identifier
stringlengths 1
43
| dataset
stringclasses 3
values | question
stringclasses 4
values | rank
int64 0
99
| url
stringlengths 14
1.88k
| read_more_link
stringclasses 1
value | language
stringclasses 1
value | title
stringlengths 0
200
| top_image
stringlengths 0
125k
| meta_img
stringlengths 0
125k
| images
listlengths 0
18.2k
| movies
listlengths 0
484
| keywords
listlengths 0
0
| meta_keywords
listlengths 1
48.5k
| tags
null | authors
listlengths 0
10
| publish_date
stringlengths 19
32
⌀ | summary
stringclasses 1
value | meta_description
stringlengths 0
258k
| meta_lang
stringclasses 68
values | meta_favicon
stringlengths 0
20.2k
| meta_site_name
stringlengths 0
641
| canonical_link
stringlengths 9
1.88k
⌀ | text
stringlengths 0
100k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 71
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
en
|
What happened to the Nobel Prize money? – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
“Der Nobelpreis würde Dir – im Falle der Scheidung und für den Fall,
dass er mir zuteil wird – a priori vollständig abgetreten.“
“The Nobel Prize – in the event of the divorce and in the event
that it is bestowed upon me – would be ceded to you in full a priori.“
Albert Einstein to his first wife Mileva, 31. January 1918
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 – What happened to the prize money?
One of the many “ingeniously devised tales” adorning Albert Einstein’s life focuses on the prize money that accompanied the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. The actual story deserves a long and detailed account. This paper presents just a brief summary.
It begins in 1918, a long time before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conferred upon him the award. In that year, Albert Einstein signed over the award money to his first wife, Mileva: “[I]n the case of a voluntary divorce… the Nobel Prize… would be ceded to you in full a priori.”
Has this apparently generous gesture to be considered a belated acknowledgement of an ousted co-author – Mileva – of certain scientific papers published between 1901 and 1913 under Albert Einstein’s name alone? There is no document to justify this frequent claim. In fact, correspondence preserved in the archives tells a different story. In 1918, the prize money was still far away, yet confidently expected. It represented the security that Mileva demanded in the event of divorce.
The draft of the divorce agreement stated: “Disposal of the interest would be left entirely to your discretion. The capital would be deposited in Switzerland and placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
As reworded by Mileva’s lawyer, in the divorce decree the phrase “placed in safe-keeping for the children” became “In the case of the remarriage or death of Mrs. Einstein [the capital] shall go to the children.” Even if the practical consequences hardly changed – due to the fact that Mileva “shall have no authority over the capital without the consent of Prof. Einstein” – Albert’s clear statement of intent regarding the children’s heritage was swept under the rug. Yet happy to escape prolonged negotiations, in order to end an unfortunate marriage, Albert may not even have realized the difference.
Almost four years after the divorce, in the fall of 1922, it happened. “[N]ow … you really will be getting the Nobel Prize”, Albert announced to his children in a letter from Japan, once he received notice of the award. Soon Mileva’s plan could materialize: “Look into the matter about the house. The rest will be deposited somewhere in your names. Then, you’ll be so rich that, God knows, someday I may have to squeeze money out of you …“
In 1922, the Nobel Prize in Physics was endowed with 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, a relatively small sum compared with other years, yet the equivalent of more than twelve years’ income for Albert Einstein.
The divorce agreement of February 1919 stipulated that the capital was to be deposited in a Swiss bank account. But by 1923, even Switzerland’s economy was destabilized by political uncertainty. Would not Albert’s jocular forecast be jeopardized if the prize money remained in Europe?
Back from his trip to the Far East in the spring of 1923, Albert transferred 45,000 Swiss francs to Zurich, the amount Mileva planned to invest in real estate. Of the remaining 91,000 Swedish kronor Albert could have retained the equivalent of 40,000 German marks, deposited, in securities, in Zurich in 1918, as an advance payment towards the divorce. But by 1923, galloping inflation in Germany had reduced the original value to a tiny fraction. Following the advice of a financial expert, Albert decided to place the remaining prize money with an American bank “because I regard this as more advantageous and safer in your and the children’s interest“. In Mileva’s name, this capital was invested in a number of different dollar bonds.
By May 1924, Mileva had found the property she wished to own: a five-storey apartment building at the edge of Zurich’s prosperous district of Fluntern. Upon payment of 45,000 Swiss francs she became the owner of Huttenstrasse 62, valued at 195,000 SFr. In late summer, Mileva and her two sons moved into the six-room apartment on the third floor. Albert, visiting in September, expressed his satisfaction at the “visible result of my musings”.
When in the following year the roof required repair work, Albert offered Mileva an interest-free loan to avoid sale of bonds in the United States. That same year, 1925, while revising his last will, Albert noticed that the wording in the divorce decree only partially reflected his original intentions. Concerned, he asked Mileva for a written note stating that the Nobel Prize money will be considered an advance payment of their sons’ inheritance, and that Mileva would not appeal against Albert’s last will. Mileva, fearing that her sons be bamboozled, stubbornly ignored this demand. What she did not know is that in this last will Albert assigned to their sons not merely his violins, books and papers, but explicitly the scientific manuscripts which by now had become an asset of ever-increasing value.
Thanks to rental income, supplemented by the interest flowing in from her American account, and a few smaller loans, in the second half of the 1920s Mileva and Eduard enjoyed a relatively comfortable existence.
In the early summer of 1930, bonds in Mileva’s American account reached their maturity date; a capital of 5,000 US$ needed to be reinvested. With the stock market crash of October 1929 fresh in mind, Albert, circumspectly, suggested that she place this money in real estate rather than in new bonds. After hesitating for a moment, Mileva became enamoured with the idea of owning a second property. The following month such a property was found. Trusting in Mileva’s judgment “because you already once made a good buy” Albert signed the necessary forms. By August 1930, the purchase was finalized.
How could it be, that hardly one month later, Mileva decided to purchase a third house?
In order to make this acquisition, in September 1930 – with Albert’s approval – she sold bonds worth a total of 5,400 US$. The face value of the bonds now left in her account in New York could hardly have been more than 10,000 US$; accordingly, the income from interest “formidably shrunk”.
Albert’s Nobel Prize money reposed now in three apartment buildings situated in Zurich’s rather expensive residential area, on the Zürichberg. Here, only high-earners could afford the rent. This turned out to be a disaster once the economic crisis reached Switzerland. Some tenants delayed the rent payments or paid only a part of it, others moved out; each empty apartment left a bigger dent in Mileva’s budget.
To assist her in escaping from this precarious situation, in the summer of 1932 Albert engaged a lawyer to sort out Mileva’s financial affairs, and to find a way out of the impasse. However, Mileva did not appreciate the expert’s suggestion: to sell property as fast as possible, even at an unfavorable price.
In the same politically explosive summer of 1932, Albert revived the plan to amend his testament and, as he fruitlessly did in 1925, again asked Mileva and the sons to commit to “unconditionally respect” his last will. In return, he offered the sons the interest from a sum of ca. 25,000 Marks he had saved up for them.
“Back then,” he wrote, referring to the year 1918, “I ceded to you the Nobel Prize with the intention to secure your and the children’s future. It ought to be made clear … that this sum, the only assets I had at all by then, was to be credited to the children’s inheritance in the event of my death.”
In this summary I will not expand on the controversy that Albert’s request brought about, and how it affected the younger son, Eduard. One fact, however, needs to be stated: neither Mileva nor Hans Albert were ready to sign a paper which might, as they surmised, discriminate against them, vis-à-vis Albert’s new family. Mistrust prevailed on both sides.
Soon other concerns made obsolete the smoldering conflict: By January 1933, Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia; it seemed unlikely that he would become (financially) independent in the near future; in May, Albert lost his possessions in Germany, including the savings retained for the sons, all seized by the Nazis. Thanks to some foreign income prudently kept outside Germany, and his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was not left destitute and was still able to aid Mileva.
However, despite the large and small sums Albert sent occasionally in answer to Mileva’s anxious appeals, or at the request of her professional supporters, and despite the monthly allowance – a sum equivalent to a qualified handyman’s salary – for the son who remained with his mother at home, between 1933 and 1938, Mileva’s debts slowly grew to alarming heights.
In 1936, she sold the last American stocks to finance renovations of the house at Huttenstrasse 62, in the hope of yielding higher rental income.
That year, the income from the two apartment houses purchased in 1930 did not even cover the running expenses, let alone the mortgages. It was impossible to sell them; foreclosure approached. Just before the house at Huttenstrasse 62 was about to be seized too, in 1938, Mileva implored Albert to take it over – a formality made legally possible by the 1935 conversion of Mileva’s old debts to Albert into an additional mortgage in his favor.
With the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation, a body founded by Albert Einstein for the one and only purpose of preventing loss of the property, by April 1939, “the house seem[ed] bailed out for the time being, though with substantial sacrifices”.
At this point, it is pertinent to ask how much of the 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, almost 180,000 Swiss francs, or around 31,000 US$, was still at Mileva’s disposal.
Her American account was empty. The two apartment houses acquired in 1930, including all money she invested there later, were lost. If any, the house Huttenstrasse 62, valued at around 200,000 SFr, might have represented the final few Swedish kronor; but this property was now owned by the Corporation. The Corporation held a mortgage of 15,000 SFr; mortgages totaling 135,000 SFr were held by the State Treasury, and two additional mortgages together amounting to 44,000 SFr belonged to Albert. A part of the latter figure, though, was still Nobel Prize money, signed over to Albert in 1935, to prevent intervention by creditors.
Who was to blame for the considerable losses? Did Albert cause them, as some claim, due to his gambling on the stock exchange, and by leaving Mileva, contrary to all promises, in the lurch with the high hospital fees for their sick son? None of these allegations is supported by evidence, even though Mileva’s desperate calls for help seem to suggest it, and her Zurich friends and supporters, compassionately, sided with her. The fact is that Mileva financially overstretched herself by acquiring expensive properties yielding only meager returns and, in a period of economic instability, even no return at all.
When, in 1939, the Corporation had become the property’s official owner, Mileva’s budget problems seemed solved for the time being. An official agreement between the Corporation and Mileva was established. As in previous years, she would collect the rents and from this income pay the mortgage interests and taxes, as well as all necessary expenses. Her official salary amounted to 600 SFr p.a.; the surplus was to go to the Corporation together with regular accounts for income and expenses. Such an agreement met the tax office’s provisions. In practice, things were supposed to continue as was the case prior to the change of hands. The “surplus” including the mortgage interest owed to Albert and the Corporation would flow into Mileva’s household budget. And, of course, she and Eduard could stay in their comfortable home, free of charge. Yet, for a limited transition period, the lawyer who supervised the takeover by the Corporation, had to remain the house’s official manager; unfortunately, he knew too well how to skim off a considerable part of the surplus.
By the end of 1941 the house had become more or less unprofitable. Relenting to Mileva’s begging, Albert promised not to sell it unless the situation should become financially unbearable.
With the entry of the United States into the war, the correspondence between Mileva and Albert was interrupted. While Albert succeeded in ensuring the transfer of his monthly payments for Eduard, for a few years Mileva did not meet her obligation to regularly submit financial statements to the Corporation.
The statements arrived eventually in 1946. They made obvious that the house accumulated even more debts during the war years. Only a considerable investment could have brought about a long-term change, money that Albert would rather invest directly in a pension scheme for Eduard than in this house. The sale had become inevitable.
In 1947, the Corporation entrusted Mileva with the sales negotiations. Since her greatest concern was Eduard’s financial protection, Albert committed himself to sign over the 40,000 SFr mortgage – the only sum which still contained a small part of the Nobel Prize money – to Eduard’s name as soon as a legal guardian had been appointed for him. The 4,000 SFr mortgage would be paid to Mileva after the sale. The sale proceeds, less the profit tax charged in the United States, and less some debts Albert had made to cover the costs of the takeover, were supposed to be placed in a bank account in the Corporation’s name — yet at Mileva’s disposal, thus replacing the revenue Mileva previously obtained from the rents.
Assisted by the House Owners’ Association, in September 1947 Mileva sold the house on behalf of the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation at a price of 235,000 SFr. The buyer took over mortgages of altogether 192,000 SFr and handed out the difference. As suggested by the Corporation, the contract granted Mileva the right to stay in her apartment.
Once the contract was signed, she remained silent about the deal. Despite a number of reminders, by the end of April 1948, the Corporation had not yet received the sales documents and nothing precise was known about how much money Mileva obtained. Instead, she was writing desperate, reproachful letters to Albert and denigrating him with third persons in a quite perfidious way. She was distressed and confused, and no more able to comply with her obligations.
In May 1948, Mileva suffered a stroke. While picking her up from bed, at home, the paramedics discovered cash amounting to more than 87,000 SFr.
Is it reasonable to assume that these 87,000 SFr or a part of this sum was the rest of the Nobel Prize money?
The legal guardian recently appointed for Eduard now was also taking care of Mileva; he deposited the sum with the guardianship authorities. Although unaware of its actual amount, Mileva claimed that the entire sum belonged to her, being the leftover of the Nobel Prize money.
She died in August 1948.
If the full 87,000 SFr did belong to her, then this heritage would be split between her two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, a position immediately endorsed by Hans Albert.
Soon, however, the guardian realized that the case was more complicated. The Corporation made it perfectly clear that any amount handed over to Mileva when she was selling the house legally belonged to the Corporation in the first place. As for the mortgages in Albert’s favor, at a total value of 55,000 SFr, Albert confirmed his commitment to eventually make them available, preferably for Eduard’s care. The whereabouts of the promissory notes, though, still remained in the dark.
So far, the calculation was:
Out of the 87,000 SFr, payments had to be made to Mileva’s doctor and the tax office as well as for her funeral and the liquidation of her household. 43,000 SFr would then go to the Corporation. The remaining sum was to be shared among the sons.
The situation changed drastically when it came to light that Mileva, unauthorized, had sold Albert’s mortgages and the proceeds were contained in the 87,000 SFr.
To make matters worse, the owner of an old bearer mortgage note of 37.000 SFr registered his claim, which had not yet expired.
Hence the calculations looked quite different:
The 87,000 SFr plus a small sum resulting from the sale of Mileva’s household stood counter to the following claims:
43,000 SFr by the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation
55,000 SFr by Albert related to two mortgages
37,000 SFr by the owner of the promissory note dating from one of the houses that Mileva bought in 1930 = 135,000 SFr
It is pointless to go into details about the dispute which erupted between Hans Albert and his father when Albert showed his inclination to rescue whatever sum he could for the benefit of the younger son. It is, however, worth mentioning that eventually Albert’s perseverance and his insistence on the Corporation’s and his personal entitlements brought the case to a successful conclusion. Confronted with the estate’s impending bankruptcy and the danger of losing the full sum, the owner of the 37,000 SFr mortgage agreed to a settlement payment of 15,000 SFr. Albert then withdrew his own claim and thus allowed Eduard’s legal guardian to accept the succession.
Once all bills and taxes were paid, 70,000 SFr were left.
It is true that this sum could no longer be considered the remains of Albert’s Nobel Prize money; too much additional money had been invested in what for 24 years represented the “visible result of my musings”, as Albert put it in 1924.
But at least these 70,000 SFr eventually ended up in the hands of his sons, as foreseen in 1918: “The capital would be … placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
There is a very last chapter to this story:
In 1950, Hans Albert grudgingly agreed upon an “unjust” sharing of what may be called Mileva’s estate – 30,000 SFr for him, and 40,000 SFr for his far needier brother.
Until the end of his life, another six years, Albert continued to pay a monthly allowance to Eduard. By the time of Albert’s death, in 1955, out of the 40,000 SFr, more than 39,000 SFr were still in Eduard’s account.
Eduard’s share of Albert’s inheritance amounted to 64,256:25 SFr, and by 1956 Eduard owned a little over 100,000 SFr.
For another ten years, Eduard lived off this sum supplemented by occasional small gifts.
At the time of his death, in fall of 1965, 67,000 SFr were still lying in his account.
Eduard’s only heir was his brother Hans Albert.
Taxes and Hans Albert’s contribution to the placement of a headstone for Eduard lowered his inheritance. How much money may eventually have fallen into his hands? 40,000 SFr? 30,000 SFr? In any case, even given some inflation, this amount is more than what he lost when, in 1950, he generously renounced the “fair” or “just” distribution of the money that Mileva had left.
So in the end, the Nobel Prize money, through all the ups and downs and losses and gains, and the political catastrophes and personal tragedies, had served, besides Mileva, one way or another, the two sons, just as it was Albert’s intention.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 46
|
https://www.livescience.com/16362-nobel-prize-physics-list.html
|
en
|
Nobel Prize in Physics: 1901-Present
|
[
"https://mos.fie.futurecdn.net/nsn8tjxqmqhfgoo4-16455329884552.png",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/j8cKnbQFcGupxZQsTfdL34-320-80.jpg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p/?c1=2&c2=10055482&cv=4.4.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Live Science Staff"
] |
2022-10-04T14:39:22+00:00
|
The history of the winners of the Nobel Prize in physics, including Steven Chu, Aage Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi.
|
en
|
livescience.com
|
https://www.livescience.com/16362-nobel-prize-physics-list.html
|
According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Nobel Prize in Physics was to go to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics." The prize has been awarded every year except for 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941 and 1942.
Here is the full list of winners:
2023: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier won the 2023 prize for devising a way to generate pulses of light measured in attoseconds — one quintillionth of a second. An attosecond is to a second what a second is to the age of the universe, a miniscule slice of time so short that it can be used to peer at the movements of electrons and molecules.
2022: American physicist John Clauser, French physicist Alain Aspect and Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger each shared the 2022 prize "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science,” according to the Nobel Prize organization. Their work demonstrated that what Einstein so famously dubbed "spooky action at a distance" is real and laid the groundwork for early quantum computers.
2021: The 2021 Nobel prize went to three scientists whose work alerted the world to the dangers of climate change. The prize was awarded for "for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems." Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann shared one-half of the prize "for the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming" while Giorgio Parisi won the other half "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."
2020: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided amongst a trio of black hole researchers. One half of the award went to Roger Penrose, "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity", while Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez jointly shared the other half "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy"
2019: Canadian-American James Peebles of Princeton University received one-half of the Nobel "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. The other half of the prize was awarded jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star," the Academy said. Mayor is a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and Queloz is at both the University of Geneva and the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
Together, the trio won the Nobel "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos," the Academy said.
2018: Arthur Ashkin was awarded one half of the prize, and the other half was awarded jointly to Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou, "for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics." This was the first time in 55 years that a woman was part of the Nobel Prize in physics. [Read more about the 2018 prize and Nobel Laureates]
2017: Half of the 9 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million) award went to Rainer Weiss of MIT. The other half was shared jointly to Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of Caltech. The prize honored the trio's "decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves," according to Nobelprize.org. The three scientists were integral in the first detection of the ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. The waves in this case came from the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
2016: One half was awarded to David J. Thouless, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and the other half to F. Duncan M. Haldane, Princeton University, and J. Michael Kosterlitz, Brown University, Providence. Their theoretical discoveries opened the door to a weird world where matter can take on strange states. According to the Nobel Foundation: "Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics."
2015: Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for showing the metamorphosis of neutrinos, which revealed that the subatomic particles have mass and opened up a new realm in particle physics.
2014: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for their invention of an energy-efficient light source: blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
2013: Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom and François Englert of Belgium, two of the scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson nearly 50 years ago. [Related: Higgs Boson Physicists Snag Nobel Prize]
2012: French physicist Serge Haroche and American physicist David Wineland, for their pioneering research in quantum optics.
2011: One half awarded to Saul Perlmutter, the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess, "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae."
2010: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene."
2009: Charles K. Kao, "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor."
2008: Yoichiro Nambu, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics," and Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
2007: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance"
2006: John C. Mather and George F. Smoot, "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."
2005: Roy J. Glauber, "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence," and John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch, "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique."
2004: David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction."
2003: Alexei A. Abrikosov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg and Anthony J. Leggett, "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids."
2002: Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos," and Riccardo Giacconi, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources."
2001: Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E. Wieman, "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates."
2000: Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer, "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics," and Jack S. Kilby "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit."
1999: Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics."
1998: Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations."
1997: Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."
1996: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson, "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3."
1995: Martin L. Perl, "for the discovery of the tau lepton," and Frederick Reines, "for the detection of the neutrino."
1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, "for the development of neutron spectroscopy," and Clifford G. Shull, "for the development of the neutron diffraction technique."
1993: Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr., "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."
1992: Georges Charpak, "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber."
1991: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, "for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers."
1990: Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor, "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."
1989: Norman F. Ramsey, "for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks," and Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul, "for the development of the ion trap technique."
1988: Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino."
1987: J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alexander Müller, "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials."
1986: Ernst Ruska, "for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope," and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, "for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope."
1985: Klaus von Klitzing, "for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect".
1984: Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, "for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction."
1983: Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars," and William Alfred Fowler, "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe."
1982: Kenneth G. Wilson, "for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions."
1981: Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy," and Kai M. Siegbahn, "for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy."
1980: James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch, "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons."
1979: Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current."
1978: Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, "for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics," and Arno Allan Penzias, Robert Woodrow Wilson "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation."
1977: Philip Warren Anderson, Sir Nevill Francis Mott and John Hasbrouck van Vleck, "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems."
1976: Burton Richter and Samuel Chao Chung Ting, "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind."
1975: Aage Niels Bohr, Ben Roy Mottelson and Leo James Rainwater, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection."
1974: Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish, "for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars."
1973: Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, for "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively," and Brian David Josephson, "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects."
1972: John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer, "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory."
1971: Dennis Gabor, "for his invention and development of the holographic method."
1970: Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén, "for fundamental work and discoveries in magnetohydro- dynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics," and Louis Eugène Félix Néel, "for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics."
1969: Murray Gell-Mann, "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions."
1968: Luis Walter Alvarez, "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis."
1967: Hans Albrecht Bethe, "for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars."
1966: Alfred Kastler, "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms."
1965: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard P. Feynman, "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles."
1964: Charles Hard Townes, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle," and Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle."
1963: Eugene Paul Wigner, "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles," and Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure."
1962: Lev Davidovich Landau, "for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium."
1961: Robert Hofstadter, "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons," and Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer, "for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name."
1960: Donald Arthur Glaser, "for the invention of the bubble chamber."
1959: Emilio Gino Segrè and Owen Chamberlain, "for their discovery of the antiproton."
1958: Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Il´ja Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, "for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect."
1957: Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee, "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles."
1956: William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect."
1955: Willis Eugene Lamb, "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum," and Polykarp Kusch, "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron."
1954: Max Born, "for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction," and Walther Bothe, "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith."
1953: Frits (Frederik) Zernike, "for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope."
1952: Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell, "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith."
1951: Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles."
1950: Cecil Frank Powell, "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method."
1949: Hideki Yukawa, "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces."
1948: Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, "for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation."
1947: Sir Edward Victor Appleton, "for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer."
1946: Percy Williams Bridgman, "for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics."
1945: Wolfgang Pauli, "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle."
1944: Isidor Isaac Rabi, "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei."
1943: Otto Stern, "for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton."
1940-1942: No Prizes awarded.
1939: Ernest Orlando Lawrence, "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements."
1938: Enrico Fermi, "for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons."
1937: Clinton Joseph Davisson and George Paget Thomson, "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals."
1936: Victor Franz Hess, "for his discovery of cosmic radiation," and Carl David Anderson, "for his discovery of the positron."
1935: James Chadwick, "for the discovery of the neutron."
1934: No Prize awarded
1933: Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."
1932: Werner Karl Heisenberg, "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen."
1931: No Prize awarded
1930: Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him"
1929: Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, "for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons."
1928: Owen Willans Richardson, "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him."
1927: Arthur Holly Compton, "for his discovery of the effect named after him," and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, "for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapor."
1926: Jean Baptiste Perrin, "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium."
1925: James Franck and Gustav Ludwig Hertz, "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom."
1924: Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn, "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy."
1923: Robert Andrews Millikan, "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."
1922: Niels Henrik David Bohr, "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them."
1921: Albert Einstein, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."
1920: Charles Edouard Guillaume, "in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys."
1919: Johannes Stark, "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields."
1918: Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta."
1917: Charles Glover Barkla, "for his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements."
1916: No Prize awarded.
1915: Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays."
1914: Max von Laue, "for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals."
1913: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, "for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium."
1912: Nils Gustaf Dalén, "for his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys."
1911: Wilhelm Wien, "for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat."
1910: Johannes Diderik van der Waals, "for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids."
1909: Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy."
1908: Gabriel Lippmann, "for his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon of interference."
1907: Albert Abraham Michelson, "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid."
1906: Joseph John Thomson, "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases."
1905: Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, "for his work on cathode rays."
1904: Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies."
1903: Antoine Henri Becquerel, " "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity," and Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
1902: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman, "in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena."
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 13
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/honours-prizes-awards/
|
en
|
Honours, prizes, awards – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/rostock_ehrenpromotion_small1.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/uni_logo_200.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/Pour-le-merite.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/gold-medal.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/MPM-Vs.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/MPM-Rs.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ETH1905.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/blackboard.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/Franklin-Medal-K.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/HarvCamp-1935.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/honours-prizes-awards/
|
University of Geneva
Dr. h. c. – awarded on July 9, 1909
On Friday, July 9, 1909, the University of Geneva awarded Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate on occasion of the 350th founding year of the university. 110 persons were honored during this ceremony. Among the honored persons were also the French chemist and physicist Marie Curie (1867-1934) and the German chemist and philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). Einstein was awarded the honorary doctorate following the proposal of the experimental physicist and Director of the Physical Institute of the University of Geneva Charles Eugène Guye (1866-1942). Einstein was present during the ceremony. On the day of the award he wrote in a letter to Lucien Chavan (1868-1942) and his wife Jeanne: “… I send you an affectionate greeting from the hospitable Geneva. I am delighted about the friendliness and kindness of the people …”
It was Chavan who had convinced Einstein to take part in the ceremony which is connected with the award, after Einstein had, accidentally, thrown the invitation into the “official wastepaper basket” of the Bernese patent-office.
In his memories concerning the end of the ceremony it says:
“The ceremony ended with the most opulent feast that I have taken part in during my whole life. Then I said to a patrician from Geneva who was sitting next to me: ‘Do you know what Calvin would have made if he was still alive?’ As he said no, and asked me for my opinion, I said: ‘He would have erected a large pyre, and he would have burned us all because of sinful gluttony.’ The man did no longer speak to me, and this is the last thing I can remember with regard to the noteworthy ceremony.”
Source: “Albert Einstein – A biography” Albrecht Fölsing, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 1993
It was the reformer Johannes Calvin (1509-1564) who had, in 1559, founded the Geneva Academy, the predecessor of the University of Geneva.
It was Albert Einstein‘s first honorary doctorate, but many more were to follow.
University of Rostock
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 12, 1919
On the day of the celebration of the 500th anniversary (Wednesday, November 12, 1919) of the University of Rostock, Albert Einstein and Max Planck (German physicist and Nobel laureate, 1858-1947) were awarded the honorary doctorate.
Einstein was awarded a honorary doctorate in medicine “in recognition of the enormous work of his mind”. In his letter of thanks to the dean of the medical faculty Einstein wrote: “I thank you very much for sending me the certificate which represents your excellent taste, and for your friendly covering letter. The wonderful celebration of your venerable university and the heartfelt hospitality which I was allowed to experience in Rostock will always be a nice memory for me.”
The honorary doctorate which Einstein was awarded in Rostock is the only one he was given in Germany!
Translation:
„On the day of the celebration of five hundred years Rostock University, the Medical Faculty awards professor Albert Einstein, Doctor of Philosophy, the honorary Doctor of Medicine in recognition of the enormous work of his mind, through which he has renewed the terms of space and time, gravity and matter from scratch.
Rostock, November 12, 1919.
The Dean“
Illustration Credit:
Courtesy Universitaetsarchiv Rostock
Signature: Prom. med. Nr. 150/ 1919, Albert Einstein
Princeton University
Dr. h. c. – awarded on May 9, 1921
“We greet the new Columbus of science, who travels lonesome through the foreign seas of thinking.” The German speech held by the president and head of the Princeton University John Hibben, began with these words. It was held on the occasion of awarding Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate on Monday, May 9, 1921. The celebration took place in Alexander Hall.
Albert Einstein, who visited the United States for the first time, accompanied Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) to succeed in financing the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They stayed from the beginning of April until the end of May. In Washington, Einstein was welcomed in the White House by President Warren G. Harding (1865-1923). After that he visited, among other cities, Princeton, Chicago and Cleveland. In Princeton he held the first of five lectures on the theory of relativity – Stafford Little Lectures (May 9 to May 13) after being awarded the honorary doctorate. The lecture hall was overcrowded. Not only students and members of the faculty, but also many curious and sensation-seeking people were present. Einstein spoke German, so only few people could follow his explanations. After he had finished his speech, Einstein’s lecture was summed up in English by a member of staff of the physical faculty. The demand for the second and the three following lectures was no longer that great and all the interested people found a comfortable place.
These lectures have been translated into English and published entitled “The Meaning of Relativity.” The German text was published in 1922 entitled: “Four Lectures on the Theory of Relativity.”
Approximately ten years later, the little town of Princeton, New Jersey, should become Albert Einstein’s new home.
University of Manchester
Dr. h. c. – awarded on June 9, 1921
Albert Einstein was awarded the honorary doctorate in natural sciences in the big lecture hall of the University of Manchester on Thursday, June 9, 1921. He was honored by the Vice Chancellor of the University, the English mineralogist Sir Henry Alexander Miers (1858-1942). Einstein said German words of thanks, and also held his lecture in German language.
In its evening edition of June 10, the Vossische Zeitung reported about the ceremony:
“Einstein honored in Manchester. The yesterday lecture of Prof. Einstein at the University of Manchester was, as our London reporter says, a homage to the German scholar. The big lecture hall of the university was filled with approximately thousand persons who gave Einstein a warm welcome. Before the lecture was held, the chemist Prof. Diron, who explained Einstein‘s merits, stood up and explained that the name of the discoverer of the theory of relativity may be mentioned next to the ones of the greatest researchers. He had done more for the progress of the world than statesmen and conquerors. The Vice Chancellor of the university, Sir Henry Miers, then awarded Einstein the honorary doctorate and explained that science was independent from the blood feud between the people. Manchester was proud to be able to honor the German scholar. Einstein then held his lecture in German. He thanked for the honors that were awarded to him, and expressed his hope that the demonstration would contribute to the improvement of the international relationships.”
During the time from June 8 until June 17, Einstein was on a lecture tour through England (Liverpool, Manchester, London and Oxford). Politically significant was his London encounter with the British politician Lord Richard Haldane (1856-1928) and with Prime Minister David Lloyd Georg (1863-1945).
Nobel Foundation, Stockholm
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize – awarded on December 10, 1922
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1921. He was awarded the prize “for his work on theoretical physics, especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. It is remarkable that Einstein was not awarded the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity.
During the presentation of awards, the laureate is awarded the Nobel Certificate and the golden Nobel Medal with the picture of the founder Alfred Nobel (Swedish chemist and industrial, 1833-1896) by the Swedish king. The prize money is only payed when the Nobel speech has been held.
Einstein was on a journey through Japan when he was awarded the prize on December 10, 1922. Who should take receipt of the prize for him? Shortly before the presentation of awards there were still differences of opinion about the nationality of Einstein. Was he a German or a Swiss citizen? Finally it was the German legate in Sweden who received the prize in Einstein’s name. Einstein himself was handed over the document and the medal in Berlin by the Swedish ambassador in Germany. As the statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that the Nobel laureate has to hold his Nobel speech before he receives the prize money, Einstein still had to wait for some time until he received the money.
Einstein held his Nobel speech on July 11, 1923 in the Jubilee Hall in Goeteborg in presence of the king and in front of about 2000 listeners. He spoke about “fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity”. After the speech King Gustav V had a vivid chat with Einstein.
The total amount of the prize money – about 120.000 Swedish Krones (back then converted about 180.000 Swiss Francs) – Einstein made available to his first wife Mileva and his two sons Hans Albert and Eduard.
University of Madrid
Dr. h. c. – awarded on March 8, 1923
Fulfilling the traditional customs Albert Einstein received the degree of an honorary doctor on Thursday, March 8, 1923 – in the morning and during a special meeting of the University of Madrid. Speeches were among others held by the Principal of the University, Professor José Rodríguez Carracido (1856-1928), Professor José Maria Plans (1878-1934), a student of the University, and the German ambassador in Madrid, Ernst Langwerth von Simmern (1865-1942). He held his speech in Spanish language. Albert Einstein held his acceptance speech in German.
Einstein‘s entry into his travel log dated March 8, 1923:
„Ehrendoktor Aecht spanische Reden mit zugehörigem bengalischem Feuer Lange aber inhaltlich gute Rede des d. Gesandten über deutsch-span. Beziehungen; (aber ins) ächt deutsch. Nichts rhetorisches. (Abends) Dann Besuch bei techn. Studenten. Reden und nichts als Reden, aber gut gemeint. Abends Vortrag Dann bei Kuno 1) musizieren. Ein Künstler (Direktor des Konservatoriums 2)) Poras spielte herrlich Violine.”
Translation:
“Honorary doctor Aecht Spanish speeches with corresponding Bengal firework Long but contentwise good speech of the German ambassador concerning German-Spanish relationships; (however) into ächt German. Nothing rhetorical. (in the evening) Then visiting technical students. Speeches and nothing but speeches, however, well-meant. In the evening lecture. Then playing music with Kuno 1). An artist (Director of the Conservatory 2)) Poras plays the violin – magnificent!”
Source:
Publisher: Diana Kormos Buchwald, among others, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 13, Princeton 2012
1) Kuno Kocherthaler, a relative of Einstein
2) Antonio Fernandez Bordas (1870-1950)
Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa were on a lecture tour through Spain with the stations Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza. They stayed in Spain from February 22 until March 15, 1923.
During Einstein‘s stay in Madrid he was awarded the diploma of a corresponding foreign member by the Academia de Ciencias on March 4. It was a formal meeting under the presidency of the Spanish King.
Order “Pour le mérite”
admission to the order – June 7, 1923
On Thursday, June 7, 1923 Albert Einstein was admitted to the order “Pour le mérite”. He received the medal Pour le mérite for science and arts, with which persons were and still are awarded “who have made themselves a name through widely spread recognition of their work in science and arts”.
The poet Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946), the mathematician Felix Klein (1849-1925), the sculptor Hugo Lederer (1871-1940) and the painter Max Liebermann (1847-1935) were also admitted to the order on this day.
Due to the political situation and thus the incidents in nazi Germany, Einstein renounced the membership to the order in 1933. An attempt of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss (1884-1963), at the beginning of the 1950ies to persuade Einstein to renew his membership was in vain.
The order Pour le mérite for science and arts was founded by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia (1795-1861) in May 1842. The first civil Order of Merit of this kind in Europe should complete the military order of Frederick II, King of Prussia (1712-1786, “Frederick the Great”) of 1740. In 1924 it was converted into an “independent organisation of excellent scientists and artists” with new statutes. In the 30ies the fate of the order was uncertain and its disbanding was given a serious thought. Only through the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, the order was revived and again entered the public consciousness in May 1952.
The order Pour le mérite is nowadays regarded as one of the highest awards in Germany, which a scientist or artist can achieved.
Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde
Genootschaps Medal – awarded on Dezember 13, 1923
The Dutch society Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde, which was founded in Amsterdam in 1790, promotes and supports activities in the areas of science and medicine. On Thursday, December 13, 1923, the society awarded its highest distinction, the Genootschaps Medal, in the auditorium of the Amsterdam university and thus honoured Albert Einstein and the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928). The list of previous laureates contained names like for example the Dutch physicists and Nobel Prize laureates Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923) and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926).
Albert Einstein took personally part in the celebration taking place on occasion of the annual meeting of the “Genootschap” on December 13. Despite acceptance of the invitation, H. A. Lorentz did not.
In advance there was a letter from the Board of the society to Albert Einstein, which was dated “October 25, 1923”:
„Hochgeehrter Herr Professor Einstein,
im Namen der “Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in Amsterdam” haben wir das Vergnügen Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass die “Genootschap” in ihrer Sitzung vom 22. Oktober 1923 Ihnen und Herrn Professor H. A. Lorentz ihre goldene Medaille zuerkannt hat. Die Verleihung dieser Medaillen wird am 31. Oktober 1923 in der Jahresversammlung der Gen. in der Aula der Universität nachmittags um 4 Uhr stattfinden.
Es würde uns eine ganz besondere Ehre sein, wenn Sie der Verleihung dieser Medaillen durch Herrn Prof. J. D. v. d. Waals, Professor der Physik an unserer Universität, persönlich beiwohnen könnten, wie auch Herr Professor Lorentz es uns versprochen hat. …
Mit einer zustimmenden Antwort würden Sie uns eine besondere Freude machen. …”
Translation:
“Highly honoured Professor Einstein,
in the name of the “Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in Amsterdam” we have the pleasure to inform you that the “Genootschap” has awarded you and Professor H. A. Lorentz its golden medal in its meeting dated October 22, 1923. The presentation of these medals will take place in the annual meeting of the Gen. in the auditorium of the university on October 31, 1923 at 4 pm.
It would be a very special honour for us if you could personally attend to the presentation of these medals by Prof. J. D. v. d. Waals, professor of physics at our university, like also Professor Lorentz has promised to do. …
You would specially please us if you sent us a positive answer. …“
The presentation date which is mentioned in the letter seems to have been postponed.
Royal Society of London
Copley Medal – awarded on November 30, 1925
Albert Einstein was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London in a ceremony on Monday, November 30, 1925. As tradition has it, the highest award of the society was handed over during its annual celebration. In 1925 the celebration took place in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in London. At the annual celebration the Royal Society awarded also other medals and prizes.
Einstein was awarded the Copley Medal by the English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), the retiring president of the society. The presentation of the medal was one of the last official actions of Sherrington. After the presentation of the medals he handed over the position of the president after one term of office (five years) to the British physicist from New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), from 1931 on Lord Rutherford of Nelson.
Some of the people who were awarded the Copley Medal before and after Einstein were the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1838), the British physicist Sir William Thomson (1883), from 1892 on Lord Kelvin of Largs, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1918), the German physicist Max Planck (1929), the Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1938) and the English physicist Paul A.M. Dirac (1952).
Sir Geoffrey Copley made money available to the Royal Society to promote scientific work (1709). A few years later the Copley Medal was suggested:
“…a medal or other honorary prize should be bestowed on the person whose experiment should be best approved…”
The English physicist Stephen Gray (1666-1736) was awarded the first Copley Medal in 1731. The medal consists of silver and gold. It was and still is awarded for special scientific work.
Royal Astronomical Society
Gold Medal – awarded on February 12, 1926
Some weeks after Einstein had been awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London, he was awarded another prize in England. This time the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) awarded him, also in London, its highest award, the Gold Medal. The Gold Medal was awarded for special performance in the field of astronomy. It is still awarded by the RAS, which also awards the Eddington and the Herschel Medal.
It was not possible for Einstein to receive the Gold Medal personally. In a letter of thanks which he had written before the award he wrote to the RAS: “…He who finds a thought which lets us look into the secret of nature – even if only a little bit deeper – has won mercy. He who then still experiences the recognition, sympathies and promotion of the greatest persons of his time almost obtains more luck than a human being is able to bear. In this consciousness I thank you in humble attitude for the great award you judged I deserve. I would like to come to you personally to receive the Medal awarded to me; but unfortunately I am not able to…”
Already in 1919 the RAS had, on proposal of the English astronomer and astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), decided to award Albert Einstein the Gold Medal for the year 1920. But “patriotic” members of the RAS prevented this. The result was that no medal was awarded in 1920. Einstein still had to wait for six years until he received the highest award of the RAS.
University of Paris
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 9, 1929
On Saturday, November 9, 1929, the University of Paris awarded Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate in the hall of the Sorbonne. The principal of the university, the French historian Sébastien Charléty (1867-1945), awarded Einstein the honorary doctorate diploma.
On November 12, the Vossische Zeitung reported about the ceremony what follows:
“Einstein honorary doctorate of the Sorbonne. From Paris we hear: In the large amphitheater of the Sorbonne there was, on Sunday evening, under the chairmanship of the principal Professor Charléty and in the presence of the whole scientific and intellectual Paris, a festive presentation of the honorary doctorate and the insignias of an honorary doctorate of the University of Paris for Professor Albert Einstein. The dean of the faculty for mathematics and natural sciences, Professor Maurain, celebrated the merits and the work of Einstein in a speech which the audience interrupted through minute-long applause. Einstein stood up and thanked with a bow. The applause was even longer when the principal awarded Einstein the doctorate diploma and covered his shoulder with the “Robenschleife” in the colors of the city of Paris. The ceremony was also attended by the German ambassador v. Hösch, with whom Professor Einstein stays during his visit in Paris.”
The dean of the faculty for mathematics and sciences, who is mentioned in the article, was the French geophysicist Charles Honoré Maurain (1871-1967). The German ambassador in Paris was Leopold von Hoesch (1881-1936).
Einstein‘s stay in Paris began on November 7 and ended on November 14. During his stay he held two lectures in the Institute Henri Poincaré and took part in a meeting of the Académie des sciences and the academic society Societé française de Philosophie.
ETH, Zurich
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 7, 1930
On occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule, ETH), Albert Einstein was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Science in a ceremony on Friday, November 7, 1930. The nomination was initiated by the department of mathematics of the ETH.
In the letter of the nomination it said: “To the completer of classical physics in the theory of relativity and the pioneer of quantum physics, its former student and teacher, in recognition of his excellent scientific performance and in thankful remembrance of his work which he performed for Switzerland and the college.”
The honorary doctorate of his Alma mater surely meant a lot to Albert Einstein.
From October 1896 to July 1900 Einstein had studied at the ETH and from October 1912 to March 1914 he worked there as full professor for theoretical physics.
Yeshiva College, New York
Dr. h. c. – awarded on October 8, 1934
On Monday, October 8, 1934, Albert Einstein received in a ceremony the degree of an honorary doctor (Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa) of the Yeshiva College in New York, USA.
Einstein had approved of the award of the degree of an honorary doctor in a letter to the College dated September 1, 1934. Dr. Bernard Revel (1885-1940), the first President of the Yeshiva College in New York, USA, which was founded in 1928, welcomed the attendees to the ceremony on occasion of the award of the degree of an honorary doctor, which at the same time was the official beginning of the academic year 1934/35.
After the award of the degree of an honorary doctor Einstein held his acceptance speech. He spoke in German: „Es erfüllt mich mit besonderer Freude und Genugtuung …” (“It is my special pleasure and satisfaction…“). Further speakers were among others the Governor of the Federal State of New York, Herbert Henry Lehman (1878-1963), and Herman Bernstein (1876-1935), editor of the Jewish Daily Bulletin.
Franklin Institute, Philadelphia
Franklin Medal – awarded on May 15, 1935
On Wednesday, May 15, 1935 Albert Einstein received the Benjamin Franklin Medal (Benjamin Franklin, American politician, author and scientist, 1706–1790) in a ceremony. It was awarded in recognition of his fundamental contributions to theoretical physics; especially for his theories of relativity and his work on the photoelectric effect.
The Franklin Medal is one of the highest awards of the Franklin Institute. It was and still is awarded for special performance in the field of science and the arts. The Franklin Institute also awards other medals than the Franklin Medal.
In the ceremony, which took place in the evening at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, USA, not only the two Franklin Medals, but also five Longstreth Medals and seven Wetherill Medals were awarded. Einstein did not hold any speech.
Harvard University
Dr. h. c. – awarded on June 20, 1935
In 1935 Albert Einstein received a new honorary doctorate, this time by the most traditional and most important university of the USA, the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was Thursday, June 20, 1935 when he was awarded in a ceremony the Doctor of Science in a ceremony. The president of the university, J.B. Conant, said in a speech about Einstein: “…Acclaimed by the world as a great revolutionist of theoretical physics, his bold speculations, now become basis doctrine, will be remembered when mankind`s present troubles are long forgotten…”
Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, July 5, 1935
At the same time like Einstein, the German author Thomas Mann (1857-1955) was honoured. He was awarded the Doctor of Letters. About Mann, Conant said in his speech: “… Novelist of rare distinction, an interpreter of life to many in the western world, one of the few contemporary guardians of the great tradition of Germany culture …”
Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, July 5, 1935
Like Einstein, Mann and his family had also emigrated to the USA in 1933. Both the emigrants received long lasting applause from the people present at the presentation of awards. Thomas Mann later stated in a letter to his publisher that his and Einstein’s honorary doctorate “had not been possible without any interference of president Roosevelt“.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 11
|
https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/article/257
|
en
|
https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/assets/img/favicon.ico
|
https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/assets/img/favicon.ico
|
[
"https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/assets/img/logo_288.jpg 2x",
"https://play.google.com/intl/it_it/badges/images/generic/it_badge_web_generic.png",
"https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/assets/img/badge_iOS.svg",
"https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/thumbs.php?ID=1445&W=1200 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/assets/img/favicon144.png
| null |
On a hot summer afternoon in 1923 in the Conference Hall at the Gothenburg Jubilee Exhibition, Albert Einstein gave a talk on “Fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity” as can be seen in fig. 1. In the large audience, besides the conference participants at the 17th Scandinavian Natural Sciences Meeting, were in the front row the Swedish King, Gustav V, and Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) the man responsible for inviting Einstein. This lecture became Einstein’s Nobel Lecture for his 1921 Nobel Prize in physics that was awarded in 1922.
What was the background to this? Why on Earth did such a large crowd attend a physics lecture in the middle of a heat wave and why was Einstein not awarded the Nobel Prize for his theories of relativity as most people would expect? This paper will search for an explanation by looking into the evaluation work of Einstein for the Nobel Prize.
1 How the Nobel Prize works
The statutes of the Nobel Foundation govern how the Nobel system works. It is based on Alfred Nobel’s will, but the Nobel Foundation is nowhere mentioned in the will. The Nobel Foundation was instead created by the Prize awarding institutions to manage their common interests and facilitate the general collaboration between the Prize awarders. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, mentioned in the will, awards the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry. Each Prize awarder also has their separate statutes that govern the evaluation work. Only invited nominators in certain categories are entitled to nominate. A successful candidate must have at least one nomination, but it is not automatically so that the most nominations get you the Prize. A five-person Nobel committee then evaluates all nominees, and the committee decides who are the most interesting candidates who are subjected to special reports. Then the Nobel Committee writes up a general report briefly discussing all nominees before presenting more extensive coverage of the main contenders, and most reasoning goes into that year’s committee proposal in the end. Then the proposal is discussed by the physics class of the Academy and finally there is the formal vote in pleno where all members of the Academy have the right to vote.
During the period from the first nomination of Einstein in 1910 until he was awarded the 1921 Prize in 1922 there was an increasing number of nominations as can be seen from fig. 2, but it was not until 1919, when the Nobel Committee made its first special evaluation of Einstein, and then it was the case of the Brownian motion.
2 Nominations of Einstein
Aant Elzinga, who has closely studied Einstein and the Nobel Prize, has grouped the nominations for Einstein in three periods. In the first period of nominations (1910–1914) it was mostly the special relativity that was proposed.
For these early nominations the Nobel Committee did not make any special report thus indicating that Einstein was not yet considered a main candidate. From the general reports it was claimed that an award would be premature, and the often-used argument that it would be better to await further results and possible confirmations was raised. Also, counterarguments like that the special relativity theory had no practical importance and thus of no benefit to mankind to quote from Nobel’s will were raised. Another argument was that it was a question of theory of knowledge rather than physics.
The second period (1915–1919) saw an increase in nominations where other work by Einstein was proposed as his work on the Brownian motion. But most of the other nominations kept suggesting Einstein for the special relativity theory and now also the general theory of relativity. Some nominators apparently sensed the committee’s unease with theoretical work and pointed out that Einstein had done experimental work. Now the committee argued that others had precedence, when it came to the Brownian motion and as for the general relativity theory only Mercury’s perihelion precession supported the theory whereas gravitational redshift and light bending were not yet confirmed. Also, arguments that the general theory of relativity was just a belief rather than a proper physical theory was raised.
The third period (1920–1922) is of course marked by the attention the famous 1919 solar eclipse expeditions got, as seen in fig. 3. Nominations were soaring and almost all were arguing for the theories of relativity. But one nominator suggested the photoelectric effect. Now the Nobel Committee, not ready to award Einstein, questioned the validity of the solar eclipse data and also questioned the 1921 nomination for Einstein for the photoelectric effect, where Arrhenius in his special report would argue that it was a lucky guess by Einstein and that it was experimentalists that had made the work worthy of recognition.
3 Special reports on Einstein
Let us now look at the special reports on Einstein as can be seen in table 1. In 1919 there were nominations for The Svedberg and Jean Perrin for their work on the motions of molecules, but since their work was based on Einstein’s work on the Brownian motion Arrhenius had been asked by his colleagues in the committee to also nominate Einstein for the sake of thoroughness. Arrhenius also got the task to write the special report on the three, where he concluded the section on Einstein:
As far as the prize-awarding of these works is concerned, it must be confessed that they have had as great a value for experimental research as Einstein’s other works. Nevertheless, Einstein’s theoretical work, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory, are by far most proposed of the majority of nominators compared to his molecular kinetic works, when it comes to awarding him with the Nobel Prize. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that these first-mentioned works seem far more apt to change our conception of nature and therefore have a greater significance than the molecular kinetic studies, which are in the very best agreement with, and are a consequence of, the classical conception of the motion of molecules. It would therefore, no doubt, seem strange to the learned world if Einstein received a prize precisely for the works referred to here, notwithstanding their obviously great merit and usefulness for the development of science, and not for his other great works, which is what have attracted the attention of nominators.
So, the argument was that Einstein could not be awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the Brownian motion since his peers expected it to be for the theories of relativity or quantum theory. This meant that Perrin and Svedberg also were put on hold until 1926 when Perrin got the physics prize and Svedberg the chemistry prize. Instead, Max Planck was awarded the reserved 1918 Nobel Prize for physics “in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta” and Johannes Stark was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize in physics for “for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields”.
The next year, in 1920, Svante Arrhenius followed up his own argument and made a special report on Einstein’s theories of relativity in light of the results from the solar eclipse the previous year. Now Einstein was the candidate that had the most nominations and also by important nominators. Arguments were again made for Einstein’s theories of the Brownian motion, the specific heat, but most of all for the theories of relativity. And as for the general theory of relativity there were discussions of the three specific cases where the theory could be put to the test.
1. The shift of Mercury’s perihelion (where Einstein’s theory was in agreement with observations).
2. The bending of light by the Sun (where there were arguments for and against the accuracy of the observations).
3. The redshift of lines in the solar spectra (which could not yet be detected).
Arrhenius in his report described the great interest and astonishment that had followed the presentation of the solar eclipse results at the joint meeting in November 1919 with the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. But he also reported on the subsequent critique. Although there was much in favour of the Mercury perihelion shift, Arrhenius also brought up critique and other explanations. For the red shift he, quite lengthy, presented the tests that had been made and none delivered any clear support: “In any case, this effect on wavelength seems unsuitable for supporting Einstein’s theory”. Arrhenius even observed at the end of his report that there had appeared both uncritical admiration and unjust critique of Einstein.
The Nobel Prize in physics for 1920 instead went to the director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Charles Edouard Guillaume, “in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys”.
Next year in 1921, there were even more nominations for Einstein. So, this year there were two special reports made on Einstein. One was written by Allvar Gullstrand (1862–1930) on the theories of relativity and the other one, due to a new nomination for the photoelectric effect, on which Arrhenius wrote the report.
Almost half of the general report in 1921 deals with Einstein. It first summed up arguments from Gullstrand’s special report and regarding the experimental tests of the theories of relativity that they had neither contradicted nor confirmed, and it was stated that “it demands a great deal of conviction in respect to phenomena, which lie entirely outside experience, it does not seem to meet the requirements which should apply to the awarding of the Nobel Prize”. Then followed brief summaries of the three different test options of Einstein’s theory arguing that they did not give any clear support. Gullstrand’s report also called into question the shift of Mercury’s perihelion, that many considered a solid argument for Einstein. Gullstrand, however, claimed that for now it was not clear if Einstein’s theory could be considered in agreement with Leverrier’s measurements. And since the general theory of relativity “so far in no way has been satisfactorily confirmed by experience, the committee does not currently consider themselves able to propose him for a Nobel Prize”. The end verdict this year was to wait for further observations and tests to determine the fortune of Einstein. This is a fate that Einstein has shared with many over the years, a cautious policy has perhaps helped the Nobel institution over the years. It must not be wrong. Noteworthy is that the general report in 1921 used terms as “Einstein’s followers” in connection with the discussion of the relativity theories. Normally, the general reports are very matter of fact, without references to anything outside the physics at hand. So, this phrase is special and cannot be understood in any positive sense.
But the general report continued with Einstein’s photoelectric effect. This was more summarily dismissed this year, based on the special report by Arrhenius, claiming that others than Einstein had been crucial in making the experimental work. Arrhenius also dismissed the argument from the nomination that the photoelectric law is fundamental for the quantum theory and its successful dealing with atomic phenomena. And since the 1918 Prize had gone to Planck, it was argued that this had already been awarded. So, prospects for Einstein seemed gloomy and the committee recommended that, since no prizeworthy candidate at all was at hand, the 1921 Nobel Prize should be reserved until next year, and such became the decision of the Academy.
4 Solving the gridlock
Something needed to change if this deadlock should go away. This dominance of experimentalists and experimental ethos in the committee has been observed by historians. And it was quite remarkable that the two members that got the task to evaluate Einstein were Allvar Gullstrand, a professor of ophtalmology and Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1911, and Svante Arrhenius, director of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry and Nobel Laureate in chemistry in 1903. The five-person physics committee did not have any professional theoretical physicist among them at this time.
