Ptak Science Books

Videos of Scientists & Mathematicians: Feynman, von Neumann, Dirac et al

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Richard Feynman on being "stupid":

John von Neumann inerview:

 

Did Galileo Know That He Was Galileo?

JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1610

Here's an interesting lead sentence I found in 3QuarksDaily via Salon:

  "Karl Marx did not know what we know: he did not know that he was Karl Marx."

The author suggested that Marx would've had a better time in his life had he known what influence he wielded in what he was writing--basically, Karl Marx didn't know that he was KARL MARX.  It is an interesting--and frightening--idea to think of someone laboring like that laboring (as it were) away in relative obscurity, or at least relative to the monumental influence it would come to have.

The real question is not how many people might be in this category of not knowing who we know them to be, but if everyone is in this category at one point or another, and how long it took for them to understand the lasting significance of their work.  But for right now I'm interested to know what people think of the following ten science personalities, and to answer (in a simple survey), if they knew the significance of their work.

The survey is simple and fairly straightforward, and asks questions regarding Copernicus, Harvey, Galileo, Einstein, Maxwell, Newton, Turing, Darwin, Lucretius and John Von Neumann. 

You'll have a chance to view the survey results at the end.  Thanks!

Follow this link to the survey.

 

History of Lines--The Mathematics of Euclidean Love & Maxwell's Demon, 1879

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1603  {The History of Lines series.]

If you give them a chance, physics and the maths will provide their own fairy tales.

This lovely trompe l'oeil of Euclid calls into play the play of love, in hard angles and parabolas, between Mr. Punch of Punch or the London Charivari  and the object of his affection.  The  image was published on 8 November 1879--just three days after the death of one of the greatest line-makers of the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell.  (There is no mention of JCM anywhere in Punch, and I guess probably that there needn't be, even if he was one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth (or any other) century.)

          "XIIITH BOOK OF EUCLID.—PROPOSITION 1. THEOREM.

If two Players on two sides of a Parallelogram are equal to each other, each to each, and have likewise the hearts contained by those two side» equal to each other, and shall likewise have all advantages equal, and their faulty shall coincide, then shall they be equal each to each, viz., a love-match, which may or may not be absurd."

Maxwell's really big lines come in a series of four papers called "On the Lines of Force"¹, and were published in 1861 and 1862. It is in these papers that Maxwell's famous equations are all found, and it is also the place where we'll find the basis not only for the foundation of classical electrodynamics, but the forms for the structure of what would become the epochal/modern communication/electrical technologies. 

[Source:  here.]

Maxwell's Demon came into being as a gedankenexperiment in a series of letters--it was Maxwell not only playing devil's advocate in trying to propose a circumstance in which the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics could be violated, but also providing the Demon, in the experiment, which he proposed as being a finite being, the contradictor.  JCM didn't actually name this thing on his own--that appelation came via William Thomson in an article in Nature magazine³ in 1874. 

We'll continue this later with Faraday's lines of force.

1. The articles appear in four parts in the Philosophical Magazine in 1861 and 1862 (full text via links):

• 1 Part I: The Theory of Molecular Vortices applied to Magnetic Phenomena
• 2 Part II: The Theory of Molecular Vortices applied to Electric Currents
• 3 Part III: The Theory of Molecular Vortices applied to Statical Electricity
• 4 Part IV: The Theory of Molecular Vortices applied to the Action of Magnetism on Polarized Light
• 5 Footnotes

2.   Maxwell stated it so:  "... if we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us. For we have seen that molecules in a vessel full of air at uniform temperature are moving with velocities by no means uniform, though the mean velocity of any great number of them, arbitrarily selected, is almost exactly uniform. Now let us suppose that such a vessel is divided into two portions, A and B, by a division in which there is a small hole, and that a being, who can see the individual molecules, opens and closes this hole, so as to allow only the swifter molecules to pass from A to B, and only the slower molecules to pass from B to A. He will thus, without expenditure of work, raise the temperature of B and lower that of A, in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics...."

3.  William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), "Kinetic Theory of the Dissipation of Energy," Nature, 9 April 1874, pp. 441-444, and "The Sorting Demon Of Maxwell" (1879), Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. ix, p. 113.

The Radium Dance, 1898 and 1904

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1595

Jean Schwartz (b. 1878) , composed this number for his (with the collaboration of William Jerome) Broadway (hit!) musical comedy Piff! Paff! Poof!  in 1904,  which sounded like this.

