beliefs

Albert Einstein was a staunch democratic socialist, humanist, pacifist and anti-fascist. Einstein”s authority, achieved through his revolutionary discoveries in physics, allowed him to actively influence social and political transformations in the world.

In an essay entitled “Why Socialism? (“Why Socialism?”), published as an article in the largest Marxist magazine in the United States, Monthly Review, Albert Einstein outlined his vision of socialist transformation. In particular, the scientist substantiated the unsustainability of economic anarchy of capitalist relations, which caused social injustice, and he called “neglect of the human person” the main flaw of capitalism. Condemning the alienation of man under capitalism, the desire to profit and acquisition, Einstein noted that a democratic society cannot in itself limit the willfulness of the capitalist oligarchy, and ensuring human rights becomes possible only in a planned economy. The article was written at the invitation of the Marxist economist Paul Sweezy at the height of the McCarthyist “witch hunt” and expressed the scientist”s civic position.

Because of his “leftism,” the scientist was often attacked by right-wing conservative circles in the United States. As early as 1932, the American “Women”s Patriotic Corporation” demanded not to let Einstein into the U.S., as he was a known troublemaker and friend of the Communists. Nevertheless, the visa was granted, and Einstein wrote in a newspaper: “I have never received such a vigorous refusal from the fair sex, and if I did, it was not from so many at once. During the height of McCarthyism, the FBI had a personal file of 1,427 pages of “unreliable” Einstein. Specifically, he was accused of “preaching a doctrine designed to establish anarchy. The FBI archives also show that the physicist was the object of close attention by the intelligence services, because throughout 1937-1955, Einstein “was or was a sponsor and honorary member of 34 communist fronts,” was honorary chairman of three such organizations, and among his close friends were persons “sympathetic to the communist ideology.

Einstein advocated a democratic socialism that would combine social protection and economic planning with a democratic regime and respect for human rights. Of Lenin he wrote in 1929: “I respect in Lenin a man who used all his power with the complete self-sacrifice of his personality to implement social justice. His method seems to me impractical. But one thing is certain: men like him are the guardians and renewers of the conscience of mankind.

Einstein disapproved of the totalitarian methods of building a socialist society observed in the USSR. In an interview in 1933, Einstein explained why he never accepted an invitation to come to the USSR: he is against any dictatorship “enslaving the individual through terror and violence, whether they manifest themselves under the flag of fascism or communism. In 1938, Einstein wrote several letters to Stalin and other leaders of the USSR, which asked to treat humanely repressed in the Soviet Union of foreign émigré physicists. In particular, Einstein worried about the fate of Fritz Nöther, brother of Emmy Nöther, who had hoped to find refuge in the USSR, but in 1937 was arrested and soon (in September 1941) shot. In a 1936 conversation, Einstein called Stalin a political gangster. In a letter to Soviet scientists (1948) Einstein pointed out such negative features of the Soviet system, as the omnipotence of the bureaucracy, the tendency to turn the Soviet government into “a kind of church and brand as traitors and vile villains all who do not belong to it. At the same time, Einstein always remained an advocate of rapprochement and cooperation between Western democracies and the socialist camp.

In support of his anti-war stance, Einstein wrote:

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling that possesses me because killing human beings is abhorrent. My attitude comes not from any speculative theory, but is based on the deepest antipathy to any kind of cruelty and hatred.

He rejected nationalism in all its manifestations and called it “the plague of humanity. In 1932, in order to prevent the Nazis from winning the elections, he put his signature under an appeal of the International Socialist Struggle Union calling for a united labor front of the Social Democratic and Communist Parties.

During World War II, Einstein temporarily abandoned his principled pacifism and took an active part in the fight against fascism. After the war, Einstein supported non-violent means of struggle for the rights of the masses, especially noting the merits of Mahatma Gandhi: “I consider the views of Gandhi the most outstanding of all politicians – our contemporaries. We must try to act in this spirit: not to use violence to fight for our rights.

Together with Julian Huxley, Thomas Mann, and John Dewey, he served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York.