There were two professors of mathematical physics in Sweden. At Lund University the professor was an expert on sea currents and at this time not a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The other professor of mathematical physics was also an expert on hydrodynamics, Carl Wilhelm Oseen (1879–1944). He became professor already in 1909 at Uppsala University, but had for many years during the 1910s struggled with tuberculosis. He had early on taken an interest in Niels Bohr and together with Rutherford he helped the Dane to get his professorship. He had also debated some aspects of quantum theory with Planck in 1914. Niels and Margarethe Bohr had visited Oseen in 1913 while the Swede stayed at a sanatorium the months before Bohr published his famous papers on the atomic structure. In 1919 Oseen held a summer lecture series for teachers about the quantum theory and the theories of relativity. From these lectures we can conclude that he was positive although not uncritical to these theories. The lectures, together with the attention that the solar eclipse observations added, helped initiate the founding of the Swedish Physical Society in 1920, where Oseen became the first president. His training from Lund University was in mathematics, so in 1921 he got elected to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, at first to a mathematical class. Later in 1922 he was transferred to the physics class. And more importantly already in the autumn of 1921 Oseen had been adjoined to the Nobel Committee for physics. And at the first meeting he attended, where the above-mentioned decision to reserve the 1921 Prize was recommended by the class, he managed to invoke a possible future opening for the photoelectric law and he:
emphasized that this discovery could gain further significance in the future, which is why he hoped that the committee’s statement should not be understood that the matter was decided once and for all.
In view of this and after further deliberation, the class decided to state that Einstein’s law for the photoelectric effect must be ascribed great importance, but that any awarding of the prize should wait until a more reliable understanding was attained of its significance for science.
For a long time, the Nobel Committee had relied on Gullstrand’s investigations of Einstein’s theory of relativity for the candidacy, and he found the whole thing to be a matter of “belief.” His correspondence with Oseen from this time shows that Gullstrand constantly tried to find errors in Einstein’s theory, whereupon Oseen rejected his objections. At one point, Oseen wrote that it “took a few minutes” for him to dismiss the problem that Gullstrand had posed. But Gullstrand returned with “the fable of the clock that slows down” which was something for “the relativist believer”.
5 Oseen’s tandem solution
1922 became a busy year for Oseen. In May 1922 the astronomer and astrophysicist Bernhard Hasselberg died after years of dwindling health. His last major impact on the committee’s work had been the prize for Guillaume. In September 1922 Gullstrand proposed that Oseen should replace Hasselberg in the committee and brought up Oseen’s grasp of theoretical physics as beneficial for the committee’s work. The nomination was signed by two other members as well as by The Svedberg, member of the chemistry committee. It should also be noted that Oseen was still only member of the applied mathematics and astronomy class and had to be adjoined, not only to the Nobel committee, but also to the physics class to take part in the class’ discussions of the Nobel committee’s proposals. But already before this decision the Nobel committee had submitted its recommendation to the Academy of the two available Nobel Prizes in physics (1921 & 1922), and before that, during the summer, the special reports, by the adjoint member Oseen, had been submitted.
But other important events had also taken place in this context during the summer of 1922. In June Niels Bohr was invited to deliver the Wolfskehl lectures in Göttingen. He travelled there accompanied by his Swedish assistant at this time, Oskar Klein, and they stayed at an inn in the outskirts of the city. At the same inn Oseen also boarded. He was making a rare trip and was anxious to listen to his old friend Niels Bohr and meet other colleagues, as can be seen from fig. 4 and fig. 5. At this conference Bohr presented Hendrik Kramers’ dispersion theory, to which a young Werner Heisenberg raised objections.
Oseen already had a very positive opinion of Bohr’s work, and despite the criticism made by Heisenberg in Göttingen (that actually impressed Bohr), Oseen returned to Uppsala where he sat down and wrote two special Nobel reports, one on Bohr and one on Einstein, see fig. 6. He finished his 34 pages report on Bohr, “Bohr’s atomic theory,” on August 9, and a few days later, on August 13, he finished his 12 pages report on “Einstein’s law for the photoelectric effect”. After submitting these reports he had ten days before the second Nordic Physicist Meeting started in Uppsala, where he was one of the organizers. Bohr attended giving the main lecture “On the Explanation of the Periodic System.” The meeting provided another opportunity for Bohr and Oseen to meet. This conference can be seen as an important step in establishing theoretical atomic physics as a central area for physics among Nordic physicists. It was also considered as something of a “summit meeting” between Oseen and Bohr.
If we look closer at the evaluations by Oseen in 1922, it becomes clear that to him Bohr and Einstein were a tandem. Bohr’s work was based on Einstein’s theory and Einstein’s theory became more palatable when connected to Bohr’s work. Such a solution would manage a Nobel Prize to Einstein, but avoiding the contested issue of the relativity theories, and at the same time solving the pressure of all the nominations for Einstein. No one but Oseen ever nominated Einstein only for the photoelectric effect. He was well aware of the opposition to Einstein’s relativity theories and the political and cultural aspects pertaining to them. However, he was a supporter and one of few in Sweden that actually understood the general theory of relativity at this time. And since there were two available prizes in 1922 it was an opportunity that could not be missed. The postponing in 1921 might thus actually have helped to accommodate the solution in 1922.
6 Finally, a Nobel Prize for Einstein
Looking closer at Oseen’s reports we can note the different sections, after the first theoretical examination he addressed the experimental confirmations of Einstein’s law. And the usage of “law” of course underscores the irrefutable nature of the theory. Especially Millikan’s work was referred to. Then came a section “The Einstein law and Bohr’s atomic theory” which concluded: “The Einstein proposition and Bohr’s objectively identical frequency conditions are currently one of the most trustworthy propositions in physics”. Then followed a section “A look at Einstein’s activities,” where other Einstein’s important contributions were listed. The first group was his works based on classical physics like the Brownian motion, the second group was his writings on the quantum theory, like his papers on the specific heat. The third group was his contributions to electromagnetic theory to which his special theory of relativity was counted. The fourth group was the general theory of relativity. All very important contributions depending on one’s particular interest. “In any case, no other discovery made by Einstein than his proposition on the quantum emission and absorption of light has generated as much interest in measuring physics” Oseen stated. This argument was set to thwart any objections from the overly cautious experimentalists in the committee and in the physics class.
Most important is of course the concluding part:
At a time when physicists, with few exceptions, were opposed to Planck’s quantum theory, Einstein has shown through an original and astute analysis that the energy exchange between matter and ether must take place in such a way that an atom emits or absorbs an energy quantum hν, where ν is the oscillation number. As an application of this proposition, Einstein has established the law that if an electron is photoelectrically triggered from a substance, its energy after release must have the value $h\nu – P$, where $P$ is the work needed to release the electron from the substance. This law has been most beautifully confirmed by measurements by Millikan and others. Einstein’s proposition has received its greatest significance and also the most convincing confirmation in that it is one of the assumptions on which Bohr built his atomic theory. Almost all confirmations of Bohr’s atomic theory are also confirmations of Einstein’s proposition.
The discovery of Einstein’s law is without a doubt one of the most significant events in the history of physics. Its discoverer seems to me to fully deserve a Nobel Prize in physics.
A stronger endorsement cannot be phrased but let us also briefly examine Oseen’s report on Bohr. The different sections gave a hint of the way his argument went: “The historical assumptions for Bohr’s atomic theory”, “The basis for Bohr’s theory of 1913”, “The results of Bohr’s theory from 1913”, “Theory for the Stark effect and the Zeeman effect”, “Bohr’s correspondence principle”, “Bohr’s rule for determining the stationary states”, “The atomic theory’s development 1913–1921”, “Bohr’s atomic theory of 1921”, “Confirmations of Bohr’s theory”, and “Difficulties in Bohr’s atomic theory” concluded the report and the final words should be noted:
The cornerstone of Bohr’s thought structure, the Einstein-Bohr condition $\epsilon_{1} - \epsilon_{2} = h\nu$, has, through studies by Franck et al. received an extremely comprehensive and overwhelming confirmation. [...] Finally, if one asks whether the Bohr atomic theory is worthy of a Nobel Prize in physics, it seems to me that the answer can be no other than this. Both with regard to its already confirmed findings and with regard to the powerful stimulus that this theory has given to both experimental and theoretical physics, Bohr’s atomic theory seems to me fully worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Also, an extremely strong endorsement. There was also another seven pages special report in 1922 by Allvar Gullstrand supplementing his special report from the previous year on Einstein’s theories of relativity. Here Gullstrand reiterated that these theories were a “matter of faith”, and he went through the three tests for the general theory. For the red shift Gullstrand quoted von Laue that there was room for further tests. And he continued to quote von Laue that there was no absolute certainty and that there was room for more and further investigations. For the perihelion test Gullstrand referred to some papers that did not fully support Einstein’s theory, and that any certain judgment therefore would have to wait. He also referred several times to “followers of the relativity theory”, and concluded:
It should be clear from the above that my opinion from last year that Einstein cannot at present be advocated for the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics, either for the special or the general theory of relativity or for the combined value of these theories, is not only still valid, but has been further confirmed by subsequent publications.
Despite Gullstrand’s stubborn objections to relativity, Oseen convinced his colleagues in the Nobel Committee for his tandem solution, and Gullstrand could still be content that the relativity theories were not awarded a Nobel Prize. The general report also stated that there was an overwhelming number of nominations for Einstein, which might have made the Committee and the Academy members extra prone to accept Oseen’s solution. Most nominations for Einstein were for the relativity theories, and only Oseen had nominated Einstein exclusively for the photoelectric effect. The committee referred to Gullstrand’s present and prior reports and to Arrhenius previous report and the committee “maintained its verdict from last year and considered itself unable to propose Einstein for the Nobel Prize for his theories of relativity and gravitation”. Then the report continued discussing Einstein and Bohr simultaneously according to Oseen’s arguments and concluded:
Due to what the committee here had the honour to state, may the committee suggest that of the two available Nobel Prizes for Physics, the one reserved from the previous year should be awarded to Professor Albert Einstein in Berlin for his merits in theoretical physics, especially his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect; and that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics should be awarded to Professor Niels Bohr in Copenhagen for his merits in exploring the structure of atoms and the radiation emanating from them.
The class did approve of this suggestion by the Nobel Committee, which basically was Oseen’s tandem solution.
All this was well-received, also in the Academy in pleno and on November 9, 1922 the decision was made at the Nobel meeting of the Academy to award Einstein the reserved 1921 Physics Prize and Niels Bohr the 1922 Physics Prize. Noteworthy is that the Academy was anxious to keep any trace of the theories of relativity out of the motivation and they changed the phrase: “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” adding “regardless of the value that, after any confirmation, could be attributed to the theories of relativity and gravity, [...] award the 1921 prize [...] to Albert Einstein for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” This text also made it onto Einstein’s Nobel diploma making it stand out as the only Nobel diploma with text stating what the Laureate was not awarded for. The most common interpretation of this is that it is a symptom of the anxious and perhaps not so brilliant Swedish Committee. That could well be the case, but another interpretation might be possible as we shall see.
7 The end of nominations
Oseen had managed an incredible feat to have two of his own candidates each being awarded the Nobel Prize and thus defusing the difficult situation with the many nominations for Einstein. And as we have seen, the Nobel Prize to Einstein was intrinsically coupled to the Nobel Prize to Bohr and vice versa. Also clear is that it was all Oseen’s doing. No one beside members of the Nobel Committee could fully understand what had played out, but some people did. Oseen’s former colleague from Uppsala, Eva von Bahr-Bergius, was pleased with the end result and wrote to Oseen:
More than one month ago – when the names of the Nobel laureates were announced – I was determined to write to you. I felt a need to thank you for being there and taking care of the Nobel Prizes, so that physicists will not make a fool of themselves in the same way as the Swedish [Literary] Academy. Because your influence on these matters is very great, I understand very well. I would very much wish that someday you alone could be in charge of the Nobel Prizes, but I am afraid that you write such learned things that – at least here in Sweden – there is no one who can judge them.
I assume that there was a controversy about Einstein’s name. His opponents, who succeeded in excluding the theory of relativity from the prize statement, have thereby simply ensured that in the future he will receive the prize one more time.
So, this is another possible interpretation. That the non-awarding of the theories of relativity would only mean that Einstein would be awarded the Nobel Prize again. And there were no formal objections to such a chain of events, Marie Curie had a decade earlier received her second Nobel Prize. And Einstein if any could have been nominated again for the theories of relativity and other works. But the fact is that that did not happen. The following year there were two nominations for him, but they were actually late arrivals from the previous year. And thereafter there are no nominations at all for Einstein. So, apparently his peers considered that he was now put up on the Nobel shelf, which is also telling of how awards in science may function, especially the Nobel Prize.
But let us return to where we started. Einstein did not come to Stockholm to pick up his Nobel Prize, he was on a boat on his way from the USA to Japan, when the news broke, and there was no possibility for him to make it to the Prize awarding events in Stockholm. Since it is mandatory to deliver a Nobel Prize Lecture to receive the prize amount, he eventually came to Sweden the year after, and invited by Svante Arrhenius he delivered a lecture in Gothenburg on July 11, 1923 on “Fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity.” But that was not the work he had been awarded for. But since most people were more interested in a lecture on relativity theory than the photoelectric effect as can be seen in the large crowd in fig. 1, this is what Arrhenius asked Einstein to talk about. And immediately after Arrhenius delivered the manuscript of the lecture for the Nobel Foundation yearbook, Les Prix Nobel, as Einstein’s Nobel Lecture. This was questioned in the Academy, but Arrhenius then said that the manuscript had already been set, and proofs already sent out. So, it was agreed that it should be allowed. Among Einstein’s critics in Sweden this caused an outrage and a lot of complaints to the Academy that had let this pass, complaints arrived also from abroad. The lecture should take place within six months, but this was after seven months; the lecture should take place in Stockholm, and most of all it should be about the Prize awarded work. There had been instances of delay earlier, the Curies held their lecture one and a half year late, but they held it in Stockholm and on the topic they had been awarded for at least. The reason for Arrhenius’ actions might be found in his argument in the 1919 special report not to award Einstein for the Brownian motion, since it would be strange if Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for anything else than the theories of relativity. This is why Einstein’s Nobel lecture is about the theories of relativity, for which he was not awarded the Nobel Prize.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 44
|
https://www.space.com/15524-albert-einstein.html
|
en
|
Albert Einstein: His life, theories and impact on science
|
[
"https://mos.fie.futurecdn.net/uyhgawbmc02uaww6-16455340654394.png",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/W2xQZxs7T2gUE2fMbUv4s6-320-80.jpg",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/oohkepmm7WCssC7ToxyVXi-320-80.jpg",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/w2fwDbRoyRyX2nsbtdWTCH-320-80.jpeg",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CUW7whqfDKqyMBxM5RRxuK-320-80.jpg",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jPqqrvNvM3AvuV4mUwuTMT-320-80.jpg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p/?c1=2&c2=10055482&cv=4.4.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Elizabeth Howell",
"Ailsa Harvey"
] |
2022-02-01T11:26:40+00:00
|
Albert Einstein profoundly changed physics and ideas about space and time. Learn more about his life, theories and scientific impact.
|
en
|
Space.com
|
https://www.space.com/15524-albert-einstein.html
|
Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His work continues to help astronomers study everything from gravitational waves to Mercury's orbit.
The scientist's equation that helped explain special relativity – E = mc^2 – is famous even among those who don't understand its underlying physics. Einstein is also known for his theory of general relativity (an explanation of gravity), and the photoelectric effect (which explains the behavior of electrons under certain circumstances); his work on the latter earned him a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
Einstein also tried in vain to unify all the forces of the universe in a single theory, or a theory of everything, which he was still working on at the time of his death.
Related: What is the Theory of Everything?
Einstein's early years
Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, a town that today has a population of just more than 120,000. There is a small commemorative plaque where his house used to stand (it was destroyed during World War II). The family moved to Munich shortly after his birth, according to the Nobel Prize website, and later to Italy when his father faced problems with running his own business. Einstein's father, Hermann, ran an electrochemical factory and his mother Pauline took care of Albert and his younger sister, Maria.
Einstein would write in his memoirs that two "wonders" deeply affected his early years, according to Hans-Josef Küpper, an Albert Einstein scholar. Young Einstein encountered his first wonder — a compass — at age 5: He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with unseen forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he worshipped, calling it his "holy geometry book."
Contrary to popular belief, young Albert was a good student, according to an online archive. He excelled in physics and mathematics, but was a more "moderate" pupil in other subjects, Küpper wrote on his website. However, Einstein rebelled against the authoritarian attitude of some of his teachers and dropped out of school at 16. He later took an entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, and while his performances in physics and math were excellent, his marks in other areas were subpar, and he did not pass the exam. The aspiring physicist took additional courses to close the gap in his knowledge and was admitted to the Swiss Polytechnic in 1896. In 1901 he received his diploma to teach physics and mathematics.
However, Einstein could not find a teaching position, and began work in a Bern patent office in 1901, according to his Nobel Prize biography. It was while there that, in between analyzing patent applications, he developed his work in special relativity and other areas of physics that later made him famous.
Einstein married Mileva Maric, a longtime love of his from Zurich, in 1903. Their children, Hans Albert and Eduard, were born in 1904 and 1910. (The fate of a child born to them in 1902 before their marriage, Lieserl, is unknown.) Einstein divorced Maric in 1919 and soon after married Elsa Löwenthal. Löwenthal died in 1933.
Career highlights
Einstein's career sent him to multiple countries. He earned his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 and subsequently took on professor positions in Zurich (1909), Prague (1911) and Zurich again (1912). Next, he moved to Berlin to become director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and a professor at the University of Berlin (1914). He also became a German citizen.
A major validation of Einstein's work came in 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington, secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, led an expedition to Africa that measured the position of stars during a total solar eclipse. The group found that the position of stars was shifted due to the bending of light around the sun. (In 2008, a BBC/HBO production dramatized the story in "Einstein and Eddington.")
Einstein remained in Germany until 1933 when dictator Adolf Hitler rose to power. The physicist then renounced his German citizenship and moved to the United States to become a professor of theoretical physics at Princeton. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and retired in 1945.
Einstein remained active in the physics community throughout his later years. In 1939, he famously penned a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that uranium could be used for an atomic bomb.
Late in Einstein's life, he engaged in a series of private debates with physicist Niels Bohr about the validity of quantum theory. Bohr's theories held the day, and Einstein later incorporated quantum theory into his own calculations.
Einstein's death
Einstein died of an aortic aneurysm on April 18, 1955. A blood vessel burst near his heart, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). When asked if he wanted to have surgery, Einstein refused. "I want to go when I want to go," he said. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."
Einstein's body — most of it, anyway — was cremated; his ashes were spread in an undisclosed location, according to the AMNH. However, a doctor at Princeton Hospital, Thomas Harvey, had controversially performed an autopsy, and removed Einstein's brain and eyeballs, according to the BBC.
Harvey sliced hundreds of thin sections of brain tissue to place on microscope slides and snapped 14 photos of the brain from several angles. He took the brain tissue, slides and images with him when he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he was a medical supervisor in a biological testing lab.
Over the next 30 years, Harvey sent a few slides to other researchers who requested them, but kept the rest of the brain in two glass jars, sometimes in a cider box under a beer cooler. The story of Einstein's brain was largely forgotten until 1985, when Harvey and his colleagues published their study results in the journal Experimental Neurology.
Harvey failed a competency exam in 1988, and his medical license was revoked, Blitz wrote. Harvey eventually donated the brain to Princeton Hospital, where the brain's journey had begun. Harvey died in 2007. Pieces of Einstein's brain are now at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Live Science reported.
Einstein's remarkable brain
Harvey's 1985 study authors reported that Einstein's brain had a higher number of glial cells (those that support and insulate the nervous system) per neurons (nerve cells) than other brains they examined. They concluded that it might indicate the neurons had a higher metabolic need — in other words, Einstein's brain cells needed and used more energy, which could have been why he had such advanced thinking abilities and conceptual skills.
However, other researchers have pointed out a few problems with that study, according to Eric H. Chudler, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. First, for example, the other brains used in the study were all younger than Einstein's brain. Second, the "experimental group" had only one subject — Einstein. Additional studies are needed to see if these anatomical differences are found in other people. And third, only a small part of Einstein's brain was studied.
Another study, published in 1996 in the journal Neuroscience Letters, found that Einstein's brain weighed only 1,230 grams, which is less than the average adult male brain (about 1,400 g). Also, the scientist's cerebral cortex was thinner than that of five control brains, but the density of neurons was higher.
A study published in 2012 in the journal Brain revealed that Einstein's brain had extra folding in the gray matter, the site of conscious thinking. In particular, the frontal lobes, regions tied to abstract thought and planning, had unusually elaborate folding.
Einstein's scientific legacy
Einstein's legacy in physics is significant. Here are some of the key scientific principles that he pioneered:
Theory of special relativity: Einstein showed that physical laws are identical for all observers, as long as they are not under acceleration. However, the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same, no matter at what speed the observer is traveling. This work led to his realization that space and time are linked to what we now call space-time. So, an event seen by one observer may also be seen at a different time by another observer.
Theory of general relativity: This was a reformulation of the law of gravity. In the 1600s, Newton formulated three laws of motion, among them, outlining how gravity works between two bodies. The force between them depends on how massive each object is, and how far apart the objects are. Einstein determined that when thinking about space-time, a massive object causes a distortion in space-time (like putting a heavy ball on a trampoline). Gravity is exerted when other objects fall into the "well" created by the distortion in space-time, like a marble rolling towards a large ball. General relativity passed a major test in 2019 in an experiment involving a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Photoelectric effect: Einstein's work in 1905 proposed that light should be thought of as a stream of particles (photons) instead of just a single wave, as was commonly thought at the time. His work helped decipher curious results scientists were previously unable to explain.
Unified field theory: Einstein spent much of his later years trying to merge the fields of electromagnetism and gravity. He was unsuccessful but may have been ahead of his time. Other physicists are still working on this problem.
Einstein's astronomical legacy
There are many applications of Einstein's work, but here are some of the most notable ones in astronomy:
Gravitational waves: In 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected space-time ripples — otherwise known as gravitational waves— that occurred after black holes collided about 1.4 billion light-years from Earth. LIGO also made an initial detection of gravitational waves in 2015, a century after Einstein predicted these ripples existed. The waves are a facet of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Mercury's orbit: Mercury is a small planet orbiting close to a very massive object relative to its size — the sun. Its orbit could not be understood until general relativity showed that the curvature of space-time is affecting Mercury's motions and changing its orbit. There is a small chance that over billions of years, Mercury could be ejected from our solar system due to these changes (with an even smaller chance that it could collide with Earth).
Gravitational lensing: This is a phenomenon by which a massive object (like a galaxy cluster or a black hole) bends light around it. Astronomers looking at that region through a telescope can then see objects directly behind the massive object, due to the light being bent. A famous example of this is Einstein's Cross, a quasar in the constellation Pegasus: A galaxy roughly 400 million light-years away bends the light of the quasar so that it appears four times around the galaxy.
Black holes: In April 2019, the Event Horizon telescope showed the first-ever images of a black hole. The photos again confirmed several facets of general relativity, including not only that black holes exist, but also that they have a circular event horizon — a point at which nothing can escape, not even light.
Additional resources
To find the answers to frequently asked questions about Albert Einstein, visit The Nobel Prize website. Additionally, you can learn about The Einstein Memorial at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.
Bibliography
"Einstein: The Life and Times". American Journal of Physics (1973). https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1
"On the brain of a scientist: Albert Einstein". Experimental Neurology (1985). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3979509/
"The fascinating life and theory of Albert Einstein". Mih, W. C. Nova Publishers (2000). https://books.google.co.uk/books
"Alterations in cortical thickness and neuronal density in the frontal cortex of Albert Einstein". Neuroscience Letters (1996). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8805120/
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 52
|
https://twitter.com/NobelPrize/status/1780974843359289665
|
en
|
x.com
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
X (formerly Twitter)
| null | ||||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 4
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
|
en
|
Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/94/Symbol_support_vote.svg/19px-Symbol_support_vote.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1b/Semi-protection-shackle.svg/20px-Semi-protection-shackle.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_-_restoration.jpg/220px-Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_-_restoration.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Albert_Einstein_signature_1934.svg/150px-Albert_Einstein_signature_1934.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Albert_Einstein_at_the_age_of_three_%281882%29.jpg/170px-Albert_Einstein_at_the_age_of_three_%281882%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Albert_Einstein_as_a_child.jpg/200px-Albert_Einstein_as_a_child.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/WMAP_2012.png/220px-WMAP_2012.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Symbol_category_class.svg/16px-Symbol_category_class.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Crab_Nebula.jpg/16px-Crab_Nebula.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Albert_Einstein%27s_exam_of_maturity_grades_%28color2%29.jpg/170px-Albert_Einstein%27s_exam_of_maturity_grades_%28color2%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Albert_Einstein_and_his_wife_Mileva_Maric.jpg/220px-Albert_Einstein_and_his_wife_Mileva_Maric.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Albert_Einstein_and_Elsa_Einstein_arriving_by_ship%2C_San_Diego%2C_1930_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Albert_Einstein_and_Elsa_Einstein_arriving_by_ship%2C_San_Diego%2C_1930_%28cropped%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Einstein_thesis.png/170px-Einstein_thesis.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Einstein_patentoffice.jpg/240px-Einstein_patentoffice.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Einstein-with-habicht-and-solovine.jpg/240px-Einstein-with-habicht-and-solovine.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/19191125_A_New_Physics_Based_on_Einstein_-_The_New_York_Times.png/220px-19191125_A_New_Physics_Based_on_Einstein_-_The_New_York_Times.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Albert_Einstein_%28Nobel%29.png/170px-Albert_Einstein_%28Nobel%29.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/League_of_Nations_Commission_067.tif/lossy-page1-220px-League_of_Nations_Commission_067.tif.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Albert_Einstein_and_Charlie_Chaplin_City_Lights_premiere_1931.jpg/200px-Albert_Einstein_and_Charlie_Chaplin_City_Lights_premiere_1931.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Einstein-cartoon1.jpg/170px-Einstein-cartoon1.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Einstein%27s_landing_card_%285706142737%29.jpg/220px-Einstein%27s_landing_card_%285706142737%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Churchill_and_Einstein_in_1933.jpg/220px-Churchill_and_Einstein_in_1933.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Einstein-formal_portrait-35_%28cropped%29.jpg/170px-Einstein-formal_portrait-35_%28cropped%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/M%C3%BCnchen-2021-Deutsches_Museum-Einstein.jpg/220px-M%C3%BCnchen-2021-Deutsches_Museum-Einstein.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Citizen-Einstein.jpg/220px-Citizen-Einstein.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Einstein_Apr.1921_SS_Rotterdam_32099.jpg/220px-Einstein_Apr.1921_SS_Rotterdam_32099.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Albert_Einstein_Head.jpg/170px-Albert_Einstein_Head.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Wanda_von_Debschitz-Kunowski_Albert_Einstein_beim_Geigenspiel_1927.jpg/220px-Wanda_von_Debschitz-Kunowski_Albert_Einstein_beim_Geigenspiel_1927.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/1919_eclipse_positive.jpg/170px-1919_eclipse_positive.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/MillikanLemaitreEinstein.jpg/220px-MillikanLemaitreEinstein.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Albert_Einstein_photo_1920.jpg/170px-Albert_Einstein_photo_1920.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Photoelectric_effect_in_a_solid_-_diagram.svg/220px-Photoelectric_effect_in_a_solid_-_diagram.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Albert_Einstein_1921_%28re-cropped%29.jpg/170px-Albert_Einstein_1921_%28re-cropped%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/NYT_May_4%2C_1935.jpg/170px-NYT_May_4%2C_1935.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Niels_Bohr_Albert_Einstein4_by_Ehrenfest_cr.jpg/170px-Niels_Bohr_Albert_Einstein4_by_Ehrenfest_cr.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Solvay_conference_1927.jpg/220px-Solvay_conference_1927.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Einstein-Oslofjord_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Einstein-Oslofjord_%28cropped%29.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Albert_Einstein_sticks_his_tongue_1951.jpg/189px-Albert_Einstein_sticks_his_tongue_1951.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/20px-Commons-logo.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/23px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/26px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Scholia_logo.svg/40px-Scholia_logo.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Speaker_Icon.svg/15px-Speaker_Icon.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Symbol_category_class.svg/16px-Symbol_category_class.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Symbol_category_class.svg/16px-Symbol_category_class.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/69/P_vip.svg/19px-P_vip.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Star_of_David.svg/16px-Star_of_David.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Nuvola_apps_edu_mathematics_blue-p.svg/19px-Nuvola_apps_edu_mathematics_blue-p.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Stylised_atom_with_three_Bohr_model_orbits_and_stylised_nucleus.svg/17px-Stylised_atom_with_three_Bohr_model_orbits_and_stylised_nucleus.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Crab_Nebula.jpg/19px-Crab_Nebula.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/He1523a.jpg/16px-He1523a.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/RocketSunIcon.svg/19px-RocketSunIcon.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Earth-moon.jpg/21px-Earth-moon.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Nuvola_apps_kalzium.svg/19px-Nuvola_apps_kalzium.svg.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png",
"https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
] |
2001-11-05T18:26:16+00:00
|
en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
|
German-born physicist (1879–1955)
"Einstein" redirects here. For other uses, see Einstein (disambiguation) and Albert Einstein (disambiguation).
Albert Einstein ( EYEN-styne;[4] German: [ˈalbɛɐt ˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn] ⓘ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held as one of the most influential scientists. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics.[1][5] His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been called "the world's most famous equation".[6] He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect",[7] a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein broadly synonymous with genius.[8]
Born in the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg)[note 1] the following year. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zürich, graduating in 1900. In 1901, he acquired Swiss citizenship, which he kept for the rest of his life. In 1903, he secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he moved to Berlin in order to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1917, he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics; he also became a German citizen again, this time as a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia.[note 1] In 1933, while he was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi war of extermination against his fellow Jews,[9] Einstein decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in 1940.[10] On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommended that the US begin similar research. Einstein supported the Allies but generally viewed the idea of nuclear weapons with great dismay.[11]
Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science.[12][13] In 1905, he published four groundbreaking papers, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year). These papers outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect, explained brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity—a theory which addressed the inability of classical mechanics to account satisfactorily for the behavior of the electromagnetic field—and demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass and energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he proposed a general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A cosmological paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole.[15][16]
In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics. For much of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that proved ultimately unsuccessful. First, he advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's picture of the world, objecting that "God does not play dice".[17] Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism too. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from the mainstream modern physics. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked top among physicists for making the most important contributions to physics.[18]
Life and career
Childhood, youth and education
See also: Einstein family
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,[19] in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879.[20][21] His parents, secular Ashkenazi Jews, were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, the family moved to Munich's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt, where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.[19]
Albert attended St. Peter‘s Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of five. When he was eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received advanced primary and then secondary school education.
In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's company tendered for a contract to install electric lighting in Munich, but without success—they lacked the capital that would have been required to update their technology from direct current to the more efficient, alternating current alternative.[23] The failure of their bid forced them to sell their Munich factory and search for new opportunities elsewhere. The Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia, where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani.[24] Einstein, then fifteen, stayed behind in Munich in order to finish his schooling. His father wanted him to study electrical engineering, but he was a fractious pupil who found the Gymnasium's regimen and teaching methods far from congenial. He later wrote that the school's policy of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity. At the end of December 1894, a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, and he joined his family in Pavia. While in Italy as a teenager, he wrote an essay entitled "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".[27]
Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age, and soon acquired the mathematical expertise normally only found in a child several years his senior. He began teaching himself algebra, calculus and Euclidean geometry when he was twelve; he made such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday.[28][30] A family tutor, Max Talmud, said that only a short time after he had given the twelve year old Einstein a geometry textbook, the boy "had worked through the whole book. He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics ... Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow." Einstein recorded that he had "mastered integral and differential calculus" while still just fourteen. His love of algebra and geometry was so great that at twelve, he was already confident that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure".
At thirteen, when his range of enthusiasms had broadened to include music and philosophy, Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher; according to Talmud, "At the time he was still a child, only thirteen years old, yet Kant's works, incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, seemed to be clear to him."
In 1895, at the age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examination for the federal polytechnic school (later the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the test, but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics. On the advice of the polytechnic's principal, he completed his secondary education at the Argovian cantonal school (a gymnasium) in Aarau, Switzerland, graduating in 1896.[35] While lodging in Aarau with the family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. (His sister, Maja, later married Winteler's son Paul. )
In January 1896, with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order to avoid conscription into military service. The Matura (graduation for the successful completion of higher secondary schooling), awarded to him in September 1896, acknowledged him to have performed well across most of the curriculum, allotting him a top grade of 6 for history, physics, algebra, geometry, and descriptive geometry. At seventeen, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the federal polytechnic school. Marie Winteler, a year older than him, took up a teaching post in Olsberg, Switzerland.
The five other polytechnic school freshmen following the same course as Einstein included just one woman, a twenty year old Serbian, Mileva Marić. Over the next few years, the pair spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning about topics in physics that the polytechnic school's lectures did not cover. In his letters to Marić, Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more enjoyable than reading a textbook in solitude. Eventually the two students became not only friends but also lovers.[39]
Historians of physics are divided on the question of the extent to which Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications. There is at least some evidence that he was influenced by her scientific ideas,[39][40][41] but there are scholars who doubt whether her impact on his thought was of any great significance at all.[43][45]
Marriages, relationships and children
Correspondence between Einstein and Marić, discovered and published in 1987, revealed that in early 1902, while Marić was visiting her parents in Novi Sad, she gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl. When Marić returned to Switzerland it was without the child, whose fate is uncertain. A letter of Einstein's that he wrote in September 1903 suggests that the girl was either given up for adoption or died of scarlet fever in infancy.[46]
Einstein and Marić married in January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born in Zürich in July 1910. In letters that Einstein wrote to Marie Winteler in the months before Eduard's arrival, he described his love for his wife as "misguided" and mourned the "missed life" that he imagined he would have enjoyed if he had married Winteler instead: "I think of you in heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy as only a man can be."[48]
In 1912, Einstein entered into a relationship with Elsa Löwenthal, who was both his first cousin on his mother's side and his second cousin on his father's.[50] When Marić learned of his infidelity soon after moving to Berlin with him in April 1914, she returned to Zürich, taking Hans Albert and Eduard with her.[39] Einstein and Marić were granted a divorce on 14 February 1919 on the grounds of having lived apart for five years.[52] As part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if he were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give the money that he received to Marić; he won the prize two years later.[54]
Einstein married Löwenthal in 1919. In 1923, he began a relationship with a secretary named Betty Neumann, the niece of his close friend Hans Mühsam.[57][58][59][60] Löwenthal nevertheless remained loyal to him, accompanying him when he emigrated to the United States in 1933. In 1935, she was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems. She died in December 1936.
A volume of Einstein's letters released by Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006[62] added further names to the catalog of women with whom he was romantically involved. They included Margarete Lebach (a married Austrian),[63] Estella Katzenellenbogen (the rich owner of a florist business), Toni Mendel (a wealthy Jewish widow) and Ethel Michanowski (a Berlin socialite), with whom he spent time and from whom he accepted gifts while married to Löwenthal.[64][65] After being widowed, Einstein was briefly in a relationship with Margarita Konenkova, thought by some to be a Russian spy; her husband, the Russian sculptor Sergei Konenkov, created the bronze bust of Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.[66][67]
Following an episode of acute mental illness at about the age of twenty, Einstein's son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia.[68] He spent the remainder of his life either in the care of his mother or in temporary confinement in an asylum. After her death, he was committed permanently to Burghölzli, the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zürich.
1902–1909: Assistant at the Swiss Patent Office
Einstein graduated from the federal polytechnic school in 1900, duly certified as competent to teach mathematics and physics. His successful acquisition of Swiss citizenship in February 1901 was not followed by the usual sequel of conscription; the Swiss authorities deemed him medically unfit for military service. He found that Swiss schools too appeared to have no use for him, failing to offer him a teaching position despite the almost two years that he spent applying for one. Eventually it was with the help of Marcel Grossmann's father that he secured a post in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office,[72] as an assistant examiner – level III.[74][75]
Patent applications that landed on Einstein's desk for his evaluation included ideas for a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter.[75] His employers were pleased enough with his work to make his position permanent in 1903, although they did not think that he should be promoted until he had "fully mastered machine technology". It is conceivable that his labors at the patent office had a bearing on his development of his special theory of relativity. He arrived at his revolutionary ideas about space, time and light through thought experiments about the transmission of signals and the synchronization of clocks, matters which also figured in some of the inventions submitted to him for assessment.
In 1902, Einstein and some friends whom he had met in Bern formed a group that held regular meetings to discuss science and philosophy. Their choice of a name for their club, the Olympia Academy, was an ironic comment upon its far from Olympian status. Sometimes they were joined by Marić, who limited her participation in their proceedings to careful listening. The thinkers whose works they reflected upon included Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach and David Hume, all of whom significantly influenced Einstein's own subsequent ideas and beliefs.
1900–1905: First scientific papers
Einstein's first paper, "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen" ("Conclusions drawn from the phenomena of capillarity"), in which he proposed a model of intermolecular attraction that he afterwards disavowed as worthless, was published in the journal Annalen der Physik in 1901.[80] His 24-page doctoral dissertation also addressed a topic in molecular physics. Titled "Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen" ("A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions") and dedicated to his friend Marcel Grossman, it was completed on 30 April 1905 and approved by Professor Alfred Kleiner of the University of Zurich three months later. (Einstein was formally awarded his PhD on 15 January 1906.)[83] Four other pieces of work that Einstein completed in 1905—his famous papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, his special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy—have led to the year being celebrated as an annus mirabilis for physics akin to 1666 (the year in which Isaac Newton experienced his greatest epiphanies). The publications deeply impressed Einstein's contemporaries.[84]
1908–1933: Early academic career
Einstein's sabbatical as a civil servant approached its end in 1908, when he secured a junior teaching position at the University of Bern. In 1909, a lecture on relativistic electrodynamics that he gave at the University of Zurich, much admired by Alfred Kleiner, led to Zürich's luring him away from Bern with a newly created associate professorship.[85] Promotion to a full professorship followed in April 1911, when he accepted a chair at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, a move which required him to become an Austrian citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[87] His time in Prague saw him producing eleven research papers.[88]
In July 1912, he returned to his alma mater, the ETH Zurich, to take up a chair in theoretical physics. His teaching activities there centred on thermodynamics and analytical mechanics, and his research interests included the molecular theory of heat, continuum mechanics and the development of a relativistic theory of gravitation. In his work on the latter topic, he was assisted by his friend, Marcel Grossmann, whose knowledge of the kind of mathematics required was greater than his own.[89]
In the spring of 1913, two German visitors, Max Planck and Walther Nernst, called upon Einstein in Zürich in the hope of persuading him to relocate to Berlin. They offered him membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the directorship of the planned Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and a chair at the Humboldt University of Berlin that would allow him to pursue his research supported by a professorial salary but with no teaching duties to burden him.[50] Their invitation was all the more appealing to him because Berlin happened to be the home of his latest girlfriend, Elsa Löwenthal. He duly joined the Academy on 24 July 1913,[91] and moved into an apartment in the Berlin district of Dahlem on 1 April 1914.[50] He was installed in his Humboldt University position shortly thereafter.[91]
The outbreak of the First World War in July 1914 marked the beginning of Einstein's gradual estrangement from the nation of his birth. When the "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three" was published in October 1914—a document signed by a host of prominent German thinkers that justified Germany's belligerence—Einstein was one of the few German intellectuals to distance himself from it and sign the alternative, eirenic "Manifesto to the Europeans" instead. However, this expression of his doubts about German policy did not prevent him from being elected to a two-year term as president of the German Physical Society in 1916. When the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics opened its doors the following year—its foundation delayed because of the war—Einstein was appointed its first director, just as Planck and Nernst had promised.[95]
Einstein was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1920,[96] and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1921. In 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".[7] At this point some physicists still regarded the general theory of relativity sceptically, and the Nobel citation displayed a degree of doubt even about the work on photoelectricity that it acknowledged: it did not assent to Einstein's notion of the particulate nature of light, which only won over the entire scientific community when S. N. Bose derived the Planck spectrum in 1924. That same year, Einstein was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[97] Britain's closest equivalent of the Nobel award, the Royal Society's Copley Medal, was not hung around Einstein's neck until 1925.[1] He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1930.[98]
Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy in March 1933. His accomplishments in Berlin had included the completion of the general theory of relativity, proving the Einstein–de Haas effect, contributing to the quantum theory of radiation, and the development of Bose–Einstein statistics.[50]
1919: Putting general relativity to the test
In 1907, Einstein reached a milestone on his long journey from his special theory of relativity to a new idea of gravitation with the formulation of his equivalence principle, which asserts that an observer in an infinitesimally small box falling freely in a gravitational field would be unable to find any evidence that the field exists. In 1911, he used the principle to estimate the amount by which a ray of light from a distant star would be bent by the gravitational pull of the Sun as it passed close to the Sun's photosphere (that is, the Sun's apparent surface). He reworked his calculation in 1913, having now found a way to model gravitation with the Riemann curvature tensor of a non-Euclidean four-dimensional spacetime. By the fall of 1915, his reimagining of the mathematics of gravitation in terms of Riemannian geometry was complete, and he applied his new theory not just to the behavior of the Sun as a gravitational lens but also to another astronomical phenomenon, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury (a slow drift in the point in Mercury's elliptical orbit at which it approaches the Sun most closely).[50][100] A total eclipse of the Sun that took place on 29 May 1919 provided an opportunity to put his theory of gravitational lensing to the test, and observations performed by Sir Arthur Eddington yielded results that were consistent with his calculations. Eddington's work was reported at length in newspapers around the world. On 7 November 1919, for example, the leading British newspaper, The Times, printed a banner headline that read: "Revolution in Science – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian Ideas Overthrown".[101]
1921–1923: Coming to terms with fame
With Eddington's eclipse observations widely reported not just in academic journals but by the popular press as well, Einstein became "perhaps the world's first celebrity scientist", a genius who had shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the seventeenth century.[102]
Einstein began his new life as an intellectual icon in America, where he arrived on 2 April 1921. He was welcomed to New York City by Mayor John Francis Hylan, and then spent three weeks giving lectures and attending receptions.[103] He spoke several times at Columbia University and Princeton, and in Washington, he visited the White House with representatives of the National Academy of Sciences. He returned to Europe via London, where he was the guest of the philosopher and statesman Viscount Haldane. He used his time in the British capital to meet several people prominent in British scientific, political or intellectual life, and to deliver a lecture at King's College. In July 1921, he published an essay, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", in which he sought to sketch the American character, much as had Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835).[106] He wrote of his transatlantic hosts in highly approving terms: "What strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive attitude to life ... The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic, and without envy."
In 1922, Einstein's travels were to the old world rather than the new. He devoted six months to a tour of Asia that saw him speaking in Japan, Singapore and Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon). After his first public lecture in Tokyo, he met Emperor Yoshihito and his wife at the Imperial Palace, with thousands of spectators thronging the streets in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. (In a letter to his sons, he wrote that Japanese people seemed to him to be generally modest, intelligent and considerate, and to have a true appreciation of art. But his picture of them in his diary was less flattering: "[the] intellectual needs of this nation seem to be weaker than their artistic ones – natural disposition?" His journal also contains views of China and India which were uncomplimentary. Of Chinese people, he wrote that "even the children are spiritless and look obtuse... It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary".[109][110]) He was greeted with even greater enthusiasm on the last leg of his tour, in which he spent twelve days in Mandatory Palestine, newly entrusted to British rule by the League of Nations in the aftermath of the First World War. Sir Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner, welcomed him with a degree of ceremony normally only accorded to a visiting head of state, including a cannon salute. One reception held in his honor was stormed by people determined to hear him speak: he told them that he was happy that Jews were beginning to be recognized as a force in the world.
Einstein's decision to tour the eastern hemisphere in 1922 meant that he was unable to go to Stockholm in the December of that year to participate in the Nobel prize ceremony. His place at the traditional Nobel banquet was taken by a German diplomat, who gave a speech praising him not only as a physicist but also as a campaigner for peace.[112] A two-week visit to Spain that he undertook in 1923 saw him collecting another award, a membership of the Spanish Academy of Sciences signified by a diploma handed to him by King Alfonso XIII. (His Spanish trip also gave him a chance to meet a fellow Nobel laureate, the neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal.)[113]
1922–1932: Serving the League of Nations
From 1922 until 1932, with the exception of a few months in 1923 and 1924, Einstein was a member of the Geneva-based International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, a group set up by the League to encourage scientists, artists, scholars, teachers and other people engaged in the life of the mind to work more closely with their counterparts in other countries.[114][115] He was appointed as a German delegate rather than as a representative of Switzerland because of the machinations of two Catholic activists, Oskar Halecki and Giuseppe Motta. By persuading Secretary General Eric Drummond to deny Einstein the place on the committee reserved for a Swiss thinker, they created an opening for Gonzague de Reynold, who used his League of Nations position as a platform from which to promote traditional Catholic doctrine.[116] Einstein's former physics professor Hendrik Lorentz and the Polish chemist Marie Curie were also members of the committee.[117]
1925: Touring South America
In March and April 1925, Einstein and his wife visited South America, where they spent about a week in Brazil, a week in Uruguay and a month in Argentina.[118] Their tour was suggested by Jorge Duclout (1856–1927) and Mauricio Nirenstein (1877–1935)[119] with the support of several Argentine scholars, including Julio Rey Pastor, Jakob Laub, and Leopoldo Lugones. and was financed primarily by the Council of the University of Buenos Aires and the Asociación Hebraica Argentina (Argentine Hebraic Association) with a smaller contribution from the Argentine-Germanic Cultural Institution.[120]
1930–1931: Touring the US
In December 1930, Einstein began another significant sojourn in the United States, drawn back to the US by the offer of a two month research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech supported him in his wish that he should not be exposed to quite as much attention from the media as he had experienced when visiting the US in 1921, and he therefore declined all the invitations to receive prizes or make speeches that his admirers poured down upon him. But he remained willing to allow his fans at least some of the time with him that they requested.
After arriving in New York City, Einstein was taken to various places and events, including Chinatown, a lunch with the editors of The New York Times, and a performance of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, where he was cheered by the audience on his arrival. During the days following, he was given the keys to the city by Mayor Jimmy Walker and met Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University, who described Einstein as "the ruling monarch of the mind". Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor at New York's Riverside Church, gave Einstein a tour of the church and showed him a full-size statue that the church made of Einstein, standing at the entrance. Also during his stay in New York, he joined a crowd of 15,000 people at Madison Square Garden during a Hanukkah celebration.
Einstein next traveled to California, where he met Caltech president and Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan. His friendship with Millikan was "awkward", as Millikan "had a penchant for patriotic militarism", where Einstein was a pronounced pacifist. During an address to Caltech's students, Einstein noted that science was often inclined to do more harm than good.
This aversion to war also led Einstein to befriend author Upton Sinclair and film star Charlie Chaplin, both noted for their pacifism. Carl Laemmle, head of Universal Studios, gave Einstein a tour of his studio and introduced him to Chaplin. They had an instant rapport, with Chaplin inviting Einstein and his wife, Elsa, to his home for dinner. Chaplin said Einstein's outward persona, calm and gentle, seemed to conceal a "highly emotional temperament", from which came his "extraordinary intellectual energy".
Chaplin's film City Lights was to premiere a few days later in Hollywood, and Chaplin invited Einstein and Elsa to join him as his special guests. Walter Isaacson, Einstein's biographer, described this as "one of the most memorable scenes in the new era of celebrity". Chaplin visited Einstein at his home on a later trip to Berlin and recalled his "modest little flat" and the piano at which he had begun writing his theory. Chaplin speculated that it was "possibly used as kindling wood by the Nazis".
1933: Emigration to the US
In February 1933, while on a visit to the United States, Einstein knew he could not return to Germany with the rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
While at American universities in early 1933, he undertook his third two-month visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In February and March 1933, the Gestapo repeatedly raided his family's apartment in Berlin.[129] He and his wife Elsa returned to Europe in March, and during the trip, they learned that the German Reichstag had passed the Enabling Act on 23 March, transforming Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship, and that they would not be able to proceed to Berlin. Later on, they heard that their cottage had been raided by the Nazis and Einstein's personal sailboat confiscated. Upon landing in Antwerp, Belgium on 28 March, Einstein immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship. The Nazis later sold his boat and converted his cottage into a Hitler Youth camp.[131]
Refugee status
In April 1933, Einstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. Historian Gerald Holton describes how, with "virtually no audible protest being raised by their colleagues", thousands of Jewish scientists were suddenly forced to give up their university positions and their names were removed from the rolls of institutions where they were employed.
A month later, Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burnings, with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming, "Jewish intellectualism is dead." One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged", offering a $5,000 bounty on his head.[133] In a subsequent letter to physicist and friend Max Born, who had already emigrated from Germany to England, Einstein wrote, "... I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise." After moving to the US, he described the book burnings as a "spontaneous emotional outburst" by those who "shun popular enlightenment", and "more than anything else in the world, fear the influence of men of intellectual independence".
Einstein was now without a permanent home, unsure where he would live and work, and equally worried about the fate of countless other scientists still in Germany. Aided by the Academic Assistance Council, founded in April 1933 by British Liberal politician William Beveridge to help academics escape Nazi persecution, Einstein was able to leave Germany.[135] He rented a house in De Haan, Belgium, where he lived for a few months. In late July 1933, he visited England for about six weeks at the invitation of the British Member of Parliament Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, who had become friends with him in the preceding years.[136] Locker-Lampson invited him to stay near his Cromer home in a secluded wooden cabin on Roughton Heath in the Parish of Roughton, Norfolk. To protect Einstein, Locker-Lampson had two bodyguards watch over him; a photo of them carrying shotguns and guarding Einstein was published in the Daily Herald on 24 July 1933.[138]
Locker-Lampson took Einstein to meet Winston Churchill at his home, and later, Austen Chamberlain and former Prime Minister Lloyd George. Einstein asked them to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. British historian Martin Gilbert notes that Churchill responded immediately, and sent his friend, physicist Frederick Lindemann, to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities.[140] Churchill later observed that as a result of Germany having driven the Jews out, they had lowered their "technical standards" and put the Allies' technology ahead of theirs.[140]
Einstein later contacted leaders of other nations, including Turkey's Prime Minister, İsmet İnönü, to whom he wrote in September 1933 requesting placement of unemployed German-Jewish scientists. As a result of Einstein's letter, Jewish invitees to Turkey eventually totaled over "1,000 saved individuals".[141]
Locker-Lampson also submitted a bill to parliament to extend British citizenship to Einstein, during which period Einstein made a number of public appearances describing the crisis brewing in Europe. In one of his speeches he denounced Germany's treatment of Jews, while at the same time he introduced a bill promoting Jewish citizenship in Palestine, as they were being denied citizenship elsewhere.[143] In his speech he described Einstein as a "citizen of the world" who should be offered a temporary shelter in the UK.[note 3][144] Both bills failed, however, and Einstein then accepted an earlier offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, US, to become a resident scholar.
Resident scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study
On 3 October 1933, Einstein delivered a speech on the importance of academic freedom before a packed audience at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with The Times reporting he was wildly cheered throughout.[135] Four days later he returned to the US and took up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, noted for having become a refuge for scientists fleeing Nazi Germany.[146] At the time, most American universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Yale, had minimal or no Jewish faculty or students, as a result of their Jewish quotas, which lasted until the late 1940s.[146]
Einstein was still undecided on his future. He had offers from several European universities, including Christ Church, Oxford, where he stayed for three short periods between May 1931 and June 1933 and was offered a five-year research fellowship (called a "studentship" at Christ Church),[147][148] but in 1935, he arrived at the decision to remain permanently in the United States and apply for citizenship.
Einstein's affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study would last until his death in 1955.[150] He was one of the four first selected (along with John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, and Hermann Weyl[151]) at the new Institute. He soon developed a close friendship with Gödel; the two would take long walks together discussing their work. Bruria Kaufman, his assistant, later became a physicist. During this period, Einstein tried to develop a unified field theory and to refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics, both unsuccessfully. He lived in Princeton at his home from 1935 onwards. The Albert Einstein House was made a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
World War II and the Manhattan Project
See also: Einstein–Szilárd letter
In 1939, a group of Hungarian scientists that included émigré physicist Leó Szilárd attempted to alert Washington to ongoing Nazi atomic bomb research. The group's warnings were discounted. Einstein and Szilárd, along with other refugees such as Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, "regarded it as their responsibility to alert Americans to the possibility that German scientists might win the race to build an atomic bomb, and to warn that Hitler would be more than willing to resort to such a weapon."[153] To make certain the US was aware of the danger, in July 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, Szilárd and Wigner visited Einstein to explain the possibility of atomic bombs, which Einstein, a pacifist, said he had never considered.[154] He was asked to lend his support by writing a letter, with Szilárd, to President Roosevelt, recommending the US pay attention and engage in its own nuclear weapons research.
The letter is believed to be "arguably the key stimulus for the U.S. adoption of serious investigations into nuclear weapons on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II".[155] In addition to the letter, Einstein used his connections with the Belgian royal family[156] and the Belgian queen mother to get access with a personal envoy to the White House's Oval Office. Some say that as a result of Einstein's letter and his meetings with Roosevelt, the US entered the "race" to develop the bomb, drawing on its "immense material, financial, and scientific resources" to initiate the Manhattan Project.
For Einstein, "war was a disease ... [and] he called for resistance to war." By signing the letter to Roosevelt, some argue he went against his pacifist principles.[157] In 1954, a year before his death, Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them ..." In 1955, Einstein and ten other intellectuals and scientists, including British philosopher Bertrand Russell, signed a manifesto highlighting the danger of nuclear weapons.[159] In 1960 Einstein was included posthumously as a charter member of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS),[160] an organization founded by distinguished scientists and intellectuals who committed themselves to the responsible and ethical advances of science, particularly in light of the development of nuclear weapons.
US citizenship
Einstein became an American citizen in 1940. Not long after settling into his career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he expressed his appreciation of the meritocracy in American culture compared to Europe. He recognized the "right of individuals to say and think what they pleased" without social barriers. As a result, individuals were encouraged, he said, to be more creative, a trait he valued from his early education.
Einstein joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Princeton, where he campaigned for the civil rights of African Americans. He considered racism America's "worst disease",[133][162] seeing it as "handed down from one generation to the next". As part of his involvement, he corresponded with civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois and was prepared to testify on his behalf during his trial as an alleged foreign agent in 1951. When Einstein offered to be a character witness for Du Bois, the judge decided to drop the case.[165]
In 1946, Einstein visited Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically black college, where he was awarded an honorary degree. Lincoln was the first university in the United States to grant college degrees to African Americans; alumni include Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. Einstein gave a speech about racism in America, adding, "I do not intend to be quiet about it."[166] A resident of Princeton recalls that Einstein had once paid the college tuition for a black student.[165] Einstein has said, "Being a Jew myself, perhaps I can understand and empathize with how black people feel as victims of discrimination".[162]
Personal views
Political views
In 1918, Einstein was one of the signatories of the founding proclamation of the German Democratic Party, a liberal party.[167][168] Later in his life, Einstein's political view was in favor of socialism and critical of capitalism, which he detailed in his essays such as "Why Socialism?".[170] His opinions on the Bolsheviks also changed with time. In 1925, he criticized them for not having a "well-regulated system of government" and called their rule a "regime of terror and a tragedy in human history". He later adopted a more moderated view, criticizing their methods but praising them, which is shown by his 1929 remark on Vladimir Lenin:
In Lenin I honor a man, who in total sacrifice of his own person has committed his entire energy to realizing social justice. I do not find his methods advisable. One thing is certain, however: men like him are the guardians and renewers of mankind's conscience.