But the real story--that we'll deal with later--occurs a few years earlier, in 1898, with a married couple of scientists who made an epochal discovery:

What was easier for folks to understand was the application of the discovery, just six years after the Curie effort--though it did take a little longer to take hold in the public creative imagination than, say, the discovery of the X-ray, which entered the public mind almost instantly following its discovery in 1895. 

[Source:  Duke University]

[Source]

Perhaps the real Radium Dance occurred for the first time by the people who found the thing, radium, back there in 1898--Marie Sklodowska Curie and Pierre Curie.  They were a happily married couple, beginning their joined life in 1895, vacationing on wedding present money on bikes through the French countryside.  They were soon back to their primary love in physics and chemistry, and inspired by the work of Henri Becquerel, began their assault on radioactivity in the next year.  After several years of effort and laboriously extracting a gram of  pure radium (by 1902) from a ton of pitchblende, they published their efforts in the volume of the great French scientific journal, Comptes rendus...Academie des Sciences (volume 127, in three short articles), announcing their discovery of polonium (after Marie's country of origin) and radium. 

The really big Radium Dance would occur the year before the Broadway hit, in 1903, when the Curies and Henri Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics¹. 

Notes:

1. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 was divided, one half awarded to Antoine Henri Becquerel "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity",the other half jointly to Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".

Present at the Creation--"Physics Today", 1948

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1579

One of the real pleasures of being a bookseller is the discovery of the unexpected source--in this case it was a small group of papers that at one time belonged to David Katcher, who--among many other things--was the first editor of the American Institute of Physics' magazine, Physics Today.  It was started in 1948 to help bridge the gap between good science writ bad and hard science writ even worse for the world of the general reader. These are a few of the fragments from the editor's desk, as Katcher was organizing his thoughts about what the magazine would be about, who would write for it, and how the ideas would be presented. 

For example, this worksheet for the first issues of the magazine outlined articles by some of the heaviest names in physics, with "something" by Bush, Conant, Oppenheimer; as well as who would be the target audience ("all");  and who the contributors would be ('big name").  Quite a different world and pace, then, and one in which a forceful man like Katcher could do a lot in, and quickly. 

Then there's this interesting page of notes of a conversation between Katcher and the great I.I. Rabi, who offered some suggestions and insights about what might appear in the new magazine:

And this, Katcher's very clear statement on editorial policy (for 28 July 1948):

History of Lines: the Desire Lines of William Blake

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1578    [Part of this blog's History of Lines series}

 The post dedicated to Patti Digh, brilliant writer and birthday girl, who wrote a lovely, image-filled  essay on Desire Lines back in December 2005 on her award-winning blog, 37days. I think the idea of Desire Lines is one of her favorites, and so I tried to imagine my own in her honor, a small Festschrift for the birthday girl.  Happy Birthday, P.D.!

 William Blake had a hard time of things, what with being thought of in unflattering terms of crazy vs. insane by many people rather than, say, being though of as "creative".  He led a good and relatively long life (1757-1827), and by his artistic and poetic creations inspired generations of other creatives, though he was very little recognized during his lifetime.  He was a seeker, and was somehow able to do his art and printmaking and poetry without a substantial income, living mostly on adequate income and patrons, slowly advancing to semi-poverty as he aged , but dying without a debt to his name.

The "line" that I site above to his unusual work, The Gates of Paradise--not the Baptistery doors by Ghiberti--, was actually a ladder and a collection of lines, but with the application of perspective becomes one combined line quicker and longer than it could ever be a ladder.   Blake's character, as with Blake himself, wants whatever it is that he can have, conceivable or not; and som, if he wants the Moon, he just goes to get it.  This version of The Gates of Paradise, which is largely a story of pictures and a few words as legend, was intended for children, perhaps--or at least that's what the title says.  In any event, its an interesting message to send to children whether it was actually intended for children of the chronological age, or not.  The "I Want, I Want" legend really wasn't necessary, as the image stands on its own.

Blake liked to tell a story with lines like this, as we see in this famous image of Newton:

Blake was an impossible anti-Newtonian--at least in my limited reading of the man--making a career of being a spectacular and beautiful anti-rationalist,  a weaver of smoke, playing with and distorting images like a theramin player of words, using language to produce dichotomies in even the most standard of sensate ideas.  Blake was the poster child for thing anti-tech, an anti-scientist out to save the world from its scientific self,  the rationalist world set to destroy imagination, the “Antichrist science” hell bent on destroying the soul of art and religion. 