As an opponent of colonialism and imperialism, Albert Einstein, along with Henri Barbusse and Jawaharlal Nehru, participated in the Brussels Congress of the Anti-Imperialist League (1927). He actively promoted the struggle of the black population of the United States for civil rights, being for two decades a close friend of the black singer and actor Paul Robeson, also known in the USSR. Upon learning that the elderly William Dubois had been declared a “Communist spy,” Einstein demanded that he be called as a defense witness, and the case was soon closed. Strongly condemned the “Oppenheimer case,” who in 1953 was accused of “Communist sympathies” and suspended from secret work.

In 1946, Einstein was among the activists who cooperated in opening a secular Jewish university at Middlesex University, but when his proposal to appoint British Labor economist Harold Laski as president of the institution was rejected (as someone allegedly “alien to American principles of democracy”), the physicist withdrew his support and later, when the institution was opened as Louis Brandeis University, he refused an honorary degree in it.

Alarmed by the rapid growth of anti-Semitism in Germany, Einstein supported the Zionist movement”s call for a Jewish national hearth in Palestine and gave several articles and speeches on the subject. The idea of establishing a Jewish university in Jerusalem (1925) was especially promoted by him. He explained his position:

Until recently I lived in Switzerland, and while I was there I was not conscious of my Jewishness … When I came to Germany I knew for the first time that I was a Jew, a discovery I had more help from non-Jews than from Jews … Then I understood that only a common cause, dear to all Jews throughout the world, could lead to the rebirth of a people … If we did not have to live among intolerant, heartless and cruel people, I would be the first to reject nationalism in favor of a universal humanity.

A consistent internationalist, he championed the rights of all oppressed peoples–Jews, Indians, African Americans, etc. Although he initially believed that the Jewish hearth could do without a separate state, borders and army, in 1947 Einstein welcomed the creation of the state of Israel, hoping for a bi-national Arab-Jewish solution to the Palestinian problem. He wrote to Paul Ehrenfest in 1921: “Zionism is a truly new Jewish ideal and can restore to the Jewish people the joy of existence. Even after the Holocaust he noted: “Zionism did not protect German Jewry from extermination. But for those who survived, Zionism gave them the inner strength to endure the disaster with dignity and without losing a healthy sense of self-respect. In 1952, Einstein received an offer from then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to become the second president of Israel, which the scientist politely declined, citing his lack of experience and ability to work with people. Einstein bequeathed all his letters and manuscripts (and even the rights to the commercial use of his image and name) to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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Philosophy

Einstein was always interested in philosophy of science and left a number of in-depth studies on the subject. The 1949 jubilee collection for his 70th birthday was called (presumably with his knowledge and consent) “Albert Einstein. Philosopher-Scientist. Einstein considered Spinoza to be the closest philosopher to himself. Rationalism in both of them was all-encompassing and extended not only to the sphere of science, but also to ethics and other aspects of human life: humanism, internationalism, freedom-love, etc. are good not only in themselves, but also because they are the most reasonable. The laws of nature objectively exist, and they are comprehensible for the reason that they form a world harmony that is reasonable and aesthetically appealing at the same time. This is the main reason for Einstein”s rejection of the “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics, which, in his opinion, introduced an irrational element, a chaotic disharmony, into the picture of the world.

In The Evolution of Physics, Einstein wrote:

With physical theories we try to find our way through the maze of observable facts, to order and comprehend the world of our sensory perceptions. We wish observable facts to follow logically from our concept of reality. Without faith in the fact that it is possible to grasp reality with our theoretical constructions, without faith in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no science. This faith is, and always will be, the basic motive of all scientific creativity. In all our efforts, in all the dramatic struggle between the old and the new, we recognize an eternal striving for knowledge, an unshakable faith in the harmony of our world that grows ever stronger as the obstacles to knowledge increase.