Einstein offered and was called on to give judgments and opinions on matters often unrelated to theoretical physics or mathematics. He strongly advocated the idea of a democratic global government that would check the power of nation-states in the framework of a world federation. He wrote "I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself."[173] The FBI created a secret dossier on Einstein in 1932; by the time of his death, it was 1,427 pages long.[174]
Einstein was deeply impressed by Mahatma Gandhi, with whom he corresponded. He described Gandhi as "a role model for the generations to come".[175] The initial connection was established on 27 September 1931, when Wilfrid Israel took his Indian guest V. A. Sundaram to meet his friend Einstein at his summer home in the town of Caputh. Sundaram was Gandhi's disciple and special envoy, whom Wilfrid Israel met while visiting India and visiting the Indian leader's home in 1925. During the visit, Einstein wrote a short letter to Gandhi that was delivered to him through his envoy, and Gandhi responded quickly with his own letter. Although in the end Einstein and Gandhi were unable to meet as they had hoped, the direct connection between them was established through Wilfrid Israel.[176]
Relationship with Zionism
Einstein was a figurehead leader in the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,[177] which opened in 1925.[178] Earlier, in 1921, he was asked by the biochemist and president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, to help raise funds for the planned university. He made suggestions for the creation of an Institute of Agriculture, a Chemical Institute and an Institute of Microbiology in order to fight the various ongoing epidemics such as malaria, which he called an "evil" that was undermining a third of the country's development. He also promoted the establishment of an Oriental Studies Institute, to include language courses given in both Hebrew and Arabic.
Einstein was not a nationalist and opposed the creation of an independent Jewish state. He felt that the waves of arriving Jews of the Aliyah could live alongside existing Arabs in Palestine. The state of Israel was established without his help in 1948; Einstein was limited to a marginal role in the Zionist movement.[183] Upon the death of Israeli president Weizmann in November 1952, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion offered Einstein the largely ceremonial position of President of Israel at the urging of Ezriel Carlebach.[184][185] The offer was presented by Israel's ambassador in Washington, Abba Eban, who explained that the offer "embodies the deepest respect which the Jewish people can repose in any of its sons". Einstein wrote that he was "deeply moved", but "at once saddened and ashamed" that he could not accept it.
Religious and philosophical views
Einstein expounded his spiritual outlook in a wide array of writings and interviews.[187] He said he had sympathy for the impersonal pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza's philosophy. He did not believe in a personal god who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified, however, that "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself an agnostic,[192] or a "deeply religious nonbeliever". When asked if he believed in an afterlife, Einstein replied, "No. And one life is enough for me."
Einstein was primarily affiliated with non-religious humanist and Ethical Culture groups in both the UK and US. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York,[194] and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Association, which publishes New Humanist in Britain. For the 75th anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity."
In a German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. ... I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.[196]
Einstein had been sympathetic toward vegetarianism for a long time. In a letter in 1930 to Hermann Huth, vice-president of the German Vegetarian Federation (Deutsche Vegetarier-Bund), he wrote:
Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.[197]
He became a vegetarian himself only during the last part of his life. In March 1954 he wrote in a letter: "So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It almost seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore."[198]
Love of music
Einstein developed an appreciation for music at an early age. In his late journals he wrote:
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music ... I get most joy in life out of music.[199][200]
His mother played the piano reasonably well and wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to instill in him a love of music but also to help him assimilate into German culture. According to conductor Leon Botstein, Einstein began playing when he was 5. However, he did not enjoy it at that age.[201]
When he turned 13, he discovered the violin sonatas of Mozart, whereupon he became enamored of Mozart's compositions and studied music more willingly. Einstein taught himself to play without "ever practicing systematically". He said that "love is a better teacher than a sense of duty".[201] At the age of 17, he was heard by a school examiner in Aarau while playing Beethoven's violin sonatas. The examiner stated afterward that his playing was "remarkable and revealing of 'great insight'". What struck the examiner, writes Botstein, was that Einstein "displayed a deep love of the music, a quality that was and remains in short supply. Music possessed an unusual meaning for this student."[201]
Music took on a pivotal and permanent role in Einstein's life from that period on. Although the idea of becoming a professional musician himself was not on his mind at any time, among those with whom Einstein played chamber music were a few professionals, including Kurt Appelbaum, and he performed for private audiences and friends. Chamber music had also become a regular part of his social life while living in Bern, Zürich, and Berlin, where he played with Max Planck and his son, among others. He is sometimes erroneously credited as the editor of the 1937 edition of the Köchel catalog of Mozart's work; that edition was prepared by Alfred Einstein, who may have been a distant relation.[202][203]
In 1931, while engaged in research at the California Institute of Technology, he visited the Zoellner family conservatory in Los Angeles, where he played some of Beethoven and Mozart's works with members of the Zoellner Quartet.[204][205] Near the end of his life, when the young Juilliard Quartet visited him in Princeton, he played his violin with them, and the quartet was "impressed by Einstein's level of coordination and intonation".[201]
Death
On 17 April 1955, Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been reinforced surgically by Rudolph Nissen in 1948.[206] He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the state of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live to complete it.[207]
Einstein refused surgery, saying, "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."[208] He died in the Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end.[209]
During the autopsy, the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.[210] Einstein's remains were cremated in Trenton, New Jersey,[211] and his ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.[212][213]
In a memorial lecture delivered on 13 December 1965 at UNESCO headquarters, nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: "He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn."[214]
Einstein bequeathed his personal archives, library, and intellectual assets to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.[215]
Scientific career
Throughout his life, Einstein published hundreds of books and articles.[19][216] He published more than 300 scientific papers and 150 non-scientific ones.[15][216] On 5 December 2014, universities and archives announced the release of Einstein's papers, comprising more than 30,000 unique documents.[218] Einstein's intellectual achievements and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with "genius".[8] In addition to the work he did by himself he also collaborated with other scientists on additional projects including the Bose–Einstein statistics, the Einstein refrigerator and others.[219][220]
1905 – Annus Mirabilis papers
The Annus Mirabilis papers are four articles pertaining to the photoelectric effect (which gave rise to quantum theory), Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity, and E = mc2 that Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik scientific journal in 1905. These four works contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, and matter. The four papers are:
Title (translated) Area of focus Received Published Significance "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" Photoelectric effect 18 March 9 June Resolved an unsolved puzzle by suggesting that energy is exchanged only in discrete amounts (quanta).[222] This idea was pivotal to the early development of quantum theory.[223] "On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid, as Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat" Brownian motion 11 May 18 July Explained empirical evidence for the atomic theory, supporting the application of statistical physics. "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Special relativity 30 June 26 September Reconciled Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics by introducing changes to mechanics, resulting from analysis based on empirical evidence that the speed of light is independent of the motion of the observer.[226] Discredited the concept of a "luminiferous ether".[227] "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" Matter–energy equivalence 27 September 21 November Equivalence of matter and energy, E = mc2, the existence of "rest energy", and the basis of nuclear energy.
Statistical mechanics
Thermodynamic fluctuations and statistical physics
Einstein's first paper[229] submitted in 1900 to Annalen der Physik was on capillary attraction. It was published in 1901 with the title "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen", which translates as "Conclusions from the capillarity phenomena". Two papers he published in 1902–1903 (thermodynamics) attempted to interpret atomic phenomena from a statistical point of view. These papers were the foundation for the 1905 paper on Brownian motion, which showed that Brownian movement can be construed as firm evidence that molecules exist. His research in 1903 and 1904 was mainly concerned with the effect of finite atomic size on diffusion phenomena.[229]
Theory of critical opalescence
Main article: Critical opalescence
Einstein returned to the problem of thermodynamic fluctuations, giving a treatment of the density variations in a fluid at its critical point. Ordinarily the density fluctuations are controlled by the second derivative of the free energy with respect to the density. At the critical point, this derivative is zero, leading to large fluctuations. The effect of density fluctuations is that light of all wavelengths is scattered, making the fluid look milky white. Einstein relates this to Rayleigh scattering, which is what happens when the fluctuation size is much smaller than the wavelength, and which explains why the sky is blue.[230] Einstein quantitatively derived critical opalescence from a treatment of density fluctuations, and demonstrated how both the effect and Rayleigh scattering originate from the atomistic constitution of matter.
Special relativity
Main article: History of special relativity
Einstein's "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") was received on 30 June 1905 and published 26 September of that same year. It reconciled conflicts between Maxwell's equations (the laws of electricity and magnetism) and the laws of Newtonian mechanics by introducing changes to the laws of mechanics. Observationally, the effects of these changes are most apparent at high speeds (where objects are moving at speeds close to the speed of light). The theory developed in this paper later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity.
This paper predicted that, when measured in the frame of a relatively moving observer, a clock carried by a moving body would appear to slow down, and the body itself would contract in its direction of motion. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether—one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time—was superfluous.[note 4]
In his paper on mass–energy equivalence, Einstein produced E = mc2 as a consequence of his special relativity equations. Einstein's 1905 work on relativity remained controversial for many years, but was accepted by leading physicists, starting with Max Planck.[note 5]
Einstein originally framed special relativity in terms of kinematics (the study of moving bodies). In 1908, Hermann Minkowski reinterpreted special relativity in geometric terms as a theory of spacetime. Einstein adopted Minkowski's formalism in his 1915 general theory of relativity.
General relativity
General relativity and the equivalence principle
Main article: History of general relativity
See also: Theory of relativity and Einstein field equations
General relativity (GR) is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Einstein between 1907 and 1915. According to it, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of spacetime by those masses. General relativity has developed into an essential tool in modern astrophysics; it provides the foundation for the current understanding of black holes, regions of space where gravitational attraction is so strong that not even light can escape.[235]
As Einstein later said, the reason for the development of general relativity was that the preference of inertial motions within special relativity was unsatisfactory, while a theory which from the outset prefers no state of motion (even accelerated ones) should appear more satisfactory. Consequently, in 1907 he published an article on acceleration under special relativity. In that article titled "On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn from It", he argued that free fall is really inertial motion, and that for a free-falling observer the rules of special relativity must apply. This argument is called the equivalence principle. In the same article, Einstein also predicted the phenomena of gravitational time dilation, gravitational redshift and gravitational lensing.
In 1911, Einstein published another article "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light" expanding on the 1907 article, in which he estimated the amount of deflection of light by massive bodies. Thus, the theoretical prediction of general relativity could for the first time be tested experimentally.
Gravitational waves
In 1916, Einstein predicted gravitational waves, ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as waves, traveling outward from the source, transporting energy as gravitational radiation. The existence of gravitational waves is possible under general relativity due to its Lorentz invariance which brings the concept of a finite speed of propagation of the physical interactions of gravity with it. By contrast, gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, which postulates that the physical interactions of gravity propagate at infinite speed.
The first, indirect, detection of gravitational waves came in the 1970s through observation of a pair of closely orbiting neutron stars, PSR B1913+16.[242] The explanation for the decay in their orbital period was that they were emitting gravitational waves.[242][243] Einstein's prediction was confirmed on 11 February 2016, when researchers at LIGO published the first observation of gravitational waves,[244] detected on Earth on 14 September 2015, nearly one hundred years after the prediction.[242][245][246][247][248]
Hole argument and Entwurf theory
While developing general relativity, Einstein became confused about the gauge invariance in the theory. He formulated an argument that led him to conclude that a general relativistic field theory is impossible. He gave up looking for fully generally covariant tensor equations and searched for equations that would be invariant under general linear transformations only.[249]
In June 1913, the Entwurf ('draft') theory was the result of these investigations. As its name suggests, it was a sketch of a theory, less elegant and more difficult than general relativity, with the equations of motion supplemented by additional gauge fixing conditions. After more than two years of intensive work, Einstein realized that the hole argument was mistaken[250] and abandoned the theory in November 1915.
Physical cosmology
Main article: Physical cosmology
In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to the structure of the universe as a whole. He discovered that the general field equations predicted a universe that was dynamic, either contracting or expanding. As observational evidence for a dynamic universe was lacking at the time, Einstein introduced a new term, the cosmological constant, into the field equations, in order to allow the theory to predict a static universe. The modified field equations predicted a static universe of closed curvature, in accordance with Einstein's understanding of Mach's principle in these years. This model became known as the Einstein World or Einstein's static universe.[253]
Following the discovery of the recession of the galaxies by Edwin Hubble in 1929, Einstein abandoned his static model of the universe, and proposed two dynamic models of the cosmos, the Friedmann–Einstein universe of 1931[255] and the Einstein–de Sitter universe of 1932.[257] In each of these models, Einstein discarded the cosmological constant, claiming that it was "in any case theoretically unsatisfactory".[255][258]
In many Einstein biographies, it is claimed that Einstein referred to the cosmological constant in later years as his "biggest blunder", based on a letter George Gamow claimed to have received from him. The astrophysicist Mario Livio has cast doubt on this claim.[259]
In late 2013, a team led by the Irish physicist Cormac O'Raifeartaigh discovered evidence that, shortly after learning of Hubble's observations of the recession of the galaxies, Einstein considered a steady-state model of the universe.[260][261] In a hitherto overlooked manuscript, apparently written in early 1931, Einstein explored a model of the expanding universe in which the density of matter remains constant due to a continuous creation of matter, a process that he associated with the cosmological constant.[262][263] As he stated in the paper, "In what follows, I would like to draw attention to a solution to equation (1) that can account for Hubbel's [sic] facts, and in which the density is constant over time" ... "If one considers a physically bounded volume, particles of matter will be continually leaving it. For the density to remain constant, new particles of matter must be continually formed in the volume from space."
It thus appears that Einstein considered a steady-state model of the expanding universe many years before Hoyle, Bondi and Gold.[264][265] However, Einstein's steady-state model contained a fundamental flaw and he quickly abandoned the idea.[262][263][266]
Energy momentum pseudotensor
Main article: Stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor
General relativity includes a dynamical spacetime, so it is difficult to see how to identify the conserved energy and momentum. Noether's theorem allows these quantities to be determined from a Lagrangian with translation invariance, but general covariance makes translation invariance into something of a gauge symmetry. The energy and momentum derived within general relativity by Noether's prescriptions do not make a real tensor for this reason.[267]
Einstein argued that this is true for a fundamental reason: the gravitational field could be made to vanish by a choice of coordinates. He maintained that the non-covariant energy momentum pseudotensor was, in fact, the best description of the energy momentum distribution in a gravitational field. While the use of non-covariant objects like pseudotensors was criticized by Erwin Schrödinger and others, Einstein's approach has been echoed by physicists including Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz.[268]
Wormholes
In 1935, Einstein collaborated with Nathan Rosen to produce a model of a wormhole, often called Einstein–Rosen bridges.[270] His motivation was to model elementary particles with charge as a solution of gravitational field equations, in line with the program outlined in the paper "Do Gravitational Fields play an Important Role in the Constitution of the Elementary Particles?". These solutions cut and pasted Schwarzschild black holes to make a bridge between two patches. Because these solutions included spacetime curvature without the presence of a physical body, Einstein and Rosen suggested that they could provide the beginnings of a theory that avoided the notion of point particles. However, it was later found that Einstein–Rosen bridges are not stable.[271]
Einstein–Cartan theory
Main article: Einstein–Cartan theory
In order to incorporate spinning point particles into general relativity, the affine connection needed to be generalized to include an antisymmetric part, called the torsion. This modification was made by Einstein and Cartan in the 1920s.
Equations of motion
Main article: Einstein–Infeld–Hoffmann equations
In general relativity, gravitational force is reimagined as curvature of spacetime. A curved path like an orbit is not the result of a force deflecting a body from an ideal straight-line path, but rather the body's attempt to fall freely through a background that is itself curved by the presence of other masses. A remark by John Archibald Wheeler that has become proverbial among physicists summarizes the theory: "Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve."[272][273] The Einstein field equations cover the latter aspect of the theory, relating the curvature of spacetime to the distribution of matter and energy. The geodesic equation covers the former aspect, stating that freely falling bodies follow lines that are as straight as possible in a curved spacetime. Einstein regarded this as an "independent fundamental assumption" that had to be postulated in addition to the field equations in order to complete the theory. Believing this to be a shortcoming in how general relativity was originally presented, he wished to derive it from the field equations themselves. Since the equations of general relativity are non-linear, a lump of energy made out of pure gravitational fields, like a black hole, would move on a trajectory which is determined by the Einstein field equations themselves, not by a new law. Accordingly, Einstein proposed that the field equations would determine the path of a singular solution, like a black hole, to be a geodesic. Both physicists and philosophers have often repeated the assertion that the geodesic equation can be obtained from applying the field equations to the motion of a gravitational singularity, but this claim remains disputed.[274][275]
Old quantum theory
Main article: Old quantum theory
Photons and energy quanta
In a 1905 paper, Einstein postulated that light itself consists of localized particles (quanta). Einstein's light quanta were nearly universally rejected by all physicists, including Max Planck and Niels Bohr. This idea only became universally accepted in 1919, with Robert Millikan's detailed experiments on the photoelectric effect, and with the measurement of Compton scattering.
Einstein concluded that each wave of frequency f is associated with a collection of photons with energy hf each, where h is the Planck constant. He did not say much more, because he was not sure how the particles were related to the wave. But he did suggest that this idea would explain certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect.
Quantized atomic vibrations
Main article: Einstein solid
In 1907, Einstein proposed a model of matter where each atom in a lattice structure is an independent harmonic oscillator. In the Einstein model, each atom oscillates independently—a series of equally spaced quantized states for each oscillator. Einstein was aware that getting the frequency of the actual oscillations would be difficult, but he nevertheless proposed this theory because it was a particularly clear demonstration that quantum mechanics could solve the specific heat problem in classical mechanics. Peter Debye refined this model.[276]
Bose–Einstein statistics
Main article: Bose–Einstein statistics
In 1924, Einstein received a description of a statistical model from Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, based on a counting method that assumed that light could be understood as a gas of indistinguishable particles. Einstein noted that Bose's statistics applied to some atoms as well as to the proposed light particles, and submitted his translation of Bose's paper to the Zeitschrift für Physik. Einstein also published his own articles describing the model and its implications, among them the Bose–Einstein condensate phenomenon that some particulates should appear at very low temperatures. It was not until 1995 that the first such condensate was produced experimentally by Eric Allin Cornell and Carl Wieman using ultra-cooling equipment built at the NIST–JILA laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[278] Bose–Einstein statistics are now used to describe the behaviors of any assembly of bosons. Einstein's sketches for this project may be seen in the Einstein Archive in the library of the Leiden University.[219]
Wave–particle duality
Although the patent office promoted Einstein to Technical Examiner Second Class in 1906, he had not given up on academia. In 1908, he became a Privatdozent at the University of Bern. In "Über die Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung" ("The Development of our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation"), on the quantization of light, and in an earlier 1909 paper, Einstein showed that Max Planck's energy quanta must have well-defined momenta and act in some respects as independent, point-like particles. This paper introduced the photon concept (although the name photon was introduced later by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926) and inspired the notion of wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. Einstein saw this wave–particle duality in radiation as concrete evidence for his conviction that physics needed a new, unified foundation.
Zero-point energy
In a series of works completed from 1911 to 1913, Planck reformulated his 1900 quantum theory and introduced the idea of zero-point energy in his "second quantum theory". Soon, this idea attracted the attention of Einstein and his assistant Otto Stern. Assuming the energy of rotating diatomic molecules contains zero-point energy, they then compared the theoretical specific heat of hydrogen gas with the experimental data. The numbers matched nicely. However, after publishing the findings, they promptly withdrew their support, because they no longer had confidence in the correctness of the idea of zero-point energy.
Stimulated emission
In 1917, at the height of his work on relativity, Einstein published an article in Physikalische Zeitschrift that proposed the possibility of stimulated emission, the physical process that makes possible the maser and the laser. This article showed that the statistics of absorption and emission of light would only be consistent with Planck's distribution law if the emission of light into a mode with n photons would be enhanced statistically compared to the emission of light into an empty mode. This paper was enormously influential in the later development of quantum mechanics, because it was the first paper to show that the statistics of atomic transitions had simple laws.[282]
Matter waves
Einstein discovered Louis de Broglie's work and supported his ideas, which were received skeptically at first. In another major paper from this era, Einstein observed that de Broglie waves could explain the quantization rules of Bohr and Sommerfeld. This paper would inspire Schrödinger's work of 1926.[283][284]
Quantum mechanics
Einstein's objections to quantum mechanics
Einstein played a major role in developing quantum theory, beginning with his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect. However, he became displeased with modern quantum mechanics as it had evolved after 1925, despite its acceptance by other physicists. He was skeptical that the randomness of quantum mechanics was fundamental rather than the result of determinism, stating that God "is not playing at dice".[285] Until the end of his life, he continued to maintain that quantum mechanics was incomplete.[286]
Bohr versus Einstein
Main article: Bohr–Einstein debates
The Bohr–Einstein debates were a series of public disputes about quantum mechanics between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who were two of its founders. Their debates are remembered because of their importance to the philosophy of science.[287][289] Their debates would influence later interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
Main article: EPR paradox
Einstein never fully accepted quantum mechanics. While he recognized that it made correct predictions, he believed a more fundamental description of nature must be possible. Over the years he presented multiple arguments to this effect, but the one he preferred most dated to a debate with Bohr in 1930. Einstein suggested a thought experiment in which two objects are allowed to interact and then moved apart a great distance from each other. The quantum-mechanical description of the two objects is a mathematical entity known as a wavefunction. If the wavefunction that describes the two objects before their interaction is given, then the Schrödinger equation provides the wavefunction that describes them after their interaction. But because of what would later be called quantum entanglement, measuring one object would lead to an instantaneous change of the wavefunction describing the other object, no matter how far away it is. Moreover, the choice of which measurement to perform upon the first object would affect what wavefunction could result for the second object. Einstein reasoned that no influence could propagate from the first object to the second instantaneously fast. Indeed, he argued, physics depends on being able to tell one thing apart from another, and such instantaneous influences would call that into question. Because the true "physical condition" of the second object could not be immediately altered by an action done to the first, Einstein concluded, the wavefunction could not be that true physical condition, only an incomplete description of it.
A more famous version of this argument came in 1935, when Einstein published a paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen that laid out what would become known as the EPR paradox. In this thought experiment, two particles interact in such a way that the wavefunction describing them is entangled. Then, no matter how far the two particles were separated, a precise position measurement on one particle would imply the ability to predict, perfectly, the result of measuring the position of the other particle. Likewise, a precise momentum measurement of one particle would result in an equally precise prediction for of the momentum of the other particle, without needing to disturb the other particle in any way. They argued that no action taken on the first particle could instantaneously affect the other, since this would involve information being transmitted faster than light, which is forbidden by the theory of relativity. They invoked a principle, later known as the "EPR criterion of reality", positing that: "If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity." From this, they inferred that the second particle must have a definite value of both position and of momentum prior to either quantity being measured. But quantum mechanics considers these two observables incompatible and thus does not associate simultaneous values for both to any system. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen therefore concluded that quantum theory does not provide a complete description of reality.
In 1964, John Stewart Bell carried the analysis of quantum entanglement much further. He deduced that if measurements are performed independently on the two separated particles of an entangled pair, then the assumption that the outcomes depend upon hidden variables within each half implies a mathematical constraint on how the outcomes on the two measurements are correlated. This constraint would later be called a Bell inequality. Bell then showed that quantum physics predicts correlations that violate this inequality. Consequently, the only way that hidden variables could explain the predictions of quantum physics is if they are "nonlocal", which is to say that somehow the two particles are able to interact instantaneously no matter how widely they ever become separated. Bell argued that because an explanation of quantum phenomena in terms of hidden variables would require nonlocality, the EPR paradox "is resolved in the way which Einstein would have liked least".
Despite this, and although Einstein personally found the argument in the EPR paper overly complicated, that paper became among the most influential papers published in Physical Review. It is considered a centerpiece of the development of quantum information theory.
Unified field theory
Main article: Classical unified field theories
Encouraged by his success with general relativity, Einstein sought an even more ambitious geometrical theory that would treat gravitation and electromagnetism as aspects of a single entity. In 1950, he described his unified field theory in a Scientific American article titled "On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation". His attempt to find the most fundamental laws of nature won him praise but not success: a particularly conspicuous blemish of his model was that it did not accommodate the strong and weak nuclear forces, neither of which was well understood until many years after his death. Although most researchers now believe that Einstein's approach to unifying physics was mistaken, his goal of a theory of everything is one to which his successors still aspire.[299]
Other investigations
Main article: Einstein's unsuccessful investigations
Einstein conducted other investigations that were unsuccessful and abandoned. These pertain to force, superconductivity, and other research.
Collaboration with other scientists
In addition to longtime collaborators Leopold Infeld, Nathan Rosen, Peter Bergmann and others, Einstein also had some one-shot collaborations with various scientists.
Einstein–de Haas experiment
Main article: Einstein–de Haas effect
In 1908, Owen Willans Richardson predicted that a change in the magnetic moment of a free body will cause this body to rotate. This effect is a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum and is strong enough to be observable in ferromagnetic materials.[300] Einstein and Wander Johannes de Haas published two papers in 1915 claiming the first experimental observation of the effect.[301][302] Measurements of this kind demonstrate that the phenomenon of magnetization is caused by the alignment (polarization) of the angular momenta of the electrons in the material along the axis of magnetization. These measurements also allow the separation of the two contributions to the magnetization: that which is associated with the spin and with the orbital motion of the electrons. The Einstein-de Haas experiment is the only experiment concived, realized and published by Albert Einstein himself.
A complete original version of the Einstein-de Haas experimental equipment was donated by Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz, wife of de Haas and daughter of Lorentz, to the Ampère Museum in Lyon France in 1961 where it is currently on display. It was lost among the museum's holdings and was rediscovered in 2023.[303][304]
Einstein as an inventor
In 1926, Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd co-invented (and in 1930, patented) the Einstein refrigerator. This absorption refrigerator was then revolutionary for having no moving parts and using only heat as an input.[305] On 11 November 1930, U.S. patent 1,781,541 was awarded to Einstein and Leó Szilárd for the refrigerator. Their invention was not immediately put into commercial production, but the most promising of their patents were acquired by the Swedish company Electrolux.[note 6]
Einstein also invented an electromagnetic pump,[307] sound reproduction device,[308] and several other household devices.[309]
Non-scientific legacy
While traveling, Einstein wrote daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters Margot and Ilse. The letters were included in the papers bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Margot Einstein permitted the personal letters to be made available to the public, but requested that it not be done until twenty years after her death (she died in 1986[310]). Barbara Wolff, of the Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives, told the BBC that there are about 3,500 pages of private correspondence written between 1912 and 1955.[311]
Einstein's right of publicity was litigated in 2015 in a federal district court in California. Although the court initially held that the right had expired,[312] that ruling was immediately appealed, and the decision was later vacated in its entirety. The underlying claims between the parties in that lawsuit were ultimately settled. The right is enforceable, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the exclusive representative of that right.[313] Corbis, successor to The Roger Richman Agency, licenses the use of his name and associated imagery, as agent for the university.[314]
Mount Einstein in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska was named in 1955.
Mount Einstein in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after him in 1970 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.[315]
In popular culture
Einstein became one of the most famous scientific celebrities after the confirmation of his general theory of relativity in 1919.[316][317][318] Although most of the public had little understanding of his work, he was widely recognized and admired. In the period before World War II, The New Yorker published a vignette in their "The Talk of the Town" feature saying that Einstein was so well known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory". Eventually he came to cope with unwanted enquirers by pretending to be someone else: "Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein."[319]
Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films, plays, and works of music.[320] He is a favorite model for depictions of absent-minded professors; his expressive face and distinctive hairstyle have been widely copied and exaggerated. Time magazine's Frederic Golden wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist's dream come true".[321]
Many popular quotations are often misattributed to him.[322][323]
Awards and honors
Einstein received numerous awards and honors, and in 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". None of the nominations in 1921 met the criteria set by Alfred Nobel, so the 1921 prize was carried forward and awarded to Einstein in 1922.[7]
Einsteinium, a synthetic chemical element, was named in his honor in 1955, a few months after his death.[324]
Publications
Scientific
Others
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 50
|
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848815,00.html
|
en
|
How Nobel Winners Spend Their Prize Money
|
[
"https://content.time.com/time/photoessays/2008/nobel_prize/nobel_prize_einstein.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2008-10-10T00:00:00
|
In divorce papers signed in 1919, which finally dissolved Einstein's troubled marriage to his first wife, Mileva Maric, the theoretical physicist left all his Nobel money to Maric and their two sons....
|
en
|
https://content.time.com/time/favicon.ico
|
TIME.com
|
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848815,00.html
|
In divorce papers signed in 1919, which finally dissolved Einstein's troubled marriage to his first wife, Mileva Maric, the theoretical physicist left all his Nobel money to Maric and their two sons. There has been a lot of speculation around that decision. Some have suggested that Einstein felt indebted to Maric it has been rumored that she, herself a budding young scientist, helped author some of Einstein's most famous work. Although there's no clear evidence that she co-wrote any of his papers, few historians doubt that she assisted her husband and often provided him a sounding board.
Perhaps more intriguing is Einstein's bold prescience: He left the money to Maric in 1919 (in a notarized document, no less), yet was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics until 1921. R.F.
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 72
|
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-2017-nobel-prize
|
en
|
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Founders
|
[
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/ligo_signals-1638717264243aca66a201c1f0d50559.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/pages/images/91/page_wide/generic.2.png?1582060698",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_caltech-dffffad68d75521d67f82d4d77917573.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_mit-1089305c79c9fb3f86d3c36e6246efe5.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_nsf-b095d1e913dd555437f6682a15d70afb.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_lsc-f75e18cb88af4537a57f048612242fd5.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_virgo-2668a383d8713db7632150294c630ea7.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics -- press release
|
/assets/favicon/apple-icon-57x57-78f4f4b87ac8ed844b6956a7674c7917.png
|
LIGO Lab | Caltech
|
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-2017-nobel-prize
|
Caltech Press Release | MIT Press Release
Caltech Press Release
Caltech Scientists Awarded 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three key players in the development and ultimate success of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Caltech's Barry C. Barish, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus; and the other half was awarded to MIT's Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus.
On September 14, 2015, the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years earlier. The public announcement took place on February 11, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Each of the twin LIGO observatories—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—picked up the feeble signal of gravitational waves generated 1.3 billion years ago when two black holes spiraled together and collided. Two additional detections of gravitational waves, once again from merging black-hole pairs, were made on December 26, 2015, and January 4, 2017, and, on August 14, 2017, a fourth event was detected by LIGO and the European Virgo gravitational-wave detector.
The detections ushered in a new era of gravitational-wave astronomy. LIGO and Virgo provided astronomers with an entirely new set of tools with which to probe the cosmos. Previously, all astronomy observations have relied on light—which includes X-rays, radio waves, and other types of electromagnetic radiation emanating from objects in space—or on very-high-energy particles called neutrinos and cosmic rays. Now, astronomers can learn about cosmic objects through the quivers they make in space and time.
The Nobel Prize recognizes Weiss, Barish, and Thorne for their "decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves."
"I am delighted and honored to congratulate Kip and Barry, as well as Rai Weiss of MIT, on the award this morning of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics," says Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "The first direct observation of gravitational waves by LIGO is an extraordinary demonstration of scientific vision and persistence. Through four decades of development of exquisitely sensitive instrumentation—pushing the capacity of our imaginations—we are now able to glimpse cosmic processes that were previously undetectable. It is truly the start of a new era in astrophysics."
Thorne received the call from the Nobel committee this morning at 2:15 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
"The prize rightfully belongs to the hundreds of LIGO scientists and engineers who built and perfected our complex gravitational-wave interferometers, and the hundreds of LIGO and Virgo scientists who found the gravitational-wave signals in LIGO's noisy data and extracted the waves' information," Thorne says. "It is unfortunate that, due to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the prize has to go to no more than three people, when our marvelous discovery is the work of more than a thousand."
Barish received the call from the Nobel committee this morning at 2:45 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
"I am humbled and honored to receive this award," says Barish. "The detection of gravitational waves is truly a triumph of modern large-scale experimental physics. Over several decades, our teams at Caltech and MIT developed LIGO into the incredibly sensitive device that made the discovery. When the signal reached LIGO from a collision of two stellar black holes that occurred 1.3 billion years ago, the 1,000-scientist-strong LIGO Scientific Collaboration was able to both identify the candidate event within minutes and perform the detailed analysis that convincingly demonstrated that gravitational waves exist."
An Idea That Began Decades Ago
Einstein predicted in 1916 that gravitational waves would exist, but thought them too weak to ever be detected. By the 1960s, technological advances such as the laser and new insights into possible astrophysics sources made it conceivable that Einstein was wrong and that gravitational waves might actually be detectable.
The first person to build a gravitational-wave detector was Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland. Weber's detectors, built in the 1960s, used large aluminum cylinders, or bars, that would be driven to vibrate by passing gravitational waves. Other researchers elsewhere, including the late Ronald W. P. Drever at the University of Glasgow in Scotland—later a professor of physics at Caltech—soon followed Weber's lead.
When those experiments proved unsuccessful, the focus of the field began shifting to a different type of detector called a gravitational-wave interferometer, invented independently by Weiss at MIT and, in rudimentary form, by several others. In this instrument, gravitational waves stretch and squeeze space by an infinitesimal amount while widely separated mirrors hanging by wires "ride" the oscillations, moving apart and together ever so slightly. This mirror motion is measured with laser light using a technique called interferometry.
In the late 1960s, Weiss began laying conceptual foundations for these interferometers. In parallel, Thorne, along with his students and postdocs at Caltech, worked to improve the theory of gravitational waves, and estimated the details, strengths, and frequencies of the waves that would be produced by objects in our universe such as black holes, neutron stars, and supernovas.
In 1972, Thorne, with his student Bill Press (MS '71, PhD '73), published the first of many articles that would appear over the next three decades, summarizing what was known about the gravitational-wave sources and formulating a vision for gravitational-wave astronomy.
"LIGO would not exist without Kip's vision for the scientific potential of gravitational waves and his amazing gift for sharing that vision with other scientists," says Stan Whitcomb (BS '73), the chief scientist for the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech, who began working on the project in 1980.
Also in 1972, Weiss published a detailed analysis of his interferometers. He identified all of the major obstacles that could prevent the instruments from detecting gravitational waves, such as vibrations of the earth and of the mirrors, and he invented techniques to deal with each obstacle. At this stage, it became evident that large interferometers, several kilometers or more in size, might possibly prove successful—as, indeed, they ultimately did with LIGO and its 4-kilometer-long arms. Also evident was the fact that perfecting the interferometers would be exceedingly difficult: a passing gravitational wave would induce mirror motions 1,000 times smaller than a proton, and these infinitesimal changes would have to be measured. That's 100 million times smaller than an atom, and a trillion times smaller than the wavelength of the light being used in the measurement.
Triggered by Weiss's work, Drever's research group in Glasgow switched from bars to interferometers, as did a research group in Garching, Germany, led by Heinz Billing. By 1975, there were three prototype interferometers under development at MIT, Glasgow, and Garching.
A Fateful Hotel Room Discussion
At first Thorne was skeptical of Weiss's interferometer idea. "I even wrote, in a textbook, that it was not very promising," he says. But that changed when Thorne studied, in depth, Weiss's 1972 analysis. Thorne came to call it a "tour de force" and a "blueprint for the future."
In 1975, Weiss invited Thorne to speak at a NASA committee meeting in Washington, D.C., about cosmology and gravitation experiments in space. Hotel rooms that summer were fully booked, so the two shared a room, where they stayed up all night talking. Thorne came away so excited by the experimental prospects that he went home and proposed creating an experimental gravity group at Caltech to work on interferometers in parallel with MIT, Glasgow, and Garching. Caltech then brought Drever on board in 1979 to lead the new experimental effort, because, as Thorne says, they knew his inventiveness would prove crucial to LIGO's success. Soon thereafter, in 1980, Caltech hired a young Chicago astrophysicist, Whitcomb, to assist in the leadership.
"What a pleasure it was to have this brilliant, budding experimental group working alongside my theory group at Caltech," says Thorne. "Those were heady days."
Together, Drever and Whitcomb led the design and construction of a 40-meter interferometer at Caltech—a prototype to test and perfect the ideas of Weiss, Drever, and others, including the teams at Glasgow and Garching.
Meanwhile, Thorne and his theory students—in collaboration with the late Vladimir Braginsky of Moscow State University, a regular Caltech visitor over three decades—were analyzing various sources of noise that the big interferometers would face, especially "quantum noise," or random fluctuations of the mirrors' positions predicted by quantum theory. They were coming up with ways to deal with those fluctuations.
In 1984, all of this parallel work came together. Caltech and MIT, with encouragement from the NSF, formed a collaboration to design and build LIGO. Rochus E. (Robbie) Vogt, Caltech's R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of Physics, Emeritus, was recruited in 1987 as LIGO's first director. Vogt led the merging of the Caltech and MIT experimental groups; the early planning for LIGO; the writing of a proposal to NSF to fund the project; and the education of Congress about this high-risk project with a potentially exceedingly high payoff. In 1992, Congress allocated the first major funding. "NSF and Congress have backed LIGO unwaveringly ever since," says Thorne.
Scaling up LIGO
Building LIGO was a tremendous challenge—logistically and technically. To meet this challenge, Caltech and MIT later recruited, as LIGO's second director, Barry Barish, who at that time had been the leader of several very large high-energy physics projects. Barish developed the first high-energy neutrino beam experiment at Fermilab near Chicago and was one of the leaders of a large international collaboration that performed a search for magnetic monopoles—magnetic analogs of single electric charges that, if found, would help confirm the Grand Unified Theory that seeks to unify the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. The experiment, called MACRO (Monopole, Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Observatory), did not find magnetic monopoles but set the most stringent limits on their existence. Barish then led the design of one of the two detectors planned for another big science project, the Superconducting Super Collider—a particle accelerator to be built in Waxahachie, Texas. The accelerator was canceled during construction in 1993, after which Barish took on the challenge of LIGO, becoming its principal investigator in 1994, and then its director in 1997.
"I always wanted to be an experimental physicist and was attracted to the idea of using continuing advances in technology to carry out fundamental science experiments that could not be done otherwise," says Barish. "LIGO is a prime example of what couldn't be done before. Although it was a very large-scale project, the challenges were very different from the way we build a bridge or carry out other large engineering projects. For LIGO, the challenge was and is how to develop and design advanced instrumentation on a large scale, even as the project evolves."
"Barish, in my opinion, is the most brilliant leader of large science projects that physics has ever seen," says Thorne.
Barish ushered LIGO through its final design stages and secured funding through NSF's National Science Board. He oversaw construction of the two LIGO facilities from 1994 to 1999, and then the installation and commissioning of the initial LIGO interferometers from 1999 to 2005. The scaling up from Caltech's 40-meter prototype to LIGO's 4-kilometer interferometers was such a huge undertaking that it was carried out in two steps. First, the team built initial interferometers, which operated from 2002 to 2010, at a sensitivity that Barish characterized as being at a level where detections were "possible." This first step demonstrated the observatory's basic concepts and solved many technical obstacles. The development and approval of the next phase of LIGO, called Advanced LIGO, was also led by Barish and then-LIGO Laboratory deputy director Gary Sanders, and was designed to be sensitive to a level at which detections were "probable." Advanced LIGO was commissioned and built between 2010 and 2015. Though Barish left LIGO in 2006 to become director of the Global Design Effort for the International Linear Collider, he would rejoin the LIGO team in 2012, in time for the project's historic discovery in 2015. After Barish left, LIGO was led by Jay Marx of Caltech, followed by current executive director, Caltech's David H. Reitze.
"LIGO had to make the change from tabletop science to a real science facility," says Whitcomb. "Barry understood what was needed, and he guided that transformation without ever losing sight of the scientific goals."
Under Barish's leadership, several key technologies were developed that ultimately led to the detection of gravitational waves. For the first phase of LIGO, now referred to as Initial LIGO, he chose to use solid-state lasers rather than the gas lasers that were more commonly in use at that time. These solid-state lasers were the basis of more powerful versions developed for Advanced LIGO. He also oversaw the development of technologies for reducing unwanted movements in LIGO's mirrors, caused by earthquakes, passing trucks, and other ground vibrations.
"In the initial phase of LIGO, in order to isolate the detectors from the earth's motion, we used a suspension system that consisted of test-mass mirrors hung by piano wire and used a multiple-stage set of passive shock absorbers, similar to those in your car. We knew this probably would not be good enough to detect gravitational waves, so we, in the LIGO Laboratory, developed an ambitious program for Advanced LIGO that incorporated a new suspension system to stabilize the mirrors and an active seismic isolation system to sense and correct for ground motions," says Barish.
The active seismic isolation system developed for Advanced LIGO works in a similar fashion to noise-canceling headphones, except it can measure and cancel out ground vibrations coming from many directions. In conjunction with this system, a new "quieter" way to suspend LIGO's mirrors was developed with the help of the Glasgow group, which involved hanging the mirrors with a four-stage pendulum. The combination of these two advances gave LIGO a huge improvement in sensitivity to lower frequencies of gravitational waves, which was ultimately what was needed to detect the crashing of two black holes.
Barish also created the LIGO of today: a collaboration of approximately 1,200 scientists and engineers at about 100 institutions in 19 nations called the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC).
"In addition to picking the right technologies and developing them, and securing funding, we needed to build a collaboration of the absolute best people possible for this almost impossible project," says Barish. "Forming an international collaboration, the LSC, enabled this. We attracted the best people from other universities and countries, creating an 'equal opportunity' collaboration, where there was no advantage to being at Caltech or MIT." The LSC conducted the scientific searches and analysis that led to the LIGO discovery.
While this experimental work was taking place, theorists outside Caltech, MIT, and the LIGO project were developing computer codes to simulate the massive collisions of black holes and other sources of gravitational waves that LIGO might detect. These simulations are essential to LIGO; by comparing the shapes of the waves that LIGO observes with the simulations' predicted wave shapes, LIGO scientists can figure out what produces the observed waves. In the early 2000s, Thorne became alarmed at the slow progress on simulations and so with then-Caltech physicist Lee Lindblom, he created a research group at Caltech in collaboration with a group at Cornell University led by his former student Saul Teukolsky (PhD '74), who is now jointly the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech and Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics and Astrophysics at Cornell University. By 2015, this SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) project was simulating the collisions of black holes with ease, as were several other research groups.
On September 14, 2015, just after the Advanced LIGO interferometers began their first search for gravitational waves, they captured a strong signal. Comparison with the SXS simulations revealed that the signal was from the collision of two hefty black holes 29 and 36 times more massive than the sun and located 1.3 billion light-years from Earth. The waves carried away as much energy as would be produced by annihilating three suns. After intense scrutiny of the results, the LIGO scientists announced this discovery to the world on February 11, 2016.
"I'm positively delighted that the Nobel Committee has recognized the LIGO discovery and its profound impact on the way we view the cosmos," says Reitze. "This prize rewards not just Kip, Barry, and Rai but also the large number of very smart and dedicated scientists and engineers who worked tirelessly over the past decades to make LIGO a reality."
"LIGO was a huge technical and scientific gamble," says Fiona Harrison, the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair in Caltech's Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. "But it paid off in spades with one of the most dramatic discoveries in decades. The entire LIGO team should be celebrating today."
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics represents the 37th and 38th Nobel Prizes awarded to Caltech faculty and alumni. Current Caltech faculty with Nobel Prizes include: Robert Grubbs, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Yves Chauvin and Richard R. Schrock; David Politzer, recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics with David J. Gross and Frank Wilczek; Rudy Marcus, sole winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; and David Baltimore, winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Renato Dulbecco and Howard M. Temin.
In 2016, Drever, Thorne, and Weiss won the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize, and the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. In 2017, Barish, Thorne, and Weiss won the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research and the European Physical Society's Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize.
Barish was born on January 27, 1936, in Omaha, Nebraska, and spent his childhood in Los Angeles. He received his BA in physics in 1957 and his PhD in experimental particle physics in 1962, both from UC Berkeley. In 1963, he joined Caltech as a research fellow. He became an assistant professor in 1966, an associate professor in 1969, and a professor of physics in 1972. He was named the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics in 1991 and Linde Professor, Emeritus, in 2005. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society, the latter of which he served as president. In 2002, he received the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers and, in 2016, he received the Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society. He won the Henry Draper Medal in 2017 with Whitcomb. For a full biography, click here.
Thorne was born on June 1, 1940, in Logan, Utah. He received a bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech in 1962 and a PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1965. He joined Caltech as a research fellow in 1966, and joined the faculty in 1967 as an associate professor of theoretical physics. In 1970, he became a professor of theoretical physics. In 1991, he was named the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics. He retired in 2009. Thorne has coauthored or authored several books, including Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, published in 1994. He served as an executive producer and science adviser for the 2014 film Interstellar. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. On October 11, 2017, Thorne will publish the textbook Modern Classical Physics, coauthored with Roger Blandford. For a full biography, click here.
More information about LIGO's many partners is online here.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Local:
Deborah Williams-Hedges
Senior Media Relations Manager
626-395-3227 office
626-840-1565 cell
debwms@caltech.edu
Other:
Whitney Clavin
Senior Content and Media Strategist
626-395-1856 office
wclavin@caltech.edu
Emily Velasco
Science Writer
626-395-6487 office
626-536-6915 cell
evelasco@caltech.edu
MIT Press Release
CONTACT: Kimberly Allen, MIT News Office
allenkc@mit.edu; 617.253.2702 or 617.852.6094 (mobile)
MIT Media Relations
expertrequests@mit.edu; 617-253-1682
MIT Physicist Rainer Weiss Shares Nobel Prize in Physics
Rainer Weiss ’55, PhD ’62, professor emeritus of physics at MIT, has won the Nobel Prize in physics for 2017. Weiss wins half the prize, sharing the other half of the award with Kip S. Thorne, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at Caltech, and Barry C. Barish, professor emeritus of physics at Caltech.
The Nobel Foundation, in its announcement this morning, cited the physicists "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
“We are immensely proud of Rai Weiss, and we also offer admiring best wishes to his chief collaborators and the entire LIGO team,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “The creativity and rigor of the LIGO experiment constitute a scientific triumph; we are profoundly inspired by the decades of ingenuity, optimism, and perseverance that made it possible. It is especially sweet that Rai Weiss not only served on the MIT faculty for 37 years, but is also an MIT graduate. Today’s announcement reminds us, on a grand scale, of the value and power of fundamental scientific research and why it deserves society’s collective support.”
Listening for a wobble
On Sept. 14, 2015, at approximately 5:51 a.m. EDT, a gravitational wave — a ripple from a distant part of the universe — passed through the Earth, generating an almost imperceptible, fleeting wobble in the world that would have gone completely unnoticed save for two massive, identical instruments, designed to listen for such cosmic distortions.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, consists of two L-shaped interferometers, each 4 kilometers in length, separated by 1,865 miles. On Sept. 14, 2015, scientists picked up a very faint wobble in the instruments and soon confirmed that the interferometers had been infinitesimally stretched — by just one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton — and that this miniscule distortion arose from a passing gravitational wave.
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, with the Caltech-MIT LIGO Laboratory and more than 1,000 scientists at universities and observatories around the world, confirmed the signal as the first direct detection of a gravitational wave by an instrument on Earth. The scientists further decoded the signal to determine that the gravitational wave was the product of a violent collision between two massive black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
The momentous result confirmed the theory of general relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, who almost exactly 100 years earlier had predicted the existence of gravitational waves but assumed that they would be virtually impossible to detect from Earth. Since this first discovery, LIGO has detected three other gravitational wave signals, also generated by pairs of spiraling, colliding black holes; the most announced of a detection came just last week.
“We are incredibly proud of Rai and his colleagues for their vision and courage that led to this great achievement,” says Michael Sipser, the Donner Professor of Mathematics and dean of the School of Science at MIT. “It is a wonderful day for them, for MIT, for risk-taking and boldness, and for all of science.”
A gravitational blueprint
The detection was an especially long-awaited payoff for Weiss, who came up with the initial design for LIGO some 50 years ago. He has since been instrumental in shaping and championing the idea as it developed from a desktop prototype to LIGO’s final, observatory-scale form.
In 1967, Weiss, then an assistant professor of physics at MIT, was asked by his department to teach an introductory course in general relativity — a subject he knew little about. A few years earlier, the American physicist Joseph Weber had claimed to have made the first detection of gravitational waves, using resonant bars — long, aluminum cylinders that should ring at a certain frequency in response to a gravitational wave. When his students asked him to explain how these Weber bars worked, Weiss found that he couldn't.
No one in the scientific community had been able to replicate Weber’s results. Weiss had a very different idea for how to do it, and assigned the problem to his students, instructing them to design the simplest experiment they could to detect a gravitational wave. Weiss himself came up with a design: Build an L-shaped interferometer and shine a light down the length of each arm, at the end of which hangs a free-floating mirror. The lasers should bounce off the mirrors and head back along each arm, arriving where they started at the exact same time. If a gravitational wave passes through, it should “stretch” or displace the mirrors ever so slightly, and thus change the lasers’ arrival times.
Weiss refined the idea over a summer in MIT’s historic Building 20, a wooden structure built during World War II to develop radar technology. The building, meant to be temporary and known to many as the “Plywood Palace,” lived on to germinate and support innovative, high-risk projects. During that time, Weiss came to the conclusion that his design could indeed detect gravitational waves, if built to large enough dimensions. His design would serve as the essential blueprint for LIGO.
An observatory takes shape
To test his idea, Weiss initially built a 1.5-meter prototype. But to truly detect a gravitational wave, the instrument would have to be several thousand times longer: The longer the interferometer’s arms, the more sensitive its optics are to minute displacements.
To realize this audacious design, Weiss teamed up in 1976 with noted physicist Kip Thorne, who, based in part on conversations with Weiss, soon started a gravitational wave experiment group at Caltech. The two formed a collaboration between MIT and Caltech, and in 1979, Scottish physicist Ronald Drever, then of Glasgow University, joined the effort at Caltech. The three scientists — who became the co-founders of LIGO — worked to refine the dimensions and scientific requirements for an instrument sensitive enough to detect a gravitational wave.
Barry Barish soon joined the team as first a principal investigator, then director of the project, and was instrumental in securing funding for the audacious project, and bringing the detectors to completion.
After years of fits and starts in research and funding, the project finally received significant and enthusiastic backing from the National Science Foundation, and in the mid-1990s, LIGO broke ground, erecting its first interferometer in Hanford, Washington, and its second in Livingston, Louisiana.
Prior to making their seminal detection two years ago, LIGO’s detectors required years of fine-tuning to improve their sensitivity. During this time, Weiss not only advised on scientific quandaries but also stepped in to root out problems in the detectors themselves. Weiss is among the few to have walked the length of the interferometers’ tunnels in the space between LIGO’s laser beam tube and its encasement. Inspecting the detectors in this way, Weiss would often discover minute cracks, tiny shards of glass, and even infestations of wasps, mice, and black widow spiders, which he would promptly deal with.
A cosmic path
Weiss was born in 1932 in tumultuous Berlin. When his mother, Gertrude Loesner, was pregnant with Weiss, his father, neurologist Frederick Weiss, was abducted by the Nazis for testifying against a Nazi doctor. He was eventually released with the help of Loesner’s family. The young family fled to Prague and then emigrated to New York City, where Weiss grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, cultivating a love for classical music and electronics, and making a hobby of repairing radios.
After graduating high school, he went to MIT to study electrical engineering, in hopes of finding a way to quiet the hiss heard in shellac records. He later switched to physics, but then dropped out of school in his junior year, only to return shortly after, taking a job as a technician in Building 20. There, Weiss met physicist Jerrold Zacharias, who is credited with developing the first atomic clock. Zacharias encouraged and supported Weiss in finishing his undergraduate degree in 1955 and his PhD in 1962.
Weiss spent some time at Princeton University as a postdoc, where he developed experiments to test gravity, before returning to MIT as an assistant professor in 1964. In the midst of his work in gravitational wave detection, Weiss also investigated and became a leading researcher in cosmic microwave background radiation — thermal radiation, found in the microwave band of the radio spectrum, that is thought to be a diffuse afterglow from the Big Bang.
In 1976, Weiss was appointed to oversee a scientific working group for NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which launched in 1989 and went on to precisely measure microwave radiation and its tiny, quantum fluctuations. Weiss was co-founder and chair of the science working group for the mission, whose measurements helped support the Big Bang theory of the universe. COBE’s findings earned two of its principal investigators the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006.
Weiss has received numerous awards and honors, including the Medaille de l’ADION, the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology, and the 2007 Einstein Prize of the American Physical Society. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Physical Society, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, Weiss received a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, and the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, all shared with Drever and Thorne. Most recently, Weiss shared the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research with Thorne, Barry Barish of Caltech, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
RELATED LINKS
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics
Rainer Weiss
Video: LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves
LIGO
Advanced LIGO Instrument
MIT LIGO
ARCHIVED MIT NEWS
Scientists make first detection of gravitational waves
Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 84
|
https://fi.edu/en/news/case-files-albert-einstein
|
en
|
Case Files: Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://fi.edu/modules/custom/tfi_menu/img/mobile-logo.svg",
"https://fi.edu/themes/custom/simplytheme/src/img/print/logo--print.png",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2020-01/General_CaseFiles_Portrait_Einstein.jpg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_LetterFromEinsteinToTFI_1of2.jpg.jpg?itok=v-173kT3",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_LetterFromEinsteinToTFI_2of2.jpg.jpg?itok=vsnvzoGb",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_PhotoOfMedal.jpg?itok=7N6fbE0f",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_PhotoOfMembershipCertificate.jpg?itok=ulss-esa",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_AlbertEinstein_MagazineExtract_1of2.jpg?itok=8vIPbaYN",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_MagazineExtract_2of2_0.jpg?itok=UFZOlL6H",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_PhotoOfMedalCertificate.jpg?itok=7JP0fqd3",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_InvitationToAwardDinner.jpg?itok=SVU953fr",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/facebook.svg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/instagram.svg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/twitter_x_0.svg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/Group 456.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2016-05-27T09:53:33-04:00
|
Introduction Though he described himself as a "mathematical ignoramus," Albert Einstein's thinking was so complex that accomplished members of the scientific community still struggle to wrap their minds around the meaning and implications of his theories. Born in Germany in 1879, the frizzy-haired physicist conducted some of his most important research in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the later years of his life.
|
en
|
/themes/custom/simplytheme/favicon.ico
|
The Franklin Institute
|
https://fi.edu/en/news/case-files-albert-einstein
|
Introduction
Though he described himself as a "mathematical ignoramus," Albert Einstein's thinking was so complex that accomplished members of the scientific community still struggle to wrap their minds around the meaning and implications of his theories. Born in Germany in 1879, the frizzy-haired physicist conducted some of his most important research in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the later years of his life. Perhaps best known for his Theory of Relativity and his equation E=mc2, Einstein's work revolutionized the field of theoretical physics and made him a celebrity throughout the globe.
