Einstein: A Life of Genius (The True Story of Albert Einstein) Page 4

  Three weeks before the eclipse, however, Germany and Russia declared war on each other, and the team was arrested by Russian troops. The day of the eclipse was overcast, and photographs would have been impossible in any case.

  Ironically, in subsequent months, Einstein uncovered an error in his calculations which, had the photographs materialized, would have disproven his theory. The theory of general relativity still needed attention, but in the summer of 1914, the world changed forever.

  The First World War Erupts

  The war which descended upon Europe in 1914 was unlike any other in history. Greater than 60 million European soldiers were mobilized during a conflict, and more than 9 million would be dead by its resolution. It was a war in which the wonders of the previous decades became weapons of unbelievable destruction. The automobile became a means of moving troops. The airplane, less than a decade after its invention and popularization, gave generals the new military option of bombing enemy cities far behind the front lines. Civilians, usually considered noncombatants during wars in the previous century, were in the line of fire. Both Germany and Great Britain attempted to starve each other’s civilian populations, the British through a naval blockade, the Germans by the use of the submarine.

  Early German successes in the war soon slowed down, turning the conflict into a war of attrition, and trenches cut across the landscape of Europe. Toxic gas made its first appearance on the battlefield, as did a fearsome new weapon known as a tank.

  Although the causes of the war were many, two at the forefront were militarism and nationalism, traits Einstein despised. As German national pride and militaristic hubris drew in many of his colleagues and friends, Einstein was appalled. “Europe in its madness has now embarked on something incredibly preposterous,” he wrote. His pacifist views and arguments against the war isolated him from friends, many of whom became active supporters of the German military machine.

  Einstein Resolves the Theory of General Relativity

  By mid-1915, Einstein’s progress in general relativity was sufficient for him to present it in full to fellow physicists. By the end of November, he had finalized the theory. In a series of four papers presented that month to the Prussian Academy, he established an entirely new way of looking at existence. Physicist Max Born called it, “the greatest feat of human thinking about nature, the most amazing combination of philosophical penetration, physical intuition and mathematical skill.” Yet it continued to garner skepticism from other physicists, and remained a theory under debate.

  Einstein’s Marriage ends in Divorce

  Einstein dealt with the debate and skepticism stubbornly, protected his findings and explained them with infinite patience. His two sons saw only this stubborn side of him. Convinced that their mother had poisoned their minds against him, he became aloof, and widened the emotional distance between himself and his sons. The difficulty to cross borders during the war and Einstein’s fatigue from the work on relativity prevented him from seeing his children often, and several promised visits were canceled. Meanwhile, Elsa pushed Einstein to finalize a divorce from Maleva. In early 1916, Einstein wrote to Maleva and formally asked for a divorce. “For you it involves a mere formality,” he wrote. “For me, however, it is an imperative duty.” He believed that he could convince her with more money, and he cunningly offered to increase his support, cloaking it in his expressed desire “to do more than I had obligated myself to before.” Maleva soon suffered an emotional collapse, which Einstein dismissed to intermediaries. “She is not afraid to use all means when she wants to achieve something. You have no idea of the natural craftiness of such a woman.”

  In 1917, it was Einstein’s turn to fall ill with a stomach condition that was worsened by the shortages of food as a result of the war. The now 38 year old Einstein lost more than forty pounds as a result of the illness. As he recovered, he increased his financial offer to Maleva. Although he had not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize, his confidence that he would one day convinced him to offer her the financial portion of the award, a highly lucrative sum, as an incentive. By late 1918, as the German Empire fell apart in riots and naval mutinies, she agreed, and his marriage to Maleva came to an end. The war ended in November 1918, the marriage the following month. The divorce documents forbade Einstein from marrying again for a period of two years. But he ignored that authority as he typically did, and married Elsa a few months later.

  Relativity is Proven with Photographic Evidence

  In the spring of 1919, an English expedition led by Arthur Eddington journeyed to Principe, an equatorial island off the west coast of Africa. A second expedition journeyed to Brazil. Both were funded by the British Admiralty, and both were tasked with obtaining photographs of the solar eclipse in late May.

  Their intent was to determine whether or not the gravity of the sun would bend the light from stars passing by it. Neither expedition was directly connected with Einstein. Their findings, released in November of 1919, created a sensation. Einstein’s theory of relativity was proven correct, as was his earlier findings that light contained mass. To a world weary of war, it was a revelation. Overnight, Albert Einstein became much more than a noted physicist; he achieved world-wide fame.

  Einstein regarded the reaction in the world’s press with bemusement. He wrote to Heinrich Zangger, “The newspaper drivel about me is pathetic.” Others were quick to jump on the bandwagon, with more than six hundred publications regarding relativity written within six years of the eclipse which established it as fact.

