Think of a great scientist, and chances are the first name that comes to your mind is Albert Einstein.
“Einstein is the most world-renowned scientist in history, both in name and in looks, which is just an illustration of his uniqueness,” said Dr. Martin J. Klein in his opening statement at this year’s Shackleton Memorial Symposium, held Tuesday at the Exley Science Center.
Klein is the Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of Physics and the History of Science at Yale University. He is considered an authority on Einstein and the origin of the Quantum Theory, and he is renowned for his ability to engage a broad audience. His presentation, entitled “Einstein’s Miracle Year and its Significance Today,” refers to 1905, when Einstein published his most important discoveries in the field of physics.
Although Einstein is best known as a groundbreaking physicist, Klein urged the audience to consider a different picture.
“We must think of Einstein in 1905, a young man of 26 years old, not a sage of Princeton, with his long gray hair and other peculiarities like not wearing socks,” he said. “He had the makings of that man, but was not that man yet.”
Einstein’s start in the academic world was rather humble. He graduated with a BA from the Swiss National Polytechnic in 1900, a degree Klein equated to a college sophomore level of physics. According to Klein, Einstein was not a good student, as he tended to skip those subjects that didn’t interest him, and he relied on a friend’s notes to pass exams. After graduation, Einstein applied to many assistantships with professors of physics but was invariably turned down. He eventually got a job in the Swiss Patent Office thanks to a friend’s family connections.
“What best characterized Einstein’s approach was that in physics he was able to scent out those paths that would lead to the depths of the subject,” Hamilton said. “The notion that just by sitting and thinking he could figure out the world is not an accurate image.”
It was in 1905 that Einstein wrote and published his famed special theory of relativity. Interestingly, it was not until later that he added the E=MC2 formula, and later still that he devised his general theory of relativity. Still, Klein stressed that Einstein did not publish these paper as solid theories, but rather heuristic suggestions that aimed to provide the physicist with a different point of view.
“Twentieth century physics would not exist had these papers not been written,” Klein said.
Only after this “miracle year” did Einstein start to take on the world-famous persona that we now associate with him. When Einstein began to travel the globe on lecture circuits, he became a genuine world figure.
“There is generally too much emphasis on Einstein’s reclusion, but he studied hard and worked with people,” said Jack DiSciacca ’07, a physics major. “A lot of theorists believe that just sitting alone and thinking is a measure of how smart you are.”
Klein concluded his speech by touching on Einstein’s political involvement in government policies of his native Germany, and his protest of the militant sentiments that were stirring there in the early 1930s. Einstein left Germany just before Hitler’s rise to power. He lived in Belgium and then the United States, and never returned to Europe.
“[The talk] provided a good mix of personal character with scientific theory, which made the technical stuff more understandable. [Einstein] seemed like a pretty cool guy,” said Jacob Goldman ’07.
Established in 1995 in memory of Bob Shackleton, the Symposium brings a prominent academic in math or science to campus every year.
“Dr. Klein has been recommended to us by a number of physicists,” said Mike Zebarth, Director of the Project to Increase Mastery of Mathematics and Science (PIMMS),
Students appreciated the candid look behind the myth of Einstein.
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