As he presented Einstein at Medal Day exercises, Dr. Frederick Palmer, Jr. of The Franklin Institute's Committee on Science and the Arts said:"The romance of his achievement has been such that mathematical physics has become popular with the public."
Who was Albert Einstein? What were his achievements in the field of physics?
The Nature of a Genius
Before he was known as a genius whose work profoundly changed the way the world thinks about physics, Albert Einstein thought of himself as "merely curious." In his youth, his curiosity lead him to explore the field of natural science through private reading outside of his high school classes, and to apply his knowledge to his own thoughts and questions about the nature of the cosmos.
Einstein was a philosopher and a human rights activist as well as a scientist. During his lifetime he witnessed two world wars and predicted the invention of the atomic bomb in a now-famous letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Einstein eloquently recorded his thoughts on religion, science and human rights, and the pages of his writings are imbued with the complex emotions and musings of a man who witnessed profound changes in the world around him, and whose direct involvement in major scientific breakthroughs inspired him to think about the extent to which developments in science effect society at large.
Despite the fame brought to him by his theories and research, Einstein's sense of humility remained intact. Though anecdotal episodes from his youth show some signs of arrogance and frustration with his fame, his adulthood is marked by a mature gratitude for his abilities and a resigned acceptance of his celebrity status. Reflecting on his success in his later years Einstein wrote, "For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it."
The "Lone Traveler" Sets Out
Albert began his schooling in Germany, where his teachers disciplined him and his classmates were disrespectful to the young Einstein. His primary school classes emphasized memorization and learning by rote. Albert was reprimanded by his German elementary school teachers for thinking too much about the meaning of their questions and failing to produce responses as quickly as his peers. At home, Albert obediently completed his homework before engaging in solitary games. One of his favorite pastimes as a child was constructing houses of cards, which sometimes was able to reach four stories. Even as a young child Einstein valued solitude, and in 1930 he would reflect: "I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, and even my immediate family with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude—feelings which increase with the years" (qtd in Cassidy 64).
Working Ahead
In the fall of 1888, when Einstein was nine years old, he entered a secondary school in Munich, Germany called the Luitpold-Gymnasium. This school emphasized non-scientific subjects like Latin and ancient Greek. While he did earn good grades in his classes, they did not spark his interest. It was during these secondary school days that Albert began to diverge from the curriculum prescribed for him, engaging in his own private reading. At age thirteen he asked his parents to purchase the mathematics textbook that he would be using the following year, and proceeded to work his way through the entire mathematics program at the Lutipold-Gymnasium in a matter of months. He indulged his passion for physics and physical phenomena by reading textbooks that were, at the time, key writings on the natural sciences.
In Need of a Liberal Arts Education
As his thoughts shifted towards college and more advanced studies, Albert was determined to apply to the Federal Institute of Technology (FIT) in Zurich, Switzerland. He disliked the Lutipold-Gymnasium and did not complete his studies there. He instead committed himself to a period of self-study, during which he acquired knowledge of theoretical physics. He took the FIT's competitive entrance exam at age sixteen, more than a year younger than the other students who sat for the exam at the same time. The results of his exam revealed that he had done well on the mathematical-physical section of the test, while he had failed the general portion of the exam which tested his knowledge of literary and political history and of foreign language. Albert was thus required to attend a secondary school in the nearby Swiss town of Aarau before he was admitted to the FIT.
Einstein began his studies at the Federal Institute of Technology (FIT) in October of 1896. As a college student he often skipped lectures and studied for tests by borrowing notes from his classmates, and would later describe himself as a mediocre university student. While not an avid participant in his classes, Albert's genuine interest in theoretical physics inspired him to devote large periods of time to its study. He participated in a number of physics experiments while a student, and consistently strove to unite the abstract concepts of theoretical physics with practical matters. His doctoral thesis made strides towards such unification, combining the theoretical claim for the existence of molecules with a description of the physical law governing the behavior of molecules. Einstein used experimental data to further describe this law and to further develop the relationship between the theoretical and the practical.
Princeton Days
After he completed his degree at the FIT, Einstein found work as an assistant professor and eventually as a full professor of theoretical physics. He preferred researching to teaching, and in 1914 he accepted a paid research position in Berlin, Germany, which was considered the "capital city" of physics at that point in time. In 1933 the rise of Nazi power in Germany prompted Einstein to resign from his position in Berlin and flee to the United States, where he took up residence at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey and assumed a position on the faculty of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.
Oswald Veblen, the first professor in the Institute for Advanced Study, helped select and relocate Einstein and other foreign mathematicians after Hitler's rise to power in Europe. Veblen was a leading geometer and served a term as president of the American Mathematical Society and of the International Congress of Mathematicians, held at Harvard. Though highly respected as a scholar, Veblen valued his relationships with his students and helped design common spaces in Princeton buildings in order to help encourage the formation of student-faculty relationships.
The verification and publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity in 1919 brought him instant celebrity status.
Under Investigation
In August of 1939 Einstein mailed a letter to the White House, informing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the potential threat posed by the discovery of and subsequent experimentation with nuclear fission in Berlin, Germany. His ominous prediction read:
"This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory."
History indicates that Einstein sent four letters to President Roosevelt, each expressing an increased urgency for action. In December of 1941, Roosevelt heeded Einstein's warning and convened the American investigation into nuclear fission and the development of such a bomb known as the Manhattan Project. This top secret project went underway in a laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Four years later, in 1945, the United States dropped the newly-developed atomic bomb, devastating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Despite his role in alerting the President to the possibility of nuclear weapons, Einstein did not participate in the Manhattan Project. Though he was granted American citizenship in 1940, his involvement with liberal organizations whose missions called for world peace made Einstein a "radical" in the eyes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In response to the perceived threat posed by Einstein, the FBI compiled an extensive secret file on the scientist, monitoring and recording his movements. His status as a security threat prevented Einstein from gaining the security clearance necessary to enter the secret laboratory in New Mexico. It is very likely that this was not a source of disappointment for Einstein, who publicly declared his dedication to pacifism. He was quite distressed when the public mind associated him with the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 and the subsequent civilian casualties.
Interested in learning more about Albert Einstein? Learn More About His Benjamin Franklin Award
Personal Commitments
Einstein committed to his family, and throughout the course of his life he married twice and had three children. All three children were a product of his relationship with Mileva Maric, whom he encountered while he was a university student. Mileva was a classmate and a fellow scientist, and evidence suggests that she was instrumental in the development of some of her husband's theories. Einstein's children were named Lieserl, Hans Albert and Eduard, who was known as "Tete." Einstein eventually divorced Mileva, marrying his cousin Else Löwenthal four months later.
Einstein was also deeply committed to his Jewish faith. His religious beliefs inspired him to grapple with philosophical thoughts and to champion the cause of Zionists and their quest for a Jewish home state in Palestine. He was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, though he declined this honor. He died three years later of an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, bequeathing much of his writings and photographs to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
An Eternal Riddle
Though he is conceived of as a genius in modern society, Einstein's ways of thinking diverged sharply from those of a majority of other scientists when he initially penned some of his most famous theories. In the early years of the 20th Century, theorists were not regarded with great respect, but Einstein viewed theoretical work as a high calling. Contemplating theoretical physics, Einstein wrote, "I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential...Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle."
Electromagnetic Waves
Some scientists in the late 1800s and early 1900s believed in and described an entity known as "the ether." The ether was thought to be a backdrop at a state of absolute rest against which the movement of elements of the cosmos occurred. Einstein disagreed with the existence of the ether, which will be seen during the discussion of his theory of special relativity. However, an understanding of the ether is important for understanding the theory of electromagnetic phenomena which preceded Einstein's theory of relativity.
During the 19th Century, scientists Michael Farady, James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz formulated a theory that described electromagnetic phenomena. This theory indicated that electric and magnetic forces resulted from the effect of electric and magnetic fields existing in space between electric charges. These electric charges were produced by the ether, which was thought to be able to exert electric forces on ordinary matter. Hertz showed that moving electromagnetic fields could break away from ordinary matter and propagate through the ether as independent electromagnetic waves carrying energy. These electromagnetic waves come in both visible and invisible forms. Hertz showed that visible light is one visible form of the electromagnetic wave. Invisible electromagnetic waves include radio waves, x-rays and microwaves. The concept of such waves moving through the ether can be likened to the waves that spread over a pond after a stone is thrown into the water. The ripples in the pond can be thought of as the equivalent of electromagnetic waves, and the still water as the equivalent of the ether. In a pond, the force of the stone hitting the water results in the ripples. One of the things puzzling the scientists of Einstein's time was what exactly caused the formation of electromagnetic fields whose independent movement resulted in the electromagnetic waves which they conceived of as moving through space.
The Electron
In 1897, the source of electromagnetic fields was discovered: the electron. At the time of its discovery, the electron possessed the smallest mass known. It also carried the smallest electric charge known. Because of its charge, it was found to be the source of electromagnetic fields. However, the electron posed a problem for scientists grappling with electromagnetic theory. As is discussed above, electromagnetic theory dealt with fields and waves, entities that were thought to be continuous and without mass. Electrons are neither continuous nor without mass: they are individual, charged particles that have mass. Electrons thus did not "fit into" electromagnetic theory as it was understood in the late 19th Century. They posed yet another riddle for Einstein and his contemporaries.
A Quantum Leap
In 1905, Einstein challenged the concept that visible light, one form of the electromagnetic wave, always behaved as a continuous wave. Einstein argued that in certain cases light behaves as individual particles. He called these particles "light quanta," and said that each "light quanta" carries a "quantum," meaning a fixed quantity of energy. A light beam is thus composed of many "light quanta" which are observed as one continuous wave. The total energy of a light beam, Einstein said, is the sum total of the individual energies of the distinct "light quanta." Today, these "light quanta" are called "photons." Theories that treat total energy as "quantized" (meaning that total energy is calculated by adding together the fixed energies of the individual "quanta" of which the overall energy is composed) are known as quantum theories.
It's (Photo) Electric!
Einstein's light quantum hypothesis helped to explain certain visible light behavior which could not be explained if visible light were understood to exist in the form of a wave, rather than in the form of tiny individual particles. One of these phenomena was known as the photoelectric effect. Scientists had observed that, when light hit metal, electrons were ejected from the surface of the metal. Einstein's light quanta could eject electrons from the surface of the metal by changing the energy states of the electrons they hit. Light quanta are little bundles of energy, and according to electron theory, electrons absorb energy. The act of absorbing energy takes an electron to a higher energy state, causing it to jump. When it returns to its state of rest, it emits the energy it has absorbed in the form of light. This results in the observable ejection of electrons from the metal's surface known as the photoelectric effect.
Galileo and Relativity
Though Einstein is the scientist most frequently associated with the theory of relativity, there are several thinkers who are responsible for its formulation. The first known person to theorize about relativity was Galileo, who articulated the first "relativity principle" in the seventeenth century. In generating his relativity principle, Galileo removed the distinction between stationary and moving observers, arguing that people on earth cannot tell if they are really at rest or if they are moving with the rotation of the earth each day. To demonstrate this, Galileo used the example of a cannonball falling from the top of a ship's mast. He noted that the cannonball will land at the base of the mast whether the ship is moving steadily through the ocean, or whether it is at rest in a dock. Even if they observe the falling ball, people on the ship cannot tell if they are really at rest or if they are moving with the ship. They cannot distinguish their state of rest from the ship's state by observing motion that takes place within the "reference frame" of the ship. In other words, a person at rest on the deck of a ship cannot determine whether the ship is at rest or moving at a steady speed through the ocean by observing actions that happen on the ship itself. That person must observe the ship relative to its surrounding environment in order to make such a determination.
A Matter of Principle
In 1905, Einstein wrote a paper entitled, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." This paper served as the foundation for his theory of relativity. It also included many of the theories and results of scientists whose work had preceded Einstein, so much so that many of his contemporaries had a difficult time distinguishing Einstein's "theory of special relativity" from other accepted theories of the time. The main difference between Einstein's theories and other prevalent scientific theories of the 1900s lies in how Einstein went about deriving his theories. While many of his contemporaries drew "constructive theories," Einstein drew "principle theories."
Einstein's theories were not hypotheses built on data reached through experimentation. Rather, they were universal principles intended to impact all of physics. Throughout his life, Einstein was driven by a desire to isolate a single theory that would unify gravitation and electromagnetic fields. Though this single theory has not yet been found, Einstein's work has inspired physicists of today to continue the search for a unified theory.
Special Relativity
Einstein's theory of special relativity is fundamentally a theory of measurement. He qualified the theory as "special" because it refers only to uniform velocities (meaning to objects either at rest or moving at a constant speed). In formulating his theory, Einstein dismissed the concept of the "ether," and with it the "idea of absolute rest." Prior to the generation of Einstein's theory of special relativity, physicists had understood motion to occur against a backdrop of absolute rest (the "ether"), with this backdrop acting as a reference point for all motion. In dismissing the concept of this backdrop, Einstein called for a reconsideration of all motion. According to his theory, all motion is relative and every concept that incorporates space and time must be considered in relative terms. This means that there is no constant point of reference against which to measure motion. Measurement of motion is never absolute, but relative to a given position in space and time. Returning to Galileo's cannonball, Einstein considered this: the cannonball falling from the mast of the ship would appear to an observer standing on the deck of that ship as though it dropped straight down; however, to an observer standing on the shore, the cannonball would appear to follow a curved trajectory on its way to the base of the mast. Which trajectory did the ball actually follow? According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, the answer is, both—and neither. Each observer's observation is valid in its own reference frame, yet each is no more than an artifact of the measurement, or observation, undertaken by the observer.
Implications of Relativity
Einstein's theory of special relativity has many complex consequences, which confuse even scientists of the present. One of the most famous consequences of this theory is the formula E=mc2. This theory relates energy to mass times the square of the speed of light. Often considered the "speed limit" of the universe, the speed of light is equivalent to about 186,000 miles per second.
Four-Dimensional Space
In 1904, mathematician Hermann Minowski succeeded in representing Einstein's theory of special relativity mathematically. He did so by introducing the concept of four dimensions: three of space and one of time. Using his mathematical representation, he was able to describe the positions and motions of objects such as speeding electrons as they moved through space. Minowski's four-dimensional space-time helped Einstein to develop his theory of general relativity, which he would come to regard as his greatest achievement.
Principle of Equivalence
Special relativity applies only to cases in which objects are moving at a uniform velocity. General relativity, however, is applicable to all forms of accelerated motion. This theory of general relativity arose from Einstein's principle of equivalence. Einstein formulated this principle by examining a given mass in two different states. The first state occurs when the mass in question is acted on by gravity, and the second when the mass is in a state of inertia (when it resists forces and accelerations). According to Einstein's principle of equivalence, the given mass is equivalent in both states. Take, for example, a spinning top. According to the principle of equivalence, the top has the same mass whether it is falling off a desk (being acted on by gravity) or whether it is spinning atop a desk (in a state of inertia). This principle may seem obvious, and in fact people since Newton's time had simply assumed it to be true. However, the implications of the principle of equivalence are far from obvious, and Einstein was the first to realize those implications.
General Relativity
Einstein's theory of general relativity unites his theory of special relativity with the concept of gravity conceived of by Sir Isaac Newton. Einstein's key insight was that gravitation is not the result of a force. It is rather a manifestation of curved space and time. Einstein's theory of general relativity can be understood by considering the following scenario. An astronaut sitting in a space capsule waiting to launch at Cape Canaveral feels his normal weight. While in space, free from gravitational pull, the astronaut feels weightless. However, if the space capsule were to accelerate upwards in space at exactly the acceleration of gravity back on earth, the astronaut would be pushed into his seat with a force exactly equivalent to his own weight. The astronaut would be unable to distinguish between the sensation of sitting in the space capsule prior to launch in Cape Canaveral, and the sensation of sitting in the space capsule as it accelerates upwards in space at exactly the acceleration of gravity. He could only distinguish between the two by looking out the window.
Curved Space
Einstein's theory of general relativity describes space as curved, with the "curved space" being the four-dimensional space-time conceived of by Minowski. The curvature of space results in the effects of gravity. This notion of curved space becomes more tangible by thinking again about the astronaut and the space capsule, but this time introducing a beam of light into the capsule. If a beam of light is shone from the top of one capsule wall to the opposite wall while the capsule is accelerating upwards in space, the light will appear curved. This is because, in the time it takes for the light beam to move across the cabin to the opposite wall, the cabin will have accelerated upwards and the beam will appear to curve across the cabin and hit below the spot directly across from where it started. The light will also appear to curve across the top of the space capsule if the capsule is at rest in Cape Canaveral. In other words, the light beam acts as if it is being pulled down by gravity. The space-time through which it moves can be understood to be curved by the presence of a massive body: in this case, the earth. In space, the curvature of space itself causes all objects, such as light or planets or spaceships, to follow the curvature. In both cases, the gravitational effect occurs because of the curvature of space.
Acknowledgement
Albert Einstein was awarded a 1935 Franklin Medal by The Franklin Institute "In recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics, especially his work on Relativity and the Photo-Electric effect."
Additionally, Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine, and philosophy from many European and American universities. He was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world.
A few of Albert Einstein's notable prizes include the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, the 1925 Royal Society Copley Medal, and the 1929 Max Planck Medal.
Fan Mail
Many inquisitive schoolchildren mailed letters to Albert Einstein, asking the famous physicist questions about science and about his personal life. Einstein's letters to and from children are bound together in a book entitled Dear Professor Einstein, and the abbreviated text of one of these exchanges is reproduced below. You can follow the example of the children who sent their questions to Dr. Einstein by writing to your own favorite scientists. Talk to your teacher about the kinds of questions you could ask, and how you should go about contacting the scientists whose work is of interest to you.
Cape Town, South Africa
10th July, 1946
Dear Sir,
I am awfully interested in Science, so are quite a lot of people in my form at school. My best friends are the Wilson twins. Every night after Lights Out at school, Pat Wilson and I lean out of our cubicle windows, which are next to each other, and discuss Astronomy, which we both prefer to anything as far as work goes. Pat has a telescope and we study those stars that we can see. We usually have to creep past the prefect's room to other parts of the building to carry on our observations. We have been caught a few times now, though, so it is rather difficult.
What worries me most is How can Space go on forever? I have read many books on the subject, but they all say they could not possibly explain, as no ordinary reader would understand. If you do not mind me saying so, I do not really see how it could be spiral. But then, of course you obviously know what you are saying, and I could not contradict!
I trust you are well, and will continue to make many more great Scientific discoveries.
I remain,
Yours obediently,
Tyfanny
----------
August 25, 1946
Dear Tyfanny,
Thank you for your letter of July 10th.
Be not worried about "curved space." You will understand at a later time that for it this status is the easiest it could possibly have. Used in the right sense the word "curved" has not exactly the same meaning as in everyday language.
I hope that yours and your friend's future astronomical investigations will not be discovered anymore by the eyes and ears of your school-government. This is the attitude taken by most good citizens toward their government and I think rightly so.
Yours sincerely,
Albert Einstein
View Einstein's Case File Bibliography
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 25
|
https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/albert-einstein-got-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-for-class-12-physics-cbse-5fa8aa51b0ec2513fe7d2373
|
en
|
Albert Einstein got a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on:(A) Special theory of relativity(B) General theory of relativity(C) Photoelectric effect(D) Theory of specific heats
|
[
"https://vmkt.vedantu.com/vmkt/PROD/svg%2Bxml/d4520270-6e40-4273-a48f-e1c595f1ce26-1709193411767-4001376723323670.svg%2Bxml",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/seo-qna.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-left.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-down-qna.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/green-check.svg",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2020-11-09T02:32:49+05:30
|
Albert Einstein got a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on:(A) Special theory of relativity(B) General theory of relativity(C) Photoelectric effect(D) Theory of specific heats. Ans: Hint: All the theories in the given options are proposed by Albert...
|
en
|
https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/albert-einstein-got-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-for-class-12-physics-cbse-5fa8aa51b0ec2513fe7d2373
|
Hint: All the theories in the given options are proposed by Albert Einstein. Recall these theories year wise and identify in which theory Albert Einstein proved the particle nature of light. For the same theory he was awarded with the Nobel Prize, the most honorable award in the world.
Complete step by step answer:
-We know that special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity were proposed by Albert Einstein in 1905 and 1915 respectively. Also, the theory of specific heats is proposed by Albert Einstein in 1906. But none of these theories got a Nobel Prize for his extraordinary work.
-Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize for photoelectric effect that he proposed in 1905 in the same year he proposed the special theory of relativity. The phenomenon of photoelectric effect is also observed by other scientists before Einstein, but none of them can explain the phenomenon with proper proof.
Additional information:
According to photoelectric effect, the metal emits electrons when the photon of certain energy incident on it. The energy of the incident photon should be greater than the binding energy of the electron in the atom. Therefore, we call the energy of the photon as threshold energy to emit the electron from the metal surface. The energy of the photon is express as,
\[\Delta E = h\nu \]
Here, h is the Planck’s constant and \[\nu \] is the frequency of the photon.
According to Einstein as he proposed in the special theory of relativity, no object can attain the speed of light. Only massless objects like photons whose rest mass is zero can have the speed of light.
Note:The special theory of relativity links the space and time of the objects having the consistent speeds. This theory grabbed so much attention but could not get awarded with the Nobel Prize. The photoelectric effect was like the beginning of the new era, it has tremendous applications. In the same theory he proved that light can also behave as a particle.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 70
|
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/albert-einstein/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/logo-nuc-home-1.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ahf-footer-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/logo-nuc-home-1.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ahf-footer-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/voices-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rangerinyourpocket_horz-1024x154.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/ahf-mainlogo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Einstein from E Archives Hebrew U.jpg",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ahf-footer-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/fb.svg",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/tw.svg",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ig.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Einstein influenced the beginning of the Manhattan Project. In collaboration with Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, warning of possible German nuclear weapons research and proposing that the United…
|
en
|
Nuclear Museum
|
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/albert-einstein/
|
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Einstein influenced the beginning of the Manhattan Project. In collaboration with Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, warning of possible German nuclear weapons research and proposing that the United States begin its own research into atomic energy.
Einstein played no role in the Manhattan Project, having been denied a security clearance in July 1940 due to his pacifist tendencies. After World War II, he worked to control nuclear proliferation. He later regretted signing the letter to Roosevelt, saying in a Newsweek interview that “had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing.”
Scientific Contributions
In 1896, Einstein began studying to be a physics and mathematics teacher at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. He graduated in 1901, the same year he became a citizen of Switzerland. He then worked at the Swiss Patent Office. Einstein earned his Ph.D from the University of Zurich during his “miracle year,” 1905, where he published four groundbreaking papers and won notice from academics.
Einstein’s special theory of relativity sought to harmonize the laws of mechanics and laws of the electromagnetic field. His investigations also helped establish the photon theory of light. Based on the special theory of relativity, he proposed a theory of gravitation, and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” For more on Einstein’s scientific contributions, visit the Nobel Prize website.
Later Years
As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Einstein left for the United States and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ in 1933. Einstein became an American citizen in 1940. Einstein turned down an offer to serve as President of Israel, and was a co-founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He died on April 18, 1955.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 69
|
https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/589219
|
en
|
Albert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize...
|
[
"https://www.rarenewspapers.com/images/redesign/logo.png",
"https://www.rarenewspapers.com/images/redesign/ebay.png",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/2.7.2012/image032.jpg",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/2.7.2012/image032_tn.jpg",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/2.7.2012/image033_tn.jpg",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/2.7.2012/image034_tn.jpg",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/2.7.2012/image035_tn.jpg",
"https://www.rarenewspapers.com/images/icons/cart_put.png?1342717916",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/7.17.2024/image034_tn.jpg",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/7.17.2024/image017_tn.jpg",
"https://secure-images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/7.11.2024/image015_tn.jpg",
"https://www.rarenewspapers.com/images/redesign/american-antiquarian-society-logo.png",
"https://www.rarenewspapers.com/images/redesign/ephemera-society-logo.png",
"https://privacy-policy.truste.com/privacy-seal/rarenewspapers.com/TRUSTe-Certified-Privacy-Seal.png",
"https://www.rarenewspapers.com/images/follow-me-pinterest.png",
"https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/viewthroughconversion/1072220669/?guid=ON&script=0"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"historic newspapers",
"old newspapers",
"timothy hughes rare and early newspapers"
] | null |
[] | null |
Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers offers the largest inventory of original historic newspapers for sale, all guaranteed authentic and all at great prices.
| null | ||||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 90
|
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life-and-times/career-scientist
|
en
|
Career Scientist
|
[
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/plan-your-visit/plan-your-visit/3917385-5-eng-US/plan-your-visit_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/plan-your-visit/join-now/5645881-1-eng-US/join-now_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/exhibitions/richard-gilder-center-for-science-education-and-innovation/3482942-16-eng-US/richard-gilder-center-for-science-education-and-innovation_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/exhibitions/allison-and-roberto-mignone-halls-of-gems-and-minerals/5999543-1-eng-US/allison-and-roberto-mignone-halls-of-gems-and-minerals_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/learn--teach/resources-for-learning/3553907-9-eng-US/resources-for-learning_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/learn--teach/children--family-programs/3553954-8-eng-US/children--family-programs_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/explore/climate-change/3555256-2-eng-US/climate-change_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/explore/viruses-vaccines-and-covid-19/5595943-1-eng-US/viruses-vaccines-and-covid-19_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/join-support/become-a-member/3906066-6-eng-US/become-a-member_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/join--support/donate/3906071-3-eng-US/donate_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/shop/great-for-gifts/5166526-3-eng-US/great-for-gifts_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/import_exhibits/import_exhibit_images/bern_residence.jpg/232376-1-eng-US/bern_residence.jpg_full_610.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/fuld_hall/542856-1-eng-US/fuld_hall_full_610.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/extension/amnh/design/amnh_redesign/images/placeholders/badge_app-store.svg",
"https://www.amnh.org/extension/amnh/design/amnh_redesign/images/logos/amnh-logo-white.svg?2023",
"https://www.amnh.org/extension/amnh/design/amnh_redesign/images/logos/amnh-logo-white.svg?2023"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Einstein recognized early in life that he had a talent for mathematics and abstract thought, and the intellectual freedom of theoretical physics appealed to him. While still establishing himself as...
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
American Museum of Natural History
|
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life-and-times/career-scientist
|
The Path to Princeton
Self-reliant from a young age, Einstein carved out a distinguished career through his unfaltering dedication to science. As a boy, he struggled against a structured education system that wouldn't allow his imagination to flourish. Einstein recognized early in life that he had a talent for mathematics and abstract thought, and the intellectual freedom of theoretical physics appealed to him.
While still establishing himself as a physicist, Einstein had to move to wherever jobs were available. Academic institutions in Berlin, Zurich, Bern, Prague, and other European cities were well known to him. Einstein soon developed a reputation as a brilliant professor and was a visiting scholar at research institutes around the world. During a repeat visit to the California Institute of Technology, a colleague offered Einstein a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1933 Einstein made one final move: to Princeton, where he lived out his last decades as a theoretical physicist at the Institute.
Patent Clerk to Professor
Einstein's first job out of college was that of a patent clerk at the Swiss Federal Office for Intellectual Property in Bern. Einstein later fondly remembered the patent office as the place where he "hatched his most beautiful ideas."
After seven years at the patent office and one year as a guest lecturer at the University of Bern, Einstein moved his family from their Bern residence when he became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich.
The Institute for Advanced Study
Tucked away on a quiet campus off the bustling streets of downtown Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study was for Einstein a "free thinker's" paradise where he could focus solely on theoretical physics. His office in Fuld Hall was sparsely furnished, except for a chalkboard, chairs, a desk, and shelves stacked with papers. There, Einstein and his assistants tried unsuccessfully to formulate the "Grand Unified Theory," which is still pursued by physicists today.
Einstein's Miracles of 1905
One great accomplishment may be enough for some lifetimes but not for Albert Einstein's. Now known as his "annus mirabilis," or miraculous year, 1905 was a great turning point in the young physicist's career. Einstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich, and he wrote four groundbreaking articles that were published in the prestigious journal Annalen der Physik:
On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, Annalen der Physik, 1905
On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat, Annalen der Physik, 1905
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, Annalen der Physik, 1905
Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?, Annalen der Physik, 1905
The 26-year-old scientist knew his work was important, but even he could not predict how the physics world would react. In 1901 he had written to Mileva Mari, "I am now working very eagerly on electrodynamics of moving bodies, which promises to become a capital paper." Better known as the Special Theory of Relativity, that "capital paper" and three others spurred intense discussion in the scientific community; the newly graduated Ph.D. was now seen as a noteworthy physicist. Some historians have noted that if Einstein had never published anything after 1905, he still would have been known as one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
Einstein's Nobel Prize
The path to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize is often long and difficult. In fact, Einstein never actually made it to Stockholm to accept his medal. Famous thanks to a 1919 eclipse that confirmed his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein was in the midst of a world lecture tour when the Nobel committee awarded him the 1921 prize. He won for his distinguished career in physics, most notably for his 1905 theory of light and electrons called the Photoelectric Effect, not his more controversial theory of relativity.
Einstein and his wife Elsa were headed to Japan when the Nobel telegram arrived at their Berlin residence in 1922. The German ambassador to Sweden attended the December award ceremony on Einstein's behalf, overlooking that the scientist had renounced his German citizenship in 1896. After much confusion over whether Einstein was a German or Swiss citizen, the Swedish ambassador hand-delivered the medal to Einstein in Berlin in 1923. Later that year Einstein visited Sweden to give his "Nobel lecture"—on relativity.
Einstein's Nobel Prize Medal
1922
Alfred Nobel (1833–1896), a Swedish inventor of dynamite and other explosive technology, requested that upon his death his estate be used to establish a foundation of good will. Decreed in 1900, the Nobel Foundation provides prize money to Nobel recipients, named by separate committees. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences chooses the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The central image on Einstein's Nobel medal depicts the Genius of Science unveiling Nature, in the form of the goddess Isis. She is emerging from the clouds holding a vessel of abundance. Surrounding the image are the words, "Inventions enhance life which is beautified through art." The reverse side bears an image of Alfred Nobel.
Nobel Prize in Physics Certificate
In 1922, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences retroactively awarded Albert Einstein the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking theory of the Photoelectric Effect. Members of the prize committee had nominated Einstein nearly every year between 1910 and 1922, but there was much debate as to which groundbreaking theory they should cite. Some said General Relativity, but a mere eclipse was not enough proof for all committee members to stake their reputations on Einstein's new theory. With the medal came a sum of 121,592 kronor (roughly $32,000), which Einstein gave to his ex-wife Mileva as part of their divorce agreement.
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 66
|
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/einstein-bomb-netflix-did-albert-143751992.html
|
en
|
Einstein and the Bomb on Netflix: Did Albert Einstein Win the Nobel Prize?
|
https://media.zenfs.com/en/comingsoon_net_477/d6e589a25317a226ba9fab72fa897ba5
|
https://media.zenfs.com/en/comingsoon_net_477/d6e589a25317a226ba9fab72fa897ba5
|
[
"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/r9_nen9CjXcSet4YAqQvMA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTIwMDtoPTYw/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2022-10/31915bb0-5957-11ed-acdd-c2a5caca7698",
"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/4c4i_OxCaUQGzvDF16pUgQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyNDI7aD02OTk-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/comingsoon_net_477/d6e589a25317a226ba9fab72fa897ba5",
"https://s.yimg.com/g/images/spaceball.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/entertainment/images/desktop_ent_footer_logo.png",
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=7241469&c5=1197800334&c7=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fentertainment%2Feinstein-bomb-netflix-did-albert-143751992.html&c14=-1"
] |
[
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/2t9RwElQGhg?feature=oembed"
] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Debangshu Nath"
] |
2024-02-19T14:37:51+00:00
|
The new Netflix docudrama titled Einstein and the Bomb showcases the life and career of German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein. In addition, it also shows the time in his life when he back and forth between his status as a refugee in England. Albert Einstein was a renowned recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize in […] The post Einstein and the Bomb on Netflix: Did Albert Einstein Win the Nobel Prize? appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
|
en
|
https://s.yimg.com/rz/l/favicon.ico
|
Yahoo Entertainment
|
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/einstein-bomb-netflix-did-albert-143751992.html
|
The new Netflix docudrama titled Einstein and the Bomb showcases the life and career of German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein. In addition, it also shows the time in his life when he back and forth between his status as a refugee in England.
Albert Einstein was a renowned recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics. According to the Nobel Prize’s official website, he received the honor “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. The theoretical physicist explained that light consists of quanta—packets. They have fixed energies corresponding to certain frequencies. Furthermore, one such light quantum, a photon, must have a certain minimum frequency before it can free an electron.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the synopsis of Einstein and the Bomb reads, “Using archival footage and his own words. This docudrama chronicles what happened after the scientist fled Nazi Germany and dives into the mind of this tortured genius.”
When did Albert Einstein win the Nobel Prize?
Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year,1921. However, according to the Nobel Prize’s official website, he received it a year later in 1922. Apparently, during the selection process in 1921, the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that zero nominations met the criteria as outlined in Alfred Nobel’s will. In such cases, the award can be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied.
Einstein had been fascinated with the world’s greatest scientific mysteries since he was a child. In Einstein and the Bomb, his character states, “As a child, 4 or 5, my father showed me a compass. This experience made a deep and lasting impression on me. Since this needle behaved in such a determined way, something deeply hidden had to be behind things… The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
Einstein and the Bomb was directed and produced by Anthony Philipson and Anne Mensah respectively.
|
||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 89
|
https://fi.edu/en/news/case-files-albert-einstein
|
en
|
Case Files: Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://fi.edu/modules/custom/tfi_menu/img/mobile-logo.svg",
"https://fi.edu/themes/custom/simplytheme/src/img/print/logo--print.png",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2020-01/General_CaseFiles_Portrait_Einstein.jpg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_LetterFromEinsteinToTFI_1of2.jpg.jpg?itok=v-173kT3",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_LetterFromEinsteinToTFI_2of2.jpg.jpg?itok=vsnvzoGb",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_PhotoOfMedal.jpg?itok=7N6fbE0f",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_PhotoOfMembershipCertificate.jpg?itok=ulss-esa",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_AlbertEinstein_MagazineExtract_1of2.jpg?itok=8vIPbaYN",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_MagazineExtract_2of2_0.jpg?itok=UFZOlL6H",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_PhotoOfMedalCertificate.jpg?itok=7JP0fqd3",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_allery_thumb/public/2019-06/General_CaseFiles_AlbertEinstein_InvitationToAwardDinner.jpg?itok=SVU953fr",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/facebook.svg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/instagram.svg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/twitter_x_0.svg",
"https://fi.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/Group 456.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2016-05-27T09:53:33-04:00
|
Introduction Though he described himself as a "mathematical ignoramus," Albert Einstein's thinking was so complex that accomplished members of the scientific community still struggle to wrap their minds around the meaning and implications of his theories. Born in Germany in 1879, the frizzy-haired physicist conducted some of his most important research in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the later years of his life.
|
en
|
/themes/custom/simplytheme/favicon.ico
|
The Franklin Institute
|
https://fi.edu/en/news/case-files-albert-einstein
|
Introduction
Though he described himself as a "mathematical ignoramus," Albert Einstein's thinking was so complex that accomplished members of the scientific community still struggle to wrap their minds around the meaning and implications of his theories. Born in Germany in 1879, the frizzy-haired physicist conducted some of his most important research in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the later years of his life. Perhaps best known for his Theory of Relativity and his equation E=mc2, Einstein's work revolutionized the field of theoretical physics and made him a celebrity throughout the globe.
As he presented Einstein at Medal Day exercises, Dr. Frederick Palmer, Jr. of The Franklin Institute's Committee on Science and the Arts said:"The romance of his achievement has been such that mathematical physics has become popular with the public."
Who was Albert Einstein? What were his achievements in the field of physics?
The Nature of a Genius
Before he was known as a genius whose work profoundly changed the way the world thinks about physics, Albert Einstein thought of himself as "merely curious." In his youth, his curiosity lead him to explore the field of natural science through private reading outside of his high school classes, and to apply his knowledge to his own thoughts and questions about the nature of the cosmos.
Einstein was a philosopher and a human rights activist as well as a scientist. During his lifetime he witnessed two world wars and predicted the invention of the atomic bomb in a now-famous letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Einstein eloquently recorded his thoughts on religion, science and human rights, and the pages of his writings are imbued with the complex emotions and musings of a man who witnessed profound changes in the world around him, and whose direct involvement in major scientific breakthroughs inspired him to think about the extent to which developments in science effect society at large.
Despite the fame brought to him by his theories and research, Einstein's sense of humility remained intact. Though anecdotal episodes from his youth show some signs of arrogance and frustration with his fame, his adulthood is marked by a mature gratitude for his abilities and a resigned acceptance of his celebrity status. Reflecting on his success in his later years Einstein wrote, "For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it."
The "Lone Traveler" Sets Out
Albert began his schooling in Germany, where his teachers disciplined him and his classmates were disrespectful to the young Einstein. His primary school classes emphasized memorization and learning by rote. Albert was reprimanded by his German elementary school teachers for thinking too much about the meaning of their questions and failing to produce responses as quickly as his peers. At home, Albert obediently completed his homework before engaging in solitary games. One of his favorite pastimes as a child was constructing houses of cards, which sometimes was able to reach four stories. Even as a young child Einstein valued solitude, and in 1930 he would reflect: "I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, and even my immediate family with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude—feelings which increase with the years" (qtd in Cassidy 64).
Working Ahead
In the fall of 1888, when Einstein was nine years old, he entered a secondary school in Munich, Germany called the Luitpold-Gymnasium. This school emphasized non-scientific subjects like Latin and ancient Greek. While he did earn good grades in his classes, they did not spark his interest. It was during these secondary school days that Albert began to diverge from the curriculum prescribed for him, engaging in his own private reading. At age thirteen he asked his parents to purchase the mathematics textbook that he would be using the following year, and proceeded to work his way through the entire mathematics program at the Lutipold-Gymnasium in a matter of months. He indulged his passion for physics and physical phenomena by reading textbooks that were, at the time, key writings on the natural sciences.
In Need of a Liberal Arts Education
As his thoughts shifted towards college and more advanced studies, Albert was determined to apply to the Federal Institute of Technology (FIT) in Zurich, Switzerland. He disliked the Lutipold-Gymnasium and did not complete his studies there. He instead committed himself to a period of self-study, during which he acquired knowledge of theoretical physics. He took the FIT's competitive entrance exam at age sixteen, more than a year younger than the other students who sat for the exam at the same time. The results of his exam revealed that he had done well on the mathematical-physical section of the test, while he had failed the general portion of the exam which tested his knowledge of literary and political history and of foreign language. Albert was thus required to attend a secondary school in the nearby Swiss town of Aarau before he was admitted to the FIT.
Einstein began his studies at the Federal Institute of Technology (FIT) in October of 1896. As a college student he often skipped lectures and studied for tests by borrowing notes from his classmates, and would later describe himself as a mediocre university student. While not an avid participant in his classes, Albert's genuine interest in theoretical physics inspired him to devote large periods of time to its study. He participated in a number of physics experiments while a student, and consistently strove to unite the abstract concepts of theoretical physics with practical matters. His doctoral thesis made strides towards such unification, combining the theoretical claim for the existence of molecules with a description of the physical law governing the behavior of molecules. Einstein used experimental data to further describe this law and to further develop the relationship between the theoretical and the practical.
Princeton Days
After he completed his degree at the FIT, Einstein found work as an assistant professor and eventually as a full professor of theoretical physics. He preferred researching to teaching, and in 1914 he accepted a paid research position in Berlin, Germany, which was considered the "capital city" of physics at that point in time. In 1933 the rise of Nazi power in Germany prompted Einstein to resign from his position in Berlin and flee to the United States, where he took up residence at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey and assumed a position on the faculty of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.
Oswald Veblen, the first professor in the Institute for Advanced Study, helped select and relocate Einstein and other foreign mathematicians after Hitler's rise to power in Europe. Veblen was a leading geometer and served a term as president of the American Mathematical Society and of the International Congress of Mathematicians, held at Harvard. Though highly respected as a scholar, Veblen valued his relationships with his students and helped design common spaces in Princeton buildings in order to help encourage the formation of student-faculty relationships.
The verification and publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity in 1919 brought him instant celebrity status.
Under Investigation
In August of 1939 Einstein mailed a letter to the White House, informing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the potential threat posed by the discovery of and subsequent experimentation with nuclear fission in Berlin, Germany. His ominous prediction read:
"This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory."
History indicates that Einstein sent four letters to President Roosevelt, each expressing an increased urgency for action. In December of 1941, Roosevelt heeded Einstein's warning and convened the American investigation into nuclear fission and the development of such a bomb known as the Manhattan Project. This top secret project went underway in a laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Four years later, in 1945, the United States dropped the newly-developed atomic bomb, devastating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Despite his role in alerting the President to the possibility of nuclear weapons, Einstein did not participate in the Manhattan Project. Though he was granted American citizenship in 1940, his involvement with liberal organizations whose missions called for world peace made Einstein a "radical" in the eyes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In response to the perceived threat posed by Einstein, the FBI compiled an extensive secret file on the scientist, monitoring and recording his movements. His status as a security threat prevented Einstein from gaining the security clearance necessary to enter the secret laboratory in New Mexico. It is very likely that this was not a source of disappointment for Einstein, who publicly declared his dedication to pacifism. He was quite distressed when the public mind associated him with the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 and the subsequent civilian casualties.
Interested in learning more about Albert Einstein? Learn More About His Benjamin Franklin Award
Personal Commitments
Einstein committed to his family, and throughout the course of his life he married twice and had three children. All three children were a product of his relationship with Mileva Maric, whom he encountered while he was a university student. Mileva was a classmate and a fellow scientist, and evidence suggests that she was instrumental in the development of some of her husband's theories. Einstein's children were named Lieserl, Hans Albert and Eduard, who was known as "Tete." Einstein eventually divorced Mileva, marrying his cousin Else Löwenthal four months later.
Einstein was also deeply committed to his Jewish faith. His religious beliefs inspired him to grapple with philosophical thoughts and to champion the cause of Zionists and their quest for a Jewish home state in Palestine. He was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, though he declined this honor. He died three years later of an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, bequeathing much of his writings and photographs to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
An Eternal Riddle
Though he is conceived of as a genius in modern society, Einstein's ways of thinking diverged sharply from those of a majority of other scientists when he initially penned some of his most famous theories. In the early years of the 20th Century, theorists were not regarded with great respect, but Einstein viewed theoretical work as a high calling. Contemplating theoretical physics, Einstein wrote, "I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential...Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle."
Electromagnetic Waves
Some scientists in the late 1800s and early 1900s believed in and described an entity known as "the ether." The ether was thought to be a backdrop at a state of absolute rest against which the movement of elements of the cosmos occurred. Einstein disagreed with the existence of the ether, which will be seen during the discussion of his theory of special relativity. However, an understanding of the ether is important for understanding the theory of electromagnetic phenomena which preceded Einstein's theory of relativity.
During the 19th Century, scientists Michael Farady, James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz formulated a theory that described electromagnetic phenomena. This theory indicated that electric and magnetic forces resulted from the effect of electric and magnetic fields existing in space between electric charges. These electric charges were produced by the ether, which was thought to be able to exert electric forces on ordinary matter. Hertz showed that moving electromagnetic fields could break away from ordinary matter and propagate through the ether as independent electromagnetic waves carrying energy. These electromagnetic waves come in both visible and invisible forms. Hertz showed that visible light is one visible form of the electromagnetic wave. Invisible electromagnetic waves include radio waves, x-rays and microwaves. The concept of such waves moving through the ether can be likened to the waves that spread over a pond after a stone is thrown into the water. The ripples in the pond can be thought of as the equivalent of electromagnetic waves, and the still water as the equivalent of the ether. In a pond, the force of the stone hitting the water results in the ripples. One of the things puzzling the scientists of Einstein's time was what exactly caused the formation of electromagnetic fields whose independent movement resulted in the electromagnetic waves which they conceived of as moving through space.
The Electron
In 1897, the source of electromagnetic fields was discovered: the electron. At the time of its discovery, the electron possessed the smallest mass known. It also carried the smallest electric charge known. Because of its charge, it was found to be the source of electromagnetic fields. However, the electron posed a problem for scientists grappling with electromagnetic theory. As is discussed above, electromagnetic theory dealt with fields and waves, entities that were thought to be continuous and without mass. Electrons are neither continuous nor without mass: they are individual, charged particles that have mass. Electrons thus did not "fit into" electromagnetic theory as it was understood in the late 19th Century. They posed yet another riddle for Einstein and his contemporaries.
A Quantum Leap
In 1905, Einstein challenged the concept that visible light, one form of the electromagnetic wave, always behaved as a continuous wave. Einstein argued that in certain cases light behaves as individual particles. He called these particles "light quanta," and said that each "light quanta" carries a "quantum," meaning a fixed quantity of energy. A light beam is thus composed of many "light quanta" which are observed as one continuous wave. The total energy of a light beam, Einstein said, is the sum total of the individual energies of the distinct "light quanta." Today, these "light quanta" are called "photons." Theories that treat total energy as "quantized" (meaning that total energy is calculated by adding together the fixed energies of the individual "quanta" of which the overall energy is composed) are known as quantum theories.
It's (Photo) Electric!
Einstein's light quantum hypothesis helped to explain certain visible light behavior which could not be explained if visible light were understood to exist in the form of a wave, rather than in the form of tiny individual particles. One of these phenomena was known as the photoelectric effect. Scientists had observed that, when light hit metal, electrons were ejected from the surface of the metal. Einstein's light quanta could eject electrons from the surface of the metal by changing the energy states of the electrons they hit. Light quanta are little bundles of energy, and according to electron theory, electrons absorb energy. The act of absorbing energy takes an electron to a higher energy state, causing it to jump. When it returns to its state of rest, it emits the energy it has absorbed in the form of light. This results in the observable ejection of electrons from the metal's surface known as the photoelectric effect.
Galileo and Relativity
Though Einstein is the scientist most frequently associated with the theory of relativity, there are several thinkers who are responsible for its formulation. The first known person to theorize about relativity was Galileo, who articulated the first "relativity principle" in the seventeenth century. In generating his relativity principle, Galileo removed the distinction between stationary and moving observers, arguing that people on earth cannot tell if they are really at rest or if they are moving with the rotation of the earth each day. To demonstrate this, Galileo used the example of a cannonball falling from the top of a ship's mast. He noted that the cannonball will land at the base of the mast whether the ship is moving steadily through the ocean, or whether it is at rest in a dock. Even if they observe the falling ball, people on the ship cannot tell if they are really at rest or if they are moving with the ship. They cannot distinguish their state of rest from the ship's state by observing motion that takes place within the "reference frame" of the ship. In other words, a person at rest on the deck of a ship cannot determine whether the ship is at rest or moving at a steady speed through the ocean by observing actions that happen on the ship itself. That person must observe the ship relative to its surrounding environment in order to make such a determination.
A Matter of Principle
In 1905, Einstein wrote a paper entitled, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." This paper served as the foundation for his theory of relativity. It also included many of the theories and results of scientists whose work had preceded Einstein, so much so that many of his contemporaries had a difficult time distinguishing Einstein's "theory of special relativity" from other accepted theories of the time. The main difference between Einstein's theories and other prevalent scientific theories of the 1900s lies in how Einstein went about deriving his theories. While many of his contemporaries drew "constructive theories," Einstein drew "principle theories."
Einstein's theories were not hypotheses built on data reached through experimentation. Rather, they were universal principles intended to impact all of physics. Throughout his life, Einstein was driven by a desire to isolate a single theory that would unify gravitation and electromagnetic fields. Though this single theory has not yet been found, Einstein's work has inspired physicists of today to continue the search for a unified theory.
Special Relativity
Einstein's theory of special relativity is fundamentally a theory of measurement. He qualified the theory as "special" because it refers only to uniform velocities (meaning to objects either at rest or moving at a constant speed). In formulating his theory, Einstein dismissed the concept of the "ether," and with it the "idea of absolute rest." Prior to the generation of Einstein's theory of special relativity, physicists had understood motion to occur against a backdrop of absolute rest (the "ether"), with this backdrop acting as a reference point for all motion. In dismissing the concept of this backdrop, Einstein called for a reconsideration of all motion. According to his theory, all motion is relative and every concept that incorporates space and time must be considered in relative terms. This means that there is no constant point of reference against which to measure motion. Measurement of motion is never absolute, but relative to a given position in space and time. Returning to Galileo's cannonball, Einstein considered this: the cannonball falling from the mast of the ship would appear to an observer standing on the deck of that ship as though it dropped straight down; however, to an observer standing on the shore, the cannonball would appear to follow a curved trajectory on its way to the base of the mast. Which trajectory did the ball actually follow? According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, the answer is, both—and neither. Each observer's observation is valid in its own reference frame, yet each is no more than an artifact of the measurement, or observation, undertaken by the observer.
Implications of Relativity
Einstein's theory of special relativity has many complex consequences, which confuse even scientists of the present. One of the most famous consequences of this theory is the formula E=mc2. This theory relates energy to mass times the square of the speed of light. Often considered the "speed limit" of the universe, the speed of light is equivalent to about 186,000 miles per second.
Four-Dimensional Space
In 1904, mathematician Hermann Minowski succeeded in representing Einstein's theory of special relativity mathematically. He did so by introducing the concept of four dimensions: three of space and one of time. Using his mathematical representation, he was able to describe the positions and motions of objects such as speeding electrons as they moved through space. Minowski's four-dimensional space-time helped Einstein to develop his theory of general relativity, which he would come to regard as his greatest achievement.
Principle of Equivalence
Special relativity applies only to cases in which objects are moving at a uniform velocity. General relativity, however, is applicable to all forms of accelerated motion. This theory of general relativity arose from Einstein's principle of equivalence. Einstein formulated this principle by examining a given mass in two different states. The first state occurs when the mass in question is acted on by gravity, and the second when the mass is in a state of inertia (when it resists forces and accelerations). According to Einstein's principle of equivalence, the given mass is equivalent in both states. Take, for example, a spinning top. According to the principle of equivalence, the top has the same mass whether it is falling off a desk (being acted on by gravity) or whether it is spinning atop a desk (in a state of inertia). This principle may seem obvious, and in fact people since Newton's time had simply assumed it to be true. However, the implications of the principle of equivalence are far from obvious, and Einstein was the first to realize those implications.
General Relativity
Einstein's theory of general relativity unites his theory of special relativity with the concept of gravity conceived of by Sir Isaac Newton. Einstein's key insight was that gravitation is not the result of a force. It is rather a manifestation of curved space and time. Einstein's theory of general relativity can be understood by considering the following scenario. An astronaut sitting in a space capsule waiting to launch at Cape Canaveral feels his normal weight. While in space, free from gravitational pull, the astronaut feels weightless. However, if the space capsule were to accelerate upwards in space at exactly the acceleration of gravity back on earth, the astronaut would be pushed into his seat with a force exactly equivalent to his own weight. The astronaut would be unable to distinguish between the sensation of sitting in the space capsule prior to launch in Cape Canaveral, and the sensation of sitting in the space capsule as it accelerates upwards in space at exactly the acceleration of gravity. He could only distinguish between the two by looking out the window.
Curved Space
Einstein's theory of general relativity describes space as curved, with the "curved space" being the four-dimensional space-time conceived of by Minowski. The curvature of space results in the effects of gravity. This notion of curved space becomes more tangible by thinking again about the astronaut and the space capsule, but this time introducing a beam of light into the capsule. If a beam of light is shone from the top of one capsule wall to the opposite wall while the capsule is accelerating upwards in space, the light will appear curved. This is because, in the time it takes for the light beam to move across the cabin to the opposite wall, the cabin will have accelerated upwards and the beam will appear to curve across the cabin and hit below the spot directly across from where it started. The light will also appear to curve across the top of the space capsule if the capsule is at rest in Cape Canaveral. In other words, the light beam acts as if it is being pulled down by gravity. The space-time through which it moves can be understood to be curved by the presence of a massive body: in this case, the earth. In space, the curvature of space itself causes all objects, such as light or planets or spaceships, to follow the curvature. In both cases, the gravitational effect occurs because of the curvature of space.
Acknowledgement
Albert Einstein was awarded a 1935 Franklin Medal by The Franklin Institute "In recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics, especially his work on Relativity and the Photo-Electric effect."
Additionally, Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine, and philosophy from many European and American universities. He was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world.
A few of Albert Einstein's notable prizes include the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, the 1925 Royal Society Copley Medal, and the 1929 Max Planck Medal.
Fan Mail
Many inquisitive schoolchildren mailed letters to Albert Einstein, asking the famous physicist questions about science and about his personal life. Einstein's letters to and from children are bound together in a book entitled Dear Professor Einstein, and the abbreviated text of one of these exchanges is reproduced below. You can follow the example of the children who sent their questions to Dr. Einstein by writing to your own favorite scientists. Talk to your teacher about the kinds of questions you could ask, and how you should go about contacting the scientists whose work is of interest to you.
Cape Town, South Africa
10th July, 1946
Dear Sir,
I am awfully interested in Science, so are quite a lot of people in my form at school. My best friends are the Wilson twins. Every night after Lights Out at school, Pat Wilson and I lean out of our cubicle windows, which are next to each other, and discuss Astronomy, which we both prefer to anything as far as work goes. Pat has a telescope and we study those stars that we can see. We usually have to creep past the prefect's room to other parts of the building to carry on our observations. We have been caught a few times now, though, so it is rather difficult.
What worries me most is How can Space go on forever? I have read many books on the subject, but they all say they could not possibly explain, as no ordinary reader would understand. If you do not mind me saying so, I do not really see how it could be spiral. But then, of course you obviously know what you are saying, and I could not contradict!
I trust you are well, and will continue to make many more great Scientific discoveries.