“Art is the tree of life; Science is the tree of death” wrote Blake, and so he chose the “Athesistic”  Sir Isaac to stand for the beast, depicting him in art as a naked geometer intent on subjugating the world with a compass and a keen brain, reducing glory to quantification, the work of Satan..  For most of my life I thought that this image by Blake was celebrating Newton—I knew little of the poet/artist/poet, and thought the painting a reverence.  When I understood Blake a little,  I saw that the image was intended as a mockery of Newton and the idea of science—this was an unusual sensation, because absent the unspoken intention of the artist,  you could still take the subject matter of the artwork two ways. 

And of course the Creator:

 

God is presented as the Great Geometer, the creative power of the universe issuing forth with compass/dividers, was perhaps a kind of Greek conception of the rule of the universe and its interaction with all things on Earth. 

But it is interesting that in the end, Blake displays the sublime reasoning powers of Heaven and Earth, in the forms of God and Newton, both with desire lines.  I think he enjoyed doing that. 

The Series "For Children" of 1793:

How Fish and a Dog Nearly Prevented the Publication of Newton's Principia

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1508

Well, not really, no.  But sort of--when you open up the Big Book of Big Discovery, and go to the "N" section, and read about the Principia, the fish and the dog will at least be there.

The story of Edmond Halley and his wide importance in getting Isaac Newton to write what may be among the most supreme efforts in the history of science is very well known.  In pursuit of an answer to an excellent question put to him and Robert Hooke by Sir Christopher Wren in a London coffeehouse, Halley pursued his answer to the very doorstep of Newton, right to Cambridge, in a personal visit.  Newton of course knew the answer and knew more than the question, as his response provoked some of the deepest thoughts in the history. The answer to Wren's question involved something much bigger than what he knew, and it took Newton to recognize the elemental issue at play. Of course the answer would require a lot of collected observations and accurate data, which Halley could certainly provide via John Flamsteed (who was the founder of the Greenwich Observatory, and the first astronomer royal of England), but the answer involved the ability to do the calculations in a fundamentally different way.  It was the genius of Newton through and through that made the Principia (the full title by the way being Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which is Latin for "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), the Essential Book, but without the intercession and data provided by Halley, the whole deal gets a little muddy.

I can imagine that Hooke, who even though had come to the top of Newton's s-list, knew how he could answer the question, and knew that it was Newton that he needed to see, but he just couldn't do it.  As a matter of fact the Hooke/Newton business would get a little deeper as the Principia came closer to publication, with Hooke claiming some priority and influence in the ideas forming Book III--a claim that nearly prevented Newton from publishing that section of the work--but Halley again stepped in and smoothed the matter over, at least for the sake of publication.  Hooke though didn't let go, and neither did Newton, whose ultimate revenge over Hooke was by living significantly longer. 

He was prodded into publishing by Halley, who flattered and beguiled and pushed and preened and all the rest, skillfully managing the spectacular and difficult Newton, pressing him to completion.  It might be said, I think, that had Halley not been there to press Newton along, the Principia might not have been written at all, and we would know Sir Isaac for other things, but perhaps not for his great masterpiece. 

Aside from Halley's insistence, there was also the issue of money and getting the Principia printed, and even though the Royal Society had given its imprimatur¹ on Newton's project and had agreed to see it published, the publication was not necessarily a done deal.. The Royal Society hadn't gotten gotten over its disastrous investment in Francis Willoughby's History of Fishes (1686)²--an expensive edition with beautiful illustrations, a project that they funded but which just didn't sell.  And so the Society was a little gun shy, and tight.  As a matter of fact, Halley was at the time under consideration for the position of subordinate clerk, and was to receive a salary of 50 pounds (a substantial amount for the time) but was to be paid in copies of Willoughby's book, which was evaluated as one pound per copy (so Halley would make 50 copies of the Willoughby book for his work, per year).  But Halley guaranteed to pay for the publication of the Principia, paying for the thing out of his own pocket. 

Luckily Halley wasn't dependent upon his income as clerk, having inherited a legacy as well as a number of productive properties from his father³.  Halley had at least an inheritance of 150-200 pounds from his father's estate, not including 60 pounds that he received every year before his father died.  In addition to the cash was "property in several parishes in the city of London, including 13 houses in Winchester Street, two others on Canon Street...[others]...and the Dog Tavern." Halley was making enough money from the property investments to live a comfortable life, plus he had his own sources of income, plus he was living in a house without payment, also inherited from his father.  Halley was comfortable.

