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?”

Comments

[Rick Hamrick]

It is impossible to concoct a more-perfect set of circumstances, isn't it? A man of his brilliance shining at a time when global communications were such that he could progress to the point of having his dissertation ready without being known at all (I don't think that would be possible today), and, of course, a singular mind at the height of its power just as he is first introduced to the world.

It all lined up!

I am old enough to have seen Feynman at Caltech, but not old enough to have seen Einstein there. He helped put Caltech on the map as a legitimate home for important work in physics by visiting three years running in the 1930s.

[John F. Ptak]

Its an interesting question about how or if the E papers could've been published , or at the very least his dissertation. Certainly being unknown (even though E did have 4 papers published up to 1904) and not using footnotes or refs would've played against the man. I'm of course unsure about what the equivalent of his 4 papers might be interms of 2010. // And it was extraordinary that the man was waiting for everything to happemn in the summer/fall of 1905, waiting for stuff to appear...though I also doubt that he was waiting at all. I doubt that there was any doubt at all.