When his father first showed Albert Einstein, the greatest of theoretical physicists, a receptacle compass, it was like what the falling apple was to his illustrious scientific ‘forebear’ Sir Isaac Newton. Einstein was barely five years old, but he felt an indescribable experience — his mind lit up with the gadget, in a manner born, and he began his long adventure in science.
Wait a minute, because as it so often happens with the genii, Einstein [1879-1955], despite his passion for knowing, was first thought to be a slow learner by his peers. He built models and mechanical gadgets for joy, all right, but intrepid psychologists, who deciphered his ‘consciousness’ when he had grown to be a legend, felt that Albert, as a kid, suffered from dyslexia. This was further strengthened by observations that his plain shyness sprung from the notably unusual structure of his brain, which was scientifically explored after his death.
All the same, Einstein, as his legendary intellect suggests, was able to turn science inside out, thanks to his non-obsessive attitude with space and time. This, as scholars dispassionately observe, led him on his great path vis-à-vis the development of his ground-breaking general theory of relativity — one of science’s most celebrated, nay unparalleled, discoveries.
The best part — it’s said that Einstein’s formative, unhurried thought process laid the foundation to his science, unlike most children who find no time for mental fine-tuning. What’s more, and as with all great folks, who come under the scanner long after they are gone, Einstein, as medical experts now suggest, may have also had Asperger’s syndrome — a disorder related to autism.
Asperger’s syndrome — also known as Asperger’s disorder — was first described by the Viennese paediatrician Hans Asperger, in 1844, when he observed autism-like behaviours and difficulties with social and communication skills, especially in boys who had normal intelligence and language development. It was later thought that the syndrome was merely a mild form of autism. Some clinicians also called it ‘high-functioning autism’ to describe such individuals. The best definition, so far, is attributed to Uta Frith, a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience of University College London and editor of Autism and Asperger Syndrome. She describes individuals with Asperger’s syndrome as “having a dash of autism.”
This was not all. Einstein, who began to first dabble in mathematics when he’s 12, was, for long, whispered, to have flunked in the subject even when he’d progressed in his other academic pursuits. The ‘failed-buzz’ apart, it’s a fact that Einstein was encouraged to study science and mathematics by his uncles — and, he seemed to have made them happy, if not proud, with his soft, albeit wobbly numerical skills in childhood.
Einstein was not an exceptional student, all right, but what he liked best was doing his own thing. That he loved philosophy, mathematics, in his own mode, including science and music, is beyond an iota of doubt. What’s not widely known is he was his own apprentice in them — although he’s not keen to learn them by way of his school curricula.
Einstein’s parents moved to Italy in 1895, from Germany, as his father’s business could no longer sustain them; Einstein was left behind to continue with his studies. But, Einstein, who never fancied rigid learning left school without a certificate, rejoined his family. He now dipped himself into his own private studies. It was at this time that he learned calculus and some of the advanced, complex principles of science. Curiously, he failed in his entrance test for admission to the famed Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He was desolate. However, as providence would have it, he gained entry to the Institute and graduated in physics and mathematics in 1900.
Einstein became a Swiss citizen, the following year. He was also hired as a technical assistant at the Swiss Patent Office. Three years later, he married his ‘original’ flame, Mileva Marić, a Serbian physicist. The patent office was Einstein’s grand laboratory; it was also his radar and compass in theoretical physics.
When Einstein published an article — A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions in Annalen der Physik, a physics journal of repute — the submission fetched him a PhD, from the University of Zurich. Buoyant with the progression, Einstein published four more papers in the same journal — this included his milestone theory that light exists in both waves and particles. His published work also shelved the conventional view that time and space were absolute concepts; it deliberated, no less, that time and space differ with circumstances.
This sent the scientific world into a tizzy.