There was evidently one piece of property that was a major source of trouble to Halley's father and which it seems for a time threatened the stability of the family's legacy--the Dog Tavern.  But the elder Halley--also named Edmond--overcame those issues and held onto his other properties without major liabilities, and was able to make his bequest to the younger Halley, who was then (after much else happens) able to proceed funding the publication of the Principia.⁴

Notes:

1. Following the Halley visit in 1684 (August)  Newton would send his  De motu off to the Royal Society (received 10 December) ; after two and a half years of work on  28 April 1686 Newton's sent the Principia, Book I to the Royal Society, which on 19 May decided to publish it and which liscensed the book (via Samuel Pepys, the President of the Royal Society) on 30 June. 

2. The book was actually completed by John Ray following the death of Willoughby.

3. That  information comes from an article I read yesterday which sparked this post (Cook, Alan (07/01/1991). "Edmond Halley and Newton's  Principia. Notes and records of the Royal Society of London,  45 (2), p. 129}, Cook determining through his own careful research that Halley had ample funding to take care of the Principia (and also why it might have taken Halley so many months to make his trip to Cambridge, rather than just heading off to see Newton straight away from his coffeehouse meeting with Wren and Hooke). 

4. After it was all said and done, it looks as though the entire printing (300-400 copies, including 100 copies for presentation) of the first edition of the Principia cost under 100 pounds.  Part of this cost was offset because a number of copies were sold as sheets that were to be bound by the purchaser.  The second edition of 1713, with a print run of about 700 copies, cost 117 pounds.  It is interesting to note that the prices paid for copies of the first edition of the Principia didn't reach their astronomical proportions until the last decade or so, when lovely copies might demand a million dollars or more.  A.N.L. Munby (Munby, A N L (10/01/1952). "The Distribution of the First Edition of Newton\'s \'Principia\'". Notes and records of the Royal Society of London (0035-9149), 10 (1), p. 28) determines that he average price for the 17 copies of the Principia sold during the 1930's at auction was about 50 pounds, and that a signed presentation copy made 1 pound (!!) at auction in 1894.  Munby makes a good observation that the copy of the Principia for the Learned Gentleman's library in days gone by wouldn't necessarily have been the first edition, but the best edition, which would've made that the third edition of 1726. 

 

See also: 

 

Louis Turner's Review of Published Work on Nuclear Fission, 1934-1940.

With a List of Turner's References (Below)

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I've found this article¹ by physicist Louis A. Turner to be very helpful over the years.  He was an I-was-there guy (and actually an I-am-here guy) who wrote a stuccato article on the history of nuclear fission which was top heavy in references, and did so in 1940, just before the clamp came down on publication on the topic.  Certainly there are other more modern efforts in this area that are far more detailed, but few have managed to do so good a job in as limited space as Turner, which the fabulous John A. Wheeler recognized as a "great and timely" review².

Notes:

1. Louis Turner. "Nuclear Fission."  Lancaster:  American Physical Society,  1940. An article in the  Reviews of Modern Physics, vol 12/1, January 1940, pp 1-30  of an issue of 85pp   Original orange wrappers.  Fine condition.  Also contains articles by Seaborg and Zwicky.   

2.  J.A. Wheeler, "Fission in 1939, the Puzzle and the Promise" Annual Reviews, 1989. 

The original article can be purchased through our blog bookstore, here.

His 133 references can be read as a succession of one-line histories of the subject (barring the permissions to reproduce the entire article):

1. E. Fermi, Nature 133, 898 1934.
2. E. Amaldi, O. D'Agostino, F. Rassetti and E. Segrè, Proc. Roy. Soc. A146, 483 1934.
3. I. Noddack, Zeits. f. angew. Chimie. 37, 653 1934.
4. O. D'Agostino and E. Segrè, Gaz. Chim. Ital. 65, 1088 1935.
5. I. Curie, H. von Halban and P. Preiswerk, J. de phys. [7] 6, 361 1935; C.R. 200, 1841 1935; 200, 2079 1935.

A Graphical Representation of Journal Articles on Relativity Theory, 1896-1923

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I haven't often seen graphical representations showing the relative publishing interests in a particular discipline of the sciences, or the maths either for that matter.  But that's exactly what is found in the deep pages of Maurice Lecat's Bibliographie de la Relativité, suivie d'un appendice sur les déterminants à deux dimensions, le calcul des variations, les séries trigonométriques, et l'azéotropisme, published in Bruxelles by Lamertin in 1924. [The original text is offered for sale at our blog bookstore.]  The graph is called "Production Annuelle d'Ecrit sur la Relativite", and shows the total number of articles published in that area--or at least those identified by the verifiable Lecat, who finds more than 4,000 of them for the 1896-1922 1/2 period.

