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What is it that triggers a spark of genius? Is there some encouragement given
at the right time that starts the process or helps it along, or does genius
simply find its expression despite all odds?
At age five, Einstein was given
a device that would stir his intellect. It was the first time he had seen a
magnetic compass. He lay there shaking and twisting the odd contraption, certain
he could fool it into pointing off in a new direction. But try as he might, the
compass needle would always find its way back to pointing in the direction of
magnetic north. Most kid at his age, including me, would have given up figuring
how it worked. "A wonder," he must have thought. The invisible force that guided
the compass needle was evidence to Albert that there was more to our world that
meets the eye. There was "something behind things, something deeply hidden."
Einstein's genius, accompanied by his logic and imagination, succeeded in
continuing the work of Newton. Within the frame of the relativity theory,
demanding a formulation of the laws of nature independent of the observer and
emphasizing the singular role of the speed of light, gravitational effects lost
their isolated position and appeared as an integral part of a general
kinematics’ description, capable of verification by refined astronomical
observations. Moreover, Einstein's recognition of the equivalence of mass and
energy should prove an invaluable guide in the exploration of atomic phenomena.
Indeed, the breadth of Einstein's views and the openness of his mind
found most remarkable expression in the fact that, in the very same years when
he gave a widened outlook to classical physics, he thoroughly grasped the fact
that Planck's discovery of the universal quantum of action revealed an inherent
limitation in such an approach. With unfailing intuition Einstein was led to the
introduction of the idea of the photon as the carrier of momentum and energy in
individual radiative processes. He thereby provided the starting point for the
establishment of consistent quantum theoretical methods, which have made it
possible to account for an immense amount of experimental evidence concerning
the properties of matter, and even demanded reconsideration of our most
elementary concepts.
The same spirit that characterized Einstein's unique
scientific achievements also marked his attitude in all human relations.
Notwithstanding the increasing reverence which people everywhere felt for his
attainments and character, he behaved with unchanging natural modesty and
expressed himself with a subtle and charming humour. He was always prepared to
help people in difficulties of any kind, and to him, who himself had experienced
the evils of racial prejudice; the promotion of understanding among nations was
a foremost endeavour. His earnest admonitions on the responsibility involved in
our rapidly growing mastery of the forces of nature will surely help to meet the
challenge to civilization in the proper spirit.
With Albert
Einstein's death a great light has gone out in the world of physics, for
Einstein, more than any other man, set the tone of the physics of the 20th
century. His theories of special and general relativity were the capstone of
classical physics and the theory of fields. His theory of light quanta and his
later demonstration of the nature of the fluctuations of "black body" radiation
raised the paradox of the wave-particle duality. Einstein was therefore in a
very real sense the founder of the statistical theory of fundamental atomic
phenomena.
There is scarcely any important fundamental idea in modern
physics whose origin does not trace back at least in part to Einstein. Yet, like
many another father, he was not really satisfied with the children of his
scientific imagination. He never regarded his mighty contributions to quantum
theory as other than provisional suggestions for the ordering of phenomena. The
subsequent formulations of quantum mechanics and especially the thoroughgoing
statistical interpretations were to him philosophically and esthetically
repugnant.