In science these principles meant a strong disagreement with the then fashionable positivist concepts of Mach, Poincaré and others, as well as the rejection of Kantianism with its ideas of “a priori knowledge. Positivism played a certain positive role in the history of science, as it stimulated skeptical attitude of leading physicists, including Einstein, to the former prejudices (first of all – to the concept of absolute space and absolute time). It is known that Einstein, in a letter to Mach, called himself his disciple. However, the philosophy of the positivists Einstein called nonsense. Einstein explained the essence of his disagreement with them:

…A priori we should expect a chaotic world that cannot be cognized by thinking. We could (or should) only expect this world to be subject to law to the extent that we can order it with our minds. This would be an ordering similar to the alphabetical ordering of the words of a language. In contrast, the ordering introduced, for example, by Newton”s theory of gravitation is of an entirely different nature. Although the axioms of this theory are man-made, the success of this enterprise presupposes a substantial ordering of the objective world, which we have no reason to expect a priori. Therein lies the “miracle,” and the further our knowledge develops, the more magical it becomes. Positivists and professional atheists see this as a vulnerability, for they feel happy in the knowledge that they have not only succeeded in successfully banishing God from this world, but also in “depriving this world of miracles.

Einstein”s philosophy was based on very different principles. In his autobiography (1949) he wrote:

Out there, out there, was this larger world, existing independently of us humans, and standing before us as a vast eternal mystery, accessible, however, at least in part, to our perception and our mind. The study of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon became convinced that many of those I had learned to appreciate and respect had found their inner freedom and confidence by giving themselves wholly to it. The mental embrace within the possibilities of this extra-personal world available to us seemed to me, half consciously, half unconsciously, to be the ultimate goal…The prejudice of these scientists against atomic theory can no doubt be attributed to their positivist philosophical attitude. This is an interesting example of how philosophical prejudice prevents even scientists with courageous thinking and subtle intuition from correctly interpreting the facts.

In the same autobiography, Einstein clearly formulates two criteria for truth in physics: a theory must have “external justification” and “internal perfection. The first means that the theory must be consistent with experience, and the second means that it must reveal from minimal premises the deepest possible regularities of the universal and reasonable harmony of the laws of nature. The aesthetic qualities of the theory (original beauty, naturalness, grace) thereby become important physical virtues.

The simpler the premises, the more varied the subjects it connects, and the broader the field of its application, the more impressive the theory.

Einstein defended the belief in an objective reality that exists independently of human perception during his famous conversations with Rabindranath Tagore, who just as consistently denied such a reality.Einstein said:

Our natural viewpoint regarding the existence of truth independent of human beings can neither be explained nor proven, but it is believed by everyone, even primitive humans. We ascribe to truth a superhuman objectivity. This reality, independent of our existence, our experience, our reason, is necessary to us, even though we cannot say what it means.

Einstein”s influence on twentieth-century philosophy of science is comparable to the influence he had on twentieth-century physics. The essence of the approach he proposed in the philosophy of science is a synthesis of a wide variety of philosophical teachings, which Einstein proposed to use depending on the task to be solved by science. He believed that epistemological monism was unacceptable for a real scientist, as opposed to a philosopher. Depending on the particular situation, the same scientist could be an idealist, a realist, a positivist, and even a Platonist and a Pythagorean. Since such an eclecticism might seem unacceptable to a consistent systematic philosopher, Einstein believed that a real scientist looks like an opportunist in the eyes of such a philosopher. The approach advocated by Einstein is called “epistemological opportunism” in modern philosophy of science.

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Religious views

Einstein”s religious views are the subject of long-standing controversy. Some claim that Einstein believed in the existence of God, others call him an atheist. Both have used the words of the great scientist to support their point of view.

In 1921 Einstein received a telegram from the New York rabbi Herbert Goldstein: “Do you believe in God tchk paid answer 50 words. Einstein managed to fit into 24 words: “I believe in Spinoza”s God, who manifests himself in the lawful harmony of being, but not at all in God, who is concerned with the destinies and affairs of men. He expressed himself even more sharply in an interview with the New York Times (November 1930): “I do not believe in a God who rewards and punishes, in a God whose purposes are molded from our human purposes. I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, though weak minds, possessed by fear or ridiculous selfishness, find a refuge in such a belief.