We track the year of publication on the X and the number of publications on the Y, and we can see that before the great 1905 special theory was published by Einstein that Lecat considered some dozens of other papers (actually more than 200)  to fall into that (pre-Einsteinian relativity) category. It is interesting to note that "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" paper (30 June 1905) is not indicated with a vertical "Einstein" for that year (like the for indicator for 1915/16), though Lecat does indicate the general decline in relativity papers in the 1914-1916 period  was probably caused by WWI.  The number of papers does triple and then quadruples in year one and two of the peace.

History of Blank and Missing Things: Who is Albert Einstein?

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1137

[Part of the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things series.]

There was a time when this was a real question, even though the subject of that question was in the process of changing physics. One of the most enigmatic strings of 12 words and numerals in the history of science, “Bern, June, 1905" appeared at the end of Albert Einstein’s special relativity paper, setting the question in motion..

This difficult publication–one of the most revolutionary in the history of physics–was written by a mystery man.  Its author was basically unknown–when readers tried to find Einstein, they went to the universities in Bern, naturally, but of course didn’t find him there.  No one would have guessed that he was a patent office grunt, one window at work to call his own.  There were no clues in the paper about the other, not really–not even a footnote.  An invisible man was changing the face of physics. 

1905 was, well, “busy” for Einstein.  Perhaps no one person has ever had a year like this, in any discipline. His four papers delivered during this time was nothing short of miraculous.  To start,  Einstein turned 26 on 14 March, and sent his magnificent  photoelectricity paper¹ to the Annalen der Physik  three days later.  At the end of April, Einstein sent in his doctoral dissertation to the University of Zurich² (the paper accepted and approved in July  and degree formally awarded on 15 January 1906). A few weeks later (a) his son Hans Albert celebrated his first birthday and (b)he got his big idea on the special theory.  Also in this same extraordinary month of May he sent the Annalen his Brownian Motion paper³, and then, a little more than a month later, Einstein sent his SRT ⁴ paper in to the same Annalen, and saw it published 26 September.

As Einstein’s great paper awaited publication he returned from a short vacation with his family and sent in his (a)  dissertation (on 19 August, and which is published in February 1906) and (b) his mass-energy equivalence paper⁵ (E=mc2). I can think of no other time for any other scientist in the history of the sciences who had so much fabulous stuff up in the air at the same time. Impossible, really.  And then, after most of the papers are published and appeared in the orange-wrappered physical journal Annalen der Physik, Einstein got a part-time job tutoring a student.

At the end of 1905 Einstein was becoming less Blank, but considering the power of his publications, I can’t think of anyone of equal power who was unequally unknown. 
   
Notes   

1. “On a Heuristic Point of View concerning the Production and Transformation of Light.” published June 9.
2. “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.” (Published in 1906.)
3. “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat.” published July 18.
4. “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” Received June 30, published 26 September.
5. “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?”

Seeing Vision: Examples of Light and Sight, Personified

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 976

(On seeing the morning’s rising sun): “Looks like light to me.” SpongeBob SquarePants 

“All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to answer the question, 'What are light quanta?' Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.”  A. Einstein

“Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another, and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition?” I. Newton, Opticks, 1704, Query 30.

Depicting the capacity of sight and nature of light has been both an easy and a knotty problem in the history of science. Over the successive theories on the basis of light the artistic presentation of the phenomenon has been generalized (generally) in a very simple way:  by straight lines.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, the lines are just parenthetic place-holders suggesting direction, not actual descriptors of what light “looks” like.

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of images printed 1550-1850 to call upon to make this point, and I've selected but a few.  The first belongs to Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner and which appeared in his  Oculusm hoc est: fundamentum opticum...,printed in Innsbruck in 1619. His work is an out-and-out landmark in the history of optics,  physiological optics and ophthahlmometry, and provided a springboard for two generations following him, not the least of whom was Rene Descartes. The illustration above is the book's frontispiece, and features four camera obscuras demonstrating four principles of the eye, the middle ground of which is a beam of light 

Rene Descartes depicted the interpretation (in his  Principles of Philosophy of 1644) of light and its physiological reaction in the brain as follows:

the lines of sight depicting binocular vision, observed (and compressed) by the eye's "particles" and processed by the pineal gland which in turn manipulate the "fluids" in the control of nerves and muscles. 

Another example of even greater fame than the iconic image by Descartes is that of the diagram showing the connection between color and its reflective index by Isaac Newton, appearing in his Opticae of 1706.

