On The next Einstein? Wait a century
I wrote, on 23/1 Nobles are for the premier league scientists; Einstein belonged to a different set of world in that he exposed the hidden mysteries of nature. Indeed in few thousand of years from now our generation will be seen as advanced in unlocking the mystery of nature.
Message 20976450
The next Einstein? Wait a century
Dennis Overbye The New York Times
Thursday, March 3, 2005
He didn't look like much at first. He was too fat and his head was so big his mother feared it was misshapen or damaged. He didn't speak until he was well past 2, and even then with a strange echolalia that reinforced his parents' fears. He beaned his little sister with a bowling ball and chased his first violin teacher from the house by throwing a chair at her.
.
.
There was, in short, no sign, other than the patience to build card houses 14 stories high, that little Albert Einstein would grow up to be "the new Copernicus," proclaiming a new theory of nature, in which matter and energy swapped faces, light beams bent, the stars danced and space and time were as flexible and elastic as bubble gum.
.
No clue to suggest that he would help send humanity lurching down the road to the atomic age, with all its promise and dread, with the stroke of his pen on a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, certainly no reason to suspect that his image would be on T-shirts, calendars, coffee mugs, posters and dolls.
.
.
Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring up a giant detector in the bowels of some particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality.
.
"Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation.
.
Could it happen again? "Who or where is the next Einstein?"
.
No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for a young researcher to be tagged "the new Einstein," so don't expect to hear any names here.
.
"It's probably always a stupid question," said Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein.
.
Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes.
.
To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask as well about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame.
.
Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated.
.
David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics last year, said, "Of course, there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special."
.
Physics, many scientists like Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the kilometers of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors.
.
.
"Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems," said Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. "It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked."
.
.
But you never know.
.
"One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise," said Witten, chuckling. "Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?"
.
In fact, say physicists, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings.
.
"We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key," said Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
.
Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on. By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it.
.
.
"Einstein has lasted 100 years," he said. "The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years."
.
.
Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by "Einstein."
.
.
Do we mean the dark-haired young firebrand at the patent office, who yanked the rug out from under Newton and 19th century physics in 1905 when he invented relativity, supplied a convincing proof for the existence of atoms and shocked just about everyone by arguing that light could be composed of particles as well as waves?
.
.
Is it the seer who gazed serenely out at the world in 1919 from beneath headlines announcing that astronomers had measured the bending of light rays from stars during an eclipse, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity, which described gravity as the warping of space-time geometry?
.
.
Einstein had spent 10 years racking his brain and borrowing the mathematical talents of his friends trying to extend relativity to the realm of gravity. When this "great adventure in thought," as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called it, safely reached shore, Einstein caught a wave that lifted him high above physics and science in general.
.
.
The world was exhausted from the Great War. People were ready for something new, and Einstein gave them a whole new universe.
.
.
With Whitehead as his publicist, Einstein was on the road to becoming the Elvis of science.
.
.
It helped that he wore his fame lightly. "He was a caricature of the scientist," Krauss said. "He looked right. He sounded right."
.
.
When physicists are asked, what they often find distinctive about Einstein are his high standards and the ability to ferret out and question the hidden assumptions underlying the mainstream consensus about reality.
.
.
.
There is no lack of inventive, brilliant physicists today, but none of them are T-shirt material, yet.
.
.
"It's not about identifying the person who is about to be the new Einstein," said Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. "When there is someone who does something with the impact of Einstein, we'll all know."
.
.
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune.
.
< < Back to Start of Article
He didn't look like much at first. He was too fat and his head was so big his mother feared it was misshapen or damaged. He didn't speak until he was well past 2, and even then with a strange echolalia that reinforced his parents' fears. He beaned his little sister with a bowling ball and chased his first violin teacher from the house by throwing a chair at her.
.
.
There was, in short, no sign, other than the patience to build card houses 14 stories high, that little Albert Einstein would grow up to be "the new Copernicus," proclaiming a new theory of nature, in which matter and energy swapped faces, light beams bent, the stars danced and space and time were as flexible and elastic as bubble gum.
.
No clue to suggest that he would help send humanity lurching down the road to the atomic age, with all its promise and dread, with the stroke of his pen on a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, certainly no reason to suspect that his image would be on T-shirts, calendars, coffee mugs, posters and dolls.
.
.
Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring up a giant detector in the bowels of some particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality.
.
"Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation.
.
Could it happen again? "Who or where is the next Einstein?"
.
No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for a young researcher to be tagged "the new Einstein," so don't expect to hear any names here.
.
"It's probably always a stupid question," said Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein.
.
Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes.
.
To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask as well about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame.
.
Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated.
.
David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics last year, said, "Of course, there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special."
.
Physics, many scientists like Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the kilometers of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors.
.
.
"Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems," said Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. "It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked."
.
.
But you never know.
.
"One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise," said Witten, chuckling. "Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?"
.
In fact, say physicists, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings.
.
"We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key," said Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
.
Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on. By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it.
.
.
"Einstein has lasted 100 years," he said. "The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years."
.
.
Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by "Einstein."
.
.
Do we mean the dark-haired young firebrand at the patent office, who yanked the rug out from under Newton and 19th century physics in 1905 when he invented relativity, supplied a convincing proof for the existence of atoms and shocked just about everyone by arguing that light could be composed of particles as well as waves?
.
.
Is it the seer who gazed serenely out at the world in 1919 from beneath headlines announcing that astronomers had measured the bending of light rays from stars during an eclipse, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity, which described gravity as the warping of space-time geometry?
.
.
Einstein had spent 10 years racking his brain and borrowing the mathematical talents of his friends trying to extend relativity to the realm of gravity. When this "great adventure in thought," as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called it, safely reached shore, Einstein caught a wave that lifted him high above physics and science in general.
.
.
The world was exhausted from the Great War. People were ready for something new, and Einstein gave them a whole new universe.
.
.
With Whitehead as his publicist, Einstein was on the road to becoming the Elvis of science.
.
.
It helped that he wore his fame lightly. "He was a caricature of the scientist," Krauss said. "He looked right. He sounded right."
.
.
When physicists are asked, what they often find distinctive about Einstein are his high standards and the ability to ferret out and question the hidden assumptions underlying the mainstream consensus about reality.
.
.
.
There is no lack of inventive, brilliant physicists today, but none of them are T-shirt material, yet.
.
.
"It's not about identifying the person who is about to be the new Einstein," said Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. "When there is someone who does something with the impact of Einstein, we'll all know."
.
.
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune.
.
< < Back to Start of Article
He didn't look like much at first. He was too fat and his head was so big his mother feared it was misshapen or damaged. He didn't speak until he was well past 2, and even then with a strange echolalia that reinforced his parents' fears. He beaned his little sister with a bowling ball and chased his first violin teacher from the house by throwing a chair at her.
.
.
There was, in short, no sign, other than the patience to build card houses 14 stories high, that little Albert Einstein would grow up to be "the new Copernicus," proclaiming a new theory of nature, in which matter and energy swapped faces, light beams bent, the stars danced and space and time were as flexible and elastic as bubble gum.
.
No clue to suggest that he would help send humanity lurching down the road to the atomic age, with all its promise and dread, with the stroke of his pen on a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, certainly no reason to suspect that his image would be on T-shirts, calendars, coffee mugs, posters and dolls.
.
.
Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring up a giant detector in the bowels of some particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality.
.
"Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation.
.
Could it happen again? "Who or where is the next Einstein?"
.
No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for a young researcher to be tagged "the new Einstein," so don't expect to hear any names here.
.
"It's probably always a stupid question," said Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein.
.
Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes.
.
To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask as well about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame.
.
Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated.
.
David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics last year, said, "Of course, there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special."
.
Physics, many scientists like Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the kilometers of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors.
.
.
"Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems," said Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. "It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked."
.
.
But you never know.
.
"One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise," said Witten, chuckling. "Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?"
.
In fact, say physicists, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings.
.
"We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key," said Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
.
Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on. By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it.
.
.
"Einstein has lasted 100 years," he said. "The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years."
.
.
Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by "Einstein."
.
.
Do we mean the dark-haired young firebrand at the patent office, who yanked the rug out from under Newton and 19th century physics in 1905 when he invented relativity, supplied a convincing proof for the existence of atoms and shocked just about everyone by arguing that light could be composed of particles as well as waves?
.
.
Is it the seer who gazed serenely out at the world in 1919 from beneath headlines announcing that astronomers had measured the bending of light rays from stars during an eclipse, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity, which described gravity as the warping of space-time geometry?
.
.
Einstein had spent 10 years racking his brain and borrowing the mathematical talents of his friends trying to extend relativity to the realm of gravity. When this "great adventure in thought," as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called it, safely reached shore, Einstein caught a wave that lifted him high above physics and science in general.
.
.
The world was exhausted from the Great War. People were ready for something new, and Einstein gave them a whole new universe.
.
.
With Whitehead as his publicist, Einstein was on the road to becoming the Elvis of science.
.
.
It helped that he wore his fame lightly. "He was a caricature of the scientist," Krauss said. "He looked right. He sounded right."
.
.
When physicists are asked, what they often find distinctive about Einstein are his high standards and the ability to ferret out and question the hidden assumptions underlying the mainstream consensus about reality.
.
.
.
There is no lack of inventive, brilliant physicists today, but none of them are T-shirt material, yet.
.
.
"It's not about identifying the person who is about to be the new Einstein," said Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. "When there is someone who does something with the impact of Einstein, we'll all know."
.
.
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