In the midst of change, Einstein emerged with his famous mathematical equation, E=mc² [energy equals mass time the speed of light squared] in 1905. His basic theory of relativity also appeared in print — The Principle of Relativity, Sidelights on Relativity, and The Meaning of Relativity. The Royal Society of London evidenced that the solar eclipse, that took place the same year, had no less confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Come 1915, Einstein completed his general theory of relativity — a landmark apotheosis. As Inside Science puts it, “General relativity is the prevailing, modern theory of gravity. It describes the motion of all large-scale objects, including stars, planets, and galaxies. [Sir Isaac] Newton described gravity as an instantaneous and invisible force between two objects. His laws of motion and universal gravitation are relevant today because objects still obey these laws approximately in everyday human experience. But, Newton’s laws are inaccurate when describing the gravity produced by massive objects, such as black holes or neutron stars.”
The tipping point, as Inside Science articulates, is obvious, “Einstein devised a completely new description of gravity. First, he realised that objects in the universe exist in three dimensions of space and one of time. He then combined them into a four-dimensional space-time — [because] the motion of an object throughout its entire history in the universe could, then, be fully described by its trajectory in space-time. A four-dimensional space-time is challenging for all of us to imagine” — so to advance this elucidation, Einstein streamlined space-time as a roseate oeuvre on which all matter lies.
Einstein often transformed places in the scientific and also personal sense during his stupendous career — much more than in ‘relative’ terms. He not only opted, to pick an example, for the position of Professor of Physics in Prague and Zurich University, but also shifted from there to Berlin with his wife and two sons [1914]. The Prussian Academy of Sciences was his next destination. Strangely enough, on the private front, he was not innately happy in Berlin; hence, he returned with his family to Switzerland before World War I rattled Europe. He separated from his wife at the end of the Great War and married his second cousin, Elsa Lowenthal, in 1919.
Einstein was the toast of the entire world. As his fame spread far and wide, the mastermind of physics, like all great men, was not exempt from ‘spat’ by scientific critics on the groundwork of his political ideologies. In the years that followed, he began to be as much disliked for his scientific theory, just as much as he was appreciated for his vigorous stand on peace, liberty and justice.
When Einstein won the Nobel Prize, exactly a hundred years ago, in 1921 for his photoelectric law and work in the field of theoretical physics, there was no mention of the word, relativity, his landmark breakthrough — think of life’s, or scientific paradox. Einstein wasn’t daunted — he continued to work just as passionately, trying to coalesce his seminal concept of gravity and electromagnetism into a “grand unified theory of physics.” In other words, a single mathematical formula that could amalgamate the universal chattels of matter and energy — it was a voyage that Einstein was sadly unable to complete.
Einstein also foresaw the Nazi spectre, including the use of the atom bomb with as much distress. Yet, he never ever shirked his stand for pacifism — come what may — to make our world a better place to live in. This was and is still his lasting greatness. What also stands out today is his sterling scientific legacy. His theory of general relativity has held up enormously well for a hundred years in our world. It remains the bedrock for our scientists’ understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe. It continues to stimulate and excite research into the most fundamental unanswered questions in physics and astronomy. It is also being increasingly celebrated as possibly the most perfect intellectual achievement of modern physics — one that represents the scintillating panorama for the sublime, higher understanding of the history of the universe, the origin of time, the evolution of the solar systems, the stars, and the galaxies. Add to it the natural, fascinating credo of our expanding universe, the light-speed barrier, black holes, wormholes, time travel, the fulsome idea of general relativity, and they all provide scientists the seminal ‘ammo’ for imagination to take flight with new possibilities, while revealing a universe that is much more ‘alien’ than anyone ever expected, or envisaged.
This isn’t all. Nearly a century after Einstein emerged with the theory of relativity, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which Einstein helped to establish, described — as www.phys.org reports — the awe-inspiring raison d’être for one of the fundamental assumptions underlying that theory, the idea that all light particles propagate at the same speed. The research, which was also published in Nature Physics, found that light particles, or photons, travelling for billions of years from a distant gamma-ray burst towards earth arrived with a fraction of a second of each other. The data showed that the photon speed was uniform, even though the light particles had different energies.
The dazzling inference is obvious. It augments and bulwarks Einstein’s theory — what with the divergence of speed and energy measurements edifying that they are two independent variables. It also, in so doing, glowingly testifies his timeless intellect and everlasting genius.
— First published in Madras Courier