 

Another fine example comes from Zacharias Traber's (1611-1679) beautifully illustrated classic of optics (and physiological optics) , Nervus Opticus sive Tractatus Theoricus..., published in Vienna in 1690.  Traber is a great collector and synthesizer of the work done during and before his time, using the work of Descartes, Kepler, Schott, Kircher, Scheiner and Aguilon (for example), and then further implementing their ideas especially in the areas of color theory  and light refraction.  The image certainly reflects Jesuit Traber's religious training, depicting the holy source of light (originating with the almighty force) which directs it to the sun; the light then is left to the inquisitive and playful hands of cherubs who reflect and magnify it, as well as use it to start a fire (from the condensing lens) and observe it through a telescope. The main cherub empties a sack containing a number of different optical tools, no doubt for the playful brethern beneath. 

 

And then of course there is the great, unstoppable, polymathic and sometimes incorrect Jesuit Athanasius Kircher.  This image appears in his masterwork Ars Magna lucis et umbrae, printed in Amsterdam in 1671, which deals with light and shadow, optical illusions, color, refraction, projection and distortion, sundials, mirrors, as well as astronomical subjects. Most of these subjects are clearly seen in the engraved frontispiece to the work (below), the source of all of the "rays" of light coming from the godhead, relayed through a telescope, reflected from a mirror, and gathered in a camera obscura. 

 

Other interesting images from the Kircher include this spotlight.

Going from “Nothing” to Everything in a Few Years: Einstein at the Solvay Conference, 1911

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 761 Blog Bookstore

By “nothing” I mean Einstein’s relative “nothing” of early 1905 compared to the rest of the hard-working, Ph.D. laden physics field in the major universities of Germany.  And certainly Einstein was nothing and somewhat nowhere in this regard just prior to his momentous year of 1905*, scrounging around the fringes of the academic world, working as a patent examiner, trying to get his doctorate hammered out and accepted. 

Then come the summer of 1905, and the dates June 9,  July 18,  September 26 and November 21—the publication dates of his four papers in the Annalen der Physik, and with them a new epoch in the history of physics, a true modernizing, revolutionary effect takes place. 

But Einstein quietly gets his dissertation accepted (and his degree confirmed in January 1906 from the University of Zurich), and his revolution is started, absolutely certain of his results, but privately worried about whether all of it would be as beautiful as Newton ’s theories. The ball is forever set in motion.  And to make a little extra money, Einstein takes a private student for instruction at the end of the year.  He is 26 years old. 

The odd thing (although not odd when explained by Abraham Pais in any of his three books relating to Einstein) is that Einstein would remain at the patent office for another four years, though he is promoted to second class expert in 1907.  Einstein does become a private college lecturer in 1908, but stays with the patent office until October 1909 (even though he is awarded his first honorary doctorate in July from the University of Geneva) when he begins work as an associate prof for theoretical physics at Zurich.

Things speed up for Einstein from this point, and he is suddenly and rightfully acknowledged as being one of the most important thinkers in the field of physics in the world by being invited to the ultra-exclusive Solvay Conference for theoretical physics in 1911. (By the time of the conference, Einstein had been a professor at the German University in Prague, in 1910.) At 32 he is the youngest person there, surrounded by some of the best minds in the business. 

[Invited attendees for the 1911 Solvay Conference at the Hotel Metropole. included   Seated (L-R): W. Nernst, M. Brillouin, E. Solvay, H. Lorentz, E. Warburg, J. Perrin, W. Wien, M. Curie, and H. Poincaré. Standing (L-R): R. Goldschmidt, M. Planck, H. Rubens, A. Sommerfeld, F. Lindemann, M. de Broglie, M. Knudsen, F. Hasenöhrl, G. Hostelet, E. Herzen, J.H. Jeans, E. Rutherford, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, A. Einstein and P. Langevin.]

Einstein is evidently not moved by the proceedings, writing that he had heard “nothing new”, at least at the formal meetings.  The conference was for a full week,but since everyone was staying at the same hotel (which would’ve been a pretty potent address for that week) I assume that a lot was discussed in private—evidently Einstein was extremely quiet during the official proceedings, but became animated in private, post-conference conversations. 

My point for this post, really, is quite simple—the extraordinary academic rise in Einstein’s fortunes during the 1909-1911 period, captured in this famous photo.  Einstein was a bona fide powerhouse (the powerhouse) by this point, what with his revolutionary 1905 papers, plus the blockbusters of 1906, 1908 and 1911, and still yet getting stronger. (Incidentally, I always wondered about Einstein’s hand position in photos like this, showing one hand seemingly forming a neat zero with index and thumb. Actually, that hand is in the same position for this photo and for the other Solvay Conferences that Einstein attended (the 2^nd, 5^th and 6^th)—the mystery for me was solved by my friend Dr. Raymond Cooper, who pointed out to me that it was just Einstein holding his pipe.