In 1940 he described his views in Nature, in an article entitled “Science and Religion. There he writes:

In my opinion, a religiously enlightened person is one who has freed himself as much as possible from the fetters of egoistic desires and is absorbed in the thoughts, feelings and aspirations which he holds in view of their superpersonal character… regardless of whether an attempt is made to connect this with a divine being, for otherwise one would not consider the Buddha or Spinoza to be religious persons. The religiosity of such a person is that he has no doubt about the significance and grandeur of these superpersonal purposes, which cannot be rationally justified, but which do not need to be… In this sense religion is the ancient desire of humanity to realize clearly and fully these values and purposes and to strengthen and expand their influence.

He goes on to make some connection between science and religion and says that “science can only be produced by those who are imbued with a longing for truth and understanding. But the source of this feeling comes from the realm of religion. From the same place is the belief that the rules of this world are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a real scientist without a strong belief in this. Figuratively, the situation can be described as follows: science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind. The phrase “science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind” is often quoted out of context, rendering it meaningless.

Then Einstein again writes that he does not believe in a personified God, and states:

There is no human dominion or deity dominion as independent causes of natural phenomena. Of course, the doctrine of God as a person who intervenes in natural phenomena can never be literally disproved by science, for this doctrine can always find refuge in areas where scientific knowledge is not yet able to penetrate. But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion is not only undignified, but also fatal.

In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein wrote: “In relation to God I am agnostic. I am convinced that a clear understanding of the paramount importance of moral principles in improving and ennobling life does not require the notion of a legislator, especially a legislator working on the principle of reward and punishment.

Once again, Einstein described his religious views, responding to those who ascribed to him a belief in a Judeo-Christian God:

What you read about my religious beliefs is, of course, a lie. A lie that has been systematically repeated. I do not believe in God as a person and have never concealed this, but have expressed it very clearly. If there is anything in me that could be called religious, it is undoubtedly an unbounded admiration for the structure of the universe insofar as science reveals it.

In 1954, a year and a half before his death, Einstein, in a letter to the German philosopher Eric Gutkind, described his attitude toward religion as follows:

“The word ”God” to me is merely a manifestation and product of human weakness, and the Bible is a collection of venerable but still primitive legends, which are nevertheless quite childish. No interpretation, even the most sophisticated, can change that (for me).

The most comprehensive overview of Einstein”s religious views was published by his friend, Max Jemmer, in his book Einstein and Religion (1999). However, he admits that the book is not based on his direct conversations with Einstein, but on a study of archival materials. Jammer considers Einstein a deeply religious man, calls his views “cosmic religion,” and believes that Einstein did not identify God with Nature, like Spinoza, but considered him a separate non-personified entity manifest in the laws of the universe as “a spirit far superior to the human one,” in Einstein”s own words.

At the same time, Leopold Infeld, Einstein”s closest disciple, wrote that “when Einstein talks about God, he always has in mind the inner connection and logical simplicity of the laws of nature. I would call this a ”materialistic approach to God.

Charles Percy Snow on Einstein:

If Einstein had not existed, the physics of the twentieth century would have been different. This cannot be said of any other scientist… He occupied a position in public life that no other scientist is likely to occupy in the future. No one really knows why, but he has entered the public consciousness of the world, becoming a living symbol of science and a thought leader of the twentieth century.He said: “The care for man and his destiny must be the primary goal in science. Never forget this in the midst of your drawings and equations. Later he also said: “Only the life that is lived for people is valuable…Einstein was the most noble man we have ever met.

Robert Oppenheimer: “There was always a kind of magical purity about him, both childlike and infinitely stubborn.

Bertrand Russell:

I think his work and his violin gave him a considerable measure of happiness, but his deep sympathy for people and interest in their plight protected Einstein from an inappropriate measure of hopelessness… Communicating with Einstein was extraordinarily satisfying. Despite his genius and fame, he kept himself absolutely simple, without the slightest pretense of superiority… He was not only a great scientist, but also a great man.

Г. H. Hardy described Einstein in two words: “Gentle and wise.

