New Yorker on Power Point Einstein: His Life and Times Robert Damrauer Chemistry Department University of Colorado at Denver Denver, Colorado, 80217.

New Yorker on Power Point

Einstein: His Life and Times

Robert Damrauer

Chemistry Department

University of Colorado at Denver

Denver, Colorado, 80217

UHL Seminars: October 24 and 31, 2008

Einstein: First Talk Poster Centennial

First Talk:

March 14, 1979

Chronology: 1889-1884

1879 March 14, born in Ulm, Germany, von Laue and Hahn born, James Clerk Maxwell dies, Planck receives doctorate

1880 Family moves to Munich, von Baeyer synthesizes indigo

1881 Sister Maja born

1882 Darwin dies

1883 Curie effect discovered, Mach published “The Science of Mechanics”

Chronology: 1884-1888

1886 Enters public school

1888 Transfer to Luitpold Gymnasium

1884 Enchantment with pocket compass, Mendel dies

1885 Niels Bohr born

1887 Hertz generates electromagnetic waves, Mach photographs shock wave in front of missile, Schrödinger born

Paternal Grandparents

Abraham und Helen

Parents

Pauline und Hermann

Family Pictures 1

Earliest known photo (Munich in early 1880s)

With sister Maja in 1884

Family Pictures 2

With Maja-- AE at 14

1889-1895

1889 First encounters with Max Talmey, who recommends books on science and mathematics, Eiffel builds tower

1892 Reads works of Kant and becomes interested in the calculus, de Broglie born

1894 Family moves to Italy, he remains in Munich alone

1895 Fails entrance exams to the Polytechnic (ETH) at 16

1895-1896

1896 Renounces German citizenship, completes year at Aarau, enters ETH, Meets Mileva Maric, Becquerel discovers radioactivity, Wien formulates radiation law

1895 Roentgen discovers X-rays, Ramsey isolates helium, Nobel endows prizes

1898-1900

1898 Curies isolate radium

1900 Receives “Mathematics Teacher” degree, fails in application for assistantship at ETH, first paper (on capillarity) is published in Annalen der Physik, Planck formulates quantum law

1899 Formally applies for Swiss citizenship, Rutherford discovers alpha and beta rays

1901-1902

1901 Receives Swiss citizenship, gets temporary work as teacher/tutor in Winterthur, Fermi born

1902 Employed at Swiss Patent Office in Bern, begins work on classical statistical mechanics

As New Swiss Citizen, 1901

1902-1904

1902 Birth of daughter Lieserl, Fischer shows proteins made up of amino acids, Nobel Prize to Lorentz and Zeeman for splitting of spectral lines in magnetic fields

1903 Marries Mileva, Nobel to Becquerel and Curies

1904 First son, Hans Albert, born, discusses special relativity with Michael Besso for first time, Rutherford and Soddy understand radioactivity as atomic disintegration

Miracle Years: 1666

1666 City of London survives great fire

1666 British Fleet defeats Dutch (Treaty in 1667 gives Britain New Netherland)

Miracle Years: 1666

And by the way

Laid the foundation of his Calculus

Propounded his theory of color

Propounded his law of gravitation

At 24 years old

Newton

Miracle Years: 1905

1905 AE publishes five papers in Annalen der Physik

1905 Philipp Lenard wins Nobel Prize in Physics

Miracle Years: 1905

The nature of light = photoelectric effect

Determination of molecular dimensions

Motion of small particles: Brownian motion

Electrodynamics of moving bodies (special relativity)

Equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc2)

At 26 years old

Published on:

In Bern, 1905

Isaac Newton 1642-1727

Michael Faraday 1791-1867

Michael Faraday 1791-1867

James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879

James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879

Annus Mirabilus 1905

Equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc2)

“One more consequence of the paper on electrodynamics has also occurred to me. The principle of relativity, in conjunction with Maxwell’s equations, requires that mass be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body….

The argument is amusing and seductive; but for all I know the Lord might be laughing over it and leading me around by the nose.”

Annus Mirabilus 1905

To Carl Seelig in 1952: “Between the conception of the idea for the special relativity and the completion of the relevant publication, five or six weeks elapsed.”

Special Relativity

1906-1909

1906 AE earns doctorate at U of Zurich on “New Determination of Dimensions in Molecules”, promotion to Technical Expert, Second Class, Planck accepts special relativity, Ludwig Boltzmann dies, Nobel to J.J. Thomson

1908 AE becomes lecturer at U of Bern, begins work refining relativity, Becquerel dies, Minkowski gives lecture on space and time, Kamerlingh Onnes liquifies helium

1909 Receives first honorary doctorate at U of Geneva, becomes Associate Professor at U of Zurich, Haber process patented, Wright builds Robie House

1907 Nobel Prize to Michelson, Picasso and Braque invent Cubism

1910-1912

1910 Second son, Eduard, born

1911 Professorship at German University in Prague, has first important ideas for a formulation of general theory (gravity deflecting light), 1st Solvay Conference, Nobel to Wien

1912 Returns to Zurich as Professor at Polytechnic

Mileva

Student Petition to Retain EA at U of Zurich

This is so simple, God could not have passed it up.

Nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.

I had violin lessons from age 6 to 14, but had no luck with my teachers for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing.

For science something can be said, no violinist is so well fed.

To the Department of Education

We hear that Prof. Einstein has been proposed for the soon to be vacant professorship of theoretical physics at the University of Prague.

The undersigned auditors of Prof. Einstein’s lectures request you herewith to do your utmost to keep this outstanding researcher and teacher at our university.

Prof. Einstein has an amazing talent for presenting the most difficult problems of theoretical physics so clearly and so comprehensibly that it is a great delight for us to follow his lectures; and he is so good at establishing a perfect contact with his audience that we are convinced that his teaching activity would be of great advantage to our university.