*It really is hard to overstate the importance of Einstein’s efforts in this year.  Really.

The four papers in volume 17 of the Annalen der Physik:

-Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristishen Gesichtspunkt, (“On a Heuristic Point of View concerning the Production and Transformation of Light.”) being the photoelectricity/quantum of light paper, received March 18 and published June 9.

-Die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen, (“On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat”), being the  Brownian Motion of particles/atomic theory paper, received May 11, published July 18.

-Elektrodynamic bewegter Körper, (“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”), being the special relativity theory paper,. received June 30 and published 26 September.

-Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieeinhalt abhängig? (“Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?”), being the mass-energy equivalence paper (and the kernel of E=mc²), received September 27 and published November 21.

A List of the Solvay Conferences (the number, followed by its year, a translation of the title of the conference, and the conference chair):

Isaac Newton's Disappearing Name, 1711

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. I wrote briefly yesterday about a vast understatement on the work (“innovations”) of Isaac Newton lifting so little that virtually nothing else could exist, a black hole of a description of his life’s work.  An editorial oversight, I am perfectly sure.  I doubt that there is anything that I could actually add to the massive amount that has been written on the great and irascible man, though there is something that has stayed in my head for a long time without any real satisfactory answer.  Of the three superb, revolutionary works by  Newton, only one features the author’s name in near-fullness on the title page (Principia, 1687); the next, Opticks (first edition, 1704), appears with only his initials (“J.N”) at the end of the preface; and the third, his full treatment on his invention/discovery of the calculus (Analysis per Quantitatum Series, Fluxiones ac Differerntias cum Enumeratione Linearum,1711), appears with neither name nor initials.  The illustration on the front page features what may or may not be pure holy light emanating from the face of the creator; or is it Newton himself? It certainly looks like the old man, and among all of the great scientists and mathematicians of the modern age, Sir Isaac’s image is the best deserving of such an elevation.  In any event, I wonder why the disappearance of the name--it was not a standard practice, and the most immediate answer to me is that it was a (deserved, Leibniz notwithstanding) conceit.  I'm not sure.

Great Sceintific Understatement Department: Isaac Newton as the First and Only above Equals

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Earlier in this blog I’ve addressed some great understatements in the history of science and technology.  For example:

--the Wright brothers’ telegram to their father on the successful flight at Kitty Hawk, telling him to “inform Press” [sic], and misspelling Orville (“Orvelle”)

--the announcement of the invention of the telephone, giving Mr. Bell a scant 200-word mention in the London-based journal Nature.

--the alpha and omega element of the severe understatement of George Gamow on discovering the background radiation of the Big Bang.

--and the atomic bomb/nuclear Armageddon bit from the National Emergency Planning Council:  ( “Because of recent changes in the technology and potential tempo of war and because of the base power of force is in being (including equipment and supplies), there is general recognition that any future war in which the United States is engaged, especially if it is an unlimited nuclear war, may be decided without significant additional military demands upon the nation’s industrial economy.” Hmm. He continues: “That is not to say, however, that the post-attack economy would not face enormous logistical support problems.” There is no human element of this equation. “The logistic requirements of survival and recovery would present very heavy demands.”)

It is rare to see such terrific understatement concerning some of the scientific worthies, but this one (below) found in a  penetrating, interesting and very entertaining work  Devices of Wonder (2001) is really pretty remarkable.  The book illustrates an exhibition co-curated by Barbara Stafford (Chicago), and the passage comes in a part of the book by Frances Terpak.  I hate to take someone to task like this, particularly having written such a fine book, and further hate to drag anyone over coals that at all times wait for me, but Terpak' description of Newton's accomplishments as "innovations" (page 194)  goes far beyond the line.  Within two sentences she does discuss Newton's "monumental" stature and "great experiments", but alas the cat is out of the bag.  If Newton's Opticks and Principia and et cetera are "innovations", then virtually nothing else is; everything else being at least not-innovations, identifying a world of sameness.  I know that this is a simple editorial oversight, but it is a big one, at least in my head, and does fit perfectly (even if by mistake) into the blog's "great understatements" topology. 