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Confession

In the archives of the Nobel Committee there are about 60 nominations of Einstein in connection with the formulation of the theory of relativity; his candidacy was consistently nominated annually from 1910 to 1922 (except 1911 and 1915). However, the prize was awarded only in 1922 – for the theory of the photoelectric effect, which seemed to the members of the Nobel Committee to be a more indisputable contribution to science. As a result of this nomination, Einstein received the (previously deferred) prize for 1921 at the same time as Niels Bohr, who was awarded the 1922 prize.

Einstein was awarded honorary doctorates from numerous universities, including: Geneva, Zurich, Rostock, Madrid, Brussels, Buenos Aires, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Harvard, Princeton, New York (Albany), Sorbonne.

Some other awards:

Posthumously, Albert Einstein was also noted for a number of distinctions:

There are monuments to Einstein by Robert Burks in the U.S. capital and in Jerusalem near the Israeli Academy of Sciences.

In 2015, a monument to Einstein by Moscow sculptor Georgy Frangulyan was erected on the campus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Some memorable places associated with Einstein:

Memorial plaques:

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Cultural Influence

Albert Einstein has become a character in a number of fiction novels, films, and theatrical productions. In particular, he appears as a character in Nicholas Rogue”s “Insignificance,” Fred Skepisi”s comedy “I.Q.” (in which he is played by Walter Matthau), Philip Martin”s 2008 film Einstein and Eddington, Soviet

“Professor Einstein,” who creates the chronosphere and prevents Hitler from coming to power, is one of the key characters in the alternate universe he created in the Command & Conquer real-time computer strategy series. The scientist in Cain XVIII is clearly disguised as Einstein.

The appearance of Albert Einstein, who at a mature age usually appeared in a simple sweater with disheveled hair, is taken as the basis for the portrayal of “mad scientists” and “absent-minded professors” in popular culture. It also actively exploits the motif of the great physicist”s forgetfulness and impracticality, transferring it to the collective image of his colleagues. Time magazine even called Einstein “a dream come true cartoonist. The most famous one was taken on the physicist”s 72nd birthday (1951). Photographer Arthur Sass asked Einstein to smile for the camera, to which he showed his tongue. This image has become an icon of contemporary popular culture, presenting a portrait of both a genius and a cheerful living man. On June 21, 2009, at an auction in American New Hampshire, one of the nine original photographs, printed in 1951, was sold for $74,000. Einstein gave the photo to his friend – journalist Howard Smith – and signed on it that “the humorous grimace is addressed to all mankind.

Einstein”s popularity in today”s world is so great that there are controversial points about the widespread use of the scientist”s name and appearance in advertising and trademarks. Since Einstein bequeathed part of his estate, including the use of his images, to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the brand “Albert Einstein” was registered as a trademark.

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Filmography

Albert Einstein”s multifaceted scientific and political activities have given rise to an extensive mythology, as well as a considerable number of unconventional assessments of various aspects of his work. Already during his lifetime there appeared publications that downplayed or denied his importance in modern physics. A significant role in its emergence was played by the “Aryan physicists” Philip Lenard and Johannes Stark, as well as the mathematician Edmund Whittaker. Such literature was particularly widespread in Nazi Germany, where, for example, the special theory of relativity was attributed entirely to “Aryan” scientists. Attempts to downplay Einstein”s role in the development of modern physics continue even now. For example, not so long ago it was resurrected that Einstein appropriated the scientific discoveries of his first wife, Mileva Maric. A reasoned critique of such fabrications was published in his ZHZL biography of Einstein by Maxim Chertanov.

The following is a brief summary of such myths, as well as those alternative versions that have been discussed in the serious literature.

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Scientific merits of Mileva Maric

One of the many myths associated with Einstein is that Mileva Maric, his first wife, allegedly helped him to develop the theory of relativity or even was its true author. This question has been extensively researched by historians. No documentary evidence for such a conclusion has been found. Mileva showed no special aptitude for mathematics or physics; she even failed (on two attempts) to pass her final exams at the Polytechnic. Not a single scientific paper of hers is known, either during her life with Einstein or later (she died in 1948). Her recently published correspondence with Einstein does not contain any reference to the ideas of relativity, while Einstein”s reply letters contain numerous reflections on these topics.