1913-1915

1913 Draft of generalized relativity published with Grossmann, Bohr publishes “The Constitution of Atoms”

1914 Move to U of Berlin, becomes full-time member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics

1915 Explains perihelion of mercury, finds bending of light is twice as great as previously thought, signs “Manifesto to Europeans”

1916-1918

1916 Publishes General Theory of Relativity, first paper on gravitational waves, returns to quantum mechanics: induced spontaneous emission and absorption phenomena

1917 Establishes first relativistic model of the universe, introducing the cosmological constant, illnesses

1918 Planck and Haber win Nobel Prizes

Fritz Haber, 1914

1919-1921

1919 Divorces Mileva, marries cousin Elsa, two British expeditions confirm deflection of light in a gravitational field, Nobel Prize to Stark

1920 AE meets Bohr for the first time in Berlin, Lenard and Stark force AE to Leyden

1921 Visits US with Weizmann to raise money for Hebrew University, delivers lectures at Princeton, visit Newton’s grave in London on return

1919 !!!! INSTANT WORLD FAME !!!!

Chaim Weizmann, 1921

Weizmann commenting on the trip across the Atlantic:

“Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it.”

Quote to Weizmann

“If we do not find the path to honest cooperation and honest negotiations with the Arabs, then we have learned nothing from our 2000 years of suffering and we deserve the fate that will befall us. Above all, we should be careful not to rely too heavily on the English. For if we don’t get to a real cooperation with the leading Arabs, then the English will drop us, if not officially, then de facto. And they will lament our debacle with traditional, pious glances toward heaven, with assurances of their innocence, and without lifting a finger for us.”

AE as Icon

LaGuardia, 1921

Walk the Walk

Deep in Thought

Attacking Life’s Mysteries

Salesman

N-IKON

Relativity

Game Theory

Get to the Point

1922-1924-2001

1922 first paper on Unified Field Theory, wins Physics Nobel Prize retroactively for 1921, visits, France, Japan, Palestine, Spain, Bohr wins 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics

1924 Satyendranath Bose sends AE a paper, which AE generalizes, producing a new kind of quantum statistics called the Bose-Einstein statistics-- they also predict “a new form of matter”

2001 Carl Wieman, Eric Cornell, and Wolfgang Ketterle win Nobel Prize in Physics “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensate.”

1925-1928

1925 Promotes duality principle of matter by emphasizing ideas of Louis DeBroglie, Heisenberg, Born, and Jordon publish on quantum mechanics

1928 Fleming discovers penicillin

1926 Fermi-Dirac statistics created

1927 attended 5th Solvay Conference, “locks horns” with Bohr on the foundations of quantum mechanics begins, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Lindbergh flight, Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs

Einstein and Bohr: bikes

EA wrote in 1949: “that this insecure and contradictory foundation (of physics) was sufficient to enable a man of Bohr’s unique instinct and tact to discover the major laws of the spectral lines and of the electron shells of the atoms together with their significance for chemistry appeared to me a miracle -- and it appears to me as a miracle even today.”

Einstein

Bohr

Bohr 1930

Bohr 1930

1929-1936

1929 AE is fifty years old, first visit with Belgian royal family, Nobel Prize to de Broglie

1933 Nazis come to power in January, visits Cal Tech, property is confiscated as his German citizenship is revoked, resigns from Prussian Academy, returns to US never to return to Europe, begins work at the Institute for Advanced Study

1934 Violin concert in NYC raises $6,500 for German refugee scientists, Madame Curie dies

1936 Wife Elsa dies

Max Planck, 1929

Sailing at Caputh

Madame Curie c1930

Quot: Madame Curie On Madame Curie following her death:

“It was my good fortune to be linked with Madame Curie though 20 years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment—all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual.”

Churchill 1933

Quote: most beautiful emotion

Indira Gandhi and Nehru 1949

With Jacob Epstein 1933

1939-1952

1939 EA writes first letter to FDR on August 2nd, Nobel to Lawrence

1944 Handwritten copy of EA’s 1905 Special Relativity paper auctioned for $6,000,000-- proceeds to for U.S. war bonds

1948 Mileva dies

1952 After death of Weizmann, AE is asked to become 2nd president of Israel, but declines1954 Writes letter in support of Oppenheimer, last meeting with Bohr

1945 Atomic bomb explosions

Leo Szilard 1939

J. Robert Oppenheimer 1949

Irene Joliet-Curie 1948

Quote: (1) one thing have learned and (2) concern for

man 2

“One thing I have learned in a long life. All science measured against reality is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

“The concern for man and his destiny must always be the chief interest of all technical efforts. Never forget it among your diagrams and equations.”

Sailing 1

Sailing 2

Sailing 3

Sailing 4

Quote: God/Nature

“This is so simple, God could not have passed it up.”

“Nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.”

Hair Section

Hair 1

Hair 2

Hair 3

Hair 4

Pipes Section: Hookahs

Pipe 1

Pipe 2

Quote:Violins “I had violin lessons from age 6 to 14, but had no luck with my teachers for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing.”

“For science something can be said, no violinist is so well fed.”

Portraits section

At Blackboard

Fashion Plate

Halsman Photo

Karsh

“I’ll Give a Little Tink”

In Zurich, 1912

Princeton, 1953

Photo by Landshoff

At Princeton

Walking Home, Princeton

Einstein/ Newton Quote

Compare this Newton quote: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all uncovered before me.”

On his 70th birthday: “You can imagine that I look back on my life’s work with a calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.”

NYT: Death, April 18, 1955

Office After Death

Herblock

Herblock