Born in Ulm, Bavaria (where I celebrated the New Year in 1996)
Nobel Prize Physics 1901 (first ever) German Roengten for his work in eponymous rays after using Lenard’s tube experiment and noting fluorescence of a painted cardboard screen of barium platinocyanide- Roentgen rays (X-ray) with Roentgenograms (xray radiograms)
Nobel Prize 1905 Hungarian German (anti-Semitic) Phillips Lenard (after in 1905 for cathode ray tubes, 10 years after the innovation, and 4 years after Roentgen, though his work was the foundation
Nobel Prize 1921 Swiss Einstein for photoelectric effect
While a clerk at a patent office in Bern, Switzerland (Einstein renounced his German citizenship), aged 26, married to Mileva Maric worked with Michele Besso, a friend and fellow patent clerk. I think I saw the same clock that he looked at in the town square. He approved the patent that would send a signal to other local clocks to stay synched.
Think like Einstein. Create “thought experiments”.
4 papers 1 year Annales der Physik (March-Sept 1905) ANNUS MIRABILIS
PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT: A heuristic point of view of the production and transformation of light.June 9.
Light is made of not just energy(waves) but also of particles “quanta” or photons. Think of sound or wind hitting water and creating waves. Think of how paper moves with the wind. Then take sunlight, and hold up a paper. It blocks, and does not propagate the light as waves alone. This is one of two pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics, proving the existence of molecules.
BROWNIAN MOTION: On the movement of small particles suspended in a stationary liquid, as required by the molecular-kinetic theory of heat. July 18.
The physical phenomenon of Brownian motion showed that matter is composed of atoms.Think of a sugar cube dissolving in water. The glucose molecules are pulled away, and as the sugar dissolves, the coffee thickens. Here, Einstein proved how molecules moved, using a one dimensional mathematical proof that allowed the calculation of how far a molecule (imagine pollen in water under a microscope) would travel over time, without needing the more difficult proof of predicting where the molecule would go next.
SPECIAL RELATIVITY: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Sept 26.
The speed of light is immutable, constant, and independent of the observer’s movement. Everything, except the (missing in Newtonian physics (MOTION, GRAVITATION, ABSOLUTE TIME) constant speed of light, is relative. Clark Maxwell believed this. Lorenz transformation found this “time dilation” to be a mathematical quirk. “The faster we move though space, the slower we move through time.” Everything, including time, distance, and mass, is relative. THIS WAS THE REDEFINITION OF THE UNIVERSE. Time cannot move at different speeds, as much as we would like it, unless…..Imagine you are watching a train pass with a rider on it when two lightening strikes 100m apart at the exact same time on either side. If light moves at the same speed, on the train, you would see the lightening strikes were asynchronous, with the one you were moving towards first, and the one you were moving away from after, but the observer would see them hit simultaneously. Time is NOT absolute, and the speed of light is constant. was solved when it was simplified to a one dimension. This would be followed up in 1915 to include acceleration and gravity. BEFORE, the universe was explained by the laws of Newton. AFTER, the universe was by relativity and quantum mechanics.
MASS-ENERGY EQUIVALENCE
Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?
E=mc2
FUNNY: Criticism of his first paper. He has no footnotes! Response. He has answered a question no one has asked before!
NOT SO FUNNY: Einstein’s brilliant wife, Mileva, is uncredited in his work, despite the precedent set by Pierre Curie, who was an ally to his wife Marie, credited for her work ,(Henri Becquerel was also awarded with them) as a condition for him accepting the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.
NB: Marie Curie would be the first sole woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry. This makes her the only woman to win the award in two fields, to date, and only one of two winners to win in two fields, to date (Linus Pauling won both in chemistry and in peace).
NB: Newton also had an annus mirabilis in 1665-6 while self-confined to his home during the plague in Woolsthorpe, shortly after obtaining his BA from Cambridge, and while the university was closed. He used his time wisely, formulating the Law of Gravitation, Binomial theory (the basis of calculus), and Theory of Colour (light seen through prisms had three primary colours -red, yellow, and blue - that all others were derived from). According to the article by Thomas Levenson, in April 6, 2020 in the New Yorker, however, it is important not to make this a fairy tale. Newton worked on gravity before, during and after, and in his own words, he did it “by thinking on it continually”, not just as a new pass-time. He was 23.
Initially Newton thought that light was made of particles and Hook thought that light was made of waves, and Newton was “disproved”. Over 200 years later, Einstein proved that both were right, and the idea of a wave particle was born. US scientist Millikan tried to disprove his theory, but ended up convinced that he was right. Both won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work, Einstein in 1921 and Millikan in 1923.
Based on William Isaacson Einstein: His Life and Universe, Genius Season 1 Disney, BBVAOPENMIND.com Einstein’s Miracle Year, The New Yorker The Truth about Isaac Newton’s Productive Plague.
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