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Who authored the theory of relativity – Einstein or Poincaré

In the discussion of the history of the special theory of relativity (STR) from time to time there is an accusation against Einstein: why in his first article “To the electrodynamics of moving bodies” he did not refer to the works of his predecessors, in particular the works of Poincaré and Lorentz? Sometimes it is even argued that Poincaré created the STO, while Einstein”s article did not contain anything new.

Lorenz never became a supporter of the theory of relativity for the rest of his life and always refused the honor of being considered its “forerunner: “The main reason I could not propose a theory of relativity is that I held the notion that only the variable t{displaystyle t} could be considered true time, and that the local time t′{displaystyle t”} I proposed should only be regarded as an auxiliary mathematical quantity. In a letter to Einstein, Lorenz recalled:

I felt the need for a more general theory, which I tried to develop later… The credit for developing such a theory belongs to you (and, to a lesser extent, to Poincaré).

The lack of attention to the substantial works of Poincaré did take place, but, in fairness, this reproach should be addressed not only to Einstein, but to all physicists of the early 20th century. Even in France, Poincaré”s contribution was initially ignored in the works on the STR, and only after the final approval of the STR (1920s) did historians of science rediscover forgotten works and pay homage to Poincaré:

Having given impetus to further theoretical research, Lorentz”s work did not have any significant influence on the subsequent process of approval and recognition of the new theory… But Poincaré”s work failed to solve this problem either… Poincaré”s fundamental research had no noticeable influence on the views of a wide range of scientists…

The reasons are the lack of systematicity in Poincaré”s relativistic articles and essential differences between Einstein and Poincaré in physical understanding of relativism (see more in the article: Poincaré, Henri). The formulas given by Einstein, at outward similarity with Poincaré”s formulas, had a different physical content.

Einstein himself explained that two provisions were new in his work “To the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”: “the idea that the meaning of the Lorentz transformation goes beyond Maxwell”s equations and concerns the essence of space and time … and the conclusion that ”Lorentz invariance” is a general condition for every physical theory. P. S. Kudryavtsev wrote in History of Physics:

The true creator of the theory of relativity was Einstein, not Poincaré, not Lorentz, not Larmor or anyone else. The fact is that all these authors did not break away from electrodynamics and did not consider the problem from a broader perspective … The other thing is Einstein”s approach to the problem. He looked at it from a fundamentally new position, from a completely revolutionary point of view.

At the same time, when discussing the history of the theory of relativity, Max Born came to the conclusion that:

…the special theory of relativity is not the work of one man, it arose from the joint efforts of a group of great researchers – Lorentz, Poincaré, Einstein, Minkowski. The fact that only Einstein”s name is mentioned has a certain justification, because the special theory of relativity was after all only the first step to the general one, which embraced gravitation.

Neither Lorenz nor Poincaré ever questioned Einstein”s priority in relativity. Lorenz treated Einstein very warmly (it was he who recommended Einstein for the Nobel Prize), and Poincaré gave Einstein a high and friendly evaluation in his famous characterization.

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Who discovered the formula E=mc²

The law of the relationship between mass and energy E=mc² is Einstein”s most famous formula. Some sources question Einstein”s priority by pointing out that similar or even the same formulas were found by historians of science in earlier works by H. Schramm (1872), J. J. Thomson (1881), O. Heaviside (1890), A. Poincaré (1900) and F. Gasenorle (1904). All these studies referred to a particular case – to the supposed properties of ether or charged bodies. For example, Umov studied the possible dependence of the density of the ether on the energy density of the electromagnetic field, and the Austrian physicist F. Gasenorl, in the works of 1904-1905, suggested that the energy of radiation is equivalent to additional “electromagnetic mass” and is related to it by the formula: E=34mc2{displaystyle E={frac {3}{4}}mc^{2}}

Einstein was the first to present this relation as a universal law of dynamics, relating to all kinds of matter and not limited to electromagnetism. In addition, most of the above-mentioned scientists associated this law with the existence of a special “electromagnetic mass” dependent on energy. Einstein combined all kinds of mass and noted an inverse relationship: the inertness of any physical object grows with increasing energy.