I remain,
Yours obediently,
Tyfanny
----------
August 25, 1946
Dear Tyfanny,
Thank you for your letter of July 10th.
Be not worried about "curved space." You will understand at a later time that for it this status is the easiest it could possibly have. Used in the right sense the word "curved" has not exactly the same meaning as in everyday language.
I hope that yours and your friend's future astronomical investigations will not be discovered anymore by the eyes and ears of your school-government. This is the attitude taken by most good citizens toward their government and I think rightly so.
Yours sincerely,
Albert Einstein
View Einstein's Case File Bibliography
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 1
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/facts/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Facts
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-12923-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/facts/
|
Albert Einstein
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
Affiliation at the time of the award: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (now Max-Planck-Institut) für Physik, Berlin, Germany
Prize motivation: “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”
Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1922.
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Albert Einstein grew up in Munich, where his father founded an electrical engineering company. After studying at the ETH university in Zurich, Einstein worked at the patent office in Bern, during which time he produced several pioneering works in the field of physics. He was later employed at universities in Bern, Zurich, and Prague, and from 1914, in Berlin. After the Nazis seized power in Germany, Einstein immigrated to the US, where he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein married twice and had three children by his first marriage.
Work
If metal electrodes are exposed to light, electrical sparks between them occur more readily. For this photoelectric effect to occur, the light waves must be above a certain frequency, however. According to physics theory, the light's intensity should be critical. In one of several epoch-making studies beginning in 1905, Albert Einstein explained that light consists of quanta—packets with fixed energies corresponding to certain frequencies. One such light quantum, a photon, must have a certain minimum frequency before it can liberate an electron.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 31
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/lecture/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Nobel Lecture
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/lecture/
|
Albert Einstein
Nobel Lecture
Lecture delivered to the Nordic Assembly of Naturalists at Gothenburg, July 11, 1923
Fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity
Read the Nobel Lecture
English
Pdf 311 kB
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
German
Pdf 3.57 MB
From Les Prix Nobel en 1921-1922, Editor Carl Gustaf Santesson, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1923
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1923
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 53
|
https://www.tiktok.com/%40fascience7/video/7329173804675009793
|
en
|
Make Your Day
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
| null | ||||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 48
|
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/einstein-bomb-netflix-did-albert-143751992.html
|
en
|
Einstein and the Bomb on Netflix: Did Albert Einstein Win the Nobel Prize?
|
https://media.zenfs.com/en/comingsoon_net_477/d6e589a25317a226ba9fab72fa897ba5
|
https://media.zenfs.com/en/comingsoon_net_477/d6e589a25317a226ba9fab72fa897ba5
|
[
"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/r9_nen9CjXcSet4YAqQvMA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTIwMDtoPTYw/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2022-10/31915bb0-5957-11ed-acdd-c2a5caca7698",
"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/4c4i_OxCaUQGzvDF16pUgQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyNDI7aD02OTk-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/comingsoon_net_477/d6e589a25317a226ba9fab72fa897ba5",
"https://s.yimg.com/g/images/spaceball.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/default/20190501/placeholder.gif",
"https://s.yimg.com/cv/apiv2/entertainment/images/desktop_ent_footer_logo.png",
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=7241469&c5=1197800334&c7=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fentertainment%2Feinstein-bomb-netflix-did-albert-143751992.html&c14=-1"
] |
[
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/2t9RwElQGhg?feature=oembed"
] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Debangshu Nath"
] |
2024-02-19T14:37:51+00:00
|
The new Netflix docudrama titled Einstein and the Bomb showcases the life and career of German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein. In addition, it also shows the time in his life when he back and forth between his status as a refugee in England. Albert Einstein was a renowned recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize in […] The post Einstein and the Bomb on Netflix: Did Albert Einstein Win the Nobel Prize? appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
|
en
|
https://s.yimg.com/rz/l/favicon.ico
|
Yahoo Entertainment
|
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/einstein-bomb-netflix-did-albert-143751992.html
|
The new Netflix docudrama titled Einstein and the Bomb showcases the life and career of German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein. In addition, it also shows the time in his life when he back and forth between his status as a refugee in England.
Albert Einstein was a renowned recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics. According to the Nobel Prize’s official website, he received the honor “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. The theoretical physicist explained that light consists of quanta—packets. They have fixed energies corresponding to certain frequencies. Furthermore, one such light quantum, a photon, must have a certain minimum frequency before it can free an electron.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the synopsis of Einstein and the Bomb reads, “Using archival footage and his own words. This docudrama chronicles what happened after the scientist fled Nazi Germany and dives into the mind of this tortured genius.”
When did Albert Einstein win the Nobel Prize?
Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year,1921. However, according to the Nobel Prize’s official website, he received it a year later in 1922. Apparently, during the selection process in 1921, the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that zero nominations met the criteria as outlined in Alfred Nobel’s will. In such cases, the award can be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied.
Einstein had been fascinated with the world’s greatest scientific mysteries since he was a child. In Einstein and the Bomb, his character states, “As a child, 4 or 5, my father showed me a compass. This experience made a deep and lasting impression on me. Since this needle behaved in such a determined way, something deeply hidden had to be behind things… The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
Einstein and the Bomb was directed and produced by Anthony Philipson and Anne Mensah respectively.
|
||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 8
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/honours-prizes-awards/
|
en
|
Honours, prizes, awards – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/rostock_ehrenpromotion_small1.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/uni_logo_200.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/Pour-le-merite.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/gold-medal.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/MPM-Vs.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/MPM-Rs.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ETH1905.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/blackboard.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/Franklin-Medal-K.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/HarvCamp-1935.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/honours-prizes-awards/
|
University of Geneva
Dr. h. c. – awarded on July 9, 1909
On Friday, July 9, 1909, the University of Geneva awarded Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate on occasion of the 350th founding year of the university. 110 persons were honored during this ceremony. Among the honored persons were also the French chemist and physicist Marie Curie (1867-1934) and the German chemist and philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). Einstein was awarded the honorary doctorate following the proposal of the experimental physicist and Director of the Physical Institute of the University of Geneva Charles Eugène Guye (1866-1942). Einstein was present during the ceremony. On the day of the award he wrote in a letter to Lucien Chavan (1868-1942) and his wife Jeanne: “… I send you an affectionate greeting from the hospitable Geneva. I am delighted about the friendliness and kindness of the people …”
It was Chavan who had convinced Einstein to take part in the ceremony which is connected with the award, after Einstein had, accidentally, thrown the invitation into the “official wastepaper basket” of the Bernese patent-office.
In his memories concerning the end of the ceremony it says:
“The ceremony ended with the most opulent feast that I have taken part in during my whole life. Then I said to a patrician from Geneva who was sitting next to me: ‘Do you know what Calvin would have made if he was still alive?’ As he said no, and asked me for my opinion, I said: ‘He would have erected a large pyre, and he would have burned us all because of sinful gluttony.’ The man did no longer speak to me, and this is the last thing I can remember with regard to the noteworthy ceremony.”
Source: “Albert Einstein – A biography” Albrecht Fölsing, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 1993
It was the reformer Johannes Calvin (1509-1564) who had, in 1559, founded the Geneva Academy, the predecessor of the University of Geneva.
It was Albert Einstein‘s first honorary doctorate, but many more were to follow.
University of Rostock
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 12, 1919
On the day of the celebration of the 500th anniversary (Wednesday, November 12, 1919) of the University of Rostock, Albert Einstein and Max Planck (German physicist and Nobel laureate, 1858-1947) were awarded the honorary doctorate.
Einstein was awarded a honorary doctorate in medicine “in recognition of the enormous work of his mind”. In his letter of thanks to the dean of the medical faculty Einstein wrote: “I thank you very much for sending me the certificate which represents your excellent taste, and for your friendly covering letter. The wonderful celebration of your venerable university and the heartfelt hospitality which I was allowed to experience in Rostock will always be a nice memory for me.”
The honorary doctorate which Einstein was awarded in Rostock is the only one he was given in Germany!
Translation:
„On the day of the celebration of five hundred years Rostock University, the Medical Faculty awards professor Albert Einstein, Doctor of Philosophy, the honorary Doctor of Medicine in recognition of the enormous work of his mind, through which he has renewed the terms of space and time, gravity and matter from scratch.
Rostock, November 12, 1919.
The Dean“
Illustration Credit:
Courtesy Universitaetsarchiv Rostock
Signature: Prom. med. Nr. 150/ 1919, Albert Einstein
Princeton University
Dr. h. c. – awarded on May 9, 1921
“We greet the new Columbus of science, who travels lonesome through the foreign seas of thinking.” The German speech held by the president and head of the Princeton University John Hibben, began with these words. It was held on the occasion of awarding Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate on Monday, May 9, 1921. The celebration took place in Alexander Hall.
Albert Einstein, who visited the United States for the first time, accompanied Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) to succeed in financing the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They stayed from the beginning of April until the end of May. In Washington, Einstein was welcomed in the White House by President Warren G. Harding (1865-1923). After that he visited, among other cities, Princeton, Chicago and Cleveland. In Princeton he held the first of five lectures on the theory of relativity – Stafford Little Lectures (May 9 to May 13) after being awarded the honorary doctorate. The lecture hall was overcrowded. Not only students and members of the faculty, but also many curious and sensation-seeking people were present. Einstein spoke German, so only few people could follow his explanations. After he had finished his speech, Einstein’s lecture was summed up in English by a member of staff of the physical faculty. The demand for the second and the three following lectures was no longer that great and all the interested people found a comfortable place.
These lectures have been translated into English and published entitled “The Meaning of Relativity.” The German text was published in 1922 entitled: “Four Lectures on the Theory of Relativity.”
Approximately ten years later, the little town of Princeton, New Jersey, should become Albert Einstein’s new home.
University of Manchester
Dr. h. c. – awarded on June 9, 1921
Albert Einstein was awarded the honorary doctorate in natural sciences in the big lecture hall of the University of Manchester on Thursday, June 9, 1921. He was honored by the Vice Chancellor of the University, the English mineralogist Sir Henry Alexander Miers (1858-1942). Einstein said German words of thanks, and also held his lecture in German language.
In its evening edition of June 10, the Vossische Zeitung reported about the ceremony:
“Einstein honored in Manchester. The yesterday lecture of Prof. Einstein at the University of Manchester was, as our London reporter says, a homage to the German scholar. The big lecture hall of the university was filled with approximately thousand persons who gave Einstein a warm welcome. Before the lecture was held, the chemist Prof. Diron, who explained Einstein‘s merits, stood up and explained that the name of the discoverer of the theory of relativity may be mentioned next to the ones of the greatest researchers. He had done more for the progress of the world than statesmen and conquerors. The Vice Chancellor of the university, Sir Henry Miers, then awarded Einstein the honorary doctorate and explained that science was independent from the blood feud between the people. Manchester was proud to be able to honor the German scholar. Einstein then held his lecture in German. He thanked for the honors that were awarded to him, and expressed his hope that the demonstration would contribute to the improvement of the international relationships.”
During the time from June 8 until June 17, Einstein was on a lecture tour through England (Liverpool, Manchester, London and Oxford). Politically significant was his London encounter with the British politician Lord Richard Haldane (1856-1928) and with Prime Minister David Lloyd Georg (1863-1945).
Nobel Foundation, Stockholm
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize – awarded on December 10, 1922
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1921. He was awarded the prize “for his work on theoretical physics, especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. It is remarkable that Einstein was not awarded the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity.
During the presentation of awards, the laureate is awarded the Nobel Certificate and the golden Nobel Medal with the picture of the founder Alfred Nobel (Swedish chemist and industrial, 1833-1896) by the Swedish king. The prize money is only payed when the Nobel speech has been held.
Einstein was on a journey through Japan when he was awarded the prize on December 10, 1922. Who should take receipt of the prize for him? Shortly before the presentation of awards there were still differences of opinion about the nationality of Einstein. Was he a German or a Swiss citizen? Finally it was the German legate in Sweden who received the prize in Einstein’s name. Einstein himself was handed over the document and the medal in Berlin by the Swedish ambassador in Germany. As the statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that the Nobel laureate has to hold his Nobel speech before he receives the prize money, Einstein still had to wait for some time until he received the money.
Einstein held his Nobel speech on July 11, 1923 in the Jubilee Hall in Goeteborg in presence of the king and in front of about 2000 listeners. He spoke about “fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity”. After the speech King Gustav V had a vivid chat with Einstein.
The total amount of the prize money – about 120.000 Swedish Krones (back then converted about 180.000 Swiss Francs) – Einstein made available to his first wife Mileva and his two sons Hans Albert and Eduard.
University of Madrid
Dr. h. c. – awarded on March 8, 1923
Fulfilling the traditional customs Albert Einstein received the degree of an honorary doctor on Thursday, March 8, 1923 – in the morning and during a special meeting of the University of Madrid. Speeches were among others held by the Principal of the University, Professor José Rodríguez Carracido (1856-1928), Professor José Maria Plans (1878-1934), a student of the University, and the German ambassador in Madrid, Ernst Langwerth von Simmern (1865-1942). He held his speech in Spanish language. Albert Einstein held his acceptance speech in German.
Einstein‘s entry into his travel log dated March 8, 1923:
„Ehrendoktor Aecht spanische Reden mit zugehörigem bengalischem Feuer Lange aber inhaltlich gute Rede des d. Gesandten über deutsch-span. Beziehungen; (aber ins) ächt deutsch. Nichts rhetorisches. (Abends) Dann Besuch bei techn. Studenten. Reden und nichts als Reden, aber gut gemeint. Abends Vortrag Dann bei Kuno 1) musizieren. Ein Künstler (Direktor des Konservatoriums 2)) Poras spielte herrlich Violine.”
Translation:
“Honorary doctor Aecht Spanish speeches with corresponding Bengal firework Long but contentwise good speech of the German ambassador concerning German-Spanish relationships; (however) into ächt German. Nothing rhetorical. (in the evening) Then visiting technical students. Speeches and nothing but speeches, however, well-meant. In the evening lecture. Then playing music with Kuno 1). An artist (Director of the Conservatory 2)) Poras plays the violin – magnificent!”
Source:
Publisher: Diana Kormos Buchwald, among others, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 13, Princeton 2012
1) Kuno Kocherthaler, a relative of Einstein
2) Antonio Fernandez Bordas (1870-1950)
Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa were on a lecture tour through Spain with the stations Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza. They stayed in Spain from February 22 until March 15, 1923.
During Einstein‘s stay in Madrid he was awarded the diploma of a corresponding foreign member by the Academia de Ciencias on March 4. It was a formal meeting under the presidency of the Spanish King.
Order “Pour le mérite”
admission to the order – June 7, 1923
On Thursday, June 7, 1923 Albert Einstein was admitted to the order “Pour le mérite”. He received the medal Pour le mérite for science and arts, with which persons were and still are awarded “who have made themselves a name through widely spread recognition of their work in science and arts”.
The poet Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946), the mathematician Felix Klein (1849-1925), the sculptor Hugo Lederer (1871-1940) and the painter Max Liebermann (1847-1935) were also admitted to the order on this day.
Due to the political situation and thus the incidents in nazi Germany, Einstein renounced the membership to the order in 1933. An attempt of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss (1884-1963), at the beginning of the 1950ies to persuade Einstein to renew his membership was in vain.
The order Pour le mérite for science and arts was founded by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia (1795-1861) in May 1842. The first civil Order of Merit of this kind in Europe should complete the military order of Frederick II, King of Prussia (1712-1786, “Frederick the Great”) of 1740. In 1924 it was converted into an “independent organisation of excellent scientists and artists” with new statutes. In the 30ies the fate of the order was uncertain and its disbanding was given a serious thought. Only through the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, the order was revived and again entered the public consciousness in May 1952.
The order Pour le mérite is nowadays regarded as one of the highest awards in Germany, which a scientist or artist can achieved.
Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde
Genootschaps Medal – awarded on Dezember 13, 1923
The Dutch society Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde, which was founded in Amsterdam in 1790, promotes and supports activities in the areas of science and medicine. On Thursday, December 13, 1923, the society awarded its highest distinction, the Genootschaps Medal, in the auditorium of the Amsterdam university and thus honoured Albert Einstein and the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928). The list of previous laureates contained names like for example the Dutch physicists and Nobel Prize laureates Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923) and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926).
Albert Einstein took personally part in the celebration taking place on occasion of the annual meeting of the “Genootschap” on December 13. Despite acceptance of the invitation, H. A. Lorentz did not.
In advance there was a letter from the Board of the society to Albert Einstein, which was dated “October 25, 1923”:
„Hochgeehrter Herr Professor Einstein,
im Namen der “Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in Amsterdam” haben wir das Vergnügen Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass die “Genootschap” in ihrer Sitzung vom 22. Oktober 1923 Ihnen und Herrn Professor H. A. Lorentz ihre goldene Medaille zuerkannt hat. Die Verleihung dieser Medaillen wird am 31. Oktober 1923 in der Jahresversammlung der Gen. in der Aula der Universität nachmittags um 4 Uhr stattfinden.
Es würde uns eine ganz besondere Ehre sein, wenn Sie der Verleihung dieser Medaillen durch Herrn Prof. J. D. v. d. Waals, Professor der Physik an unserer Universität, persönlich beiwohnen könnten, wie auch Herr Professor Lorentz es uns versprochen hat. …
Mit einer zustimmenden Antwort würden Sie uns eine besondere Freude machen. …”
Translation:
“Highly honoured Professor Einstein,
in the name of the “Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in Amsterdam” we have the pleasure to inform you that the “Genootschap” has awarded you and Professor H. A. Lorentz its golden medal in its meeting dated October 22, 1923. The presentation of these medals will take place in the annual meeting of the Gen. in the auditorium of the university on October 31, 1923 at 4 pm.
It would be a very special honour for us if you could personally attend to the presentation of these medals by Prof. J. D. v. d. Waals, professor of physics at our university, like also Professor Lorentz has promised to do. …
You would specially please us if you sent us a positive answer. …“
The presentation date which is mentioned in the letter seems to have been postponed.
Royal Society of London
Copley Medal – awarded on November 30, 1925
Albert Einstein was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London in a ceremony on Monday, November 30, 1925. As tradition has it, the highest award of the society was handed over during its annual celebration. In 1925 the celebration took place in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in London. At the annual celebration the Royal Society awarded also other medals and prizes.
Einstein was awarded the Copley Medal by the English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), the retiring president of the society. The presentation of the medal was one of the last official actions of Sherrington. After the presentation of the medals he handed over the position of the president after one term of office (five years) to the British physicist from New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), from 1931 on Lord Rutherford of Nelson.
Some of the people who were awarded the Copley Medal before and after Einstein were the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1838), the British physicist Sir William Thomson (1883), from 1892 on Lord Kelvin of Largs, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1918), the German physicist Max Planck (1929), the Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1938) and the English physicist Paul A.M. Dirac (1952).
Sir Geoffrey Copley made money available to the Royal Society to promote scientific work (1709). A few years later the Copley Medal was suggested:
“…a medal or other honorary prize should be bestowed on the person whose experiment should be best approved…”
The English physicist Stephen Gray (1666-1736) was awarded the first Copley Medal in 1731. The medal consists of silver and gold. It was and still is awarded for special scientific work.
Royal Astronomical Society
Gold Medal – awarded on February 12, 1926
Some weeks after Einstein had been awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London, he was awarded another prize in England. This time the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) awarded him, also in London, its highest award, the Gold Medal. The Gold Medal was awarded for special performance in the field of astronomy. It is still awarded by the RAS, which also awards the Eddington and the Herschel Medal.
It was not possible for Einstein to receive the Gold Medal personally. In a letter of thanks which he had written before the award he wrote to the RAS: “…He who finds a thought which lets us look into the secret of nature – even if only a little bit deeper – has won mercy. He who then still experiences the recognition, sympathies and promotion of the greatest persons of his time almost obtains more luck than a human being is able to bear. In this consciousness I thank you in humble attitude for the great award you judged I deserve. I would like to come to you personally to receive the Medal awarded to me; but unfortunately I am not able to…”
Already in 1919 the RAS had, on proposal of the English astronomer and astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), decided to award Albert Einstein the Gold Medal for the year 1920. But “patriotic” members of the RAS prevented this. The result was that no medal was awarded in 1920. Einstein still had to wait for six years until he received the highest award of the RAS.
University of Paris
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 9, 1929
On Saturday, November 9, 1929, the University of Paris awarded Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate in the hall of the Sorbonne. The principal of the university, the French historian Sébastien Charléty (1867-1945), awarded Einstein the honorary doctorate diploma.
On November 12, the Vossische Zeitung reported about the ceremony what follows:
“Einstein honorary doctorate of the Sorbonne. From Paris we hear: In the large amphitheater of the Sorbonne there was, on Sunday evening, under the chairmanship of the principal Professor Charléty and in the presence of the whole scientific and intellectual Paris, a festive presentation of the honorary doctorate and the insignias of an honorary doctorate of the University of Paris for Professor Albert Einstein. The dean of the faculty for mathematics and natural sciences, Professor Maurain, celebrated the merits and the work of Einstein in a speech which the audience interrupted through minute-long applause. Einstein stood up and thanked with a bow. The applause was even longer when the principal awarded Einstein the doctorate diploma and covered his shoulder with the “Robenschleife” in the colors of the city of Paris. The ceremony was also attended by the German ambassador v. Hösch, with whom Professor Einstein stays during his visit in Paris.”
The dean of the faculty for mathematics and sciences, who is mentioned in the article, was the French geophysicist Charles Honoré Maurain (1871-1967). The German ambassador in Paris was Leopold von Hoesch (1881-1936).
Einstein‘s stay in Paris began on November 7 and ended on November 14. During his stay he held two lectures in the Institute Henri Poincaré and took part in a meeting of the Académie des sciences and the academic society Societé française de Philosophie.
ETH, Zurich
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 7, 1930
On occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule, ETH), Albert Einstein was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Science in a ceremony on Friday, November 7, 1930. The nomination was initiated by the department of mathematics of the ETH.
In the letter of the nomination it said: “To the completer of classical physics in the theory of relativity and the pioneer of quantum physics, its former student and teacher, in recognition of his excellent scientific performance and in thankful remembrance of his work which he performed for Switzerland and the college.”
The honorary doctorate of his Alma mater surely meant a lot to Albert Einstein.
From October 1896 to July 1900 Einstein had studied at the ETH and from October 1912 to March 1914 he worked there as full professor for theoretical physics.
Yeshiva College, New York
Dr. h. c. – awarded on October 8, 1934
On Monday, October 8, 1934, Albert Einstein received in a ceremony the degree of an honorary doctor (Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa) of the Yeshiva College in New York, USA.
Einstein had approved of the award of the degree of an honorary doctor in a letter to the College dated September 1, 1934. Dr. Bernard Revel (1885-1940), the first President of the Yeshiva College in New York, USA, which was founded in 1928, welcomed the attendees to the ceremony on occasion of the award of the degree of an honorary doctor, which at the same time was the official beginning of the academic year 1934/35.
After the award of the degree of an honorary doctor Einstein held his acceptance speech. He spoke in German: „Es erfüllt mich mit besonderer Freude und Genugtuung …” (“It is my special pleasure and satisfaction…“). Further speakers were among others the Governor of the Federal State of New York, Herbert Henry Lehman (1878-1963), and Herman Bernstein (1876-1935), editor of the Jewish Daily Bulletin.
Franklin Institute, Philadelphia
Franklin Medal – awarded on May 15, 1935
On Wednesday, May 15, 1935 Albert Einstein received the Benjamin Franklin Medal (Benjamin Franklin, American politician, author and scientist, 1706–1790) in a ceremony. It was awarded in recognition of his fundamental contributions to theoretical physics; especially for his theories of relativity and his work on the photoelectric effect.
The Franklin Medal is one of the highest awards of the Franklin Institute. It was and still is awarded for special performance in the field of science and the arts. The Franklin Institute also awards other medals than the Franklin Medal.
In the ceremony, which took place in the evening at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, USA, not only the two Franklin Medals, but also five Longstreth Medals and seven Wetherill Medals were awarded. Einstein did not hold any speech.
Harvard University
Dr. h. c. – awarded on June 20, 1935
In 1935 Albert Einstein received a new honorary doctorate, this time by the most traditional and most important university of the USA, the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was Thursday, June 20, 1935 when he was awarded in a ceremony the Doctor of Science in a ceremony. The president of the university, J.B. Conant, said in a speech about Einstein: “…Acclaimed by the world as a great revolutionist of theoretical physics, his bold speculations, now become basis doctrine, will be remembered when mankind`s present troubles are long forgotten…”
Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, July 5, 1935
At the same time like Einstein, the German author Thomas Mann (1857-1955) was honoured. He was awarded the Doctor of Letters. About Mann, Conant said in his speech: “… Novelist of rare distinction, an interpreter of life to many in the western world, one of the few contemporary guardians of the great tradition of Germany culture …”
Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, July 5, 1935
Like Einstein, Mann and his family had also emigrated to the USA in 1933. Both the emigrants received long lasting applause from the people present at the presentation of awards. Thomas Mann later stated in a letter to his publisher that his and Einstein’s honorary doctorate “had not been possible without any interference of president Roosevelt“.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 12
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
en
|
What happened to the Nobel Prize money? – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
“Der Nobelpreis würde Dir – im Falle der Scheidung und für den Fall,
dass er mir zuteil wird – a priori vollständig abgetreten.“
“The Nobel Prize – in the event of the divorce and in the event
that it is bestowed upon me – would be ceded to you in full a priori.“
Albert Einstein to his first wife Mileva, 31. January 1918
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 – What happened to the prize money?
One of the many “ingeniously devised tales” adorning Albert Einstein’s life focuses on the prize money that accompanied the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. The actual story deserves a long and detailed account. This paper presents just a brief summary.
It begins in 1918, a long time before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conferred upon him the award. In that year, Albert Einstein signed over the award money to his first wife, Mileva: “[I]n the case of a voluntary divorce… the Nobel Prize… would be ceded to you in full a priori.”
Has this apparently generous gesture to be considered a belated acknowledgement of an ousted co-author – Mileva – of certain scientific papers published between 1901 and 1913 under Albert Einstein’s name alone? There is no document to justify this frequent claim. In fact, correspondence preserved in the archives tells a different story. In 1918, the prize money was still far away, yet confidently expected. It represented the security that Mileva demanded in the event of divorce.
The draft of the divorce agreement stated: “Disposal of the interest would be left entirely to your discretion. The capital would be deposited in Switzerland and placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
As reworded by Mileva’s lawyer, in the divorce decree the phrase “placed in safe-keeping for the children” became “In the case of the remarriage or death of Mrs. Einstein [the capital] shall go to the children.” Even if the practical consequences hardly changed – due to the fact that Mileva “shall have no authority over the capital without the consent of Prof. Einstein” – Albert’s clear statement of intent regarding the children’s heritage was swept under the rug. Yet happy to escape prolonged negotiations, in order to end an unfortunate marriage, Albert may not even have realized the difference.
Almost four years after the divorce, in the fall of 1922, it happened. “[N]ow … you really will be getting the Nobel Prize”, Albert announced to his children in a letter from Japan, once he received notice of the award. Soon Mileva’s plan could materialize: “Look into the matter about the house. The rest will be deposited somewhere in your names. Then, you’ll be so rich that, God knows, someday I may have to squeeze money out of you …“
In 1922, the Nobel Prize in Physics was endowed with 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, a relatively small sum compared with other years, yet the equivalent of more than twelve years’ income for Albert Einstein.
The divorce agreement of February 1919 stipulated that the capital was to be deposited in a Swiss bank account. But by 1923, even Switzerland’s economy was destabilized by political uncertainty. Would not Albert’s jocular forecast be jeopardized if the prize money remained in Europe?
Back from his trip to the Far East in the spring of 1923, Albert transferred 45,000 Swiss francs to Zurich, the amount Mileva planned to invest in real estate. Of the remaining 91,000 Swedish kronor Albert could have retained the equivalent of 40,000 German marks, deposited, in securities, in Zurich in 1918, as an advance payment towards the divorce. But by 1923, galloping inflation in Germany had reduced the original value to a tiny fraction. Following the advice of a financial expert, Albert decided to place the remaining prize money with an American bank “because I regard this as more advantageous and safer in your and the children’s interest“. In Mileva’s name, this capital was invested in a number of different dollar bonds.
By May 1924, Mileva had found the property she wished to own: a five-storey apartment building at the edge of Zurich’s prosperous district of Fluntern. Upon payment of 45,000 Swiss francs she became the owner of Huttenstrasse 62, valued at 195,000 SFr. In late summer, Mileva and her two sons moved into the six-room apartment on the third floor. Albert, visiting in September, expressed his satisfaction at the “visible result of my musings”.
When in the following year the roof required repair work, Albert offered Mileva an interest-free loan to avoid sale of bonds in the United States. That same year, 1925, while revising his last will, Albert noticed that the wording in the divorce decree only partially reflected his original intentions. Concerned, he asked Mileva for a written note stating that the Nobel Prize money will be considered an advance payment of their sons’ inheritance, and that Mileva would not appeal against Albert’s last will. Mileva, fearing that her sons be bamboozled, stubbornly ignored this demand. What she did not know is that in this last will Albert assigned to their sons not merely his violins, books and papers, but explicitly the scientific manuscripts which by now had become an asset of ever-increasing value.
Thanks to rental income, supplemented by the interest flowing in from her American account, and a few smaller loans, in the second half of the 1920s Mileva and Eduard enjoyed a relatively comfortable existence.
In the early summer of 1930, bonds in Mileva’s American account reached their maturity date; a capital of 5,000 US$ needed to be reinvested. With the stock market crash of October 1929 fresh in mind, Albert, circumspectly, suggested that she place this money in real estate rather than in new bonds. After hesitating for a moment, Mileva became enamoured with the idea of owning a second property. The following month such a property was found. Trusting in Mileva’s judgment “because you already once made a good buy” Albert signed the necessary forms. By August 1930, the purchase was finalized.
How could it be, that hardly one month later, Mileva decided to purchase a third house?
In order to make this acquisition, in September 1930 – with Albert’s approval – she sold bonds worth a total of 5,400 US$. The face value of the bonds now left in her account in New York could hardly have been more than 10,000 US$; accordingly, the income from interest “formidably shrunk”.
Albert’s Nobel Prize money reposed now in three apartment buildings situated in Zurich’s rather expensive residential area, on the Zürichberg. Here, only high-earners could afford the rent. This turned out to be a disaster once the economic crisis reached Switzerland. Some tenants delayed the rent payments or paid only a part of it, others moved out; each empty apartment left a bigger dent in Mileva’s budget.
To assist her in escaping from this precarious situation, in the summer of 1932 Albert engaged a lawyer to sort out Mileva’s financial affairs, and to find a way out of the impasse. However, Mileva did not appreciate the expert’s suggestion: to sell property as fast as possible, even at an unfavorable price.
In the same politically explosive summer of 1932, Albert revived the plan to amend his testament and, as he fruitlessly did in 1925, again asked Mileva and the sons to commit to “unconditionally respect” his last will. In return, he offered the sons the interest from a sum of ca. 25,000 Marks he had saved up for them.
“Back then,” he wrote, referring to the year 1918, “I ceded to you the Nobel Prize with the intention to secure your and the children’s future. It ought to be made clear … that this sum, the only assets I had at all by then, was to be credited to the children’s inheritance in the event of my death.”
In this summary I will not expand on the controversy that Albert’s request brought about, and how it affected the younger son, Eduard. One fact, however, needs to be stated: neither Mileva nor Hans Albert were ready to sign a paper which might, as they surmised, discriminate against them, vis-à-vis Albert’s new family. Mistrust prevailed on both sides.
Soon other concerns made obsolete the smoldering conflict: By January 1933, Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia; it seemed unlikely that he would become (financially) independent in the near future; in May, Albert lost his possessions in Germany, including the savings retained for the sons, all seized by the Nazis. Thanks to some foreign income prudently kept outside Germany, and his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was not left destitute and was still able to aid Mileva.
However, despite the large and small sums Albert sent occasionally in answer to Mileva’s anxious appeals, or at the request of her professional supporters, and despite the monthly allowance – a sum equivalent to a qualified handyman’s salary – for the son who remained with his mother at home, between 1933 and 1938, Mileva’s debts slowly grew to alarming heights.
In 1936, she sold the last American stocks to finance renovations of the house at Huttenstrasse 62, in the hope of yielding higher rental income.
That year, the income from the two apartment houses purchased in 1930 did not even cover the running expenses, let alone the mortgages. It was impossible to sell them; foreclosure approached. Just before the house at Huttenstrasse 62 was about to be seized too, in 1938, Mileva implored Albert to take it over – a formality made legally possible by the 1935 conversion of Mileva’s old debts to Albert into an additional mortgage in his favor.
With the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation, a body founded by Albert Einstein for the one and only purpose of preventing loss of the property, by April 1939, “the house seem[ed] bailed out for the time being, though with substantial sacrifices”.
At this point, it is pertinent to ask how much of the 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, almost 180,000 Swiss francs, or around 31,000 US$, was still at Mileva’s disposal.
Her American account was empty. The two apartment houses acquired in 1930, including all money she invested there later, were lost. If any, the house Huttenstrasse 62, valued at around 200,000 SFr, might have represented the final few Swedish kronor; but this property was now owned by the Corporation. The Corporation held a mortgage of 15,000 SFr; mortgages totaling 135,000 SFr were held by the State Treasury, and two additional mortgages together amounting to 44,000 SFr belonged to Albert. A part of the latter figure, though, was still Nobel Prize money, signed over to Albert in 1935, to prevent intervention by creditors.
Who was to blame for the considerable losses? Did Albert cause them, as some claim, due to his gambling on the stock exchange, and by leaving Mileva, contrary to all promises, in the lurch with the high hospital fees for their sick son? None of these allegations is supported by evidence, even though Mileva’s desperate calls for help seem to suggest it, and her Zurich friends and supporters, compassionately, sided with her. The fact is that Mileva financially overstretched herself by acquiring expensive properties yielding only meager returns and, in a period of economic instability, even no return at all.
When, in 1939, the Corporation had become the property’s official owner, Mileva’s budget problems seemed solved for the time being. An official agreement between the Corporation and Mileva was established. As in previous years, she would collect the rents and from this income pay the mortgage interests and taxes, as well as all necessary expenses. Her official salary amounted to 600 SFr p.a.; the surplus was to go to the Corporation together with regular accounts for income and expenses. Such an agreement met the tax office’s provisions. In practice, things were supposed to continue as was the case prior to the change of hands. The “surplus” including the mortgage interest owed to Albert and the Corporation would flow into Mileva’s household budget. And, of course, she and Eduard could stay in their comfortable home, free of charge. Yet, for a limited transition period, the lawyer who supervised the takeover by the Corporation, had to remain the house’s official manager; unfortunately, he knew too well how to skim off a considerable part of the surplus.
By the end of 1941 the house had become more or less unprofitable. Relenting to Mileva’s begging, Albert promised not to sell it unless the situation should become financially unbearable.
With the entry of the United States into the war, the correspondence between Mileva and Albert was interrupted. While Albert succeeded in ensuring the transfer of his monthly payments for Eduard, for a few years Mileva did not meet her obligation to regularly submit financial statements to the Corporation.
The statements arrived eventually in 1946. They made obvious that the house accumulated even more debts during the war years. Only a considerable investment could have brought about a long-term change, money that Albert would rather invest directly in a pension scheme for Eduard than in this house. The sale had become inevitable.
In 1947, the Corporation entrusted Mileva with the sales negotiations. Since her greatest concern was Eduard’s financial protection, Albert committed himself to sign over the 40,000 SFr mortgage – the only sum which still contained a small part of the Nobel Prize money – to Eduard’s name as soon as a legal guardian had been appointed for him. The 4,000 SFr mortgage would be paid to Mileva after the sale. The sale proceeds, less the profit tax charged in the United States, and less some debts Albert had made to cover the costs of the takeover, were supposed to be placed in a bank account in the Corporation’s name — yet at Mileva’s disposal, thus replacing the revenue Mileva previously obtained from the rents.
Assisted by the House Owners’ Association, in September 1947 Mileva sold the house on behalf of the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation at a price of 235,000 SFr. The buyer took over mortgages of altogether 192,000 SFr and handed out the difference. As suggested by the Corporation, the contract granted Mileva the right to stay in her apartment.
Once the contract was signed, she remained silent about the deal. Despite a number of reminders, by the end of April 1948, the Corporation had not yet received the sales documents and nothing precise was known about how much money Mileva obtained. Instead, she was writing desperate, reproachful letters to Albert and denigrating him with third persons in a quite perfidious way. She was distressed and confused, and no more able to comply with her obligations.
In May 1948, Mileva suffered a stroke. While picking her up from bed, at home, the paramedics discovered cash amounting to more than 87,000 SFr.
Is it reasonable to assume that these 87,000 SFr or a part of this sum was the rest of the Nobel Prize money?
The legal guardian recently appointed for Eduard now was also taking care of Mileva; he deposited the sum with the guardianship authorities. Although unaware of its actual amount, Mileva claimed that the entire sum belonged to her, being the leftover of the Nobel Prize money.
She died in August 1948.
If the full 87,000 SFr did belong to her, then this heritage would be split between her two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, a position immediately endorsed by Hans Albert.
Soon, however, the guardian realized that the case was more complicated. The Corporation made it perfectly clear that any amount handed over to Mileva when she was selling the house legally belonged to the Corporation in the first place. As for the mortgages in Albert’s favor, at a total value of 55,000 SFr, Albert confirmed his commitment to eventually make them available, preferably for Eduard’s care. The whereabouts of the promissory notes, though, still remained in the dark.
So far, the calculation was:
Out of the 87,000 SFr, payments had to be made to Mileva’s doctor and the tax office as well as for her funeral and the liquidation of her household. 43,000 SFr would then go to the Corporation. The remaining sum was to be shared among the sons.
The situation changed drastically when it came to light that Mileva, unauthorized, had sold Albert’s mortgages and the proceeds were contained in the 87,000 SFr.
To make matters worse, the owner of an old bearer mortgage note of 37.000 SFr registered his claim, which had not yet expired.
Hence the calculations looked quite different:
The 87,000 SFr plus a small sum resulting from the sale of Mileva’s household stood counter to the following claims:
43,000 SFr by the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation
55,000 SFr by Albert related to two mortgages
37,000 SFr by the owner of the promissory note dating from one of the houses that Mileva bought in 1930 = 135,000 SFr
It is pointless to go into details about the dispute which erupted between Hans Albert and his father when Albert showed his inclination to rescue whatever sum he could for the benefit of the younger son. It is, however, worth mentioning that eventually Albert’s perseverance and his insistence on the Corporation’s and his personal entitlements brought the case to a successful conclusion. Confronted with the estate’s impending bankruptcy and the danger of losing the full sum, the owner of the 37,000 SFr mortgage agreed to a settlement payment of 15,000 SFr. Albert then withdrew his own claim and thus allowed Eduard’s legal guardian to accept the succession.
Once all bills and taxes were paid, 70,000 SFr were left.
It is true that this sum could no longer be considered the remains of Albert’s Nobel Prize money; too much additional money had been invested in what for 24 years represented the “visible result of my musings”, as Albert put it in 1924.
But at least these 70,000 SFr eventually ended up in the hands of his sons, as foreseen in 1918: “The capital would be … placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
There is a very last chapter to this story:
In 1950, Hans Albert grudgingly agreed upon an “unjust” sharing of what may be called Mileva’s estate – 30,000 SFr for him, and 40,000 SFr for his far needier brother.
Until the end of his life, another six years, Albert continued to pay a monthly allowance to Eduard. By the time of Albert’s death, in 1955, out of the 40,000 SFr, more than 39,000 SFr were still in Eduard’s account.
Eduard’s share of Albert’s inheritance amounted to 64,256:25 SFr, and by 1956 Eduard owned a little over 100,000 SFr.
For another ten years, Eduard lived off this sum supplemented by occasional small gifts.
At the time of his death, in fall of 1965, 67,000 SFr were still lying in his account.
Eduard’s only heir was his brother Hans Albert.
Taxes and Hans Albert’s contribution to the placement of a headstone for Eduard lowered his inheritance. How much money may eventually have fallen into his hands? 40,000 SFr? 30,000 SFr? In any case, even given some inflation, this amount is more than what he lost when, in 1950, he generously renounced the “fair” or “just” distribution of the money that Mileva had left.
So in the end, the Nobel Prize money, through all the ups and downs and losses and gains, and the political catastrophes and personal tragedies, had served, besides Mileva, one way or another, the two sons, just as it was Albert’s intention.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 10
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nobelprize_albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-activity-7186740337602621441-WEiL
|
en
|
The Nobel Prize on LinkedIn: Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 "for his…
|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5610AQFTjdLx58guTA/image-shrink_1280/0/1713452419539?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=d9egnEnEQmH9eW3hieljKArtBXd8sITniJ8orQxP4mQ
|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5610AQFTjdLx58guTA/image-shrink_1280/0/1713452419539?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=d9egnEnEQmH9eW3hieljKArtBXd8sITniJ8orQxP4mQ
|
[
"https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4D3DAQHA7z_U5pIOrw/image-scale_191_1128/0/1696924261282/nobelprize_cover?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=l6mYC2BiWwAN7v4EYmDH84xbXDZnTa_CSTQdzbiEBbA"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"The Nobel Prize"
] |
2024-04-18T15:00:19.633000+00:00
|
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the… | 30 comments on LinkedIn
|
en
|
https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/al2o9zrvru7aqj8e1x2rzsrca
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nobelprize_albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-activity-7186740337602621441-WEiL
|
"I think writing is a kind of gift. A new novel or a new play, it's a gift I get... I need to have breaks or pauses when I don't write. You can't get gifts all the time." Literature laureate Jon Fosse in our new podcast episode: https://lnkd.in/eUA9wtbj #NobelPrize
“They made me fall in love with quantum mechanics and atomic physics,” said physics laureate Anne L’Huillier of two “great teachers”. She benefitted from being taught by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Serge Haroche, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 and 2012 respectively. L'Huillier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter. Learn more about her life and work: https://lnkd.in/egnFT-SC Were you inspired by any great teachers?
What does chess have to do with economics? The answer is game theory. In these games like chess, players must think ahead and devise a strategy based on expected countermoves from other players. These interactions characterise many economic situations. Game theory is a theoretical framework that tries to produce the most optimal decision-making of competing actors in a strategic setting. When describing the economic theory, Reinhard Selten told the New York Times that the theory was like chess: “You may not always be right, but such thinking probably makes you play better and keeps you from making as many dumb moves.” The foundations for using game theory in economics were introduced in a monumental study by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern entitled 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior' (1944). Fifty years later, Selten, John Harsanyi and John Nash were awarded the prize in economic sciences for their contributions to the field. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3zOES62 #WorldChessDay
"The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you're learning, you're not old." Take a look at some snapshots of the pioneering physicist Rosalyn Yalow throughout her life. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977 for developing radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones. Learn more: https://bit.ly/2XFRZ63 Photos (top, and then left to right): Portrait of Rosalyn Yalow, Yalow on her wedding day in June 1943, Yalow in the lab, Yalow receives her Nobel Prize in 1977.
"One of the most important things as a scientist is that you have to be an optimist. If you’re a pessimist, a failed experiment will tell you that the whole idea is bad and you’ll quit. When you fail you have to continue." - chemistry laureate Richard Henderson's advice to young scientists.
“I’m fascinated by my work … I didn’t go into my career just to collect prizes or accolades or even money. I don’t have much money. I went into it for the adventure of it, the mystery of it,” said laureate Edmund Phelps. He was awarded the prize in economic sciences for his analysis of intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy, especially about inflation, wages, and unemployment. In the late 1960s, Phelps began his prize-awarded work, which challenged the assumption that high levels of unemployment corresponded with low levels of inflation and vice versa. He shares wisdom about the quest for “a good life” in his Nobel Prize interview, including this philosophical nugget: “It’s hard to draw lessons from the past about what to avoid in the present.” Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/ebEJA3QG
Rosalyn Yalow described herself as a determined and single-minded child. Growing up, her parents wanted her to become a schoolmistress. Instead, Yalow became a nuclear physicist who revolutionised the medical world. Yalow became a physicist when being a woman was seen as an impediment to success, but she persevered. When she could not pay for her graduate degree, Yalow worked as a biochemist's secretary at Columbia University in exchange for classes. In 1941, Yalow accepted an assistantship at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in the College of Engineering; she was the only woman in a faculty of 400. She earned her PhD in nuclear physics and learned how to build and use equipment to measure radioactive substances. With her research partner Solomon Berson, Yalow made a transformative contribution to medical research: radioimmunoassay, a method for measuring concentrations of substances in the blood. Yalow was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones." With the help of radioimmunoassay, she proved that type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inefficient use, rather than lack, of insulin. Learn more: https://bit.ly/2D64qQd
“I will never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality. Surely, the Nobel Peace Prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic.” – peace laureate Narges Mohammadi. The Iranian human rights advocate has been sentenced to 36 years and 3 months in prison and 154 lashes. She has not seen her children Ali and Kiana since 2015. Yet despite her captivity in the notorious Evin prison, she continues to stand at the forefront of major protests against the Iranian regime and fight for women’s rights. For condemning a "full-scale war against women" by the Iranian regime, there is a possibility that Mohammadi could be punished further. Watch the moving Nobel Prize lecture delivered by her children: https://lnkd.in/eHQzQ63M
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 45
|
https://medium.com/%40deep.space/why-didnt-einstein-get-the-nobel-prize-for-the-theory-of-relativity-909db2a1b557
|
en
|
Why didn’t Einstein get the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity?
|
[
"https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:64:64/1*dmbNkD5D-u45r44go_cf0g.png",
"https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:88:88/1*AXyJrehBUOfDmbkYhkhTJg.png",
"https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:144:144/1*AXyJrehBUOfDmbkYhkhTJg.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Space",
"medium.com",
"@deep.space"
] |
2023-03-08T16:01:21.176000+00:00
|
The fact that Einstein did not receive the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, which revolutionized theoretical and experimental physics, is perceived by many as the greatest disgrace of the…
|
en
|
Medium
|
https://medium.com/@deep.space/why-didnt-einstein-get-the-nobel-prize-for-the-theory-of-relativity-909db2a1b557
|
The fact that Einstein did not receive the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, which revolutionized theoretical and experimental physics, is perceived by many as the greatest disgrace of the Nobel Prize per se. It is often compared to the way Gandhi did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Note that Einstein still received the Nobel Prize in 1922, though for an entirely different work. The wording of the Nobel Committee read: “For the discovery of the photoelectric effect and other works in theoretical physics.
The photoelectric effect discovered by Einstein is considered by many to be the least important of his discoveries. Einstein published his series of revolutionary articles for physics in 1905. Einstein’s articles laid the foundation for three branches of modern physics: general and special relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical physics.
It took 17 years for them to be universally recognized. Einstein was nominated for the Nobel Prize for ten consecutive years and only in 1922 did the Nobel Committee consider it possible to give the prize to Einstein.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 3
|
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/the-dramatic-story-behind-general-relativitys-nobel-prize-snub/
|
en
|
The dramatic story behind general relativity's Nobel Prize snub
|
[
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ASNlogo_Stacked-color_transp1-1.png",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Albert-Einstein-portrait.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/114999-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/112315-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/112814-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/115315-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/115144-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/114467-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/117388-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/117668-featured-90x90.bmp",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/115042-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/109291-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/woodpile_Zeichenflache-1-1-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Bi-4K-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/casey-horner-RmoWqDCqN2E-unsplash-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/black-hole-7734792_1280-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/melt-2081770_1280-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/aaron-lee-0lv_DR_yfyI-unsplash-400x250.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Robert Friedman"
] |
2022-08-10T07:00:00+00:00
|
More than 100 years on after Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize, some confusion remains around the committee's reasons for omitting relativity.
|
en
|
Advanced Science News
|
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/the-dramatic-story-behind-general-relativitys-nobel-prize-snub/
|
On 9 November 1922, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences voted to award Albert Einstein the previously reserved 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for “his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”
This decision prompted several decades of speculation, especially with respect to the reason for omitting Einstein’s theories of relativity. When changes in the statutes (1974) eventually gave researchers access to official archival materials 50 years and older, historical scholarship could begin challenging conjecture and myth.
Yet, as the 100th-anniversary of this prize approaches, some confusion remains as to what actually transpired and what it means. The Academy of Sciences and related official Nobel sources have long represented this episode along a line that turns out to be incompatible with the historical record. Their version in part draws on physicist Abraham Pais’s account of how Einstein got a Nobel Prize.
Claiming Einstein received a prize for his theory of the photoelectric effect and attributing relativity’s absence simply to an unfortunate error in committee member Allvar Gullstrand’s evaluation, the Academy of Sciences’ narrative represents a misunderstanding and oversimplification of a much more complex and troubling history.
A Swedish prerogative
The Nobel Prize in physics may well be international in scope, but since its beginnings in 1901, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has determined the outcome.
During the first 50 years of proceedings that have been studied in detail, committee members relied largely on their own judgement. No juggling of statistics related to nominations — number, frequency, or origin — explains the awards. Those entitled to nominate rarely provided a clear mandate for any single candidate. Regardless, the committee seldom selected those candidates who enjoyed a consensual or even majority status from the nominators.
The Swedish committee members’ own comprehension of scientific accomplishment, their own priorities as to what was important, and their own group dynamics all proved critical for the outcome. But in order to make sense of the committee reports, and the decisions recorded therein, a deeper understanding is needed of the committee members.
The committee’s well-polished texts represent an after-the-fact justification for its recommendations sent to the Academy of Sciences; the final reports are not repositories of the processes of trying to arrive at a consensus. The act of writing was also an act of erasing the, at times, contentious processes marked by, let’s name it, bias, arrogance, and even pettiness.
1920: Fame, reactionary foes, and a surprise
At a joint meeting of the Royal Society of London and Royal Astronomical Society held on 6 November 1919, the retired Cambridge physicist, J. J. Thomson, announced the results of the now-famous British eclipse expeditions. Notwithstanding a number of inconclusive photographic plates, a sufficient amount of reliable data confirmed the minute bending of starlight by the sun’s mass that Einstein had predicted based on his general theory of relativity.
In Europe, still recovering from the horror of world war and anxious over political and social upheavals in its wake, news of a theory that overthrew the foundations of physics, and glimpses of its highly unconventional creator, attracted media attention. During the first half of 1920, not only did much of the scientific community recognize Einstein for his achievement, but the ever-growing mass media’s attention also helped generate a world-wide fascination with relativity.
Scarcely understood by the general public, relativity nevertheless assumed an unprecedented role as symbol for the new uncertain era emerging from the ruins and upheavals of war and revolution. Political movements on both ends of the political spectrum began to embrace or attack relativity for their causes. Not necessarily to his liking, Einstein was transforming into an international celebrity the likes of which was unprecedented. Not all physicists accepted the British results as valid proof of Einstein’s theory; and not all physicists were intellectually equipped or willing to understand the theory.
Einstein was no stranger to the Nobel committee. He had been nominated as early as 1910; a trickle of nominations turned by 1917 into modest but substantial annual support. Although for 1920 few nominators sent in proposals, Einstein dominated the sparse list. These included nominations from Niels Bohr and several Dutch physicists including laureates, H. A. Lorentz, Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, and Pieter Zeeman.
No doubt, some eligible nominators did not participate as a protest over a German sweep of science prizes in 1919 — Max Planck, Johannes Stark, and Fritz Haber — seemingly in defiance of the Allied nations’ boycott of German science.
The five-member Nobel Committee for Physics was dominated, as it had been from the start, by Swedish physicists with a strong commitment to an experimentalist creed that largely relegated sophisticated theory and mathematics to an insignificant role in the advance of physics.
In its 1920 general report to the Academy, the committee dismissed Einstein based on [a special report by committee member Svante Arrhenius] on the degree to which Einstein’s predictions based on relativity theory had been confirmed — the bending of starlight passing near the sun, the irregularities in Mercury’s orbit, and a shift toward the red end in the solar spectrum.
Much of his brief seven-page report emphasized the negative claims against relativity, including those from some of Einstein’s most ardent German detractors. Arrhenius completed his report during the first half of August 1920, just when German anti-Einstein agitation was becoming more public and more virulent.
Arrhenius refers to some of the extremist anti-relativity literature in his seven-page special report for the Nobel committee. After briefly noting general relativity’s ability to account for the minute irregularities in Mercury’s perihelion motion that Newtonian mechanics fails to explain, he then devotes over a half page to Ernst Gehrcke’s [previously published] criticism of Einstein on this largely undisputed success for relativity.
According to Gehrcke, this anomaly had already been resolved decades earlier by a little-known German researcher, Paul Gerber. Based on classical aether-physics, Gerber’s achievement meant there was no need to accept Einstein’s revolutionary reformulation of space and time to account for this puzzling phenomenon. When Einstein had earlier refused to respond to these claims, Gehrcke began to accuse Einstein of plagiarism, which in turn, became a common charge by the far-right against him and relativity.
Arrhenius failed however to mention that Max von Laue and other [supporters] had earlier decidedly refuted and repeatedly dismissed Gehrcke’s argument, by having demonstrated serious errors in Gerber’s calculations.
Turning to the British eclipse results, Arrhenius accepted the skeptics’ argument that the margin of experimental error was larger than the effect to be measured. He declared that these results cannot be admitted as evidence as questions remain about their degree of exactness. He then notes that all efforts to identify a redshift in the solar spectrum had failed.
Arrhenius closed his report, dated 17 August 1920, with several references to literature by various anti-Einstein writers. In a highly unusual practice, he cites articles published in newspapers, largely the ultranationalist Deutsche Zeitung. These included contributions from scientifically and politically dubious authors, such as Hermann Fricke and Johannes Riem, the latter an openly antisemitic Christian opponent of what he considered “Jewish materialism.”
Also mentioned are the “fanciful and fanatic publications” of Rudolf Mewes, a reactionary anti-Semite who supported restoring the Kaiser and opposed the alleged conspiracy to replace true German science with Jewish abstract, derivative knowledge. Arrhenius includes a comment that for the upcoming national meeting of German natural scientists at Bad Nauheim in September, preparations were underway for a “neutralizing [oskadliggörande]” of Einstein from “all layers of all the natural-science disciplines.” Toward that goal, both Gehrcke and Lenard, among others, were expected to be the main presenters.
Arrhenius concludes his evaluation with a quotation from Lenard’s recently reprinted polemic against relativity followed by an abrupt ending consisting of Lenard’s assertion that much of Einstein’s theory must be recognized as “untrustworthy [ovederhäftig].”