1932 as an Annus Mirabilis

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My daughter Emma started a collection for my wife Patti last year--for Mother’s Day—of books with dates as the main part of their title. For example:  Roger Crowley’s 1453, James Chace 1912, Andrew Brieford 1066, Charles Mann’s 1491, David McCullogh’s 1776, and that elusive 1968 that I can never find.  It is a wonderful idea, and probably something that could be expanded as a real collection. 

I mention this because I was thinking about Big Years, enormous years, the annus mirabilis. 1905 is the first date that springs to mind in this category, but it is almost entirely dedicated to one person—Einstein—and not that much miraculously else, though it can probably be argued that those four papers in the Annalen were enough for enormous contributions spread across four very big people.  Einstein really did have that good a year.

I like the year (for the sciences, anyway) 1932.

It isn’t thought of in the same way, say, as 1543, which was a great year for things big and little. Nicolas Copernicus saw (finally, basically from his deathbed) his  "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) published in Nuremberg, while the Brussels-born, brilliant and troubled Andreas Vesalius had Johannes Oporinus  print his revolutionary treatment of the human body "De humani corporis fabrica" (On the Fabric of the Human Body). Copernicus said the things that any thinking person was thinking about the structure of the solar system and universe at large, while Vesalius conducted his brave overthrow of the deeply ancient Galenic system of anatomy.

1932 isn’t 1666, either, though 1-sign-of-the-devil’s stupendous nature was related in a way to that of 1543.  1666 saw a great heavenly event—the naming of the comet known as Halley’s—and a horrendous biological one, with the great plague of London,  which killed upwards of 100,000 people.  (It was a bad year overall for the city—the winter of 1665 was terrifically cold and was followed by the plague.  At the tail end of the plague came the Great Fire of London [the diarist Samuel Pepys referring to it as 'a most horrid malicious bloody flame']).  It seems more like an annus horriblius more than anything else. Except of course for Issac Newton, who had a very fine year this year.

And 1932 wasn’t 1453 or 1066 or 1968 or 1776 or 1918 or 1945.  Perhaps it is close to 1859, which saw the  publication of what may be the most revolutionary work of the 19^th century in  Darwin'  On the Origin of Species.  Bunsen and Kirchhoff added spectacular content when they figured out (with the aid of earlier work by Fraunhoeffer and others) the internal constitution of the stars with a telescope equipped with A spectroscope—truly an unthinkable breakthrough to even a well-rounded mid-19^th century mind. 

What happened in1932 was another sweeping array of discoveries in the large and small.  Carl Anderson identified the positron while James Chadwick discovered the neutron and the Joliot-Curies’ made their monumental discoveries in radiation (called “one of the most important discoveries of the century... the consequences of the discovery of artificial radioactivity are immense" from Segrè, From X-rays to Quarks, 198-199).  Iwanenko described the neutron as a constituent f the nucleus, while Heisenberg described the nucleus as composed of protons and neutrons.  Knoll and Ruska built the electron microscope, allowing a vision of the interior parts of the interiors of the smallest things, offering images almost as spectacularly new as Hooke’s two centuries earlier.  Looking up and out, in the same year, Lev Landau postulated the existence of neutron stars while Karl Jansky invented radio astronomy.  (Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler also had a big year this year.)*

It is tempting to include 16 months or so of 1925/6/7 in this list, if for no other reason than the people making the great innovations were so very young--the term for these German physicists is Knabenphysik (boy physics, boy physicists), and what they did was invent the new quantum mechanics and change the face of physics.  It all came about at the end of the era of the old quantum theory (which comprised the years 1900-1925), and pretty much all at the  University of Goettingen.  The 1925 players were Werner Heisenberg (age 23, with his PhD. under Sommerfeld), Paul Jordan (age 22 with his Ph.D. under Born), Wolfgang Pauli (25, with his doctorate under Sommerfeld) and P. (aul)A.M. Dirac (22, and who wrote the world’s first dissertation on quantum mechanics).  The odd person out in this group though was perhaps the strongest: Erwin Schroedinger was 37 in 1925, definitely the “Old Man” of this set.  On the other hand there were three men of mountainous importance in physics who also made vast contributions to the new physics, even though  they were, um, more mature:  Max Born (in his mid-forties), Niels Bohr (about the same age) and Arnold Sommerfeld (who was 60 when he founded the quantum mechanics of metals).

In any event, I like 1932.  Next time we'll look at another Big Year:  1948.

*Some of the books released in this year was also a bumper crop:  Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway; Light in August, William Faulkner; 1919, John Dos Passos; The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett; Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell; Young Lonigan, James Farrell; Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder; and Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley