Einstein Albert - Subtle is the lord ...: the science and the life of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein in 1896.

(Einstein Archive)

ABRAHAM PAIS

Rockefeller University

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox 2 6DP

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Oxford University Press 1982
Foreword Roger Penrose 2005

The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 1982
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1983
Reissued with a new foreword, 2005

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pais, Abraham, 1918
Subtle is the Lord.
Bibliography: p. Includes index.
1. Einstein, Albert, 18791955. 2. Physicists
Biography. 3. PhysicsHistory. I. Title.
QC16.E5P26 530.0924 [B] 822273 AACR2

Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Ashford Colour Press Ltd.,
Gosport, Hampshire

ISBN 0192806726
ISBN 9780192806727

To Joshua and Daniel

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. So Einstein once wrote to explain his personal creed: A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. His was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by a deep faitha faith not capable of rational foundationthat there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His lifelong pursuit was to discover them. His realism and his optimism are illuminated by his remark: Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not (Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.). When asked by a colleague what he meant by that, he replied: Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse (Die Natur verbirgt ihr Geheimnis durch die Erhabenheit ihres Wesens, aber nicht durch List.).

The world of science is greatly fortunate that a theoretical physicist of the distinction of Abraham Pais should have discovered within himself not only a particular talent for scientific biography but also a passionate desire to convey to us his unique perspective on the momentous developments in 20th-century physics that he had witnessed. Himself a very significant later contributor, Pais had been well acquainted with most of the key figures in this highly remarkable period of scientific development, and he was able to combine his own deep understanding of the central physical ideas with a personal knowledge of these individuals.

Pais had worked with Niels Bohr in 1946 and later wrote a comprehensive biography of Bohrs life and work. above the fireplace in the faculty lounge of the mathematics building in Princeton) which in the original German reads

Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.

Pais translates this as Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.

There have been numerous biographies of Einstein, both before and after this one, but what distinguishes Paiss book is the detail and insight into Einsteins handling of the physical ideas. As Einstein had earlier commented: The essential of the being of a man of my type lies precisely in what he thinks and how he thinks, not what he does or suffers.

On the scientific side, there is, indeed, much to be said. For Einstein contributed far more to the physics of the early 20th century than just relativity. Apart from Max Planck, with his ground-breaking work of 1900 (on the spectrum of blackbody radiation), Einstein was the first to break away from the classical physics of the time and to introduce the crucial quantum wave/particle ideathe idea that despite light being an electromagnetic wave, it sometimes had to be treated as a collection of particles (now called photons). Through this work Einstein discovered the explanation of the photo-electric effect, this eventually winning him a Nobel Prize. He provided (in his doctorate thesis) a novel method of determining the sizes of molecules, at a time when their very existence was still controversial. He was one of the first to understand the detailed nature of the tiny wiggling Brownian motion of small particles in suspension and to provide a beginning to the new statistical physics. He contributed key ideas that led to the development of lasers. And all this is not to mention his revolutionary theories of special and general relativity!

In describing each of these contributions, Pais first sets the stage, lucidly describing the state of the relevant parts of physics at the time Einstein entered the scene, often explaining in significant detail the work of Einsteins precursors. Then we find Einsteins own fundamental contributions, introduced and discussed in depth, the essential novelty of Einsteins viewpoint being all very clearly set out, as is the profound influence that it had on subsequent work. This account indeed provides a wonderful overview of the developments in physics of the early 20th century, as there seems to be no major area of theoretical physics on which Einstein did not have some impact. This book is not a popular work, in the sense of the term that so often seems to involve distortions and oversimplifications in attempts to explain technical concepts to the lay reader. Instead, it comes seriously to grips with the physics involved in each major area that is treated and, where appropriate, mathematical equations are presented without apology.

Yet this is by no means simply a cold scientific account in which personal influences are deemed irrelevant. Pais illuminates many facets of Einsteins life, some of which may at first seem almost paradoxical. Pais may not always provide answers, but he expounds these issues in insightful ways. The common picture of Einstein is as an unworldly almost saintly old man, with twinkling eyes, moustache, wild white hair, and attired in a floppy sweater. But this was the Einstein who spent the last twenty years of his life in Princeton on a certain approach to a unified field theory that the majority of physicists would now judge to be basically misconceived. How does this picture relate to that of the Einstein of the miraculous year 1905, with an apparently dapper appearance, working at the Patent Office in Bern, and producing several epoch-making papers? What about Einsteins relation to quantum mechanics? Can we understand why he had set off on his lonely route, at first so much ahead of his contemporaries and then very much to one side of them, so that eventually they seemed convincingly to have passed him by? Do we find clues to his science in his early years, such as when as a child of about five he was enchanted by the seemingly miraculous behaviour of a pocket compass, or when at twelve he was enthralled by Euclid? Or may we learn as much from a remark from his teacher in the Munich Gymnasium asserting that he would have been much happier if young Albert had not been in his class: you sit there in the back row and smile, and that violates the feeling of respect which a teacher needs from his class? Einsteins early ability to find authority funny was a trait which stayed with him until the end.