The report takes little notice of what the nominators and others found valuable in Einstein’s work. While he wrote his report, the full extent of the extremist political and racist background to much of the German anti-Einstein movement may not have been clear. Still, Weyland and Lenard’s letters coupled with the fact that Lenard and Gehrcke had long been highly critical of relativity were clear indicators of the evolving situation in Germany. Moreover, he met officially and privately in June 1920 with Einstein-supporters, Planck and von Laue, as well as with the ultranationalist relativity-opponent Stark, when they all attended the Nobel ceremony.
With his deep concern for German science, it is inconceivable that Arrhenius did not discuss current events with them. He enjoyed especially good relations with both Planck and Stark, the latter had recently arranged an honorary doctorate from Greifswald University in which he emphasized nordic Arrhenius’s role in helping German science and the common racial, religious, cultural, and political heritage of their nations.
It remains puzzling why Arrhenius included this literature in his report and why, when he shortly thereafter must have understood the unsavory political and racial views expressed by many of the major German opponents of relativity, he remained silent. What Arrhenius actually thought of Einstein and relativity is difficult to pin down. His extensive correspondence reveals no particular interest in relativity; he was not a passionate opponent as were several others on the Nobel committee. Still, Arrhenius might well have been surprised and dismayed by Einstein’s response to his letter of sympathy and solidarity sent to many German scientists in the aftermath of defeat in November 1918. Einstein expressed glee over the end of the Kaiser’s Empire and declared himself to be a democrat and republican, who was deeply concerned with issues of human rights. Neither Arrhenius nor his many close relationships in German science were democrats or republicans.
1921: Bias and arrogance
By 1921, Einstein’s status in the physics community was consolidated. As part of this process, he had received comparatively broad international public support from Nobel Prize nominators. Some, such as [the Dutch physicist, H. A.] Lorentz and Planck, portrayed Einstein’s status as being that of a scientific giant, the likes of which has not been seen since Newton. Both theoretical and experimental physicists proposed Einstein for the Nobel, especially for his work on relativity. Some claimed that it would be difficult to consider other candidates without first seeing Einstein recognized. Einstein’s mandate overshadowed all other candidates.
Gullstrand took it upon himself to write a detailed report on Einstein’s relativity and gravitational theories. Gullstrand, a brilliant contributor to physiological and geometric optics, defined himself as both ophthalmologist and physicist. He is largely remembered for his path-breaking instrumental innovations for studying the eye and his complex analyses of the eye as an optical system. He received the 1911 Nobel Prize in medicine.
Gullstrand’s extraordinary talents were accompanied by stubbornness and arrogance. For over 25 years, he refused to admit error after concluding that the retinal macula, responsible for color vision, was devoid of yellow coloring. Similarly, he rejected advice to abandon his personal cumbersome and confusing form of mathematical analysis when more expedient, and more readily comprehensible forms, became available. Like Arrhenius, his command of recent theoretical physics was limited.
Gullstrand’s unusually long, 50-page evaluative report appears at first glance to be comprehensive and to engage with details of Einstein’s work. Closer inspection shows an internal logic based on the premise that Einstein cannot be right.
By 1921, the political and racial aspects of the German anti-Einstein campaign was well known, yet Gullstrand explicitly stated that he accepts the content and conclusion of Arrhenius’ 1920 evaluation. Gullstrand aimed at defusing those aspects of Einstein’s theory that called for “an overhaul of the commonsense foundations of mechanics.”
According to Gullstrand that which remained once Einstein’s errors and unproven assertions were eliminated could best be treated successfully by classical mechanics. He refers to literature written by Einstein’s supporters as being subjective, delivering unsound and insufficiently proven claims from a “cult of believers.” “Belief” rather than evidence-based scientific reasoning recurs several times in Gullstrand’s discussions of those who accept Einstein’s theories. No similar criticisms are directed toward Einstein’s opponents.
Gullstrand does not explicitly refer to Gehrcke’s arguments related to Einstein’s treatment of the Mercury perihelion anomaly; no doubt because he presented his own critique and explanation. The British eclipse data, according to Gullstrand, are useless. Even if the minute bending of starlight actually received confirmation, that would not constitute proof of Einstein’s 4D space-time.
He based that conclusion on a little-known Norwegian-language, semipopular scientific article by meteorologist and aether-physicist Vilhelm Bjerknes. Gullstrand refers extensively to Bjerknes’ effort to account for the deflection using classical physics. In the end, Gullstrand asserts that Einstein’s theories are devoid of any real content and have no relationship with physical reality; they lacked “the significance for physics for which an awarding with a Nobel Prize can come into question.”
The committee accepted Gullstrand’s evaluation and recommended to the Academy that because no candidate was deemed worthy, the prize for 1921 should be reserved until 1922. No member of the Nobel committee accepted the British data as valid evidence
As usual, the minutes of the full Academy’s Nobel meeting record only the result of the vote, and little more. Still, a number of archival sources provide some insight into the event. The Academy’s discussion revealed gaps in Gullstrand’s command of physics and, in an emotional outburst, also his prejudice. Indeed, in spite of devoting almost a year aiming to prove Einstein wrong, his efforts to master the mathematical and theoretical details proved insufficient.
While working on his report, Gullstrand occasionally had discussed his objections to Einstein’s theories with [theoretical physicist Carl Wilhelm] Oseen, who tended to respond very quickly by pointing out Gullstrand’s misunderstandings. Oseen told the younger theoretical physicist, Oskar Klein, about these tribulations while noting that Gullstrand was hindering a prize for Einstein. Oseen confessed to Arnold Sommerfeld that it was a misfortune Gullstrand had to evaluate theoretical work that he did not understand.
A rebellion that year in the Academy against the committee was unlikely. Many if not most members of the Academy were staunchly conservative politically and scientifically. Equally important, the Academy’s culture of deference to authority meant that voting against Gullstrand’s conclusions would constitute a grave insult, especially when he, one of Sweden’s most accomplished scientists, was so adamantly opposed to Einstein.
It mattered little that leading international physicists had praised Einstein as the greatest living representative of their discipline and had declared his accomplishments in relativity theory to be among the most significant in the history of science. Local “expertise” had spoken; the Academy guarded its own authority and its own right to assess and judge.
For 1922, Einstein again dominated the nominations. Bohr also received strong support. Gullstrand supplemented his report. He rejected suggestions of bringing in a foreign expert to assist with the evaluation. Privately he declared that Einstein must never receive a Nobel Prize. He continued to adhere to Gehrcke’s argument that mass suggestion created the popular mania over relativity.
Gullstrand agreed that new discoveries will soon reveal Einstein’s hoax; the enormous interest in relativity will then rapidly “evaporate [fördunsta].” Again, Gullstrand ignored the nominators’ enthusiastic declarations and extraordinary praise. From his perspective, even scientists can succumb to mass suggestion.
As in 1921, Gullstrand declared that Einstein’s theories lack the significance for physics needed to be considered for a Nobel Prize. The committee accepted this judgement without any formal dissent.
1922: Enter a master of strategy
In addition to Einstein’s contributions to relativity and gravitation theory, some nominators had also been praising his many other seminal contributions as warranting a prize. These included his work with quantum theory, especially through his theories of the photoelectric effect and of specific heat of solids; others mentioned his work related to Brownian motion and kinetic theory. In both 1921 and 1922, one lone nominator, Oseen, specified Einstein’s discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. He chose his words with care.
The law of the photoelectric effect emerged in connection with Einstein’s 1905 paper “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” where he suggested that light behaves at times as discrete, individual particles. Few physicists at first accepted Einstein’s claim for a corpuscular nature of light. A number of scientists gradually provided experimental data that tended to confirm the law.
When the committee met early in 1922 to assign reports, it accepted the need for greater expertise in theoretical physics. It petitioned the Academy in May to coopt Oseen for the committee as an ad hoc member. Once on the committee in June, he insisted on maintaining a clear demarcation between his own nomination of the discovery of the law and those that specified the theory of the photoelectric effect. Oseen wanted Einstein to receive a prize, but not for relativity; equally significant, he strongly supported awarding a prize to Bohr.
Oseen had long supported Bohr’s professional development and admired his quantum theory of the atom and its unexpected successes as something of great beauty. The Nobel committee had been dismissing Bohr’s candidacy on the basis that his quantum theory of the atom was in conflict with physical reality. Oseen understood the need for caution. He long despaired over the Academy and committee physicists’ lack of understanding of, and antagonism toward quantum theory. Now, with a brilliant strategic plan, Oseen recognized how he could overcome committee resistance to both Einstein and Bohr.
Oseen understood that he not only needed to be wary of the general lack of sympathy for quantum theory among Academy physicists, but he also had to overcome past committee evaluations. In particular, in 1921 Arrhenius wrote a short report for the committee on the theory of the photoelectric effect. He argued that regardless of Einstein’s genius-like insights, quantum theory was largely developed by others. Moreover, he concluded that it would seem odd to recognize Einstein for this considerably “less significant” accomplishment than for relativity and other work, such as related to Brownian motion. He recommended rejecting Oseen’s initial 1921 nomination for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
With Arrhenius’s prior assessment in mind and wanting to defuse potential opposition, Oseen closed his evaluation with a discussion on the relative significance of Einstein’s many accomplishments. Rejecting any universal hierarchy of importance, he suggests that each type of researcher considers its own preferred Einstein achievement as the most significant. He then provides a list, so that, for example, theoretical physicists might be drawn to Einstein’s contributions to quantum theory; mathematical physicists and epistemologists would be most attracted to the general theory of relativity. And for “the measuring physicist” —the type of physical scientist most represented and admired in the Academy—no work of Einstein’s can compete in significance with the discovery of a new fundamental law of nature, the law of the photoelectric effect.
Oseen then wrote an evaluation of Bohr’s quantum model of the atom. By emphasizing the very close bond between Einstein’s empirically proven fundamental law of nature and Bohr’s theory, Oseen overcame the committee’s earlier charges of speculative theory in conflict with the established laws of physics. Oseen convinced his colleagues in the committee to accept his proposals for the two physics prizes to be awarded in 1922.
When the Academy took up the committee recommendations, dissent emerged over the official motivation for Einstein’s prize. According to Mittag-Leffler’s diary entry, a long discussion ensued over competing suggestions for the wording. Finally, a proposal from conservative Former Prime-Minister, Hjalmar Hammarsköld “won”: relativity was not to be mentioned. This would indicate that further criticism of Gullstrand’s evaluation must have emerged. Mittag-Leffler, for one, wished to include both relativity and the discovery of the law in the official motivation for the prize. He disapproved as “a dangerous precedent” the vague general phrase relating to Einstein’s contributions to theoretical physics.
After the vote, the Academy made it clear that relativity should not be mentioned on the Nobel diploma or in any other official documentation.
Historigraphical Remarks
At the Nobel ceremony in December 1922, a tendency began of clouding the record of how the committee and Academy processed Einstein’s strongly supported candidacy (Einstein, who was away in Japan, did not attend). Of course, the statutes required secrecy, yet when Arrhenius delivered introductory comments about Einstein’s prize, he felt compelled to explain why the ever-so-prominent theory of relativity was not being recognized.
Although such ceremonial presentations are normally dubious sources for the history of discovery and of committee’s actions, Arrhenius’s presentation is especially problematic. He presented a misleading narrative. He explained the omission of relativity as it “… pertains essentially to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher [Henri] Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly.”
The message here being that relativity belongs to philosophy and not physics. Regardless, if special and general relativity were at best philosophical exercises, why then did so many prominent physicists nominate Einstein for a Nobel physics prize for his work on relativity? Why, for example, did the Italians award their Medaglia Matteucci physics prize in 1921 to Einstein for relativity?
Arrhenius’s comments subsequently stimulated research and speculation on the role of Swedish philosophers’ attitudes to relativity and their relevance for the outcome in the Academy. Einstein’s differences with Bergson have even been declared to be the reason why relativity was denied a prize. Although Swedish philosophers debated relativity, no evidence exists that they had any influence on committee evaluations or Academy decisions.
In August 1981, the first detailed analysis of the Einstein prize, including the preliminary recognition of the critical roles of Gullstrand and Oseen, was presented at a Nobel Symposium and in Nature. An alternative and less controversial narrative was written the following year by Einstein biographer, Abraham Pais with the help of the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physics, Bengt Nagel. This work is the origin of the mistaken claim that Einstein received a prize for the theory of the photoelectric effect as well as the simplified notion that Gullstrand merely made an unfortunate mistake in his evaluation as the reason for the lack of recognition of relativity.
While this certified — indeed let’s call it what it is — sanitized version of history is certainly the more pleasant, there is very little that we, as a scientific community, can learn from a simple “mistake”. The development of general relativity is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 20th century. The fact that the community’s most prestigious scientific award never recognized this achievement is at best an anomaly and at worst a scandal.
When the time is taken to properly interrogate the deeply flawed process that led to relativity being snubbed, we can see the toxic effect of contemporary politics and bigotry on the science of the day. Whether or not a scientific advancement is worthy of recognition by the scientific establishment should have nothing to do with the race, gender, religion, social background, or the politics of the scientists involved.
These events occurred in the not-too-distant past. While much progress has been made in recent decades within academia to try eradicating bigotry and prejudice from science, we must accept that such pernicious influences can again creep into the community. It is incumbent on scientists to regard history as more than an opportunity for celebration. Only by embracing the full texture of science past and by remembering and understanding what took place not so long ago, can we protect against new incursions of ideas that are antithetical to the ideals we hold for science.
This article was originally published in Annalen der Physik’s ongoing “Then and now” series, which is dedicated to the history of physics. The article has been modified for this website version.
Access the full article here: Robert Marc Friedman, The 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s Nobel Prize: Facts and Fiction, Annalen der Physik (2022). DOI: 10.1002/andp.202200305
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 44
|
https://www.toppr.com/ask/question/for-his-work-on-which-of-the-following-did-albert-einstein-receive-a-nobel-prize/
|
en
|
For his work on which of the following did Albert Einstein receive a Nobel prize?Black body radiationEther detectionPhotoelectric effectSpecial relativityGeneral relativity
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Toppr"
] |
2020-01-09T00:00:00
|
Click here:point_up_2:to get an answer to your question :writing_hand:for his work on which of the following did albert einstein receive a nobel prize
|
en
|
/ask/images/favicon.ico
|
Toppr Ask
| null |
Question
For his work on which of the following did Albert Einstein receive a Nobel prize?
Black body radiation
Ether detection
Photoelectric effect
Special relativity
General relativity
A
Special relativity
B
General relativity
C
Photoelectric effect
D
Black body radiation
E
Ether detection
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 11
|
https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/world-award-of-science/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein World Award of Science
|
http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Albert-Einstein-Medal-0983R-crop.jpg
|
http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Albert-Einstein-Medal-0983R-crop.jpg
|
[
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/WCC-logo-gold.svg",
"http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/medalla-alberteinstein.png",
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Einstein_1921_portrait-crop.jpg",
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Albert-Einstein-Medal-0983R-crop-1024x683.jpg",
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/medalla-alberteinstein.png",
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/WCC-award-book.png",
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/world-map-1-scaled-1-1024x570.jpg",
"https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/WCC-logo-gold.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2022-01-02T12:00:18+00:00
|
Winners of the Albert Einstein World Award of Science are elected by renowned scientists. Diploma, medal and cheque are awarded.
|
en
|
World Cultural Council
|
https://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/world-award-of-science/
|
In this century, the work of Albert Einstein is the most representative example of the search for the fundamental scientific laws of nature.
He was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14th, 1879. In 1916, he published “The General Theory of Relativity” which advanced twenty years time in contemporary scientific work in the area of theoretical physics. Among his most important contributions to humanity are, besides the above mentioned theory: “The Theory of Brownian Movement”, “The Inertia Principle of Energy”, “The Quantum Law in the Emission and Absorption of Light” and “The Theory of the Specific Heat of Solid Bodies”.
In 1921 he was granted the Nobel Prize in Physics for his Photoelectric Law.
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 9
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/biographical/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Biographical
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-12923-content-portrait-mobile-tiny.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/biographical/
|
Albert Einstein
Biographical
Questions and Answers on Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor’s degree.
During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.
After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.
At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.
In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.
In the 1920s, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.
After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.
Einstein’s researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.
Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920’s he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East, and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.
Einstein’s gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
* Albert Einstein was formally associated with the Institute for Advanced Study located in Princeton, New Jersey.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1922
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 49
|
https://www.quantamagazine.org/pioneering-quantum-physicists-win-nobel-prize-in-physics-20221004/
|
en
|
Quanta Magazine
|
[
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/10/Physics_Nobel_2880x1620_Lede-scaled.webp",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2021/11/CW_1.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Article.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Mobile.webp",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2021/11/CW_1.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Article.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Mobile.webp",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/10/Nobel_Medicine_Paabo_2880x1220_HP-scaled.webp"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"civil conversation. Abusive",
"self-promotional"
] |
2022-10-04T09:58:00+00:00
|
Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments with entangled particles.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Quanta Magazine
|
https://www.quantamagazine.org/pioneering-quantum-physicists-win-nobel-prize-in-physics-20221004/
|
The physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments that proved the profoundly strange quantum nature of reality. Their experiments collectively established the existence of a bizarre quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, where two widely separated particles appear to share information despite having no conceivable way of communicating.
Entanglement lay at the heart of a fiery clash in the 1930s between physics titans Albert Einstein on the one hand and Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger on the other about how the universe operates at a fundamental level. Einstein believed all aspects of reality should have a concrete and fully knowable existence. All objects — from the moon to a photon of light — should have precisely defined properties that can be discovered through measurement. Bohr, Schrödinger and other proponents of the nascent quantum mechanics, however, were finding that reality appeared to be fundamentally uncertain; a particle does not possess certain properties until the moment of measurement.
Entanglement emerged as a decisive way to distinguish between these two possible versions of reality. The physicist John Bell proposed a decisive thought experiment that was later realized in various experimental forms by Aspect and Clauser. The work proved Schrödinger right. Quantum mechanics was the operating system of the universe.
“I would not call entanglement ‘one,’ but rather ‘the’ trait of quantum mechanics,” Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel committee, quoted Schrödinger as writing in 1935. He observed, “The experiments performed by Clauser and Aspect opened the eyes of the physics community to the depth of Schrödinger’s statement, and provided tools for creating and manipulating and measuring states of particles that are entangled although they are far way.”
In addition to its paradigm-shattering philosophical implications, entanglement is now poised to power an emerging wave of quantum technologies. Zeilinger has been at the forefront of the field, developing techniques that use entanglement to achieve astounding feats of quantum networking, teleportation and cryptography.
“Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field. It has broad potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing, and sensing technology,” said Eva Olsson, another member of the committee. “Its predictions have opened doors to another world, and it has also shaken the very foundations of how we interpret measurements.”
What is quantum entanglement?
Two particles are entangled when together they form one quantum system, regardless of the distance between them.
To understand this kind of quantum connection, consider two electrons. Electrons have a quantum property called spin, which, when measured, can take one of two values, referred to as “up” or “down.” Measuring the spin of each electron is like tossing a coin: It will randomly come out up or down.
Now imagine that two physicists, Alain and John, each receive a series of coins in the mail. As each pair of coins arrives, the physicists flip them at the same time. Alain might get the sequence heads, tails, tails, heads, tails. And John might get heads, heads, tails, tails, tails. The outcome of Alain’s and John’s coin tosses will have nothing to do with each other.
But if they repeat this experiment with a series of entangled electrons instead of coins, they’ll get a strange result: Each time Alain measures an electron that’s spin-up, John will find that his corresponding half of the electron pair comes out spin-down, and vice versa. The two acts of measurement are connected, almost as if flipping one coin could send out a signal that instantaneously ensured the proper outcome of its distant partner at the precise moment of measurement.
It was Einstein, along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, who first described quantum entanglement in a now-infamous 1935 paper. The phenomenon, the effects of which Einstein disparagingly dubbed “spooky action at a distance,” was an unavoidable consequence of the nascent theory of quantum mechanics. Einstein suspected that entanglement would prove the death knell of quantum mechanics because it seemed to fly in the face of a central tenet of relativity — that no information could travel faster than the speed of light. No measurement of one electron should be able to instantly influence a measurement in some distant place.
Instead, their paper would lay the foundation for a complete rethinking of reality and a radical new field of research.
How do you measure entanglement?
By the 1930s, it was clear that Bohr, Schrödinger and the other quantum pioneers were onto something; the theory described experiments with atoms and subatomic particles more accurately than any other theory. The debate was how far one could trust it.
Einstein, for instance, held out hope that the bizarre theory was just a steppingstone on the way to a more complete picture that would philosophically align with classical physics. He suspected that two entangled electrons took on opposing spins because some “hidden variable” caused their spins to point in opposite directions in the first place. In other words, what looked like a random measurement outcome in quantum mechanics was actually the result of some as yet unappreciated deterministic description that created an illusory connection between the particles.
In 1964, John Stewart Bell proposed an experiment that could settle the debate. The details are rather involved, but the general idea was for two physicists to measure the spins of entangled particles along different axes: not just up and down but sometimes, randomly, left and right or in other directions. If Einstein was right, and the particles secretly had predetermined spins all along, then the act of switching the axis of measurement should have no effect on the outcome. Bell calculated that if the universe was truly quantum mechanical, and entanglement was as spooky as it seemed, the axis-switching would lead to correlated spin measurements more often than would be possible in classical theories like relativity.
“John Bell translated the philosophical debate into science and provided testable predictions that launched experimental work,” said Olsson.
Who performed Bell’s experiment?
John Clauser, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, and Stuart Freedman, a graduate student, were the first to take Bell’s experiment from the page into the lab. Clauser realized that the experiment would be more feasible if it involved not spinning electrons but polarized photons — particles of light. Like the spin direction of an electron, the polarization of a photon can take on one of two values relative to the orientation of a filter. Polarized sunglasses, for example, block photons that are polarized one way and let in photons polarized in the other manner.
Initially, physicists including Richard Feynman discouraged Clauser from pursuing the experiment, arguing that quantum mechanics needed no further experimental proof. But Bell personally encouraged Clauser to see the research through, and in 1972 Clauser and Freedman succeeded in realizing Bell’s experiment. They generated pairs of entangled photons and used lenses to measure their polarization directions. Unsure what he would find, Clauser had placed a $2 bet that his experiment would prove Einstein right. To his surprise, his results vindicated Bell’s prediction over Einstein’s. The photons’ states appeared correlated in a way that precluded any hidden-variable theory. Clauser’s lost bet was a huge victory for quantum mechanics.
“I was very sad to see that my own experiment had proven Einstein wrong,” he said years later in an interview.
But Clauser’s evidence still wasn’t ironclad. His experiment used fixed orientations of the lenses, allowing for a loophole: If a hidden variable that coordinates the photons’ polarizations somehow depends on the experimental positioning of the lenses, Einstein could yet be right.
Enter Alain Aspect. He carried out a series of increasingly stringent Bell tests in Paris, culminating in a devilishly sophisticated experiment in 1982. In that test, the orientation of the lenses would randomly change during the billionths of a second that the photons spent flying from the emitter to the lens. In this way, the initial lens configuration was erased and could have no influence on any secret process setting the polarization at the moment of their emission. Once more, the experiment found in favor of Bell and quantum mechanics.
Only the slimmest of loopholes remained. Could a secret and nonrandom process that was somehow set in motion at the beginning of the experiment determine how the lenses would update? Anton Zeilinger’s research at the University of Vienna further narrowed this remaining sliver of doubt. In a 2017 experiment, he led a team that used the colors of photons emitted from distant stars hundreds of years ago to determine the settings of the experiment. If some cosmic conspiracy was creating the illusion of entanglement, it would have had to begin centuries before the births of the experimenters.
Some physicists still float theories that maintain Einstein’s dream. Superdeterminism, for instance, holds that every detail of the universe’s fate, down to the spin and polarization of every last particle, was completely fixed at the Big Bang — before the stars (or Zeilinger’s cosmic Bell test) formed.
But most researchers take the work of Bell, Clauser, Aspect, Zeilinger and their teams at face value. Entanglement is what it seems: The pair of particles is one unified system. For each individual particle, properties like spin and polarization really are undefined until the moment of measurement. In other words, reality has no fixed and predetermined state until you measure it. It’s a dramatic conclusion that most researchers accept but still struggle to fully grasp.
“The very fundamental question — what does this really mean in a basic way? — is unanswered, and is an avenue for new research,” said Zeilinger.
What is entanglement good for?
In the nearly 90 years since Einstein tried to kill quantum mechanics by highlighting the absurdity of entanglement, the phenomenon has become much more than fodder for philosophical debates. It’s one of the main engines driving the booming field of quantum information science.
“Physicists are now starting to understand that entanglement and Bell pairs [are] a quantum resource that you can use to achieve amazing new things,” said Hansson.
Zeilinger is one of the central figures leading the effort to work technological miracles with entanglement. In 1997, he and his colleagues were the first to pull off a feat known as quantum teleportation, which uses a precise protocol of measurements on entangled particles to transfer the polarization direction of one particle over to another without the researchers ever learning the polarization direction that was transported. The technique may come to play a crucial role in quantum computing. “It is not like in the Star Trek films or whatever, transporting something — certainly not a person — over some distance,” Zeilinger said by phone during the Nobel announcement. “The point is, using entanglement, you can transfer all the information that is carried by an object over to another place, where the object is, so to speak, reconstituted.”
Zeilinger also developed a procedure called entanglement swapping, involving the emission of two entangled Bell pairs, for a total of four particles. When you perform a particular measurement on two of the particles that are not entangled, the remaining two become entangled with each other. Swapping entanglement from particle to particle in this way could help link nodes in a quantum communication network. In a landmark 1998 publication, Zeilinger and his collaborators demonstrated the ability to swap entanglement between photons that had never been in contact with each other.
In recent years, such technologies have left the lab and entered the real world. Jian-Wei Pan, a former student of Zeilinger’s, heads up a Chinese group that launched a satellite named Micius in 2016. Micius beamed pairs of photons to labs in China that were separated by more than 1,000 kilometers. The group’s measurements proved that entanglement had survived the journey. Pan’s group later worked with Zeilinger’s group in Austria to distribute pairs of entangled particles across the Eurasian continent. This long-distance entanglement distributed a secret message, a so-called quantum key, which gets destroyed by any attempt to intercept the information. The demonstration paves the way for essentially unbreakable cryptography, which will be guaranteed by the thoroughly tested fundamentals of quantum mechanics.
Who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in recent years?
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 50
|
https://www.sothebys.com/buy/7fab421a-16d9-4d44-80e9-1baf76295fa6/lots/d2be7063-0162-448f-8675-68dcdd08d23e
|
en
|
1954 Albert Einstein Award Medal, Awarded To Richard Feynman For His Work In Theoretical Physics
|
https://sothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0ec9c82/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1001+0+0/resize/1024x513!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsothebys-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fmedia-desk%2F0c%2Fa1%2F78188e4343149e217eaa58e16396%2F097n10691-bwdsr-01-combined.jpg
|
https://sothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0ec9c82/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1001+0+0/resize/1024x513!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsothebys-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fmedia-desk%2F0c%2Fa1%2F78188e4343149e217eaa58e16396%2F097n10691-bwdsr-01-combined.jpg
|
[
"https://dam.sothebys.com/dam/image/lot/d2be7063-0162-448f-8675-68dcdd08d23e/primary/extra_small",
"https://sothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f6c5cef/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1001+0+0/resize/385x193!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsothebys-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fmedia-desk%2F0c%2Fa1%2F78188e4343149e217eaa58e16396%2F097n10691-bwdsr-01-combined.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
<p>Property From The Family Of Richard P. Feynman</p><p>Feynman, Richard P.</p><p><em>1954 ALBERT EINSTEIN AWARD MEDAL, AWARDED TO RICHARD FEYNMAN FOR HIS WO
|
en
|
/favicon-16x16.png
|
Sotheby's
|
https://www.sothebys.com/buy/7fab421a-16d9-4d44-80e9-1baf76295fa6/lots/d2be7063-0162-448f-8675-68dcdd08d23e
|
Property From The Family Of Richard P. Feynman
Feynman, Richard P.
1954 ALBERT EINSTEIN AWARD MEDAL, AWARDED TO RICHARD FEYNMAN FOR HIS WORK IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS
1954 Albert Einstein Award Medal, struck in 10 carat gold, designed by sculptor Gilroy Roberts (ninth Chief Engraver of the US Mint, and designer of the Kennedy Half Dollar) and struck by the Medallic Art Company (producers of the Pulitzer Prize, the Peabody Award, the Newberry and Caldecott medals, and the Inaugural medals for 11 US Presidents). Obverse with bust of Albert Einstein left, encircled at edge by, THE ALBERT EINSTEIN AWARD. Central tablet on reverse incused with, AWARDED TO / RICHARD P. FEYNMAN / FOR / ACHIEVEMENT / IN THE / NATURAL SCIENCES, below, incuse IN MEMORIAM / LEWIS AND ROSA / STRAUSS, tablet framed by laurels, and topped with oil lamp; the edge marked MEDALLIC ART CO. N.Y. 10K; weight 201 g.; diameter: 76 mm (3 in.). Housed in the original black pebbled morocco case, "Metallic Art Co. NY" in gilt to underside, interior lined with navy blue satin and velvet.
TOGETHER WITH: 1960 Albert Einstein Commemorative Award medal, struck in bronze by the Medallic Art Company, obverse with bust of Albert Einstein right, encircled at edge by, ALBERT EINSTEIN COMMEMORATIVE AWARD. Central tablet on reverse incused with, IN SCIENCE / RICHARD PHILLIPS FEYNMAN/ above FOR ACHIEVEMENT/ below, incuse AWARDED BY / YESHIVA UNIVERSITY/ IN BEHALF OF THE/ ALBERT EINSTEIN/ COLLEGE OF MEDICINE/, tablet framed by laurels, and with arms of Yeshiva University; the edge marked MEDALLIC ART CO. N.Y. Bronze. Housed in the original velvet-lined leather case.
THE 1954 ALBERT EINSTEIN AWARD MEDAL AWARDED TO RICHARD FEYNMAN — AN AWARD FAR MORE EXCLUSIVE THAN THE NOBEL, PRESENTED TO AMERICA'S GREATEST PHYSICIST AND ONE OF THE MOST BELOVED SCIENTISTS OF ALL TIME
“I don’t like honors. I appreciate it for the work that I did and I know that there’s a lot of physicists who use my work. I don’t need anything else… I’ve already got the prize: the prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out…” (Sykes, No Ordinary Genius, p. 82).
The Albert Einstein Award is an extremely prestigious award in the field of theoretical physics, considered by those in the field to be the equivalent to a Nobel Prize. While the Nobel is perhaps a more famous prize, the list of awardees for the Albert Einstein Award is far most exclusive; the Nobel prize in Physics has been awarded 114 times to 216 laureates, while the Albert Einstein Award has only ever been presented 13 times. The list of awardees is a who's-who of some of the greatest minds of the 20th century including Kurt Gödel and Julian Schwinger (1951), Edward Teller (1958), John Wheeler (1965), and Stephen Hawking (1978).
The award was established by Lewis L. Strauss, one of the first five commissioners of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and the driving force behind the controversial Oppenheimer Security Hearings, which resulted in Oppenheimer’s security clearance being revoked. As a result, Strauss has often been looked upon as a bit of a villain, especially amongst those, like Richard Feynman, who worked with and admired Oppenheimer.
As Gleick recounts in his excellent biography of Feynman, Genius, this was the first major award to be bestowed upon Feynman, and he was only the third recipient (The first award, given in 1951 was shared by the brilliant mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel, and Julian Schwinger, with whom Feynman in turn shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga). The award was publicly announced by Oppenheimer, who was at the time director of the Institute for Advanced Study, and under whom Feynman had worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project. Feynman was apparently happy when he first learned he had been awarded the prize. He famously exclaimed “Hot dog!” when Strauss called to inform him, and wrote his mother about it, "'I thought you would be happy that I beat Schwinger out at last, but it turns out he got the thing 3 years ago. Of course, he only got 1/2 a medal, so I guess you'll be happy. You always compare me to Schwinger." (Gleick, pp 378-79)
When Feynman realized that the Strauss who called to inform him was the same Strauss behind Oppenheimer’s demise, he became reluctant to accept the award. It was fellow physicist (and winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in physics) Isidore Rabi, who convinced Feynman to accept, saying “You should never turn a man’s generosity as a sword against him.” (Gleick, p. 296) Feynman had felt a certain ambivalence against awards ever since he was a child, and this would continue throughout his life; he was famously annoyed at having won the Nobel, and had to be convinced by his wife Gwyneth to accept.
After Lewis L. Strauss’ death in 1974, the officers of the Lewis & Rose Strauss Memorial Fund decided to stop offering the award. In 1977 however, the work of an English theoretical physicist came to the attention of the officers, and so Lewis H. Strauss wrote Feynman to seek his opinion on the matter: “…We have taken note of the work of Dr. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University who appears to have made major theoretical strides in the areas where Einstein labored so long. Do you think that Hawking’s work is of sufficient importance to justify the Einstein award?... Is there anyone else whose name comes to your mind as more worthy?” Feynman sent his response a week later, agreeing that Hawking’s work was deserving of the Einstein Award, and Hawking become the award’s final recipient in 1978. (Michelle Feynman, ed. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track. The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. pp 313-14.)
|
||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 30
|
https://www.toppr.com/ask/question/einstein-got-his-nobel-prize-for/
|
en
|
Einstein got his Nobel Prize Explanation of Photoelectric effectHis theory of relativityHis theory of atomic heats of solidsNone of the above
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Toppr"
] |
2020-01-09T00:00:00
|
Click here:point_up_2:to get an answer to your question :writing_hand:einstein got his nobel prize for
|
en
|
/ask/images/favicon.ico
|
Toppr Ask
| null |
Question
Einstein got his Nobel Prize for
Explanation of Photoelectric effect
His theory of relativity
His theory of atomic heats of solids
None of the above
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 93
|
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_einstein.html
|
en
|
The Physics of the Universe
|
[
"https://cdn.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/banner.gif",
"https://cdn.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/title_scientists.gif",
"https://cdn.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/scientists_einstein.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"scientist",
"physicist",
"astrophysicist",
"theoretical physicist",
"Albert Einstein",
"Einstein",
"special relativity",
"general relativity",
"General Theory of Relativity",
"Special Theory of Relativity",
"mass-energy equivalence",
"E = mc2",
"Nobel Prize in Physics",
"theoretical physics",
"photoelectric effect",
"cosmological constant",
"quantum theory",
"quantum mechanics",
"atomic bomb"
] | null |
[] | null |
The Physics of the Universe - Important Scientists - Albert Einstein
|
en
|
https://cdn.physicsoftheuniverse.com/static/favicon.ico
| null |
ALBERT EINSTEIN
(1879 - 1955)
<< Back to List of Important Scientists
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist, best known for his Special and General Theory of Relativity and the concept of mass-energy equivalence expressed by the famous equation, EÂ =Â mc2. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 âfor his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effectâ and he made some essential contributions to the early development of quantum theory. He was named "Person of the Century" by Time magazine in 1999, the fourth most admired person of the 20th Century according to a 1999 Gallup poll, and âthe greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all timeâ according to âThe 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in Historyâ in 1978.
Albert Einstein was born into a non-practising Jewish family in Ulm in the Kingdom of Württemberg, Germany on 14 March 1879. He was always a little different from other children: his head was slightly larger than normal, and he hardly spoke as a young boy, leading one housekeeper to consider him "retarded". At an early age, his family moved to Munich where Einstein attended a Catholic school and showed an early aptitude for mathematics, particularly geometry and calculus (although he disliked the school's policy of strict memorization, which he thought unhelpful). Outside of school, he explored his own path of learning in mathematics and philosophy with a medical student and friend of the family, Max Talmud.
At 15, after his fatherâs electrical equipment business failed, he followed his family to Pavia, Italy (not wishing to stay and finish his schooling in Germany), and then on to Aarau, Switzerland, where he finally finished high school. At the age of just 16, he had already made his first conceptual breakthrough while looking at a mirror and wondering what he would see if he were traveling at the speed of light (a thought experiment sometimes referred to as "Einstein's Mirror"). In 1896, he renounced his German citizenship in order to avoid military service, and went to study mathematics and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, graduating in 1900. He gained Swiss citizenship in 1901 and never revoked it.
Unable to find a teaching post after graduation, Einstein eventually obtained a job evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices at the Swiss patent office in Bern. He married a Serb woman named Mileva Maric in 1903, and the couple were to bear two sons, Hans Albert (1904) and Eduard (1910), (and possibly another child, Lieserl, before their marriage, who either died in childhood or was put up for adoption), before divorcing in 1919.
In 1905, sometimes referred to as his âannus mirabilisâ (wonderful year), and while he was still working in the patent office, the young 26 year old Einstein completed his PhD (with a thesis on "A new determination of molecular dimensions") and had no less than four important papers published in the âAnnalen der Physikâ, the leading German physics journal:
a paper on the particulate nature of light, in which he explained the âphotoelectric effectâ and certain other experimental results by proposing that light interacts with matter as discrete âpacketsâ or quanta of energy, rather than as a wave (an idea first suggested by Max Planck as a purely mathematical manipulation).
a paper explaining Brownian motion (the seemingly random movement of particles suspended in a fluid) as direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory (that all matter is made up of tiny atoms and molecules).
a paper, which has become known as the Special Theory of Relativity, on the electrodynamics of moving bodies, which showed that the speed of light is independent of the observer's state of motion, and introduced the idea that the space-time frame of a moving body could slow down and contract in the direction of motion relative to the frame of the observer.
a paper on mass-energy equivalence, in which he deduced the famous equation EÂ =Â mc2 from his special relativity equations, suggesting that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy (which presaged the later development of nuclear power).
Much of this work was highly controversial (or just ignored) within the scientific community of the time, and he continued his work at the patent office until 1908. But he had earned his PhD from the University of Zürich in 1905, and he was eventually able to obtain a privatdozent position at the University of Bern in 1908, followed by brief teaching posts at the University of Zürich and the University of Prague in 1911.
During this time he continued to publish papers, but it was only on moving back to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich in 1912 that he began working in earnest on a generalization of his theory of relativity. He benefitted from the mathematical assistance of his old friend Marcel Grossman, who was one of the only people in Zurich with whom Einstein could discuss his new ideas. He moved on to Berlin in 1914 (at the personal request of Max Planck), where he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, a director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, as well as maintaining an ongoing relationship with Leiden University in the Netherlands (through his contacts there with the physicists Hendrik Lorentz and Willem de Sitter). He became actively involved in anti-war demonstrations during World War I, publicly advocating civil disobedience and the refusal of conscription.
Einstein gave a series of lectures in 1915 about his new theory, which was to become known as the General Theory of Relativity, including a new equation to replace Newton's law of gravity, now known as Einstein's field equation. The complete theory was finally published in 1916, although physicists and mathematicians like Karl Schwarzschild and Ludwig Flamm were starting to publish solutions to his field equations even before its publication. General relativity is based on the notion that gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable (the principle of equivalence) and describes gravity as a property of the geometry (or, more specifically, the warpage) of space-time, leading to the prediction of phenomena like the bending of light, black holes and wormholes.
A year later, Einstein published a paper introducing a new notion into his General Theory of Relativity, a sort of anti-gravity force which he called the âcosmological constantâ that kept the universe from collapsing in on itself, in an attempt to model the behavior of the entire universe, while retaining his firm belief in a Newtonian infinite, static model of the universe. He later called this idea his âgreatest blunderâ although, in the light of recent discoveries about the accelerating universe and dark energy, it is beginning to look remarkably prescient.
He divorced Mileva Maric in 1919, having lived apart for the last five years, and within months of the divorce, married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal (who had nursed him through an illness) and together they raised Margot and Ilse, Elsa's daughters from her first marriage.
Despite the attempts by many scientists to disprove the General Theory of Relativity, the British astronomer Arthur Eddington claimed in 1919 to have confirmed Einstein's prediction of the gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun, leading, almost overnight, to global renown and international media attention for Einstein. His fellow scientists began to speak of general relativity in terms such as "probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made" and "the greatest feat of human thinking about nature". He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, âfor his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effectâ (i.e. not for his theory of relativity).
Einstein spent the next few years traveling extensively, giving lectures around the world. Throughout the 1920s, he engaged in an extended public debate with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg over the inherently probabilistic âCopenhagen interpretationâ of quantum mechanics, with which he was never quite happy from a philosophical stand-point, claiming in 1926 that âI, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] does not throw dice". He tried to develop thought experiments whereby Heisenberg's uncertainty principle might be violated but, each time, Bohr found loopholes in Einstein's reasoning.
During the First World War, Einstein had campaigned vigorously against the war, supporting various anti-War and pacifist organizations. He remained a staunch pacifist even after the end of the War, and was highly critical of nationalism and committed to the idea of a single world government free of a military. Throughout the 1920s, he continued to participate in numerous peace campaigns and wrote articles on international peace and disarmament. He was also was drawn to the Zionist cause during the 1920s, despite its nationalistic character.
His physics research after general relativity consisted primarily of a long series of (largely unsuccessful) attempts to generalize his theory of gravitation still further in order to unify and simplify the fundamental laws of physics, particularly gravitation and electromagnetism. He was desparate to come up with a unified field theory, a "theory of everything" that would refute the claims of quantum theory, which he never came to terms with. He went so far as to publish a paper in 1929, which purported to be just such a theory, and which attracted huge media attention, but he was forced to admit to errors and back-tracked rapidly, losing credibility and accepting public humiliation in the process.
He became increasingly isolated in his research, pursuing his own lonely track while largely ignoring other developments in physics and particularly in quantum theory. He did pursue a few collaborations, most notably with the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, the Austrian Erwin Schrödinger and his Hungarian former student Leó Szilárd, and later in the 1930s with the Russian physicist Boris Podolsky and the Israeli physicist Nathan Rosen. But his his distrust of quantum theory and his inconclusive search for the elusive "theory of everything" was to consume him until the day he died.
In the early 1930s, Einstein took to spending his winters at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and was also a guest lecturer at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. When, in 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and promptly passed the "Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service" removing Jews and politically suspect government employees (including university professors) from their jobs, the Einsteins prudently moved to the U.S.A., buying a house in Princeton. The Nazis froze his German bank account and seized his home, and Einstein remained in the United States for the rest of his life, becoming a citizen in 1940 (although he also retained his Swiss citizenship). Over time, he became so well known in his adopted America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory".
His wife Elsa died in 1936, and his personal secretary, Helen Dukas, cared for him thereafter, as his health became increasingly precarious. During the 1930s and into World War II, Einstein wrote a huge number of affidavits recommending U.S. visas for European Jews who were trying to flee persecution. The âDeutsche Physikâ movement in Nazi Germany published pamphlets and even textbooks denigrating Einstein, and blacklisting any instructors who taught his theories (including Nobel laureates Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg).
With the Nazi rise to power in Germany, Einstein decided to rethink his rigid pacifist stance. Many scientists in the U.S.A., especially refugees from European anti-Semitism, recognized the danger of German scientists developing an atomic bomb during World War II, based on the newly discovered phenomenon of nuclear fission, to which Einsteinâs own theoretical work had contributed to some extent. In 1939, Einstein signed a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, penned by the Hungarian émigré and physicist Leó Szilárd, urging American development of such a weapon, and this letter is considered instrumental in Rooseveltâs subsequent authorization of secret research into the harnessing of nuclear fission for military purposes (which developed into the Manhattan Project and ultimately resulted in the nuclear weapons used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Although Einstein himself did not play a direct role in the development of the atomic bomb, he later expressed regret about signing the letter to Roosevelt, and urged that all nuclear weapons be transferred into the control of the United Nations. In the later Cold War years, Einstein lobbied, along with Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, to stop all nuclear testing and future bombs.
In politics, he was a socialist Zionist who supported the creation of a Jewish national homeland in the British mandate of Palestine, and he raised money for Zionist organizations and was in part responsible for the 1933 formation of the International Rescue Committee. In 1952, he was even invited to be Israel's second president, but he declined, claiming that he had âneither the natural ability nor the experience to deal with human beingsâ. In a 1949 article entitled "Why Socialism?", Einstein described a chaotic capitalist society as the "predatory phase of human developmentâ and as a source of evil to be overcome. He was a member of several civil rights groups, and was sympathetic to the notion of vegetarianism, adopting a strict vegetarian diet later in life.
Although many religious groups have claimed that Einstein worshipped a Judeo-Christian God, he himself was quite clear on the matter, repeatedly professing himself to be a humanist and an agnostic (although not an atheist), with no belief in a personal God, which he called a âchildlikeâ faith. The family practised no formal religion in their home and Einstein did not want his children to receive any form of religious instruction. He did, however, admit to professing a belief in âSpinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankindâ, and he often expressed a continuing awe at the harmony and order of nature and the universe.
Einstein began to suffer from ill health in 1950, and eventually died of an aortic aneurysm on 18 April 1955 in Princeton Hospital in New Jersey at the age of 76, having continued to work, both on physics and on his civil rights and political concerns, until the day he died, his search for a "theory of everything" still unrealized.
Albert Einstein Books
See the additional sources and recommended reading list below, or check the physics books page for a full list. Whenever possible, I linked to books with my amazon affiliate code, and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Purchasing from these links helps to keep the website running, and I am grateful for your support!
Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson (Author)
The World As I See It
by Albert Einstein (Author)
Relativity : the Special and General Theory: Original Version
by Albert Einstein (Author)
Ideas And Opinions
by Albert Einstein (Author)
The Principle of Relativity
by Albert Einstein (Author)
Essays in Humanism
by Albert Einstein (Author)
The Meaning of Relativity
by Albert Einstein (Author)
Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
by Albert Einstein (Author), George Bernard Shaw (Author)
The Theory of Relativity: And Other Essays
by Albert Einstein (Author)
A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein
by Stephen Hawking (Editor)
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 67
|
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-2017-nobel-prize
|
en
|
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Founders
|
[
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/ligo_signals-1638717264243aca66a201c1f0d50559.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/pages/images/91/page_wide/generic.2.png?1582060698",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_caltech-dffffad68d75521d67f82d4d77917573.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_mit-1089305c79c9fb3f86d3c36e6246efe5.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_nsf-b095d1e913dd555437f6682a15d70afb.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_lsc-f75e18cb88af4537a57f048612242fd5.png",
"https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/assets/logos/footer_virgo-2668a383d8713db7632150294c630ea7.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics -- press release
|
/assets/favicon/apple-icon-57x57-78f4f4b87ac8ed844b6956a7674c7917.png
|
LIGO Lab | Caltech
|
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-2017-nobel-prize
|
Caltech Press Release | MIT Press Release
Caltech Press Release
Caltech Scientists Awarded 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three key players in the development and ultimate success of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Caltech's Barry C. Barish, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus; and the other half was awarded to MIT's Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus.
On September 14, 2015, the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years earlier. The public announcement took place on February 11, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Each of the twin LIGO observatories—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—picked up the feeble signal of gravitational waves generated 1.3 billion years ago when two black holes spiraled together and collided. Two additional detections of gravitational waves, once again from merging black-hole pairs, were made on December 26, 2015, and January 4, 2017, and, on August 14, 2017, a fourth event was detected by LIGO and the European Virgo gravitational-wave detector.
The detections ushered in a new era of gravitational-wave astronomy. LIGO and Virgo provided astronomers with an entirely new set of tools with which to probe the cosmos. Previously, all astronomy observations have relied on light—which includes X-rays, radio waves, and other types of electromagnetic radiation emanating from objects in space—or on very-high-energy particles called neutrinos and cosmic rays. Now, astronomers can learn about cosmic objects through the quivers they make in space and time.
The Nobel Prize recognizes Weiss, Barish, and Thorne for their "decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves."
"I am delighted and honored to congratulate Kip and Barry, as well as Rai Weiss of MIT, on the award this morning of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics," says Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "The first direct observation of gravitational waves by LIGO is an extraordinary demonstration of scientific vision and persistence. Through four decades of development of exquisitely sensitive instrumentation—pushing the capacity of our imaginations—we are now able to glimpse cosmic processes that were previously undetectable. It is truly the start of a new era in astrophysics."
Thorne received the call from the Nobel committee this morning at 2:15 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
"The prize rightfully belongs to the hundreds of LIGO scientists and engineers who built and perfected our complex gravitational-wave interferometers, and the hundreds of LIGO and Virgo scientists who found the gravitational-wave signals in LIGO's noisy data and extracted the waves' information," Thorne says. "It is unfortunate that, due to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the prize has to go to no more than three people, when our marvelous discovery is the work of more than a thousand."
Barish received the call from the Nobel committee this morning at 2:45 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
"I am humbled and honored to receive this award," says Barish. "The detection of gravitational waves is truly a triumph of modern large-scale experimental physics. Over several decades, our teams at Caltech and MIT developed LIGO into the incredibly sensitive device that made the discovery. When the signal reached LIGO from a collision of two stellar black holes that occurred 1.3 billion years ago, the 1,000-scientist-strong LIGO Scientific Collaboration was able to both identify the candidate event within minutes and perform the detailed analysis that convincingly demonstrated that gravitational waves exist."
An Idea That Began Decades Ago
Einstein predicted in 1916 that gravitational waves would exist, but thought them too weak to ever be detected. By the 1960s, technological advances such as the laser and new insights into possible astrophysics sources made it conceivable that Einstein was wrong and that gravitational waves might actually be detectable.
The first person to build a gravitational-wave detector was Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland. Weber's detectors, built in the 1960s, used large aluminum cylinders, or bars, that would be driven to vibrate by passing gravitational waves. Other researchers elsewhere, including the late Ronald W. P. Drever at the University of Glasgow in Scotland—later a professor of physics at Caltech—soon followed Weber's lead.
When those experiments proved unsuccessful, the focus of the field began shifting to a different type of detector called a gravitational-wave interferometer, invented independently by Weiss at MIT and, in rudimentary form, by several others. In this instrument, gravitational waves stretch and squeeze space by an infinitesimal amount while widely separated mirrors hanging by wires "ride" the oscillations, moving apart and together ever so slightly. This mirror motion is measured with laser light using a technique called interferometry.
In the late 1960s, Weiss began laying conceptual foundations for these interferometers. In parallel, Thorne, along with his students and postdocs at Caltech, worked to improve the theory of gravitational waves, and estimated the details, strengths, and frequencies of the waves that would be produced by objects in our universe such as black holes, neutron stars, and supernovas.
In 1972, Thorne, with his student Bill Press (MS '71, PhD '73), published the first of many articles that would appear over the next three decades, summarizing what was known about the gravitational-wave sources and formulating a vision for gravitational-wave astronomy.
"LIGO would not exist without Kip's vision for the scientific potential of gravitational waves and his amazing gift for sharing that vision with other scientists," says Stan Whitcomb (BS '73), the chief scientist for the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech, who began working on the project in 1980.
Also in 1972, Weiss published a detailed analysis of his interferometers. He identified all of the major obstacles that could prevent the instruments from detecting gravitational waves, such as vibrations of the earth and of the mirrors, and he invented techniques to deal with each obstacle. At this stage, it became evident that large interferometers, several kilometers or more in size, might possibly prove successful—as, indeed, they ultimately did with LIGO and its 4-kilometer-long arms. Also evident was the fact that perfecting the interferometers would be exceedingly difficult: a passing gravitational wave would induce mirror motions 1,000 times smaller than a proton, and these infinitesimal changes would have to be measured. That's 100 million times smaller than an atom, and a trillion times smaller than the wavelength of the light being used in the measurement.
Triggered by Weiss's work, Drever's research group in Glasgow switched from bars to interferometers, as did a research group in Garching, Germany, led by Heinz Billing. By 1975, there were three prototype interferometers under development at MIT, Glasgow, and Garching.
A Fateful Hotel Room Discussion
At first Thorne was skeptical of Weiss's interferometer idea. "I even wrote, in a textbook, that it was not very promising," he says. But that changed when Thorne studied, in depth, Weiss's 1972 analysis. Thorne came to call it a "tour de force" and a "blueprint for the future."
In 1975, Weiss invited Thorne to speak at a NASA committee meeting in Washington, D.C., about cosmology and gravitation experiments in space. Hotel rooms that summer were fully booked, so the two shared a room, where they stayed up all night talking. Thorne came away so excited by the experimental prospects that he went home and proposed creating an experimental gravity group at Caltech to work on interferometers in parallel with MIT, Glasgow, and Garching. Caltech then brought Drever on board in 1979 to lead the new experimental effort, because, as Thorne says, they knew his inventiveness would prove crucial to LIGO's success. Soon thereafter, in 1980, Caltech hired a young Chicago astrophysicist, Whitcomb, to assist in the leadership.
"What a pleasure it was to have this brilliant, budding experimental group working alongside my theory group at Caltech," says Thorne. "Those were heady days."
Together, Drever and Whitcomb led the design and construction of a 40-meter interferometer at Caltech—a prototype to test and perfect the ideas of Weiss, Drever, and others, including the teams at Glasgow and Garching.
Meanwhile, Thorne and his theory students—in collaboration with the late Vladimir Braginsky of Moscow State University, a regular Caltech visitor over three decades—were analyzing various sources of noise that the big interferometers would face, especially "quantum noise," or random fluctuations of the mirrors' positions predicted by quantum theory. They were coming up with ways to deal with those fluctuations.
In 1984, all of this parallel work came together. Caltech and MIT, with encouragement from the NSF, formed a collaboration to design and build LIGO. Rochus E. (Robbie) Vogt, Caltech's R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of Physics, Emeritus, was recruited in 1987 as LIGO's first director. Vogt led the merging of the Caltech and MIT experimental groups; the early planning for LIGO; the writing of a proposal to NSF to fund the project; and the education of Congress about this high-risk project with a potentially exceedingly high payoff. In 1992, Congress allocated the first major funding. "NSF and Congress have backed LIGO unwaveringly ever since," says Thorne.
Scaling up LIGO
Building LIGO was a tremendous challenge—logistically and technically. To meet this challenge, Caltech and MIT later recruited, as LIGO's second director, Barry Barish, who at that time had been the leader of several very large high-energy physics projects. Barish developed the first high-energy neutrino beam experiment at Fermilab near Chicago and was one of the leaders of a large international collaboration that performed a search for magnetic monopoles—magnetic analogs of single electric charges that, if found, would help confirm the Grand Unified Theory that seeks to unify the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. The experiment, called MACRO (Monopole, Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Observatory), did not find magnetic monopoles but set the most stringent limits on their existence. Barish then led the design of one of the two detectors planned for another big science project, the Superconducting Super Collider—a particle accelerator to be built in Waxahachie, Texas. The accelerator was canceled during construction in 1993, after which Barish took on the challenge of LIGO, becoming its principal investigator in 1994, and then its director in 1997.