  Einstein Encounters World Wide Acclaim

  As his findings transformed the way reality was viewed by the public, the manner by which the public viewed Einstein transformed him. No longer required to defend unproven theories, he became more relaxed. He learned to give a quick response to questions, often with humor. He appeared confident in himself, and comfortable with the sudden acclaim. At forty years old, he carried himself with a charming humility, and completely disarmed those who approached him. The combative stubbornness was gone.

  Although Einstein occasionally complained to friends and colleagues about the attention and adulation showered upon him, he did little to avoid it, and much to seek it out. A writer who came to know him well said, “He had the element of the exhibitionist and the ham.” In keeping with this description, he happily granted interviews and ensured that many of his aphorisms and anecdotes were included in them. He agreed to cooperate with a biographer, to the dismay of his many Jewish friends, who worried that the book would stir up latent anti-Semitism in Germany. When the book came out, it allowed many of his detractors to claim that he was using his science to turn a profit, and that he had become a shameless self-promoter.

  Einstein considered himself to be a loner, and avoided strong emotional attachments and burdens. “I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family…I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.” Einstein himself remarked, “Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being.”

  Einstein Becomes a Zionist Supporter

  As Einstein’s fame grew, so did the anti-Semitism in Germany in the aftermath of the war. Einstein, exhibiting again the stubborn rebelliousness of his nature, began to embrace his Jewish heritage. He did not join any active Zionist groups, but he vocalized his support of Jewish settlements in Palestine. “I am, as a human being, an opponent of nationalism,” he announced. “But as a Jew, I am from today a supporter of the Zionist effort.” He supported the establishment of a Jewish university in Palestine. This placed him in direct opposition with German Jews, many of whom favored assimilation, including many of his friends and colleagues.

  Einstein’s widespread fame and support of Zionism brought him to the United States in 1921. Einstein looked at the trip to the United States as a grand lecture tour that would allow him to earn money in a stable currency, rather than the German currency, which had begun the early stages of h
yperinflation. When American universities balked at the fees he demanded for lectures, the trip became one supported by Zionist activities, and the World Zionist Organization, urged by its President, Chaim Weizmann, funded it.

  Einstein’s First Visit to the United States

  Upon arrival in New York, a press officer with the Zionist organization asked Einstein to attend the press conference. Einstein recoiled at the idea of a press conference, saying, “It’s like undressing in public.” Yet, at the conference, which all who attended agreed he thoroughly enjoyed, Einstein performed for the questioners and photographers, chuckled over questions and delivered the quips and asides with which he had already charmed the Europeans. He described those in Germany who opposed his theories as “animated by political motives…due to anti-Semitism.” When asked if he could describe relativity in one sentence, he replied that he had been working his whole life to describe it in a book. When the session ended he quipped, “I hope I have passed my examination.”

  In Washington, Einstein met with President Warren G. Harding, who freely admitted that he had no comprehension of the famous theory. Einstein was honored at the National Academy of Sciences with a reception, and endured hours of speeches from fellow honorees, before commenting to a fellow attendee that he had developed a new theory of eternity. Einstein continued his trip to Chicago, Princeton, and Harvard, and delivered lectures (Harvard did not invite him to lecture) and attended receptions for the purpose of raising money for Jewish settlements in Palestine.

  More Travel and the Nobel Prize

  Although the trip contributed to Einstein’s fame and his finances, it did not raise much money for the Zionist cause. It also allowed Einstein to affirm in a foreign land his own self-view of himself as a world citizen, rather than a German or a Swiss. Later trips to Asia and Palestine helped him to reinforce this image. On all of these trips, his global fame drew large crowds to his speeches and lectures, and helped him to restore his finances from the ravages of German hyperinflation.

  In November of 1922, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, which he had worked on beginning in 1905, during his tenure at the Patent Office. His work had given birth to new theories in physics, which addressed quanta, which he had identified as a component of electromagnetic radiation.

  Einstein found much to be uncomfortable with shortly thereafter, as younger thinkers began to build upon his own findings. He had become one of the old guard, and spent more time defending established thinking and classical ideas, rather than innovating and challenging conventional wisdom.

  Backlash and Criticism of Einstein’s Views

  The range of his fame and his humble, almost self-deprecating use of it to promote his ideas and beliefs carried an inevitable backlash by those repelled at the idea of his self-promotion. It also sparked severe criticism for his use of his fame in support of Zionism. In Germany, anti-Semitism had risen to fearful levels. Many Jews in Germany had for decades practiced assimilation, in which they tried to meld within German society, becoming more German than Jewish. Einstein’s support for Zionism — the quest for an independent Jewish state — placed the assimilationists in an uncomfortable position, one in which they fell under suspicion that all Jews were of divided loyalties. As Einstein used his celebrity to both support Zionism and declaim assimilation as impossible, their discomfort rose.