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Hilbert and the gravitational field equations

As mentioned above, the final gravitational field equations of the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) were derived almost simultaneously (in different ways) by Einstein and Hilbert in November 1915. Until recently, it was thought that Hilbert received them 5 days earlier, but published them later: Einstein submitted his paper containing the correct version of the equations to the Berlin Academy on November 25, while Hilbert”s note “Foundations of Physics” was announced 5 days earlier, on November 20, 1915, at a report at the Göttingen Mathematical Society, and then passed on to the Royal Society of Science in Göttingen. Hilbert”s paper was published on March 31, 1916. The two scientists had a lively correspondence in the preparation of their manuscripts, some of which has survived; it is clear from it that the two researchers had a mutual and fruitful influence on each other. In the literature, the field equations are called “Einstein”s equations.

In 1997, new documents were discovered, namely a proofreading of Hilbert”s article, dated December 6. From this finding, L. Corry and his co-authors concluded that Hilbert wrote out the “correct” field equations not 5 days earlier, but 4 months later than Einstein. It turned out that Hilbert”s work, prepared for printing earlier than Einstein”s, differs significantly from its final printed version in two respects:

This means that Hilbert”s version was not at first finished and not quite general-covariant; the work took its final form only before printing, when Einstein”s work had already seen the light of day. During the final edit, Hilbert inserted in his paper references to a parallel December paper by Einstein, added the remark that the field equations can be represented in another form (he then wrote out the classical formula of Einstein, but without a proof), and removed all discussion of additional conditions. Historians believe that this revision was largely influenced by Einstein”s article.

The conclusion of L. Corry”s conclusion was also confirmed in an article by T. Sauer.

In addition to Corrie, F. Winterberg was involved in further controversy, criticizing Corrie (in particular for his silence on the existence of a lacuna in the proofreading).

Academician A.A. Logunov (with co-authors) also attempted to challenge the conclusions cited by Corrie and repeated by several other authors. He noted that the non-preserved part of folio 8 may contain something essential, for example, equations in the classical form, and, besides, these equations can be obtained “in a trivial way” from the Lagrangian obviously written out in the proofs. On this basis, Logunov proposed to call the field equations “Hilbert-Einstein equations”. This proposal of Logunov did not receive notable support from the scientific community.

A recent article by Ivan Todorov provides a fairly comprehensive overview of the current situation and history of the issue. Todorov characterizes Logunov”s reaction as an uncommonly angry reaction, but he believes that it was provoked by the excessive one-sidedness of Corrie et al. He agrees that “only at the stage of proofreading does Hilbert suppress all extra conditions and recognize the unqualified physical relevance of the covariant equation,” but notes that Hilbert”s influence and collaboration with him was crucial to Einstein”s own acceptance of general covariance. Todorov does not find excessive conflict useful for the history of science and believes that it would have been much more correct, following the example of Einstein and Hilbert themselves, not to make the priority question a stumbling block at all.

It should also be emphasized that Einstein”s own priority in the creation of general relativity was never challenged, including by Hilbert. One of the myths associated with Einstein claims that Hilbert himself, without any influence from Einstein, derived the main equations of GR. Hilbert himself did not think so and never claimed priority in any part of GR:

Hilbert readily admitted, and often said so in lectures, that the great idea belonged to Einstein. “Any boy on the streets of Göttingen understands more about four-dimensional geometry than Einstein,” he once remarked. – And yet it was Einstein, not the mathematicians, who did the work.”

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Did Einstein recognize the ether

It is claimed that Einstein, who at first denied the ether in his 1905 work “Toward the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” where he called the introduction of “light-bearing ether” superfluous, later acknowledged its existence and even wrote a paper titled “The Ether and Relativity Theory” (1920).