"I always wanted to be an experimental physicist and was attracted to the idea of using continuing advances in technology to carry out fundamental science experiments that could not be done otherwise," says Barish. "LIGO is a prime example of what couldn't be done before. Although it was a very large-scale project, the challenges were very different from the way we build a bridge or carry out other large engineering projects. For LIGO, the challenge was and is how to develop and design advanced instrumentation on a large scale, even as the project evolves."
"Barish, in my opinion, is the most brilliant leader of large science projects that physics has ever seen," says Thorne.
Barish ushered LIGO through its final design stages and secured funding through NSF's National Science Board. He oversaw construction of the two LIGO facilities from 1994 to 1999, and then the installation and commissioning of the initial LIGO interferometers from 1999 to 2005. The scaling up from Caltech's 40-meter prototype to LIGO's 4-kilometer interferometers was such a huge undertaking that it was carried out in two steps. First, the team built initial interferometers, which operated from 2002 to 2010, at a sensitivity that Barish characterized as being at a level where detections were "possible." This first step demonstrated the observatory's basic concepts and solved many technical obstacles. The development and approval of the next phase of LIGO, called Advanced LIGO, was also led by Barish and then-LIGO Laboratory deputy director Gary Sanders, and was designed to be sensitive to a level at which detections were "probable." Advanced LIGO was commissioned and built between 2010 and 2015. Though Barish left LIGO in 2006 to become director of the Global Design Effort for the International Linear Collider, he would rejoin the LIGO team in 2012, in time for the project's historic discovery in 2015. After Barish left, LIGO was led by Jay Marx of Caltech, followed by current executive director, Caltech's David H. Reitze.
"LIGO had to make the change from tabletop science to a real science facility," says Whitcomb. "Barry understood what was needed, and he guided that transformation without ever losing sight of the scientific goals."
Under Barish's leadership, several key technologies were developed that ultimately led to the detection of gravitational waves. For the first phase of LIGO, now referred to as Initial LIGO, he chose to use solid-state lasers rather than the gas lasers that were more commonly in use at that time. These solid-state lasers were the basis of more powerful versions developed for Advanced LIGO. He also oversaw the development of technologies for reducing unwanted movements in LIGO's mirrors, caused by earthquakes, passing trucks, and other ground vibrations.
"In the initial phase of LIGO, in order to isolate the detectors from the earth's motion, we used a suspension system that consisted of test-mass mirrors hung by piano wire and used a multiple-stage set of passive shock absorbers, similar to those in your car. We knew this probably would not be good enough to detect gravitational waves, so we, in the LIGO Laboratory, developed an ambitious program for Advanced LIGO that incorporated a new suspension system to stabilize the mirrors and an active seismic isolation system to sense and correct for ground motions," says Barish.
The active seismic isolation system developed for Advanced LIGO works in a similar fashion to noise-canceling headphones, except it can measure and cancel out ground vibrations coming from many directions. In conjunction with this system, a new "quieter" way to suspend LIGO's mirrors was developed with the help of the Glasgow group, which involved hanging the mirrors with a four-stage pendulum. The combination of these two advances gave LIGO a huge improvement in sensitivity to lower frequencies of gravitational waves, which was ultimately what was needed to detect the crashing of two black holes.
Barish also created the LIGO of today: a collaboration of approximately 1,200 scientists and engineers at about 100 institutions in 19 nations called the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC).
"In addition to picking the right technologies and developing them, and securing funding, we needed to build a collaboration of the absolute best people possible for this almost impossible project," says Barish. "Forming an international collaboration, the LSC, enabled this. We attracted the best people from other universities and countries, creating an 'equal opportunity' collaboration, where there was no advantage to being at Caltech or MIT." The LSC conducted the scientific searches and analysis that led to the LIGO discovery.
While this experimental work was taking place, theorists outside Caltech, MIT, and the LIGO project were developing computer codes to simulate the massive collisions of black holes and other sources of gravitational waves that LIGO might detect. These simulations are essential to LIGO; by comparing the shapes of the waves that LIGO observes with the simulations' predicted wave shapes, LIGO scientists can figure out what produces the observed waves. In the early 2000s, Thorne became alarmed at the slow progress on simulations and so with then-Caltech physicist Lee Lindblom, he created a research group at Caltech in collaboration with a group at Cornell University led by his former student Saul Teukolsky (PhD '74), who is now jointly the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech and Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics and Astrophysics at Cornell University. By 2015, this SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) project was simulating the collisions of black holes with ease, as were several other research groups.
On September 14, 2015, just after the Advanced LIGO interferometers began their first search for gravitational waves, they captured a strong signal. Comparison with the SXS simulations revealed that the signal was from the collision of two hefty black holes 29 and 36 times more massive than the sun and located 1.3 billion light-years from Earth. The waves carried away as much energy as would be produced by annihilating three suns. After intense scrutiny of the results, the LIGO scientists announced this discovery to the world on February 11, 2016.
"I'm positively delighted that the Nobel Committee has recognized the LIGO discovery and its profound impact on the way we view the cosmos," says Reitze. "This prize rewards not just Kip, Barry, and Rai but also the large number of very smart and dedicated scientists and engineers who worked tirelessly over the past decades to make LIGO a reality."
"LIGO was a huge technical and scientific gamble," says Fiona Harrison, the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair in Caltech's Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. "But it paid off in spades with one of the most dramatic discoveries in decades. The entire LIGO team should be celebrating today."
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics represents the 37th and 38th Nobel Prizes awarded to Caltech faculty and alumni. Current Caltech faculty with Nobel Prizes include: Robert Grubbs, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Yves Chauvin and Richard R. Schrock; David Politzer, recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics with David J. Gross and Frank Wilczek; Rudy Marcus, sole winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; and David Baltimore, winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Renato Dulbecco and Howard M. Temin.
In 2016, Drever, Thorne, and Weiss won the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize, and the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. In 2017, Barish, Thorne, and Weiss won the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research and the European Physical Society's Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize.
Barish was born on January 27, 1936, in Omaha, Nebraska, and spent his childhood in Los Angeles. He received his BA in physics in 1957 and his PhD in experimental particle physics in 1962, both from UC Berkeley. In 1963, he joined Caltech as a research fellow. He became an assistant professor in 1966, an associate professor in 1969, and a professor of physics in 1972. He was named the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics in 1991 and Linde Professor, Emeritus, in 2005. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society, the latter of which he served as president. In 2002, he received the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers and, in 2016, he received the Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society. He won the Henry Draper Medal in 2017 with Whitcomb. For a full biography, click here.
Thorne was born on June 1, 1940, in Logan, Utah. He received a bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech in 1962 and a PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1965. He joined Caltech as a research fellow in 1966, and joined the faculty in 1967 as an associate professor of theoretical physics. In 1970, he became a professor of theoretical physics. In 1991, he was named the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics. He retired in 2009. Thorne has coauthored or authored several books, including Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, published in 1994. He served as an executive producer and science adviser for the 2014 film Interstellar. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. On October 11, 2017, Thorne will publish the textbook Modern Classical Physics, coauthored with Roger Blandford. For a full biography, click here.
More information about LIGO's many partners is online here.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Local:
Deborah Williams-Hedges
Senior Media Relations Manager
626-395-3227 office
626-840-1565 cell
debwms@caltech.edu
Other:
Whitney Clavin
Senior Content and Media Strategist
626-395-1856 office
wclavin@caltech.edu
Emily Velasco
Science Writer
626-395-6487 office
626-536-6915 cell
evelasco@caltech.edu
MIT Press Release
CONTACT: Kimberly Allen, MIT News Office
allenkc@mit.edu; 617.253.2702 or 617.852.6094 (mobile)
MIT Media Relations
expertrequests@mit.edu; 617-253-1682
MIT Physicist Rainer Weiss Shares Nobel Prize in Physics
Rainer Weiss ’55, PhD ’62, professor emeritus of physics at MIT, has won the Nobel Prize in physics for 2017. Weiss wins half the prize, sharing the other half of the award with Kip S. Thorne, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at Caltech, and Barry C. Barish, professor emeritus of physics at Caltech.
The Nobel Foundation, in its announcement this morning, cited the physicists "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
“We are immensely proud of Rai Weiss, and we also offer admiring best wishes to his chief collaborators and the entire LIGO team,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “The creativity and rigor of the LIGO experiment constitute a scientific triumph; we are profoundly inspired by the decades of ingenuity, optimism, and perseverance that made it possible. It is especially sweet that Rai Weiss not only served on the MIT faculty for 37 years, but is also an MIT graduate. Today’s announcement reminds us, on a grand scale, of the value and power of fundamental scientific research and why it deserves society’s collective support.”
Listening for a wobble
On Sept. 14, 2015, at approximately 5:51 a.m. EDT, a gravitational wave — a ripple from a distant part of the universe — passed through the Earth, generating an almost imperceptible, fleeting wobble in the world that would have gone completely unnoticed save for two massive, identical instruments, designed to listen for such cosmic distortions.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, consists of two L-shaped interferometers, each 4 kilometers in length, separated by 1,865 miles. On Sept. 14, 2015, scientists picked up a very faint wobble in the instruments and soon confirmed that the interferometers had been infinitesimally stretched — by just one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton — and that this miniscule distortion arose from a passing gravitational wave.
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, with the Caltech-MIT LIGO Laboratory and more than 1,000 scientists at universities and observatories around the world, confirmed the signal as the first direct detection of a gravitational wave by an instrument on Earth. The scientists further decoded the signal to determine that the gravitational wave was the product of a violent collision between two massive black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
The momentous result confirmed the theory of general relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, who almost exactly 100 years earlier had predicted the existence of gravitational waves but assumed that they would be virtually impossible to detect from Earth. Since this first discovery, LIGO has detected three other gravitational wave signals, also generated by pairs of spiraling, colliding black holes; the most announced of a detection came just last week.
“We are incredibly proud of Rai and his colleagues for their vision and courage that led to this great achievement,” says Michael Sipser, the Donner Professor of Mathematics and dean of the School of Science at MIT. “It is a wonderful day for them, for MIT, for risk-taking and boldness, and for all of science.”
A gravitational blueprint
The detection was an especially long-awaited payoff for Weiss, who came up with the initial design for LIGO some 50 years ago. He has since been instrumental in shaping and championing the idea as it developed from a desktop prototype to LIGO’s final, observatory-scale form.
In 1967, Weiss, then an assistant professor of physics at MIT, was asked by his department to teach an introductory course in general relativity — a subject he knew little about. A few years earlier, the American physicist Joseph Weber had claimed to have made the first detection of gravitational waves, using resonant bars — long, aluminum cylinders that should ring at a certain frequency in response to a gravitational wave. When his students asked him to explain how these Weber bars worked, Weiss found that he couldn't.
No one in the scientific community had been able to replicate Weber’s results. Weiss had a very different idea for how to do it, and assigned the problem to his students, instructing them to design the simplest experiment they could to detect a gravitational wave. Weiss himself came up with a design: Build an L-shaped interferometer and shine a light down the length of each arm, at the end of which hangs a free-floating mirror. The lasers should bounce off the mirrors and head back along each arm, arriving where they started at the exact same time. If a gravitational wave passes through, it should “stretch” or displace the mirrors ever so slightly, and thus change the lasers’ arrival times.
Weiss refined the idea over a summer in MIT’s historic Building 20, a wooden structure built during World War II to develop radar technology. The building, meant to be temporary and known to many as the “Plywood Palace,” lived on to germinate and support innovative, high-risk projects. During that time, Weiss came to the conclusion that his design could indeed detect gravitational waves, if built to large enough dimensions. His design would serve as the essential blueprint for LIGO.
An observatory takes shape
To test his idea, Weiss initially built a 1.5-meter prototype. But to truly detect a gravitational wave, the instrument would have to be several thousand times longer: The longer the interferometer’s arms, the more sensitive its optics are to minute displacements.
To realize this audacious design, Weiss teamed up in 1976 with noted physicist Kip Thorne, who, based in part on conversations with Weiss, soon started a gravitational wave experiment group at Caltech. The two formed a collaboration between MIT and Caltech, and in 1979, Scottish physicist Ronald Drever, then of Glasgow University, joined the effort at Caltech. The three scientists — who became the co-founders of LIGO — worked to refine the dimensions and scientific requirements for an instrument sensitive enough to detect a gravitational wave.
Barry Barish soon joined the team as first a principal investigator, then director of the project, and was instrumental in securing funding for the audacious project, and bringing the detectors to completion.
After years of fits and starts in research and funding, the project finally received significant and enthusiastic backing from the National Science Foundation, and in the mid-1990s, LIGO broke ground, erecting its first interferometer in Hanford, Washington, and its second in Livingston, Louisiana.
Prior to making their seminal detection two years ago, LIGO’s detectors required years of fine-tuning to improve their sensitivity. During this time, Weiss not only advised on scientific quandaries but also stepped in to root out problems in the detectors themselves. Weiss is among the few to have walked the length of the interferometers’ tunnels in the space between LIGO’s laser beam tube and its encasement. Inspecting the detectors in this way, Weiss would often discover minute cracks, tiny shards of glass, and even infestations of wasps, mice, and black widow spiders, which he would promptly deal with.
A cosmic path
Weiss was born in 1932 in tumultuous Berlin. When his mother, Gertrude Loesner, was pregnant with Weiss, his father, neurologist Frederick Weiss, was abducted by the Nazis for testifying against a Nazi doctor. He was eventually released with the help of Loesner’s family. The young family fled to Prague and then emigrated to New York City, where Weiss grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, cultivating a love for classical music and electronics, and making a hobby of repairing radios.
After graduating high school, he went to MIT to study electrical engineering, in hopes of finding a way to quiet the hiss heard in shellac records. He later switched to physics, but then dropped out of school in his junior year, only to return shortly after, taking a job as a technician in Building 20. There, Weiss met physicist Jerrold Zacharias, who is credited with developing the first atomic clock. Zacharias encouraged and supported Weiss in finishing his undergraduate degree in 1955 and his PhD in 1962.
Weiss spent some time at Princeton University as a postdoc, where he developed experiments to test gravity, before returning to MIT as an assistant professor in 1964. In the midst of his work in gravitational wave detection, Weiss also investigated and became a leading researcher in cosmic microwave background radiation — thermal radiation, found in the microwave band of the radio spectrum, that is thought to be a diffuse afterglow from the Big Bang.
In 1976, Weiss was appointed to oversee a scientific working group for NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which launched in 1989 and went on to precisely measure microwave radiation and its tiny, quantum fluctuations. Weiss was co-founder and chair of the science working group for the mission, whose measurements helped support the Big Bang theory of the universe. COBE’s findings earned two of its principal investigators the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006.
Weiss has received numerous awards and honors, including the Medaille de l’ADION, the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology, and the 2007 Einstein Prize of the American Physical Society. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Physical Society, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, Weiss received a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, and the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, all shared with Drever and Thorne. Most recently, Weiss shared the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research with Thorne, Barry Barish of Caltech, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
RELATED LINKS
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics
Rainer Weiss
Video: LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves
LIGO
Advanced LIGO Instrument
MIT LIGO
ARCHIVED MIT NEWS
Scientists make first detection of gravitational waves
Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 88
|
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/einstein
|
en
|
Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/portrait/public/einstein.jpeg?itok=mXUGRcM6",
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/related_teaser_small/public/images/featured-thumbnails/ideas/EB-225_Einstein-Eclipse_Hi-res.png?itok=gLUBA_XJ",
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/related_teaser_small/public/images/featured-thumbnails/ideas/web-Einstein-high-res.jpg?itok=Kb18hktb",
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/related_teaser_small/public/media-assets/cameron-higres.png?itok=6nWNMV-V"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2019-12-09T16:45:06-05:00
|
en
|
/themes/custom/veblen/images/favicons/favicon.ico
|
Institute for Advanced Study
|
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/einstein
|
Physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was one of the Institute’s first Faculty members, serving from 1933 until his death in 1955, and he played a significant part in its early development.
Einstein came to the United States to take up his appointment at the Institute at the invitation of Abraham Flexner, the Institute’s founding Director. During his time as an Institute Faculty member, Einstein pursued the goal of a unified field theory, and did so at a time when the goal of unifying the four fundamental forces of nature—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—had been set aside by the majority of working physicists. In recent years, this has again become a central goal of physicists and string theory has become the favored candidate to provide a framework for a unified understanding of the basic laws of the physical universe.
Nobel Laureate, Physics Prize, 1921
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 32
|
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
|
en
|
Albert Einstein | Biography, Education, Discoveries, & Facts
|
[
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-004-CFE09F17/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/87/21087-004-DCB2DAA6/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/80/222280-138-41E211F6/Your-Daily-Equation-01-E-mc2.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/78/142178-004-DD1DBD92/Albert-Einstein-portrait-Doris-Ulmann-1931.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/62/79862-004-49EADD56/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/58/245058-138-A0C6ED7D/J-Robert-Oppenheimer-atomic-bomb.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/89/142189-004-E859D3FB/Albert-Einstein-Phillip-Forman-certificate-citizenship-American-Oct-1-1940.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/61/79861-004-64BBE3D1/Albert-Einstein-birthday-children-home-United-Service.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/25/186825-138-4F923114/indeterminacy-element-interpretation-quantum-mechanics-objections-Niels.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/77/142177-004-4F78FF68/Albert-Einstein-1947.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/232632-131-A2DB4925/King-Speech-at-Sproul-Plaza-in-Berkeley.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/35/142335-131-4742621E/molecule-Model-Atom-Biology-entertainment-Molecular-Structure-2010.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/88/144788-131-ADACA20E/Michael-Faraday-John-Frederic-Daniell.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/01/115001-131-7278E518/Enrico-Fermi-Italian-problem-physics-1950.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/77/142177-131-D37928A6/Albert-Einstein-1947.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-131-93B65AAF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/62/79862-131-71A1D30E/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/178832-131-78DC370C/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-131-93B65AAF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/59/23359-131-42CFFC3D/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/44/195044-131-92574FF7/Lemmings-Really-Commit-Mass-Suicide-illustration.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/93/173193-131-3EE3B458/Nelson-Mandela.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/22/232222-050-C7D008B3/Hand-ballot-box-vote-election.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/45/189145-131-45FF672E/Secret-Service-Agent-Earpiece.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/85/203585-131-D4FEE60A/Solar-Eclipse-Flare-Astronomy-Outer-Space.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/58/156058-131-22083D0A/Adolf-Hitler.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/43/193443-131-17ABE1C9/Union-Jack-flag-Great-Britain-united-kingdom.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-050-86D8CBBF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=400&h=300&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/232632-131-A2DB4925/King-Speech-at-Sproul-Plaza-in-Berkeley.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Albert Einstein",
"encyclopedia",
"encyclopeadia",
"britannica",
"article"
] | null |
[
"Michio Kaku"
] |
1998-07-20T00:00:00+00:00
|
Albert Einstein, the brilliant physicist and Nobel laureate, revolutionized our understanding of the universe with his theory of relativity and became a symbol of genius that continues to inspire minds worldwide.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
|
Childhood and education
Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally a featherbed salesman and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. He had one sister, Maria (who went by the name Maja), born two years after Albert.
Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred little geometry book.”
Britannica Quiz
Who Said It? Famous Quotes Quiz
Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything.
Yet another important influence on Einstein was a young medical student, Max Talmud (later Max Talmey), who often had dinner at the Einstein home. Talmud became an informal tutor, introducing Einstein to higher mathematics and philosophy. A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein was 16 years old. Talmud had earlier introduced him to a children’s science series by Aaron Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher (1867–68; Popular Books on Physical Science), in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”).
Einstein’s education was disrupted by his father’s repeated failures at business. In 1894, after his company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich, Hermann Einstein moved to Milan to work with a relative. Einstein was left at a boardinghouse in Munich and expected to finish his education. Alone, miserable, and repelled by the looming prospect of military duty when he turned 16, Einstein ran away six months later and landed on the doorstep of his surprised parents. His parents realized the enormous problems that he faced as a school dropout and draft dodger with no employable skills. His prospects did not look promising.
Fortunately, Einstein could apply directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (“Swiss Federal Polytechnic School”; in 1911, following expansion in 1909 to full university status, it was renamed the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or “Swiss Federal Institute of Technology”) in Zürich without the equivalent of a high school diploma if he passed its stiff entrance examinations. His marks showed that he excelled in mathematics and physics, but he failed at French, chemistry, and biology. Because of his exceptional math scores, he was allowed into the polytechnic on the condition that he first finish his formal schooling. He went to a special high school run by Jost Winteler in Aarau, Switzerland, and graduated in 1896. He also renounced his German citizenship at that time. (He was stateless until 1901, when he was granted Swiss citizenship.) He became lifelong friends with the Winteler family, with whom he had been boarding. (Winteler’s daughter, Marie, was Einstein’s first love; Einstein’s sister, Maja, would eventually marry Winteler’s son Paul; and his close friend Michele Besso would marry their eldest daughter, Anna.)
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 71
|
https://www.mpg.de/nobel-prize
|
en
|
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
|
[
"https://www.mpg.de/21030151/original-1698909886.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODQ4LCJmaWxlX2V4dGVuc2lvbiI6ImpwZyIsIm9ial9pZCI6MjEwMzAxNTF9--c1ae1aaa1eb21814aef7327bbc13c0254438e8b4",
"https://www.mpg.de/21030151/original-1698909886.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MjQ2LCJvYmpfaWQiOjIxMDMwMTUxfQ%3D%3D--a2a12390dd976890d30d1b1613e38a3c3d3a09fb",
"https://www.mpg.de/20919722/original-1716996845.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMDkxOTcyMn0%3D--9b3843ff337dd9795b770458ed8d3bc781f663f3",
"https://www.mpg.de/19318022/original-1700812441.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxOTMxODAyMn0%3D--e6e5ca495e9360382a4277ca3131bad84f64e873",
"https://www.mpg.de/17662172/original-1700812532.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY2MjE3Mn0%3D--504120aa421e13937899e02e3152b1e8960ac7d7",
"https://www.mpg.de/17658447/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY1ODQ0N30%3D--39a6deb767ec3e7bdd39f9ff0960989a810648b9",
"https://www.mpg.de/17096369/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NjM2OX0%3D--97a25f85633603071fbfce70de37636b27f361cc",
"https://www.mpg.de/17096582/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NjU4Mn0%3D--a698465cbf5af3088bc326fdd7c6c1c198af3b00",
"https://www.mpg.de/17096861/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5Njg2MX0%3D--715d5d3e0e89b15597efa116f4bcccf1637709f2",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097107/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NzEwN30%3D--5acff2d8bf8ecca2d52b5b0ead74e52af1bd3473",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097229/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NzIyOX0%3D--904ad93408d3ef8120dd95915f0ff95e19eb2809",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097346/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NzM0Nn0%3D--1458f2b23170f0de3aec9c223dcfaa968a152cb9",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097474/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NzQ3NH0%3D--31167366471f25656bd80061766d9842b01bcf53",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097595/original-1639576278.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5NzU5NX0%3D--6836bfd7a59f8dfd7781eb4d7c11219e5520aedd",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097778/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5Nzc3OH0%3D--af41b193be3997547e2899eb84c6e638c533c26e",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097882/original-1641901033.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5Nzg4Mn0%3D--ec0e5448d4122fc414b6f2ccf29eb09b4adc115c",
"https://www.mpg.de/17097999/original-1641901033.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5Nzk5OX0%3D--73c7cf756d55b52042dec12025df85183b38be9a",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098075/original-1700813594.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODA3NX0%3D--502788d91c1f72a74b63f4e2154cb34028b2fe87",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098239/original-1700827295.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODIzOX0%3D--70f44507070e5cc8fa6d132068f0a0f04ecc40fa",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098364/original-1700827295.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODM2NH0%3D--5aa9c76cba1a3fb8e1598c89acfa87624fbc9520",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098655/original-1700827295.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODY1NX0%3D--7996b01e9acc3f27876be6024d3b35d6c32fe7e6",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098743/original-1700827295.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODc0M30%3D--9af8a69202f4bbd56dae4f9cd40bd3f6164c65e1",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098835/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODgzNX0%3D--5675683c90b367e943c684b85fb029055002be46",
"https://www.mpg.de/17098998/original-1700828876.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5ODk5OH0%3D--0c8202223da732cae2f0e886d40b7b0c39bba500",
"https://www.mpg.de/17099118/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzA5OTExOH0%3D--63b88bf92dda94d9f812e7c6225fe08eaa01ae2b",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699099/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTA5OX0%3D--efe82f71286a69e2fe6e5cd115384f17c43b896e",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699112/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTExMn0%3D--73ba88591e424192bce4cd361a34f60efe6537c8",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699125/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTEyNX0%3D--9d76987c03330dc81ff58177cfb3085f81ed245d",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699138/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTEzOH0%3D--25b54b7e8d021d31798e3f89eca157c21fb96af3",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699177/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTE3N30%3D--49a67f15a58252dcd7fb5c567f79ea2b680a1772",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699229/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTIyOX0%3D--b9bd48612b6f53b7e50f935f8fae79335c20d23f",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699255/original-1700827768.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTI1NX0%3D--745cf2cb18756f65979837e0f771b9beb24706dd",
"https://www.mpg.de/17699270/original-1700827294.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzUwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjMxOCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxNzY5OTI3MH0%3D--df43556e6445b3dcdad1eff82bd34275b7468357",
"https://www.mpg.de/18226762/original-1696426537.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6Mjg1LCJoZWlnaHQiOjIxMywiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxODIyNjc2Mn0%3D--21bd0661a049b57b6a8f70a375cc24607ba70855",
"https://www.mpg.de/22131288/original-1719485200.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMjEzMTI4OH0%3D--92d3fde9d04bf6262f8eb66f55922c01dcfa4e19",
"https://www.mpg.de/22062347/original-1718027472.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMjA2MjM0N30%3D--3437f7662ef674f49fcea2d31aea911a065ef8ab",
"https://www.mpg.de/22068931/original-1718275768.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMjA2ODkzMX0%3D--8486d406e6c23cf5170320c4ba37d310268197c8",
"https://www.mpg.de/21905743/original-1721133320.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMTkwNTc0M30%3D--67a4abe6828ba8f9fa35829a0a40cf5348dcfa2d",
"https://www.mpg.de/21733972/original-1711364160.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMTczMzk3Mn0%3D--c6b016ee7f5fb801edfdd22450b17c02810a9c8f",
"https://www.mpg.de/21570239/original-1718108047.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMTU3MDIzOX0%3D--484a1be42aa704aa98888a9eaba714632fe5d6c0",
"https://www.mpg.de/21437562/original-1706001027.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMTQzNzU2Mn0%3D--5857c57492301a6c1404b93f672a4a63c82707dc",
"https://www.mpg.de/21215154/original-1702285576.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMTIxNTE1NH0%3D--0470e5bae706fdb255191a95abadbe88a99b2f6a",
"https://www.mpg.de/21230685/teaser-1701958680.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMTIzMDY4NX0%3D--ca38fa26646dcf26c143ebc1c1db76b0777c204c",
"https://www.mpg.de/20917020/teaser-1696347157.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMDkxNzAyMH0%3D--009f80b517945e2735423d548c97d0b440f0e8b8",
"https://www.mpg.de/18226762/original-1696426537.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoxODIyNjc2Mn0%3D--a597b6f061b9bdfc5e8aa10e7c1fff75e530ffe3",
"https://www.mpg.de/20836832/original-1694677818.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MzYwLCJoZWlnaHQiOjI0MCwiZml0IjoiY3JvcCIsImZpbGVfZXh0ZW5zaW9uIjoianBnIiwib2JqX2lkIjoyMDgzNjgzMn0%3D--cea60043741ba361d3962cf484cd75f04c79997c",
"https://statistik.mpg.de/api?idsite=2&rec=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"nobel prize",
"nobel laureates of the Max Planck Society",
"max planck institute"
] | null |
[] | null |
31 Max Planck Society scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Internationally, the Nobel Prize is considered to be the highest distinction in the various disciplines.
|
en
|
/assets/touch-icon-180x180-a3e396f9294afe6618861344bef35fc0075f9631fe80702eb259befcd682a42c.png
|
https://www.mpg.de/nobel-prize
|
Nobel Prizes
A digital story about the Nobel Laureates of the Max Planck Society in eight chapters. more
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been awarded in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace efforts. Internationally, the Nobel Prize is considered to be the highest distinction in the various disciplines. The prize, which was instituted by Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel, is to be distributed to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”, according to his will. Since 2001, the prize amount, which is derived from the income in interests on the Foundation’s investments, is set to 10 million Swedish kronor per category. To date, the following scientists from the Max Planck Society and its predecessor the Kaiser Wilhelm Society have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
In retrospect, the research awarded in this way reflects an important piece of scientific history since the beginning of the 20th century. The relevance of many of the works is particularly evident in the long term. The Max Planck Society counts 31 award winners in the natural science disciplines. In the year the prize was awarded, they were scientific members of the Max Planck Society or of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society as its predecessor.
Other scientists were no longer or not yet Scientific Members at the time the prize was awarded, but had carried out the most important part of their research in the Max Planck Society or had left a lasting mark on it through their commitment to research and administration.
2023 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz
Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching
(*1962)
Ferenc Krausz, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, together with Pierre Agostini and Anne L'Huillier, has been honoured with the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. The Nobel Committee is honouring the two reserachers for the foundation of attosecond physics. An attosecond is the billionth part of a billionth of a second. Laser pulses lasting only a few attoseconds can be used to track the movements of individual electrons. This not only provides fundamental insights into the behaviour of electrons in atoms, molecules and solids, but could also help to develop electronic components more quickly.
More information in the Digital Story
2022 - Nobel Prize in Medicine
Prof. Dr. Svante Pääbo
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
(*1955)
The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2022 was awarded to Svante Pääbo "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution". Pääbo succeeded in making the genetic material of extinct early humans available with more efficient extraction and sequencing methods. In 2010, he and his team were able to reconstruct a first version of the Neanderthal genome from bones that are tens of thousands of years old. He thus laid the foundation for the new discipline of palaeogenetics, which has revolutionised our understanding of the evolutionary history of modern humans within just a few years.
More information in the Digital Story
2021 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Prof. Dr. Benjamin List
Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr
(*1968)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was awarded jointly to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis." The two researchers had discovered that small organic molecules also mediate chemical reactions. Previously, it was assumed that only enzymes and metals, including often toxic heavy metals or expensive and rare precious metals, could accelerate chemical reactions and steer them in a desired direction. It is particularly interesting that the small organic molecules are suitable for so-called asymmetric synthesis: In this process, only one of two enantiomers is formed - these are molecules that are like the left and right hand, i.e. cannot be spatially aligned. Such molecules are involved in all biological processes and also play an important role as medical agents.
More information in the Digital Story
2021 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Prof. Klaus Hasselmann
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg
(*1931)
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of complex systems". One half goes jointly to Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe "for the physical modelling of the Earth's climate, the quantification of fluctuations and the reliable prediction of global warming" and the other half to Giorgio Parisi "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales".
More information in the Digital Story
2020 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier , Ph.D.
Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin
(*1968)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier from the Max Planck Research Unit for the Science of Pathogens (at the time of the awarded research at the University of Vienna and Umeå University) and Jennifer A. Doudna "for the development of a method for genome editing." The two award winners have described how the CRISPR-Cas9 system targets DNA and how it can be used as a versatile genetic tool to alter the genome. They have contributed significantly to the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology into a powerful and versatile tool that can be used to efficiently alter any gene sequence in the cells of living organisms.
More information in the Digital Story
2020 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching
(*1952)
Reinhard Genzel, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, received the Nobel Prize for Physics 2020 together with Roger Penrose and Andrea Ghez. The Royal Swedish Academy honours the scientists for their black hole research. Using high-precision methods, the group around Genzel also observed bursts of brightness from gas in the immediate vicinity of the black hole and a gravitational redshift caused by this mass monster in the light of a passing star.
More information in the Digital Story
2014 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Prof. Dr. Stefan W. Hell
Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen
(*1962)
In 2014, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three researchers: Stefan W. Hell (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen), Eric Betzig (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) and William E. Moerner (Standford University) in honour for their contributions to nano-optics, with which they have overcome the physical resolution limit of optical microscopy and imaging with a chemical trick.
More information in the Digital Story
2007 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ertl
Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin
(*1936)
In 2007, Gerhard Ertl was honoured for his work on chemical processes on solid surfaces. His studies formed the basis for our understanding of industrial catalysts and catalytic processes. This means that today we are able to understand very different processes, such as the function of fuel cells or of catalysts in cars. Chemical reactions on catalytic surfaces play a vital role in many industrial operations, such as the production of artificial fertilizers.
More information in the Digital Story
2005 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Prof. Dr. Theodor Hänsch
Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching
(*1941)
In 2005, Theodor W. Hänsch and the Americans Roy J. Glauber and John L. Hall were honoured for their research on spectroscopy. Hänsch and Hall received the coveted prize “for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique”. The scientists developed an optical frequency comb generator, which made it possible, for the first time, to count the number of light oscillations per second accurately. Such optical frequency measurements may be million-fold more accurate than determining the light wavelengths using conventional spectroscopy.
More information in the Digital Story
1995 - Nobel Prize in Medicine
Prof. Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen, Tübingen
(*1942)
Biologist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard received the distinction together with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus for their research on the genetic control of early embryonic development. Using the egg of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus identified and classified genes that determine the body plan and the formation of body segments. They developed the gradient theory, which describes how gradients in the egg and in the embryo control the gene expression, drawing parallels in embryonic development between insects and vertebrates.
More information in the Digital Story
1995 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Paul Crutzen
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz
(1933 - 2021)
The work of Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland in atmospheric chemistry has largely contributed to explaining the chemical processes that cause ozone to form and decompose. They demonstrated, among other things, how sensitive the ozone layer is to the anthropogenic emission of air pollutants.
More information in the Digital Story
1991 - Nobel Prize in Medicine
Prof. Dr. Erwin Neher
Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen
(*1944)
Prof. Dr. Bert Sakmann
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg
(*1942)
Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann were awarded the Nobel Prize “for their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells”. They were the first to prove that the cell envelope contains tiny ion channels which regulate many functions in the body. Sakmann and Neher developed the Patch Clamp Technique, which they used to study electric signals and the opening and closing of excitable cells, as well as to explore the transmission of signals within the cell and between cells.
More information (Erwin Neher) in the Digital Story
More information (Bert Sakmann) in the Digital Story
1988 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Prof. Dr. Robert Huber
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried
(*1937)
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Michel
Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt am Main
(*1948)
Johann Deisenhofer
(*1943)
In 1988, Robert Huber, Hartmut Michel and Johann Deisenhofer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their joint studies and determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre. This allowed them to gain fundamental insights about photosynthesis – a process that is a condition for life on earth. The scientists were the first to succeed in unravelling the makeup of a membrane-bound protein, revealing the structure of the molecule, atom by atom. The protein is taken from a bacterium which, like green plants and algae, uses light energy from the sun to build organic substances.
More information (Robert Huber) in the Digital Story
More information (Hartmut Michel) in the Digital Story
More information (Johann Deisenhofer) in the Digital Story
1986 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Ernst Ruska
Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin
(1906-1988)
One half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Ernst Ruska for his “fundamental work in electron optics and for the design of the first electron microscope” (the other half was awarded jointly to Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, IBM Research Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland, for their design of the scanning tunnelling microscope). Ernst Ruska’s invention is one of the most important of this century. Its development began with work carried out by Ruska as a young student at the Berlin Technical University at the end of the 1920s. He found that a magnetic coil could act as a lens that could be used to obtain an image of an object irradiated with electrons. By coupling two such electron lenses, he produced a primitive microscope. Ruska very quickly improved various details and in 1933 was able to construct the first electron microscope with a performance clearly superior to that of conventional light microscopes. The scientist subsequently contributed actively to the development of commercial mass-produced electron microscopes which rapidly found application within many areas of science.
More information in the Digital Story
1985 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Klaus von Klitzing
Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart
(*1943)
Klaus von Klitzing was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the “quantised Hall effect”. He discovered that the unit for electric resistance (ohm) is accurately determined by Planck’s energy quantum h and the charge of the electrons e, and therefore constitutes a universal natural constant. The von Klitzing constant is a universal standard and highly accurate means of measuring resistance.
More information in the Digital Story
1973 - Nobel Prize in Medicine
Konrad Lorenz
(1903-1989)
Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen were awarded the Nobel Prize jointly “for their discoveries concerning the organisation and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns”. Lorenz combined his observations of animals in a concise physiological theory of instinctive activities, thereby paving the way for comparing the behaviour of different species. More consistently than scientists before him, Lorenz focused on two genetic particularities in his work: innate triggers of behaviour patterns (“key stimuli” and “innate releasing mechanisms”) and an early critical period of development in various animal species, in which an “imprinting process” elicits an irreversible behaviour pattern.
More information in the Digital Story
1967 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Manfred Eigen
(1927 - 2019)
Manfred Eigen shared the Nobel Prize with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter “for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy”. Eigen developed the relaxation methods for the study of faster reactions in the range of nanoseconds. The common characteristic of this method is that a chemical system in equilibrium is disturbed by singular (pressure, temperature, electromagnetic field) or periodic (sound waves) fast influences. This will cause small changes in concentration which vanish (comparatively slowly, given their smallness) as the equilibrium is re-established. Eigen developed these relaxation measurements to unsurpassed mastery and thus solved important questions in biochemistry, such as that of the control of enzymatic activities, which in turn regulate many metabolic processes in the cell.
More information in the Digital Story
1964 - Nobel Prize in Medicine
Feodor Lynen
(1911-1979)
Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen received the Nobel Prize jointly “for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism”. By succeeding in isolating activated acetic acid (acetyl coenzyme A) in yeast, Lynen established the basis for clinical research on lipid metabolism disorders, for example in Diabetes mellitus, or in the onset of atherosclerosis.
More information in the Digital Story
1963 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Karl Ziegler
(1898-1973)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta “for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers”. The discovery of organometallic compound catalysts made of aluminium and titanium, the Ziegler-Natta catalysts, transformed both chemistry as a science and the chemical industry and its technology. Using the catalysts, ethylene could, for the first time, be polymerised into polyethylene at atmospheric pressure. Until then, this had only been possible under extreme conditions (a pressure of 1000 at and temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius). Today, a global annual production of several billion tonnes makes polyethylene one of the most commonly used plastics. Due to its sought-after properties, it is very versatile.
More information in the Digital Story
1954 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Walther Bothe
(1891-1957)
Walther Bothe received the Nobel Prize for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith. He shared the prize with Max Born. The coincidence measurements proved the penetration of extraterrestrial radiation – cosmic radiation. When studying cosmic radiation, Bothe used Geiger-Müller tubes that were set up so that they only displayed a discharge if a particle passed through them linearly; this meant that it could be established from which direction the charged particles were coming. Indeed, the particles generally fell vertically towards the earth’s surface, however their incidence intensity would shrink to zero if the device was instead pointed towards the horizon. This seems logical, since particles which do not fall vertically would have to penetrate a much thicker air layer. The thicker the air layer, the fewer the particles that penetrate it – only those particles particularly rich in energy “make it through”.
More information in the Digital Story
1944 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Otto Hahn
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, Berlin (Today: Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz)
(1879–1968)
Otto Hahn received the prize “for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei”. It was the unplanned result of a joint research project with physicist Lise Meitner to investigate radioactive decay phenomena and the possible generation of transuranics by bombarding uranium atomic nuclei with neutrons. Meitner had fled Nazi Germany a few months before the discovery in 1938. But from exile, she provided the physical explanation of the chemical measurement results of Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann. Otto Hahn was one of the pioneers of radiochemistry research, which began around 1900. After the Second World War and in the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he and other Nobel Prize winners appealed to politicians to use nuclear power only for peaceful purposes. He was President of the Max Planck Society from 1948 to 1960.
More information in the Digital Story
1939 -Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Adolf Butenandt
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry, Berlin (Today: Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried)
(1903-1995)
Adolf Butenandt shares the 1939 prize “for his work on sex hormones” with Leopold Ružička. Because Adolf Hitler had forbidden Germans to accept the Nobel Prize, Butenandt did not accept the award (without prize money) until 1949. Butenandt had been working on steroid hormones since the 1920s. He isolated the sex hormones oestrone, progesterone, and androsterone and elucidated their chemical structures. His research paved the way to hormone treatments and the development of the birth control pill. After the Second World War, Adolf Butenandt left a lasting mark on the West German scientific system. He was also President of the Max Planck Society from 1960 to 1972.
More information in the Digital Story
1938 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Richard Kuhn
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg (Today: Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg)
(1900–1967)
For 1938, the prize went to biochemist Richard Kuhn for his work on carotenoids and vitamins. Like Adolf Butenandt, Kuhn did not accept the prize until 1949 because Adolf Hitler had forbidden Germans from doing so. Since the early 1930s, Kuhn had devoted himself to natural product chemistry and was able to elucidate and synthesize the structures of vitamins A and B12. Kuhn’s behaviour during National Socialism is viewed very critically today because from 1941, he participated in poison gas research and denounced his Jewish colleagues.
More information in the Digital Story
1936 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Peter J. W. Debye
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, Berlin (Today: Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich)
(1884–1966)
Physicist Peter Debye received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “his investigations on dipole moments as well as on the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases”. He was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics and the application of this to problems in solid-state physics. Among other things, he developed the theory of substance-specific heat on crystals and investigated the thermal conductivity of crystals. To this end, he also conducted experiments near absolute zero and operated one of the first refrigeration laboratories at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin of which he was also the Director. In 1940, Debye vacated his post because he did not want to take German citizenship (this was a condition of the Nazi regime to be allowed to continue in office as a Dutch native). He emigrated to the US, where he continued his career at Cornell University.
More information in the Digital Story
1931 - Nobel Prize in Medicine
Otto Heinrich Warburg
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology, Berlin
(1883–1970)
The Nobel Commission awarded Otto Heinrich Warburg the prize “for the discovery of the nature and function of the respiratory enzyme”. They thus honoured his fundamental research on metabolic processes in plant and animal cells. In his banquet speech at the award ceremony, Warburg himself summed up the essence of his work: “Traces of a heavy metal compound transfer oxygen in living cells and thus free up the forces for what happens in the organic world”. Warburg was also interested in metabolic processes in cancer cells and developed novel standard measuring instruments for the biochemical laboratory. Although a member of a Jewish family, he was able to continue working at his Institute for cell physiology during the Nazi regime. It became the Max Planck Institute in 1953 and was closed after his death.
More information in the Digital Story
1921 - Nobel Prize in Physics
Albert Einstein
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, Berlin (Today: Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich)
(1879–1955)
Albert Einstein received the prize “for his services to theoretical physics, especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”, which he described in 1905. Contrary to the prevailing theory of James Maxwell – but in agreement with the radiation formula of Max Planck – Einstein assumed that light consisted of particles (photons) that could change the energy of electrons upon impact. This was an important step on the way to quantum mechanics.
However, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which he published in 1915 as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin and which made him the most famous physicist of the 20th century, was not considered for the Nobel Prize. After the National Socialists came to power, Einstein, who had already been subjected to anti-Semitic attacks for years, did not return from a trip to the US. He applied for expatriation – without notable professional colleagues showing solidarity with him. In 1949, Einstein declined an invitation to become an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society citing the atrocities of National Socialism and the lack of sense of guilt in Germany.
More information in the Digital Story
1918 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fritz Haber
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, Berlin (Today: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society)
(1868–1934)
“For the synthesis of ammonia from its elements” as they occur in the ambient air, Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry at the end of the First World War. The committee paid tribute to him as a researcher who had solved the problem of the world food supply. Thanks to Haber’s process, which was brought to industrial maturity together with Carl Bosch, ammonia was now available in inexhaustible quantities. It provided the basis for the production of artificial fertilisers, the use of which revolutionized agriculture and made it many times more productive. However, Haber was also placed on the war crimes list of the victorious Allied powers in 1918 because he had developed poison gas weapons for the German troops in violation of the Hague Convention and had promoted the gas war side by side with the military. In 1933 Haber, who came from a Jewish family, resigned as Director of the Institute in protest against the new Nazi laws on the dismissal of Jews and fled to Switzerland in order to escape the National Socialists.
More information in the Digital Story
1915 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Richard Willstätter
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, Berlin (Today: Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz)
(1872–1942)
Richard Willstätter was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his studies of pigments, especially chlorophyll, in the plant kingdom”. His work provided fundamental insights into the composition of leaf and flower pigments. He identified magnesium as the central component of chlorophyll and the most important for photosynthesis. He did further work in anaesthesia, analgesics, and enzyme research. During the First World War, he developed a gas mask filter. Willstätter received a call to the University of Munich in September 1915, which he accepted in 1916. In 1924, he resigned from his professorship in protest against anti-Semitic movements at the university and emigrated to Switzerland during the Nazi regime.
More information in the Digital Story
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 68
|
https://johnmjennings.com/what-did-albert-einstein-do-with-his-nobel-prize-money/
|
en
|
What Did Albert Einstein do with his Nobel Prize Money?
|
http://www.theifod.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/nobel_prize_einstein-244x300.jpg
|
http://www.theifod.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/nobel_prize_einstein-244x300.jpg
|
[
"https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=5325764&fmt=gif",
"https://149918304.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/jennings-logo@2x.png",
"https://i0.wp.com/johnmjennings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/nobel_prize_einstein-244x300-1294271.jpg?resize=244%2C300&ssl=1",
"https://149918304.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/3d-book.png",
"https://i0.wp.com/johnmjennings.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Jennings-cover-med.jpg?fit=398%2C600&ssl=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"John M. Jennings"
] |
2017-12-01T12:02:55+00:00
|
In 1921 Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the photoelectric effect – or that light moves in packets called quanta or photons. This was his only Nobel Prize – he did not receive a Nobel Prize for Special or General Relativity or his other discoveries. (Which is somewhat […]
|
en
|
John M Jennings
|
https://johnmjennings.com/what-did-albert-einstein-do-with-his-nobel-prize-money/
|
In 1921 Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the photoelectric effect – or that light moves in packets called quanta or photons. This was his only Nobel Prize – he did not receive a Nobel Prize for Special or General Relativity or his other discoveries. (Which is somewhat shocking, but supposedly the Nobel committee would not grant the prize for his relativity theories as they were “unproven.” Of course, they have since been proven.)
When Einstein divorced his first wife, Mileva Maric in 1919, the terms of their divorce provided that if he were to win a Nobel Prize that the prize money would go to her as a property settlement and support of their two sons. Recently, however, personal letters of his that were discovered suggest that he kept much or all of the prize money and lost almost all of it in the stock market in the Great Depression. If that is true, it is instructive to realize that even geniuses can’t predict stock market movements and can make poor investment choices.
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 24
|
https://byjus.com/question-answer/einstein-got-nobel-prize-on-which-of-the-following-worksmass-energy-relation-special-theory-of-1/
|
en
|
Einstein got Nobel prize on which of the following works
|
[
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/byjus_logo.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/call.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/SearchIcon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/byjus_logo.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/call.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/SearchIcon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/UploadIcon2.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/UploadIcon2.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Search.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Search.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Frame.webp?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Frame.webp?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/thumb.webp?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/thumb.webp?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/simQue.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/simQue.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/relVideos.svg?imwidth=64 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/relVideos.svg?imwidth=128 2x",
"https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=640 640w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=750 750w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=828 828w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1080 1080w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1200 1200w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1920 1920w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=2048 2048w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=3840 3840w",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/lock.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/lock.svg?imwidth=64 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/ExploreMore.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/ExploreMore.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/bottomSearch_selected.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/bottomSearch_selected.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/textbooks.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/textbooks.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/question-papers.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/question-papers.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/app_install.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/app_install.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/cross.webp?imwidth=16 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/cross.webp?imwidth=32 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"BYJU'S"
] |
2022-07-04T10:36:42+05:30
|
Einstein got Nobel prize on which of the following works
|
en
|
https://byjus.com/question-answer/einstein-got-nobel-prize-on-which-of-the-following-worksmass-energy-relation-special-theory-of-1/
|
Q.
Here are some facts from Einstein’s life. Arrange them in chronological order.
[ ] Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity.
[ ] He is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
[ ] Einstein writes a letter to U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and warns against Germany’s building of an atomic bomb.
[ ] Einstein attends a high school in Munich.
[ ] Einstein’s family moves to Milan.
[ ] Einstein is born in the German city of Ulm.
[ ] Einstein joins a university in Zurich, where he meets Mileva.
[ ] Einstein dies.
[ ] He provides a new interpretation of gravity.
[ ] Tired of the school’s regimentation, Einstein withdraws from school.
[ ] He works in a patent office as a technical expert.
[ ] When Hitler comes to power, Einstein leaves Germany for the United States.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 73
|
https://www.itechpost.com/articles/114967/20221109/albert-einstein-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-albert-einstein-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-1922.htm
|
en
|
Albert Einstein Won the Nobel Prize in Physics on This Day in 1922
|
[
"https://1126564489.rsc.cdn77.org/static/common/_v3.0.0/img/logo.svg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120613/90/77/50/40/us-postal-service-caught-sharing-customer-data-to-social-media-advertisers.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/119650/90/77/50/40/facebook-is-trying-to-win-back-younger-users-amid-looming-ban-on-tiktok.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120582/90/77/50/40/verizon-looking-to-sell-thousands-of-us-cell-towers.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/119702/90/77/50/40/instagram-is-testing-new-unskippable-ads-while-browsing.png",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/99528/90/77/50/40/mlb-the-show-21-baserunning-tips-how-to-perfectly-slide-in-team-mode.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120040/502/301/50/40/new-microsoft-vulnerability-allows-anyone-to-impersonate-corporate-emails.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120623/502/301/50/40/xiaomi-mix.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120621/502/301/50/40/cybersecurity-firm-crowdstrikes-shares-drop-11-following-global-it-outage.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120624/502/301/50/40/car-dealership-operations-disrupted-again-in-microsoft-crowdstrike-outage.jpg",
"https://1126564489.rsc.cdn77.org/static/common/_v3.0.0/img/logo-plain.svg",
"https://static.getclicky.com/media/links/badge.gif",
"https://in.getclicky.com/66593558ns.gif",
"https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-QzXvCmyt3qj48.gif",
"https://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=14401431&cv=2.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Albert Einstein",
"Einstein",
"Theory of Relativity",
"Photoelectric Effect",
"Nobel Prize",
"physics"
] | null |
[
"Toni Dimaano"
] |
2022-11-09T02:20:00-05:00
|
Commemorating Einstein's 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics, 100 years today since. It has been a whole 100 years since Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in Physics for his expansion of the photoelectric effect in 1922 at only 26 years old.
|
en
|
iTech Post
|
https://www.itechpost.com/articles/114967/20221109/albert-einstein-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-albert-einstein-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-1922.htm
|
It has been a whole 100 years since Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in Physics for his expansion of the photoelectric effect in 1922 at only 26 years old.
While everyone was expecting the genius to win the prize for his theory on relativity, it was his idea on what is behind today's solar energy revolution that earned him the well-coveted merit.
What Was This Award-Winning Photoelectric Effect Explanation
According to The Atlantic, even from the beginning of the turn of the century, scientists already had an idea that light could produce electric current once exposed to certain conditions.
However, despite this observation, no one really understood why light could create electricity since it was then understood that light worked as a wave.
With this contradiction, in 1905, Einstein produced a paper that suggested that light was not a wave but was something discontinuously distributed in space.
According to his explanation of the photoelectric effect, light is spread out and scattered from a point source but is consisted of energy quanta localized at different points in space.
This means that Einstein believed that light behaved like a particle rather than a wave, which is why it can create electric current.
The Nobel Prize Organization adds that photoelectric explains that if metal electrodes are exposed to light, sparks will actualize between them.
For this to happen, light waves would be at a certain frequency, and the light's intensity should be critical for it to work.
This discovery was what warranted Einstein to win the Nobel Prize in 1922, a year after no one won the Nobel Prize in 1921.
According to the Nobel Prize Organization, during the committee's selection process for Physics, they found that nobody met the criteria outlined by the foundation and reserved the 1921 prize for next year.
This made Einstein the 1921 Nobel Prize winner in the field of Physics in the year 1922.
Read More: Israel Allocates Millions for Einstein Museum
Many Thought That Einstein's Nobel Prize Was For The Theory Of Relativity
Contrary to popular belief, despite the theory of relativity being Einstein's most well-known contributions to science, it was what won him the Nobel Prize.
According to Advanced Science News, while he came up with the theory of relativity and the photoelectric effect explanation, Einstein was only awarded for the latter.
The reserved Nobel Prize of 1921 was awarded to Einstein the next year for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect," reports say.
The decision prompted speculations from left and right, relating the controversy to the access that was granted to the official archival materials at the organization.
However, Advanced Science New writes that Einstein not winning an award for his theory of relativity might have been just a case of bias, arrogance, and pettiness among committee members at the time.
In 1954, almost 50 years after the scientist won the award for his contribution to the law of photoelectric effect, solar cells were created to run electrical equipment.
These solar cells have later been developed into the solar energy people use in modern technology today, proving that addressing a gap in knowledge can lead to something useful, The Atlantic writes.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 48
|
https://www.lbi.org/griffinger/record/243964
|
en
|
Albert Einstein receiving the Max Planck Medal from Max Planck
|
[
"https://www.lbi.org/griffinger-static/lbi_art_django2_app/images/lbi_logo.png?v=202104121238",
"https://www.lbi.org/griffinger-static/lbi_art_django2_app/images/art/243964_800px.jpg?v=202406111621"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Edythe Griffinger Portal is a curated selection of items from the Art and Objects Collection, Archives, and Library of the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI).
|
en
|
/griffinger-static/lbi_art_django2_app/images/favicon.ico?v=202104121551
|
https://www.lbi.org/griffinger/record/243964
|
Biographical/Historical Information
Since 1929, the Max Planck medal was the highest award of the German Physical Society for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. Its first recipient was Albert Einstein on June 28, 1929.