  In his defense of his Zionist views, Einstein explained why assimilation is impossible: “…the Jews are a group of people unto themselves. Their Jewishness is visible in their physical appearance, and one notices their Jewish heritage in their intellectual work.” He added, noting the unease and hyperinflation rampant in Germany, “People need a scapegoat and make the Jews responsible. They are the target of instinctive resentment because they are of a different tribe.”

  How a Theoretical Physicist Rose to Celebrity

  Einstein owed much of his celebrity to his timing. At the end of World War I and in the aftermath of the Spanish Flu pandemic which followed, the world was desperate for something to relieve it from the horror and senseless destruction. The appearance, almost as if on cue, of a man of intellect and peace, someone humble, self-effacing and avuncular in appearance and demeanor, was a breath of fresh air. That he had reinvented existence in terms of physical laws gave him a near Messianic status.

  Einstein enjoyed his celebrity. He relished the adulation of crowds and the press. He retained his simple tastes and lifestyle, and enjoyed the freedom of movement that accompanied his growing wealth.

  His occasional complaints about the trappings of fame were half-hearted, and he did little to avoid it, or to limit the public’s access to him. Einstein regarded fame as a reward for his work. His celebrity was a tool through which he could reach a larger audience. To sharpen that tool, he promoted himself, despite the disapproval of his friends and colleagues in the scientific community. His reputation continued to grow as he argued against the growing research into quantum mechanics and as the application of his famous equation from his early research into relativity — E=mc2 — took on a more onerous meaning.

  Chapter 5: The Search for the Grail

  Einstein had turned physics on its head when he bridged the fields of electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics. After World War One, he turned his attentions and efforts to merge the fields of electromagnetism and gravitation into a single, unified theory.

  Einstein was not the only physicist working towards this goal. Einstein took the work of others and revised it, and often presented his own findings, only to retract them later as unworkable. The search for a unified theory eventually consumed his entire scientific career, and he worked on it literally until the day he died.

  Einstein’s Discomfort with Quantum Theory

  At the core of Einstein’s belief was the principal of causal determinism— action and reaction— which had been defined by Newton. Einstein had disproven much of Newton’s theories when he reinterpreted what Newton had observed, and when he redefined time. In doing this, he had helped to give birth to a new field of study: quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the study of the behavior of particles, and relies largely on probabilities rather than absolutes.

  Einstein was uncomfortable with quantum mechanics, both scientifically and philosophically. In quantum mechanics, causal determinism disappears. Scientifically, Einstein was unable to accept this theory. His problem with the theory was that quantum revolution defined reality with uncertainty, which ran against his ingrained sense that nature must operate with absolute certainty. Einstein believed, and many times said, that the goal of physics was to understand the laws that establish cause and effect. This scientific position was in full accord with his philosophical beliefs— that a divine hand had created the universe in accordance with unbending physical laws. Einstein could not reconcile that portions of creation operated by laws, and other portions by whim. “God does not play dice,” he once said in response to the theory.

  Einstein’s Work in Quantum Mechanics

  Yet Einstein the scientist could not deny the scientific evidence for quantum mechanics, and decided that the theory may have some merit, but remained incomplete. It explained some, but not all, of how the universe operates. Einstein’s work in quantum mechanics consisted mainly of pointing out the gaps in the theory, gaps that were largely pursued by younger physicists.

  In his youth, Einstein had argued his theories with the old guard of physicists until they were proven. At this stage of his life, he had become one of the old guard, and believed that a theory which was not wholly compatible with his own discoveries could not be correct. Einstein believed that a single theory that brought together all of the conflicting theories of relativity and quanta, a theory that leaves nothing to chance and operates methodically, contained the answer.

  Einstein first attempted to unite the areas of gravitation, as described in the theory of relativity, with electromagnetism. “We seek a mathematically unified field theory in which th
e gravitational field and the electromagnetic field are interpreted only as different components or manifestations of the same uniform field,” he said as he received his Nobel Prize. Behind this goal was the possibility to make quantum mechanics and relativity mutual.

  First Work on a Unified Theory

  Einstein’s quest, as had so many of his others, began on the back of work already completed. A paper by physicist Hermann Weyl, written in 1918 on the extension of general relativity’s geometry into the field of electromagnetics, at first impressed him. But after a few days of study, Einstein wrote to Weyl with a wonderfully phrased rejection of his work. “Except for agreeing with reality,” wrote Einstein, “it is certainly a grand intellectual achievement.”