Albert Einstein: Master of the Universe

Nuwan Karunaratne

SHEER GENIUS: "The most beautiful and deepest experience a person can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and in science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind.

The sense that behind anything that can be experienced, there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.

To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is." These words of wisdom were cited by Albert Einstein, one of the most famous persons in history, and almost certainly the smartest. Last 14 marked the 127th birth anniversary of this remarkable intellect.

Furthermore, it was just last year that the global scientific community celebrated the "International World Year of Physics" and "Einstein Year" simultaneously to appreciate a centenary of modern innovations and Einstein's contributions to them.

Today, 51 years after his death, the father of relativity still captures the imagination of the world. Walk into a shop selling toys, trinkets for children and you will find miniature models and pictures of Einstein. Ask for help in Microsoft Word and a cartoon Einstein will do his best to solve your problem.

Visit an extravagant promotional campaign of some service or commodity that has nothing to do with physics, yet there will be a good chance of coming across a portrait of Einstein along with one of his famous quotations.

There are even books that carry compiled lists of quotations covering the great physicists' thoughts on everything from abortions to Zionism. To physicists and non-physicists alike, Einstein has become a byword for genius. Why is this?

Why is Einstein so very famous not only as a physicist but also as an intellect ? It all started in 1905, Albert Einstein was 26 and married with two children and was working as a patent examiner in Bern, Switzerland. His passion was physics, however he had been unable to find an academic position after graduating from ETH in Zurich in 1900.

Nevertheless, he found time and the peace of mind to do some genuine thinking and formulate his ideas on core concepts of physics. The end result was the publication of five seminal papers in less than seven months, from March to September 1905, which are now considered as monumental and instrumental in realising the physics that we know today.

The first of these papers was submitted on 17 March 1905, three days after his 26th birthday. The paper was on the photoelectric effect. Here Einstein boldly suggested that light consists of individual, discrete and indivisible particles. With this audacious claim Einstein challenged the crowning achievement of 19th century theoretical physics : the electromagnetic theory of light.

However with his radical idea, Einstein was able to explain certain puzzles about the way that light or any other electro- magnetic radiation ejected electrons from a metal. At first, this radical idea was universally rejected.

And it was not until Arthur Compton's 1923 X - ray scattering experiment, which showed light bouncing off electrons like colliding billiard balls, that physicists finally accepted Einstein's idea. For this work, Einstein would go on to receive the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Today many claim that Einstein's March paper was the start of Quantum Physics. Furthermore, according to Prof. John S. Rigden of University of Washington, St. Louis, USA, this paper is one that is truly revolutionary in Modern Physics.

Prof. Rigden argues that, to make a physics paper revolutionary four requirements should be satisfied. The paper should contain a "big idea". Next, the big idea must contradict the accepted norms of its time.

Third, physicists capable of understanding the built-in merit of the big idea typically reject it until they are forced to accept it. And finally, the big idea must survive and eventually become part of mainstream physics. Einstein's March paper met all these criteria.

On 30th April Einstein completed his second 1905 paper, in which he showed how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of the molecules by studying their motion in a solution.

This article was accepted by the University of Zurich and earned Einstein a Ph.D. Despite Einstein's fame with special theory of relativity and photoelectric effect, this work done on molecular dimensions became one of his most quoted research papers.

Just 11 days later, Einstein published another paper this time on Brownian motion and derived an equation that showed that the displacement of Brownian particles varies as the square root of time. This equation yielded a quantitative measure of the size of the atom and was a result of his quest for the literal truth of the existence of the atom.

Later the French chemist Jean Perrin experimentally confirmed Einstein's predictions, proving once and for all that atoms do exist. This work on Brownian motion kick-started a transformation in statistical physics that is still going on today. Examples include the stock market, where Brownian motion theory has been used to model the fluctuation of share prices and traffic flow.

Einstein's fourth paper was published on 30 June 1905 and was titled "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies" . Here Einstein postulated that no matter how fast you are moving, light will always appear to travel at the same speed combined with the requirement that the laws of physics are the same in all non-accelerating frames.

Einstein built a completely new theory of motion which revealed that hitherto assumed undisputed Newtonian mechanics was just an approximation that holds at low, everyday speeds.

This theory later became known as the special theory of relativity. In it Einstein showed that the deeply ingrained concepts like absolute space and time are just mental crutches that hinder the complete exploration of the world. He had the courage to drop these deep-rooted concepts as tools for the description of the world and was rewarded with a totally different and a novel view of the nature.

This newly acquired wisdom went on to make Einstein, crŠme de la crŠme in Modern Physics. Einstein did not stop at here, there was more to come, and on 27th of September, he submitted the fifth and final paper of 1905 - just three pages with the title "Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content ?".

This paper presented the consequences of the special theory of relativity from a different perspective and culminated in the most famous equation of all : E = mc2. And by the end of 1905 Einstein was starting to make a name for himself in the physics community. In 1909 he resigned form the patent office and took up his first academic position at University of Zurich as an associate professor.

By this time Einstein's statistical interpretation of Brownian motion and his bold postulates of special relativity were becoming part of the fabric of physics. In 1912, Einstein returned to Switzerland as professor at ETH, Zurich and three years later achieved the acme of his scientific career, by formulating the general theory of relativity giving a new perspective to gravitation.

And later in his life he would turn down an offer to be the President of Israel, a very rare opportunity for a scientist. However the year 1905 was undoubtedly the greatest year for Einstein and for physics in general. Frank Wilczek who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize of Physics states that Einstein's achievements in 1905 are one of a kind and can only be compared with the achievements made by Galileo and Newton.

Amidst the glorifications for his achievements, Einstein was modest enough to accept that he was guided and nourished by works of other notable scientists, namely Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Lorentz. Einstein would later acknowledge these by stating, "We stand on the shoulders of giants".

With good virtues like this and along with his love to mankind which was clearly evident when he became a proponent for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons among nations through the "Russell-Einstein manifesto", Einstein was more than a scientist he was an intellect par excellence.

Many present day physicists think that Einstein's 1905 discoveries would have eventually been made by others but not within less than seven months and definitely not in their spare time! In that sense Albert Einstein was a remarkable human and by all means could be regarded as a great physicist and a gentleman. It is always befitting to address him as a genius.

Thus it seems very pertinent to declare 2005 as the "International World Year of Physics" by the United Nations and the last year was full of celebrations within physics communities throughout the world.

In Sri Lanka too there were several celebrations to mark this international event, especially the celebrations organized by the Department of Physics, University of Sri Jayawardhanapura are worth mentioning.

The celebrations comprised of a very informative and a vivid presentation that spanned from Aristotle to Einstein and from Music to Physics and then there was a colourful poster exhibition depicting the many achievements of Einstein and the newest trends in modern physics.

A unique feature of the celebrations was the presentation of a Sinhala song titled "Einstein Prashasthi" which was written by the incumbent Professor of Physics of the Department of Physics.

This item added glamour and novelty to the whole event.