There is a terminological confusion here. Lorentz-Poincaré light-bearing ether Einstein never recognized. In the mentioned article, he proposes to return the term “ether” to its original (from ancient times) meaning: the material filler of emptiness. In other words, and Einstein writes about it directly, the ether in the new understanding is the physical space of the general theory of relativity:

Some important argument can be made in favor of the ether hypothesis. To deny the ether is ultimately to accept that empty space has no physical properties. The basic facts of mechanics do not agree with such a view…

This new meaning of the old term, however, did not find support in the scientific world.

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Einstein and Soviet Science

The approval of Einstein”s ideas (quantum theory and especially relativity theory) in the USSR was not easy. Some scientists, especially young scientists, perceived the new ideas with interest and understanding-the first domestic works and textbooks on these topics appeared already in the 1920s. However, there were physicists and philosophers who strongly opposed the concepts of the “new physics”; among them A. K. Timiryazev (son of the famous biologist K. A. Timiryazev), who criticized Einstein even before the revolution, was particularly active. His articles in the magazines “Krasnaya novia” (1921, No. 2) and “Under the banner of Marxism” (1922, No. 4) were followed by a critical remark of Lenin:

If Timiryazev had to stipulate in the first issue of the journal that the theory of Einstein, who himself, according to Timiryazev, does not lead any active campaign against the foundations of materialism, was already grasped by a huge mass of bourgeois intellectuals from all countries, this applies not to Einstein alone, but to a whole series, if not most of the great transformers of the natural sciences, beginning in the late 19th century.

In the same year 1922 Einstein was elected a foreign corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, during 1925-1926 Timiryazev published at least ten anti-relativistic articles.

Nor did K. E. Tsiolkovsky, who rejected relativistic cosmology and the speed limit (which undermined Tsiolkovsky”s plans for populating the cosmos): “His second conclusion: speed cannot exceed the speed of light… is the same six days supposedly used to create the world”. By the end of his life Tsiolkovsky may have softened his position, because at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s he mentions Einstein”s relativistic formula E=mc2{displaystyle E=mc^{2}} without critical objections in a number of works and interviews. However, Tsiolkovsky never came to terms with the impossibility of moving faster than light.

Although the criticism of relativity theory among Soviet physicists ceased in the 1930s, the ideological struggle of some philosophers against relativity theory as “bourgeois obscurantism” continued and especially intensified after the dismissal of Nikolai Bukharin, whose influence had previously softened the ideological pressure on science. The next phase of the campaign began in 1950; it was probably related to similar campaigns against genetics (Lysenkovschina) and cybernetics. Shortly before that (1948), the publisher Gostekhizdat published a translation of Einstein and Infeld”s Evolution of Physics, with an extensive preface entitled: “On the ideological flaws in A. Einstein and L. Infeld”s book The Evolution of Physics.” Two years later, the journal “Soviet Book” published a scathing criticism of both the book itself (for its “idealistic bias”) and the publisher (for its ideological error).

This article opened a whole avalanche of publications that were formally directed against Einstein”s philosophy, but at the same time accused a number of major Soviet physicists of ideological errors – Ya. Soon an article “On the philosophical views of Einstein” (1951) by M. M. Karpov, assistant professor at the Philosophy Department of Rostov State University, appeared in the journal “Questions of Philosophy,” where the scientist was accused of subjective idealism, disbelief in the infinity of the universe and other concessions to religion. In 1952 an article by the prominent Soviet philosopher A. A. Maximov was published, which stigmatized not only philosophy but also Einstein personally, “to whom the bourgeois press has created advertising for his numerous attacks on materialism, for the promotion of views that undermine the scientific worldview and emasculate the ideology of science. Another prominent philosopher, I. V. Kuznetsov, during the 1952 campaign said: “The interests of physical science urgently require a profound criticism and decisive exposure of the entire system of theoretical views of Einstein. However, the critical importance of the “atomic project” in those years, the authority and decisive position of the academic leadership prevented the defeat of Soviet physics, similar to that which was arranged for the geneticists. After Stalin”s death, the anti-Einstein campaign was quickly curtailed, although a considerable number of “Einstein”s subversives” met afterwards.

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Miscellaneous

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Sources

Sources

1. Эйнштейн, Альберт
2. Albert Einstein