The German theoretical physicist Max Planck contributed largely to the understanding of Quantum mechanics in physics and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 51
|
https://www.tiktok.com/%40fascience7/video/7329173804675009793
|
en
|
Make Your Day
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
| null | ||||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 53
|
https://medium.com/%40deep.space/why-didnt-einstein-get-the-nobel-prize-for-the-theory-of-relativity-909db2a1b557
|
en
|
Why didn’t Einstein get the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity?
|
[
"https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:64:64/1*dmbNkD5D-u45r44go_cf0g.png",
"https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:88:88/1*AXyJrehBUOfDmbkYhkhTJg.png",
"https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:144:144/1*AXyJrehBUOfDmbkYhkhTJg.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Space",
"medium.com",
"@deep.space"
] |
2023-03-08T16:01:21.176000+00:00
|
The fact that Einstein did not receive the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, which revolutionized theoretical and experimental physics, is perceived by many as the greatest disgrace of the…
|
en
|
Medium
|
https://medium.com/@deep.space/why-didnt-einstein-get-the-nobel-prize-for-the-theory-of-relativity-909db2a1b557
|
The fact that Einstein did not receive the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, which revolutionized theoretical and experimental physics, is perceived by many as the greatest disgrace of the Nobel Prize per se. It is often compared to the way Gandhi did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Note that Einstein still received the Nobel Prize in 1922, though for an entirely different work. The wording of the Nobel Committee read: “For the discovery of the photoelectric effect and other works in theoretical physics.
The photoelectric effect discovered by Einstein is considered by many to be the least important of his discoveries. Einstein published his series of revolutionary articles for physics in 1905. Einstein’s articles laid the foundation for three branches of modern physics: general and special relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical physics.
It took 17 years for them to be universally recognized. Einstein was nominated for the Nobel Prize for ten consecutive years and only in 1922 did the Nobel Committee consider it possible to give the prize to Einstein.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 5
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/fig_fy_23_webb3x2_2100x1400-1024x676.png",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/12/agostini_krausz_lHuillier-3_2_v2-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/09/physics-matching.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/123776-landscape-x-large.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-12923-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/marie-curie-12879-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/bohr-12929-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/chadwick-12999-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/thomson-12853-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/rontgen-13540-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/kosterlitz-15202-landscape-x-large.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/53513-landscape-x-large.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/higgs-631-landscape-x-large.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Physics Prize
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/physics-prize-2/
|
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- – -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics …” (Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Physics was the prize area which Alfred Nobel mentioned first in his will from 1895. At the end of the nineteenth century, many people considered physics as the foremost of the sciences, and perhaps Nobel saw it this way as well. His own research was also closely tied to physics.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 10
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nobelprize_albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-activity-7186740337602621441-WEiL
|
en
|
The Nobel Prize on LinkedIn: Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 "for his…
|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5610AQFTjdLx58guTA/image-shrink_1280/0/1713452419539?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=d9egnEnEQmH9eW3hieljKArtBXd8sITniJ8orQxP4mQ
|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5610AQFTjdLx58guTA/image-shrink_1280/0/1713452419539?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=d9egnEnEQmH9eW3hieljKArtBXd8sITniJ8orQxP4mQ
|
[
"https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4D3DAQHA7z_U5pIOrw/image-scale_191_1128/0/1696924261282/nobelprize_cover?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=l6mYC2BiWwAN7v4EYmDH84xbXDZnTa_CSTQdzbiEBbA"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"The Nobel Prize"
] |
2024-04-18T15:00:19.633000+00:00
|
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the… | 30 comments on LinkedIn
|
en
|
https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/al2o9zrvru7aqj8e1x2rzsrca
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nobelprize_albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-activity-7186740337602621441-WEiL
|
"I think writing is a kind of gift. A new novel or a new play, it's a gift I get... I need to have breaks or pauses when I don't write. You can't get gifts all the time." Literature laureate Jon Fosse in our new podcast episode: https://lnkd.in/eUA9wtbj #NobelPrize
“They made me fall in love with quantum mechanics and atomic physics,” said physics laureate Anne L’Huillier of two “great teachers”. She benefitted from being taught by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Serge Haroche, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 and 2012 respectively. L'Huillier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter. Learn more about her life and work: https://lnkd.in/egnFT-SC Were you inspired by any great teachers?
What does chess have to do with economics? The answer is game theory. In these games like chess, players must think ahead and devise a strategy based on expected countermoves from other players. These interactions characterise many economic situations. Game theory is a theoretical framework that tries to produce the most optimal decision-making of competing actors in a strategic setting. When describing the economic theory, Reinhard Selten told the New York Times that the theory was like chess: “You may not always be right, but such thinking probably makes you play better and keeps you from making as many dumb moves.” The foundations for using game theory in economics were introduced in a monumental study by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern entitled 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior' (1944). Fifty years later, Selten, John Harsanyi and John Nash were awarded the prize in economic sciences for their contributions to the field. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3zOES62 #WorldChessDay
"The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you're learning, you're not old." Take a look at some snapshots of the pioneering physicist Rosalyn Yalow throughout her life. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977 for developing radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones. Learn more: https://bit.ly/2XFRZ63 Photos (top, and then left to right): Portrait of Rosalyn Yalow, Yalow on her wedding day in June 1943, Yalow in the lab, Yalow receives her Nobel Prize in 1977.
"One of the most important things as a scientist is that you have to be an optimist. If you’re a pessimist, a failed experiment will tell you that the whole idea is bad and you’ll quit. When you fail you have to continue." - chemistry laureate Richard Henderson's advice to young scientists.
“I’m fascinated by my work … I didn’t go into my career just to collect prizes or accolades or even money. I don’t have much money. I went into it for the adventure of it, the mystery of it,” said laureate Edmund Phelps. He was awarded the prize in economic sciences for his analysis of intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy, especially about inflation, wages, and unemployment. In the late 1960s, Phelps began his prize-awarded work, which challenged the assumption that high levels of unemployment corresponded with low levels of inflation and vice versa. He shares wisdom about the quest for “a good life” in his Nobel Prize interview, including this philosophical nugget: “It’s hard to draw lessons from the past about what to avoid in the present.” Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/ebEJA3QG
Rosalyn Yalow described herself as a determined and single-minded child. Growing up, her parents wanted her to become a schoolmistress. Instead, Yalow became a nuclear physicist who revolutionised the medical world. Yalow became a physicist when being a woman was seen as an impediment to success, but she persevered. When she could not pay for her graduate degree, Yalow worked as a biochemist's secretary at Columbia University in exchange for classes. In 1941, Yalow accepted an assistantship at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in the College of Engineering; she was the only woman in a faculty of 400. She earned her PhD in nuclear physics and learned how to build and use equipment to measure radioactive substances. With her research partner Solomon Berson, Yalow made a transformative contribution to medical research: radioimmunoassay, a method for measuring concentrations of substances in the blood. Yalow was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones." With the help of radioimmunoassay, she proved that type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inefficient use, rather than lack, of insulin. Learn more: https://bit.ly/2D64qQd
“I will never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality. Surely, the Nobel Peace Prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic.” – peace laureate Narges Mohammadi. The Iranian human rights advocate has been sentenced to 36 years and 3 months in prison and 154 lashes. She has not seen her children Ali and Kiana since 2015. Yet despite her captivity in the notorious Evin prison, she continues to stand at the forefront of major protests against the Iranian regime and fight for women’s rights. For condemning a "full-scale war against women" by the Iranian regime, there is a possibility that Mohammadi could be punished further. Watch the moving Nobel Prize lecture delivered by her children: https://lnkd.in/eHQzQ63M
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 12
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/08/einstein-nobel-prize-relativity
|
en
|
Why Einstein never received a Nobel prize for relativity
|
[
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=6035250&cv=2.0&cj=1&cs_ucfr=0&comscorekw=Physics%2CAstronomy%2CScience%2CNobel+prizes%2CScience+prizes",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/3/13/1331656224558/Albert-Einstein-he-was-an-007.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2012/10/10/1349890185526/Robert-Lefkowitz-and-Bria-010.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2012/10/10/1349890185526/Robert-Lefkowitz-and-Bria-010.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Environment/Pix/columnists/2012/10/10/1349863064242/2012-Nobel-Prize-in-Chemi-011.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/9/1349787534200/2012-Nobel-Prize-in-physi-010.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/9/1349777892958/Physics-Nobel-announcemen-011.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Environment/Pix/columnists/2010/10/5/1286292681291/Nobel-Prize-medal-Bearing-002.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Science/contributors/2012/10/7/1349624057379/IMG931.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/8/1349721691220/James-Watson-And-Francis--008.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Stuart Clark",
"www.theguardian.com",
"dr-stuart-clark"
] |
2012-10-08T00:00:00
|
<p><strong>Stuart Clark: </strong>Nobel prizes often attract controversy, but usually after they have been awarded. Albert Einstein's physics prize was the subject of argument for years before it was even a reality</p>
|
en
|
the Guardian
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/08/einstein-nobel-prize-relativity
|
There was a lot riding on Einstein winning a Nobel prize. Beyond his academic reputation, and that of the Nobel Institute for recognising greatness, the wellbeing of his former wife and their two sons depended upon it.
In the aftermath of the first world war, defeated Germany was being consumed by hyper-inflation. The government was printing more money to pay the war reparations and, as a result, the mark went into freefall against foreign currencies. Living in Berlin, Einstein was naturally affected by the crisis.
He had divorced Mileva in 1919, several years after she had returned to Switzerland with the boys, Hans-Albert and Eduard. As part of the settlement, Einstein pledged any eventual Nobel prize money to her for their upkeep. As the hyper-inflation bit ever deeper, so he needed that cash.
By this time, Einstein had a decade's worth of Nobel nominations behind him. Yet each year, to mounting criticism, the committee decided against his work on the grounds that relativity was unproven. In 1919, that changed. Cambridge astrophysicist Arthur Eddington famously used a total eclipse to measure the deflection of stars' positions near the Sun. The size of the deflection was exactly as Einstein had predicted from relativity in 1915. The prize should have been his, but the committee snubbed him again.
Why? Because now dark forces were at work.
Antisemitism was on the rise in Germany; Jews were being scapegoated for the country's defeat in the war. As both Jew and pacifist, Einstein was an obvious target. The complexity of relativity did not help either. Opponents such as Ernst Gehrcke and Philipp Lenard found it easy to cast doubt upon its labyrinthine mathematics.
The situation reached crisis point in 1921 when, paralysed by indecision, the Nobel Committee decided it was better not to award a prize at all than to give it to relativity. The arguments raged for another year until a compromise was reached.
At the suggestion of Carl Wilhelm Oseen, Einstein would receive the deferred 1921 prize, but not for relativity. He would be given it for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from a metal sheet only under certain illuminations. The work had been published back in 1905.
It has been argued that this work, which introduced the concept of photons, has had more impact than relativity. I'm not sure. With relativity, Einstein gave us a way to understand the Universe as a whole. It was a staggering leap forward in our intellectual capability.
The Nobel citation reads that Einstein is honoured for "services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". At first glance, the reference to theoretical physics could have been a back door through which the committee acknowledged relativity. However, there was a caveat stating that the award was presented "without taking into account the value that will be accorded your relativity and gravitation theories after these are confirmed in the future".
To many, and to Einstein himself, this felt like a slap in the face. Hadn't Eddington proved the theory? Yes, but the trouble was Eddington's observations had not been perfect and he had discarded data he considered poor from his final analysis. To some, as related in Jeffrey Crelinsten's Einstein's Jury, this smacked of cooking the books in Einstein's favour. In reality it was just good scientific practice.
There is also another way to read the Nobel caveat. Could it have been that the committee was leaving the door open for a second Nobel prize in the future, once relativity had been more rigorously tested? We will never know. As Einstein's fame spread, so he alienated himself from the physics community by refusing to accept quantum theory. A Nobel prize for relativity was never awarded.
The final twist in this story is that Einstein did not attend his prize giving. Despite being informed that he was about to receive the prize, he chose to continue with a lecture tour of Japan. Partly, this was because he no longer valued the prize and partly it was because he needed to disappear.
German foreign minister Walther Rathenau had been murdered by anti-Semites. In the subsequent investigation, the police had found Einstein's name on a list of targets. In the face of such a death treat, leaving Germany to spend months in the Far East, rather than a few days in Stockholm, must have seemed prudent.
In the end, perhaps the best thing that came out of Einstein's Nobel prize was the money. It went towards keeping Mileva and the boys secure, and became essential when Eduard developed schizophrenia as a young adult and needed to be hospitalised.
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded on Tuesday. This week's prize schedule is here. You can watch each announcement live in the viewer below.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 47
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/photo-gallery/%3Fgallery_style%3Dpage
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Photo gallery
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/marquez_photo_01.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/saramago-13507-landscape-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2019/11/am-tokarczuk-delivering-lecture-1024x681.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/yan_medal_nobelfoundation.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/morrison-13448-landscape-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/photo-gallery/%3Fgallery_style%3Dpage/
|
Magical realism
Five spellbinding works by Nobel Prize laureates
“It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality,” said literature laureate and master of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez.
His works epitomise magical realism, a genre in which the framework narrative is set in the real world, but supernatural and dreamlike elements are part of the portrayal. Like fairy tales, magical realism novels blur the lines between fantasy and reality and while they vary enormously, they tend to contain a set of similar elements.
Magical realism novels are usually set in a realistic environment. Even if the place, like García Márquez’s village of Macondo is fictitious, they contain features familiar to our everyday lives. However, these novels also include unexplained magical, supernatural or dreamlike elements, such as ghosts or the ability to fly, presented as ordinary occurrences that are freely accepted by characters.
Novels in this genre often tell the stories of people on the fringes of society. Their authors use magical realism to critique society, politics or wealth, for example, shining a supernatural light on impoverished communities or the horrors of slavery.
Authors such as Franz Kafka, whose novel The Metamorphosis bears the hallmarks of magical realism texts, wrote books before the genre was recognised. However, magical realism is most commonly associated with a group of Latin American authors including García Márquez, who penned works around 60 years ago and marked a boon in popularity for the genre.
Their version of magical realism and a clear definition of the genre evaporates when borders are crossed and blurred, and myths, beliefs and different realities mingle. Writers from all over the world have produced incredible books that have enriched the genre.
Here are five novels by Nobel Prize laureates, which most critics believe showcase magical realism. Whether the books fit neatly within the genre’s varied bookcase or not, it is generally agreed that they are truly magical works of literature.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982 was awarded to one of the masters of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.”
García Márquez’s 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, weaves together the magical and the mundane in Macondo, a solitary city of mirrors that reflects the world around it. Macondo is home to multiple generations of the Buendía family who encounter magic carpets and are haunted by ghosts as they navigate periodic misfortunes, some of which are fantastic such as the birth of a child with a pig’s tail, while others are more rooted in reality, such as the effects of a rigged election.
Explaining the presence of such fantastical features in this novel and other stories, García Márquez said that in Mexico, “surrealism runs through the streets. Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America,” yet unlike surrealist poets and painters, his work is based on anecdotes, rather than being symbolic. His writing makes the impossible not only possible but strangely normal in the city of mirrors of his own invention. The microcosmos of Macondo reflects a continent and its human riches and poverty, with García Márquez strongly committed, politically, on the side of the poor and the weak against domestic oppression and foreign economic exploitation.
Blindness
Literature laureate Jose Saramago uses allegories and fanciful elements to critique society. In his novel Blindness, the population is stricken with an epidemic of blindness that quickly leads to societal collapse.
A characteristic of Saramago’s style is the blending of dialogue and narration, with sparse punctuation and long sentences that can extend for several pages. He sometimes transforms ordinary people, like his grandparents, into literary characters. He said in his Nobel Prize lecture, “this was, probably, my way of not forgetting them, drawing and redrawing their faces with the pencil that ever changes memory, colouring and illuminating the monotony of a dull and horizonless daily routine as if creating, over the unstable map of memory, the supernatural unreality of the country where one has decided to spend one’s life.”
Saramago received the Nobel Prize in Literature 1998 for his “parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony” that the committee said enable readers to “apprehend an elusory reality,” and used his Nobel Prize lecture to talk about the power of characters.
The Books of Jacob
“I write fiction, but it is never pure fabrication. When I write, I have to feel everything inside myself,” said Olga Tokarczuk, who was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Known for the mythical tone of her writing and interweaving stories across time to create universal and epic stories, Tokarczuk believes “the world is made of words.” She constructs her novels in a tension between cultural opposites: nature versus culture, reason versus madness, male versus female, home versus alienation, which enables her novels to arguably be considered part of the magical realism genre.
Her historical novel Ksiegi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob), is set in 1752 in the Podolian borderlands of what was southwest Poland where a family is gathering for a wedding. While criss-crossing Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire over 40 years, the novel portrays the 18th-century mystic and sect leader Jacob Frank whose charisma is superhuman. The character can read minds and bend nature to his will, while his prophetess cousin, Hayah can cast powerful spells to cheat death. Supernatural details aside, the work gives readers a remarkably rich panorama of an almost neglected chapter in European history.
In her Nobel Prize lecture, Tokarczuk spoke about the importance of narration and the author. “How we think about the world and – perhaps even more importantly – how we narrate it have a massive significance. […] A thing that happens and is not told ceases to exist and perishes. This is a fact well known to not only historians, but also (and perhaps above all) to every stripe of politician and tyrant. He who has and weaves the story is in charge.”
Life and Death are Wearing Me Out
Just as Tokarczuk draws upon the hidden history of her home country, Nobel Prize laureate Mo Yan’s writing often uses older Chinese literature and popular oral traditions as a starting point, combining these with contemporary social issues and his childhood memories. His narrative style bears the hallmarks of magical realism, which has had made his own to create “hallucinatory realism” which merges history and the contemporary.
Tormented by insomnia, he wrote Shengsi pilao (Life and Death are Wearing Me Out) in just 43 days. Drawing upon the Buddhist concept of the “wheel of life” to throw light on half a century of enormous changes in Chinese society and a series of tragedies associated with the land, the novel is narrated from the perspective of animals.
Despite the social criticism contained in his books, in China Yan is viewed as one of the country’s foremost authors. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012.
Beloved
Toni Morrison is another author whose works including Beloved bear hallmarks of magical realism, although Morrisson herself initially disliked her novels being included in the genre. She explained that her use of enchantment comes from her own experience and that of the black people she knew. “It formed a kind of cosmology that was perceptive as well as enchanting, and so it seemed impossible for me to write about black people and eliminate that simply because it was “unbelievable”, she said.
Set in the period following the American Civil War with its commonplace mysticism and dream-like imagery, Beloved tells the story of a formerly enslaved woman, whose home is haunted by a spiteful spirit thought to be the ghost of her eldest daughter. The novel explores slavery and other themes, weaving together places and times in the network of motifs. The combination of realistic notation and folklore paradoxically intensifies the credibility of the story. There is enormous power in the depiction of the protagonist Sethe’s action to liberate her child from threat of enslavement, and the consequences of this action for Sethe’s own life.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 was awarded to Toni Morrison “who in novels characterised by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
How many of these books have you read? Which is the most magical to you?
First published 11 July 2024
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 86
|
https://thedecisionlab.com/thinkers/philosophy/albert-einstein
|
en
|
The Decision Lab
|
[
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fd46538a4-e63c-4084-92ff-5b4dc151e7d5_TheDecisionLab_Sailec_Longer_Teal2.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=256&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fd46538a4-e63c-4084-92ff-5b4dc151e7d5_TheDecisionLab_Sailec_Longer_Teal2.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=384&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fd46538a4-e63c-4084-92ff-5b4dc151e7d5_TheDecisionLab_Sailec_Longer_Teal2.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=256&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fd46538a4-e63c-4084-92ff-5b4dc151e7d5_TheDecisionLab_Sailec_Longer_Teal2.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=384&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fea1e960e-ebf7-402e-90eb-c7c6d3c848a2_icon__eye.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=48&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fea1e960e-ebf7-402e-90eb-c7c6d3c848a2_icon__eye.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=96&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fb6833c71-1c81-431e-b36d-c616938c0e23_icon__remote.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=48&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fb6833c71-1c81-431e-b36d-c616938c0e23_icon__remote.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=96&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F2eba0858-211c-49f4-b58b-c8347a1f1f57_icon__brain.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=48&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F2eba0858-211c-49f4-b58b-c8347a1f1f57_icon__brain.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=96&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F3292713c-3226-462e-87f5-69690b4493d6_thinkers_menu.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=48&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F3292713c-3226-462e-87f5-69690b4493d6_thinkers_menu.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=96&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Ff2478436-50e8-4df0-b8a1-caf556dd62ec_Untitled_Artwork-46.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=48&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Ff2478436-50e8-4df0-b8a1-caf556dd62ec_Untitled_Artwork-46.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=96&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__save.41d8b29e.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__save.41d8b29e.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__quote.81341e4f.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__quote.81341e4f.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__share.9713e5f0.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__share.9713e5f0.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__linkedin.687e7e1f.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__linkedin.687e7e1f.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__twitter.9ebc7d25.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__twitter.9ebc7d25.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__mail.c76dda84.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__mail.c76dda84.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/static/media/icon__copy.8e788d2b.svg 1x, /_next/static/media/icon__copy.8e788d2b.svg 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fff72b31e-b36b-4b0c-8821-2543572aff87_Albert%2BEinstein.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=3840&q=75 3840w",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F16a7b464-1eb1-4991-b084-8ddd7e9fd754_dan_square-600x600.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F16a7b464-1eb1-4991-b084-8ddd7e9fd754_dan_square-600x600.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1080&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fab5998c0-0e59-4fdc-967a-5bec77425ba4_sekoul_square-600x600.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fab5998c0-0e59-4fdc-967a-5bec77425ba4_sekoul_square-600x600.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1080&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fecc0178f-bc31-4bee-9a80-52ea7a2b16fd_glen-carrie-JiSkHnWLo2o-unsplash.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2Fecc0178f-bc31-4bee-9a80-52ea7a2b16fd_glen-carrie-JiSkHnWLo2o-unsplash.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=1080&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F853b9e3c-845e-40d1-b757-497a359cc8d2_Jennifer%2BEberhardt.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F853b9e3c-845e-40d1-b757-497a359cc8d2_Jennifer%2BEberhardt.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1080&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F67c72d53-f76b-45d9-961d-fbaf46e1aa2c_Francis%2BCecil%2BSumner.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F67c72d53-f76b-45d9-961d-fbaf46e1aa2c_Francis%2BCecil%2BSumner.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=1080&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F81f60d53-1111-4172-b7ff-4abf763702dc_Lovett_Or_Leave_It_-_Ijeoma_Oluo_1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=640&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F81f60d53-1111-4172-b7ff-4abf763702dc_Lovett_Or_Leave_It_-_Ijeoma_Oluo_1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=1080&q=75 2x",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=640&q=75 640w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=750&q=75 750w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=828&q=75 828w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=2048&q=75 2048w, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F84419d66-ff4a-4081-87ea-0a6a53b0a3ba_call-to-action-1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=3840&q=75 3840w",
"https://thedecisionlab.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F9f3f384a-852c-4699-abf9-f79d147730d6_tdl-logo.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=384&q=75 1x, /_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Fthedecisionlab%2F9f3f384a-852c-4699-abf9-f79d147730d6_tdl-logo.png%3Fauto%3Dcompress%2Cformat&w=828&q=75 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Albert Einstein was a physicist, philosopher, mathematician, Nobel-prize winner, violinist and a scientist.
|
en
|
/apple-touch-icon.png
|
The Decision Lab
|
https://thedecisionlab.com/thinkers/philosophy/albert-einstein
|
When you hear the name Albert Einstein, you automatically think “Genius”. Albert Einstein was a physicist, philosopher, mathematician, Nobel-prize winner, violinist and a scientist. He is most notably known for his theory of relativity, which has become one of the two pillars of modern physics. Einstein was one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century because he recognized the importance of taking risks and was not afraid to make bold knowledge claims. Even though his left-field ideas were initially met with skepticism, Einstein is now credited to have completely revolutionized our understanding of space and time.
Einstein approached science through an atypical method, often grounding his claims in thought-experiments instead of relying on abstract equations. He understood that imagination and thinking outside of the box were vital ingredients to innovation. The ‘box’ that had come to be accepted by most was Isaac Newton’s theory of classical mechanics, which suggested that matter and energy have definite attributes that do not change, irrespective of speed or location.1 Classical mechanics seemed like a “common-sense” approach to physics, but Einstein showed us that the world as it appears to human beings may not be the world as it functions at all.
One of Albert Einstein’s most notable contributions to physics was his theory of relativity. The theory of relativity is composed of two sub-theories, one named general relativity and the other special relativity.
Einstein’s theory of relativity changed the way that time, motion and gravity were understood. It is based on two important ideas: the principle of relativity, which states that a body moving at a constant velocity acts according to the same laws as a body at rest, and the principle of the speed of light, which states that the speed of light is the same for all observers regardless of their relative motion to the light.3
But what do those two principles actually mean? They mean that we can only measure motion relative to a given frame of reference, instead of motion being an absolute, like Isaac Newton had believed.
The equation for speed is: speed = distance/time
This means that if speed changes according to one frame of reference, then distance and/or time must also change.
Einstein used a thought-experiment to flesh out his theory of relativity. He described a scenario where one person is moving at a constant speed on a train, and another is standing on the station platform watching the train. Two bolts of lighting strike either end of the train as the midpoint of the train is directly in front of the person on the platform. Since the laws of physics are the same for someone at a constant speed and someone at rest, both observers must agree on the speed of light.4
The lightning strikes at the front and back of the train are the same distance away from the person on the platform, meaning that each reaches his/her eye at the same time. That person would therefore say that the lightning strikes happened at the same time.4
However, because the train is moving, for the person on the train, the light from the strike at the end of the train reaches their eye a bit later. Since the distances that the light strikes travel are different, the time must be as well. For the person on the train, the lightning strikes happened one after the other. So, who is right?
According to Einstein, both are right. Einstein called this phenomenon special relativity, which showed that time is relative to each observer at a different reference point.
Since special relativity only described the ways that things in constant motion behaved, Einstein wanted to expand relativity to encompass acceleration and gravity. Einstein concluded that acceleration and gravity were different forms of the same thing, allowing him to come up with what is commonly thought of as the world’s most famous equation:
e= mc2 (energy= mass x speed of light2)
Einstein came to this conclusion with another thought-experiment. Imagine an object is sitting at rest and emits two pulses of light in opposite directions. Since each pulse carries energy, the object itself must lose some energy.4 Einstein then questioned how this scenario would look to a moving observer. The speed of the two beams of light has to look the same, since the speed of light is constant, meaning that the amount of energy each beam carried has to be different. Since e= mc2 , then if energy is different, mass must be a little different too.4
From this equation, Einstein concluded gravity had to be determined by more than mass and distance (as Isaac Newton had suggested); it also had to be affected by time. Einstein concluded that space and time were not separate, leading to the concept of spacetime.
Einstein believed his scientific revelations had significance for the way that people think about time in general:
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”[5]
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14th 1879.6 Despite being an icon in the scientific world today, Einstein’s genius was not apparent in all areas of his early education. He thrived in science, mathematics and music, but struggled in the languages and was actually a bit of a rebellious student.7 He even dropped out of high school before returning to education later at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (that doesn’t mean you should drop out! – see the survivorship bias to find out why).8
1905 was an important year for Einstein. He published four papers that came to be known as the annus mirabilis papers, meaning “miracle year” in Latin.8 These papers explained special relativity, the existence of atoms, and the photoelectric effect, and led to Einstein receiving his PhD from the University of Zurich.8
Einstein’s theory on the photoelectric effect was another of his great contributions to science. It was built on an idea put forward by German physicist Max Planck, who believed that light waves were not continuous and instead consisted of bundles of energy called photons.9 From Planck’s initial ideas, Einstein concluded that the frequency of a wave of light hitting a metal was what determined how many electrons were emitted from the metal, where previously, scientists had thought the amplitude of the light was what affected its ability to disrupt electrons in the metal.10 This theory earned Einstein the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.11
Understanding the photoelectric effect was the beginning of what is known today as the quantum revolution, allowing us to better understand the behavior of matter and energy on an atomic and subatomic level.12 The entire computer and smartphone industry is built based on the knowledge gained from quantum physics, as are GPS systems and MRI scanners. Einstein’s willingness to step outside the box has led to, and continues to lead to, scientific breakthroughs that have benefited us all.13
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 27
|
https://m.facebook.com/nobelprize/photos/albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-in-physics-1921-for-his-services-to-/813271380834693/
|
en
|
Bei Facebook anmelden
|
[
"https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v3/y8/r/k97pj8-or6s.png",
"https://facebook.com/security/hsts-pixel.gif?c=3.2"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Melde dich bei Facebook an, um dich mit deinen Freunden, deiner Familie und Personen, die du kennst, zu verbinden und Inhalte zu teilen.
|
de
|
Facebook
|
https://www.facebook.com/login/
| ||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 84
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
en
|
What happened to the Nobel Prize money? – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
“Der Nobelpreis würde Dir – im Falle der Scheidung und für den Fall,
dass er mir zuteil wird – a priori vollständig abgetreten.“
“The Nobel Prize – in the event of the divorce and in the event
that it is bestowed upon me – would be ceded to you in full a priori.“
Albert Einstein to his first wife Mileva, 31. January 1918
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 – What happened to the prize money?
One of the many “ingeniously devised tales” adorning Albert Einstein’s life focuses on the prize money that accompanied the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. The actual story deserves a long and detailed account. This paper presents just a brief summary.
It begins in 1918, a long time before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conferred upon him the award. In that year, Albert Einstein signed over the award money to his first wife, Mileva: “[I]n the case of a voluntary divorce… the Nobel Prize… would be ceded to you in full a priori.”
Has this apparently generous gesture to be considered a belated acknowledgement of an ousted co-author – Mileva – of certain scientific papers published between 1901 and 1913 under Albert Einstein’s name alone? There is no document to justify this frequent claim. In fact, correspondence preserved in the archives tells a different story. In 1918, the prize money was still far away, yet confidently expected. It represented the security that Mileva demanded in the event of divorce.
The draft of the divorce agreement stated: “Disposal of the interest would be left entirely to your discretion. The capital would be deposited in Switzerland and placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
As reworded by Mileva’s lawyer, in the divorce decree the phrase “placed in safe-keeping for the children” became “In the case of the remarriage or death of Mrs. Einstein [the capital] shall go to the children.” Even if the practical consequences hardly changed – due to the fact that Mileva “shall have no authority over the capital without the consent of Prof. Einstein” – Albert’s clear statement of intent regarding the children’s heritage was swept under the rug. Yet happy to escape prolonged negotiations, in order to end an unfortunate marriage, Albert may not even have realized the difference.
Almost four years after the divorce, in the fall of 1922, it happened. “[N]ow … you really will be getting the Nobel Prize”, Albert announced to his children in a letter from Japan, once he received notice of the award. Soon Mileva’s plan could materialize: “Look into the matter about the house. The rest will be deposited somewhere in your names. Then, you’ll be so rich that, God knows, someday I may have to squeeze money out of you …“
In 1922, the Nobel Prize in Physics was endowed with 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, a relatively small sum compared with other years, yet the equivalent of more than twelve years’ income for Albert Einstein.
The divorce agreement of February 1919 stipulated that the capital was to be deposited in a Swiss bank account. But by 1923, even Switzerland’s economy was destabilized by political uncertainty. Would not Albert’s jocular forecast be jeopardized if the prize money remained in Europe?
Back from his trip to the Far East in the spring of 1923, Albert transferred 45,000 Swiss francs to Zurich, the amount Mileva planned to invest in real estate. Of the remaining 91,000 Swedish kronor Albert could have retained the equivalent of 40,000 German marks, deposited, in securities, in Zurich in 1918, as an advance payment towards the divorce. But by 1923, galloping inflation in Germany had reduced the original value to a tiny fraction. Following the advice of a financial expert, Albert decided to place the remaining prize money with an American bank “because I regard this as more advantageous and safer in your and the children’s interest“. In Mileva’s name, this capital was invested in a number of different dollar bonds.
By May 1924, Mileva had found the property she wished to own: a five-storey apartment building at the edge of Zurich’s prosperous district of Fluntern. Upon payment of 45,000 Swiss francs she became the owner of Huttenstrasse 62, valued at 195,000 SFr. In late summer, Mileva and her two sons moved into the six-room apartment on the third floor. Albert, visiting in September, expressed his satisfaction at the “visible result of my musings”.
When in the following year the roof required repair work, Albert offered Mileva an interest-free loan to avoid sale of bonds in the United States. That same year, 1925, while revising his last will, Albert noticed that the wording in the divorce decree only partially reflected his original intentions. Concerned, he asked Mileva for a written note stating that the Nobel Prize money will be considered an advance payment of their sons’ inheritance, and that Mileva would not appeal against Albert’s last will. Mileva, fearing that her sons be bamboozled, stubbornly ignored this demand. What she did not know is that in this last will Albert assigned to their sons not merely his violins, books and papers, but explicitly the scientific manuscripts which by now had become an asset of ever-increasing value.
Thanks to rental income, supplemented by the interest flowing in from her American account, and a few smaller loans, in the second half of the 1920s Mileva and Eduard enjoyed a relatively comfortable existence.
In the early summer of 1930, bonds in Mileva’s American account reached their maturity date; a capital of 5,000 US$ needed to be reinvested. With the stock market crash of October 1929 fresh in mind, Albert, circumspectly, suggested that she place this money in real estate rather than in new bonds. After hesitating for a moment, Mileva became enamoured with the idea of owning a second property. The following month such a property was found. Trusting in Mileva’s judgment “because you already once made a good buy” Albert signed the necessary forms. By August 1930, the purchase was finalized.
How could it be, that hardly one month later, Mileva decided to purchase a third house?
In order to make this acquisition, in September 1930 – with Albert’s approval – she sold bonds worth a total of 5,400 US$. The face value of the bonds now left in her account in New York could hardly have been more than 10,000 US$; accordingly, the income from interest “formidably shrunk”.
Albert’s Nobel Prize money reposed now in three apartment buildings situated in Zurich’s rather expensive residential area, on the Zürichberg. Here, only high-earners could afford the rent. This turned out to be a disaster once the economic crisis reached Switzerland. Some tenants delayed the rent payments or paid only a part of it, others moved out; each empty apartment left a bigger dent in Mileva’s budget.
To assist her in escaping from this precarious situation, in the summer of 1932 Albert engaged a lawyer to sort out Mileva’s financial affairs, and to find a way out of the impasse. However, Mileva did not appreciate the expert’s suggestion: to sell property as fast as possible, even at an unfavorable price.
In the same politically explosive summer of 1932, Albert revived the plan to amend his testament and, as he fruitlessly did in 1925, again asked Mileva and the sons to commit to “unconditionally respect” his last will. In return, he offered the sons the interest from a sum of ca. 25,000 Marks he had saved up for them.
“Back then,” he wrote, referring to the year 1918, “I ceded to you the Nobel Prize with the intention to secure your and the children’s future. It ought to be made clear … that this sum, the only assets I had at all by then, was to be credited to the children’s inheritance in the event of my death.”
In this summary I will not expand on the controversy that Albert’s request brought about, and how it affected the younger son, Eduard. One fact, however, needs to be stated: neither Mileva nor Hans Albert were ready to sign a paper which might, as they surmised, discriminate against them, vis-à-vis Albert’s new family. Mistrust prevailed on both sides.
Soon other concerns made obsolete the smoldering conflict: By January 1933, Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia; it seemed unlikely that he would become (financially) independent in the near future; in May, Albert lost his possessions in Germany, including the savings retained for the sons, all seized by the Nazis. Thanks to some foreign income prudently kept outside Germany, and his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was not left destitute and was still able to aid Mileva.
However, despite the large and small sums Albert sent occasionally in answer to Mileva’s anxious appeals, or at the request of her professional supporters, and despite the monthly allowance – a sum equivalent to a qualified handyman’s salary – for the son who remained with his mother at home, between 1933 and 1938, Mileva’s debts slowly grew to alarming heights.
In 1936, she sold the last American stocks to finance renovations of the house at Huttenstrasse 62, in the hope of yielding higher rental income.
That year, the income from the two apartment houses purchased in 1930 did not even cover the running expenses, let alone the mortgages. It was impossible to sell them; foreclosure approached. Just before the house at Huttenstrasse 62 was about to be seized too, in 1938, Mileva implored Albert to take it over – a formality made legally possible by the 1935 conversion of Mileva’s old debts to Albert into an additional mortgage in his favor.
With the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation, a body founded by Albert Einstein for the one and only purpose of preventing loss of the property, by April 1939, “the house seem[ed] bailed out for the time being, though with substantial sacrifices”.
At this point, it is pertinent to ask how much of the 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, almost 180,000 Swiss francs, or around 31,000 US$, was still at Mileva’s disposal.
Her American account was empty. The two apartment houses acquired in 1930, including all money she invested there later, were lost. If any, the house Huttenstrasse 62, valued at around 200,000 SFr, might have represented the final few Swedish kronor; but this property was now owned by the Corporation. The Corporation held a mortgage of 15,000 SFr; mortgages totaling 135,000 SFr were held by the State Treasury, and two additional mortgages together amounting to 44,000 SFr belonged to Albert. A part of the latter figure, though, was still Nobel Prize money, signed over to Albert in 1935, to prevent intervention by creditors.
Who was to blame for the considerable losses? Did Albert cause them, as some claim, due to his gambling on the stock exchange, and by leaving Mileva, contrary to all promises, in the lurch with the high hospital fees for their sick son? None of these allegations is supported by evidence, even though Mileva’s desperate calls for help seem to suggest it, and her Zurich friends and supporters, compassionately, sided with her. The fact is that Mileva financially overstretched herself by acquiring expensive properties yielding only meager returns and, in a period of economic instability, even no return at all.
When, in 1939, the Corporation had become the property’s official owner, Mileva’s budget problems seemed solved for the time being. An official agreement between the Corporation and Mileva was established. As in previous years, she would collect the rents and from this income pay the mortgage interests and taxes, as well as all necessary expenses. Her official salary amounted to 600 SFr p.a.; the surplus was to go to the Corporation together with regular accounts for income and expenses. Such an agreement met the tax office’s provisions. In practice, things were supposed to continue as was the case prior to the change of hands. The “surplus” including the mortgage interest owed to Albert and the Corporation would flow into Mileva’s household budget. And, of course, she and Eduard could stay in their comfortable home, free of charge. Yet, for a limited transition period, the lawyer who supervised the takeover by the Corporation, had to remain the house’s official manager; unfortunately, he knew too well how to skim off a considerable part of the surplus.
By the end of 1941 the house had become more or less unprofitable. Relenting to Mileva’s begging, Albert promised not to sell it unless the situation should become financially unbearable.
With the entry of the United States into the war, the correspondence between Mileva and Albert was interrupted. While Albert succeeded in ensuring the transfer of his monthly payments for Eduard, for a few years Mileva did not meet her obligation to regularly submit financial statements to the Corporation.
The statements arrived eventually in 1946. They made obvious that the house accumulated even more debts during the war years. Only a considerable investment could have brought about a long-term change, money that Albert would rather invest directly in a pension scheme for Eduard than in this house. The sale had become inevitable.
In 1947, the Corporation entrusted Mileva with the sales negotiations. Since her greatest concern was Eduard’s financial protection, Albert committed himself to sign over the 40,000 SFr mortgage – the only sum which still contained a small part of the Nobel Prize money – to Eduard’s name as soon as a legal guardian had been appointed for him. The 4,000 SFr mortgage would be paid to Mileva after the sale. The sale proceeds, less the profit tax charged in the United States, and less some debts Albert had made to cover the costs of the takeover, were supposed to be placed in a bank account in the Corporation’s name — yet at Mileva’s disposal, thus replacing the revenue Mileva previously obtained from the rents.
Assisted by the House Owners’ Association, in September 1947 Mileva sold the house on behalf of the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation at a price of 235,000 SFr. The buyer took over mortgages of altogether 192,000 SFr and handed out the difference. As suggested by the Corporation, the contract granted Mileva the right to stay in her apartment.
Once the contract was signed, she remained silent about the deal. Despite a number of reminders, by the end of April 1948, the Corporation had not yet received the sales documents and nothing precise was known about how much money Mileva obtained. Instead, she was writing desperate, reproachful letters to Albert and denigrating him with third persons in a quite perfidious way. She was distressed and confused, and no more able to comply with her obligations.
In May 1948, Mileva suffered a stroke. While picking her up from bed, at home, the paramedics discovered cash amounting to more than 87,000 SFr.
Is it reasonable to assume that these 87,000 SFr or a part of this sum was the rest of the Nobel Prize money?
The legal guardian recently appointed for Eduard now was also taking care of Mileva; he deposited the sum with the guardianship authorities. Although unaware of its actual amount, Mileva claimed that the entire sum belonged to her, being the leftover of the Nobel Prize money.
She died in August 1948.
If the full 87,000 SFr did belong to her, then this heritage would be split between her two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, a position immediately endorsed by Hans Albert.
Soon, however, the guardian realized that the case was more complicated. The Corporation made it perfectly clear that any amount handed over to Mileva when she was selling the house legally belonged to the Corporation in the first place. As for the mortgages in Albert’s favor, at a total value of 55,000 SFr, Albert confirmed his commitment to eventually make them available, preferably for Eduard’s care. The whereabouts of the promissory notes, though, still remained in the dark.
So far, the calculation was:
Out of the 87,000 SFr, payments had to be made to Mileva’s doctor and the tax office as well as for her funeral and the liquidation of her household. 43,000 SFr would then go to the Corporation. The remaining sum was to be shared among the sons.
The situation changed drastically when it came to light that Mileva, unauthorized, had sold Albert’s mortgages and the proceeds were contained in the 87,000 SFr.
To make matters worse, the owner of an old bearer mortgage note of 37.000 SFr registered his claim, which had not yet expired.
Hence the calculations looked quite different:
The 87,000 SFr plus a small sum resulting from the sale of Mileva’s household stood counter to the following claims:
43,000 SFr by the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation
55,000 SFr by Albert related to two mortgages
37,000 SFr by the owner of the promissory note dating from one of the houses that Mileva bought in 1930 = 135,000 SFr
It is pointless to go into details about the dispute which erupted between Hans Albert and his father when Albert showed his inclination to rescue whatever sum he could for the benefit of the younger son. It is, however, worth mentioning that eventually Albert’s perseverance and his insistence on the Corporation’s and his personal entitlements brought the case to a successful conclusion. Confronted with the estate’s impending bankruptcy and the danger of losing the full sum, the owner of the 37,000 SFr mortgage agreed to a settlement payment of 15,000 SFr. Albert then withdrew his own claim and thus allowed Eduard’s legal guardian to accept the succession.
Once all bills and taxes were paid, 70,000 SFr were left.
It is true that this sum could no longer be considered the remains of Albert’s Nobel Prize money; too much additional money had been invested in what for 24 years represented the “visible result of my musings”, as Albert put it in 1924.
But at least these 70,000 SFr eventually ended up in the hands of his sons, as foreseen in 1918: “The capital would be … placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
There is a very last chapter to this story:
In 1950, Hans Albert grudgingly agreed upon an “unjust” sharing of what may be called Mileva’s estate – 30,000 SFr for him, and 40,000 SFr for his far needier brother.
Until the end of his life, another six years, Albert continued to pay a monthly allowance to Eduard. By the time of Albert’s death, in 1955, out of the 40,000 SFr, more than 39,000 SFr were still in Eduard’s account.
Eduard’s share of Albert’s inheritance amounted to 64,256:25 SFr, and by 1956 Eduard owned a little over 100,000 SFr.
For another ten years, Eduard lived off this sum supplemented by occasional small gifts.
At the time of his death, in fall of 1965, 67,000 SFr were still lying in his account.
Eduard’s only heir was his brother Hans Albert.
Taxes and Hans Albert’s contribution to the placement of a headstone for Eduard lowered his inheritance. How much money may eventually have fallen into his hands? 40,000 SFr? 30,000 SFr? In any case, even given some inflation, this amount is more than what he lost when, in 1950, he generously renounced the “fair” or “just” distribution of the money that Mileva had left.
So in the end, the Nobel Prize money, through all the ups and downs and losses and gains, and the political catastrophes and personal tragedies, had served, besides Mileva, one way or another, the two sons, just as it was Albert’s intention.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 72
|
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/why-didnt-einsteins-nobel-prize-mention-relativity-theory
|
en
|
Why didn't Einstein's Nobel Prize mention relativity theory?
|
[
"https://cdn.sstatic.net/Img/teams/overflowai.svg?v=d706fa76cdae",
"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/16df5085d4b8372b5dcadabb87545ad3?s=64&d=identicon&r=PG",
"https://i.sstatic.net/m8jhv.jpg?s=64",
"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/4fc987e57b8626e201e75450a705047e?s=64&d=identicon&r=PG&f=y&so-version=2",
"https://graph.facebook.com/1709097005998278/picture?type=large",
"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/bd8b20c4008fec6f82c80652e7033c28?s=64&d=identicon&r=PG",
"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f0aa4f9233760eb7263fa3e29f850ac6?s=64&d=identicon&r=PG",
"https://hsm.stackexchange.com/posts/3824/ivc/219c?prg=700941b2-6c5a-4f4d-85fb-d08689764da8"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2016-05-25T19:22:24
|
It seems Einstein's most original contribution to physics was General Relativity Theory, as Lorentz and Poincaré already laid the foundations of Special Relativity. So, why didn't his 1921 Nobel Pr...
|
en
|
https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/hsm/Img/favicon.ico?v=fbe5dfcb33e0
|
History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange
|
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/why-didnt-einsteins-nobel-prize-mention-relativity-theory
|
It is often said that the reason why Einstein's Nobel Prize didn't mention Relativity Theory is the lack of sufficient evidence to the theory of relativity by 1922. But actually, by 1922, the special theory of relativity had been tested for almost all its major and pivotal predictions. The general theory of relativity had passed many highly significant tests with extreme precision. Like the deflection of light rays or the precession of the perihelion of the Mercury. It should be noted that although the precession of the perihelion of the Mercury was known before the formulation of the theory, GR was not an ad hoc explanation for the same--and thus, the fact of precession should be regarded as a verified prediction of GR. So, the absence of the mention of the Relativity Theory remains a curious question.
Many believe that the actual reason has something to do with the views of Bergson, one of the most prominent philosophers of the 20th century, who was also more famous for his brilliance than Einstein was at the time, on Einstein's theory of relativity. Bergson considered Einstein's theory to be metaphysical and had declared his problem with the theory publicly. The writer of an account of the famous debate between Einstein and Bergson, Canales, has noted:
When the Nobel Prize was awarded to Einstein a few months later, it was not given for the theory that had made the physicist famous: relativity. Instead, it was given “for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” — an area of science that hardly jolted the public’s imagination to the degree that relativity did. The reasons behind the decision to focus on this work other than relativity were directly traced to what Bergson said that day in Paris.
The president of the Nobel Committee explained that although “most discussion centers on his theory of relativity,” it did not merit the prize. Why not? The reasons were surely varied and complex, but the culprit mentioned that evening was clear: “It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory.” Bergson had shown that relativity “pertains to epistemology” rather than to physics — and so it “has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles."
Edit
I haven't read Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein but the NatGeo show "Genius" which is based on the same indicates that Phillip Lennard had a major influence on the Nobel committee which he used to persuade them against Einstein. This seems plausible and it also explains why Einstein was given Nobel for the explanation of the photoelectric effect. Because Lennard's experiments were crucial in our experimental understanding of the phenomenon and thus, when the Nobel committee decided to give the Nobel to Einstein anyway, they tried to placate Lennard to some extent by giving it Einstein not for relativity but for the photoelectric effect.
@ Geremia, you should really abstain from citing a well-known anti-semite Bjerknes when trying to be objective about Einstein.
And no, Special Relativity doesn't "belong" to Poincare and Lorentz but to Einstein. (And it's ludicrous to talk about SR without acknowledging Fitzgerald and Maxwell). Your argument is tantamount to crediting Newton with the full invention of calculus when the heavy lifting had already been done by Descartes and Fermat on analytical geometry - a curiousa that explains how Leibniz was able to derive calculus almost simultaneously with the great Sir Isaac. In fact, the Bernoullis - and even Lagrange - always acknowledged calculus as the birth child of Fermat. So if we aren't going to split hairs on an issue such as that, then why not simply give Einstein his due for Special Relativity (which in a real epistemic sense is different than both Lorentz and Poincare's conceptions of 'relativity'). In theory, Einstein didn't actually need his scientific predecessors to create SR given that the Lorentz transformations naturally arise out of Maxwell's equations. If we're being super picky, then let's give Lorentz, Poincare, Fitzgerald, and Maxwell 50% of the credit, and Einstein the other 50%. But why stop there? Give Laplace 30% of the credit for celestial mechanics. Max Born should get 40% of the credit for Matrix Mechanics too. Robert Hooke should get 50% of the credit for coming up with the inverse square law which Newton subsequently stole and then mathematized. (I hope you get my point - you run into a fair bit of troubling when delineating attributions of scientific discoveries).
At any rate, regarding your question, there are a few reasons.
The nobel committee didn't fully understand General Relativity nor was there an immediate realization of how important GR was to the modelling of the universe until Wheeler and company advocated for it later in the century.
The nobel committee didn't fully realize the universality of SR until Dirac.
Einstein really didn't care for the Nobel prize and the Nobel committee took offense. On the week he was about to be awarded the prize, he received a message suggesting he stay around "for something big in Stockholm" (wink, wink, hint, hint). However, he had already planned a trip to Japan that week and didn't care enough about the Nobel to delay his trip (the Nobel committee certainly took offense). Not only did he skip his own Nobel ceremony, but he didn't even WRITE his reception of the award in his journal the day he received it. Later quotes by journalists asking why he never received more than one Nobel mirror his general indiffernce to the award. His only use of the Nobel prize was to complete a promise to his then ex-wife Mileva Maric that, in exchange for a divorce, he would give her the Nobel Prize money once he inevitably got it for one of the many brilliant things he did.
Much of Einstein's work was so revolutionary that there was a sense in which the committee members believed them to be too speculative. Plus, the committee has generally prejudiced experimentalists over theorists - but even that isn't enough to account for why they've given out multiple nobels to other scientists whose work were nowhere near as fundamental as Einstein's.
There's a great argument made by a plethora of science historians than Einstein deserved anywhere from 4 to 12 Nobel Prizes (klien wrote a great article on this a few years back). Stone: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-douglas-ston/einstein-fantasy-physics_b_4948045.html
Count the amount of Nobels given for Brownian Motion. Bose-Einstein Condensates. Special Relativity. General Relativity. His 1909 and, later, his 1917 Paper on the Spontaneous and Stimulated Emission, and many others. Heck, even the EPR paper would be worthy contender.
Some good history is to be found in Pais A., How Einstein Got the Nobel Prize: Why did the Nobel Committee for Physics wait so long before giving Einstein the Prize, and why did they not award it for relativity?. American Scientist 70.4 (1982): 358-365. Isaacson’s book (p.311 ff.) adds some further details. But Canales theory about Bergson is mostly a recent journalistic invention.
In the years before WWI SR was also known as Lorentz-Einstein theory and people were aware of Poincare’s earlier work. Awarding the prize to the three has not really been an option as Lorentz has already got the 1902 Nobel and Poincare died in 1912. Around 1910 Lorentz emphasized that most of Einstein’s interpretations are ‘epistemological’ (erkenntnistheoretish) and not strictly physical. His view was authoritative and well known. However since Einstein’s name appeared on newspapers frontpages in 1919 there was pressure and recommendations to award him the prize. The decision to give it to him was taken without taking account of report submitted to the Nobel Committee Actually, it was written by … an opthalmologue (a Nobel in medicine) who somehow did not like Relativity. Svante Arrhenius, who had opposed Einstein’s winning, knew Lorentz’s judgment but most probably knew from second hand that Bergson view was more or less similar. During the announcement he chose to mention Bergson, with the remark that discussions of relativity pertain to epistemology.
(Canales imagines some kind of personal inimity and writes “Historians have often puzzled why Lorentz, Poincare, and Michelson—the three men whose research was closest to Einstein’s—failed to embrace the theory of relativity wholeheartedly. The role of Bergson as an individual, colleague, mentor, friend, and confidant—in addition to the general role and impact of his philosophy—was key” p88. But Bergson became interested in Relativity after 1911 and his views appeared in print (in French) barely a mont before the Nobel Committee decision).
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 7
|
https://www.uzh.ch/en/researchinnovation/excellence/nobelprize/einstein.html
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
|
[
"https://www.uzh.ch/docroot/logos/uzh_logo_d_pos.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/docroot/logos/uzh_logo_d_pos.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:eb2710fa-f35f-49c7-a439-8191f4b18e6c/logo_swissuniversities.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:6f9d9cf1-233f-467d-9684-465cdbe258e0/leru.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:26c8d3ca-349c-4308-a5aa-6d4c086ee32e/unaeuropa2.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:483afe9a-d8eb-4324-93d6-3195b72cf2c6/logo_u21.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/docroot/favicons/apple-touch-icon.png
|
https://www.uzh.ch/en/researchinnovation/excellence/nobelprize/einstein.html
|
1905 was Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis: he published no less than five groundbreaking papers. Among these was his Light Quanta Hypothesis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
In 1905, 26-year-old Albert Einstein submitted to the University of Zurich his dissertation entitled “Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen” (A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions). Within just a few months, he published another four papers, any of which would today be regarded as worthy of a Nobel Prize. His groundbreaking work included the Theory of Special Relativity and the Light Quanta Hypothesis; the latter being singled out for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
Einstein's revolutionary Light Quanta Hypothesis states that light consists of tiny bundles of energy (quanta). If the energy of light shining on a metallic surface is sufficient, the surface will emit electrons. The electrical charge released during this process can be measured. This phenomenon is called the photoelectric effect. Though this effect had long been known in physics, Einstein was the first to explain it correctly, by developing the Light Quanta Hypothesis. Only some twenty years later was the hypothesis confirmed experimentally.
From 1896 to 1900, Einstein studied physics at the Federal Polytechnical School (today’s ETH). Although the only successful student of his year, he was not offered an assistant’s position there when he completed his studies – probably on account of his average grades, and because he often skipped classes. Rather than attend lectures, Einstein preferred to stay at home and study the masters of theoretical physics, with “holy fervor,” as he later recalled.
As he did not obtain a position at ETH, Einstein worked from 1902 to 1909 as an employee of the Federal Patent Office in Berne. In 1909 the University of Zurich created an associate professorship in theoretical physics for him. This was Einstein’s first academic position; he left it in 1911 for a professorship in Prague.
Einstein returned to Zurich from 1912 to 1914 as a professor at ETH. In 1914 he left for Berlin, and even turned down a later offer of a double professorship at the University of Zurich and ETH. He emigrated to America in 1933, never to return to Europe.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 31
|
https://totallyhistory.com/albert-einsteins-nobel-prize/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize in Physics on November 9, 1922
|
[
"https://totallyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Albert_Einstein_Potrait-in-1922-after-receiving-the-Nobel-Prize-in-Physics.png",
"https://totallyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Albert_Einstein_Potrait-in-1922-after-receiving-the-Nobel-Prize-in-Physics.png",
"https://c.statcounter.com/6875378/0/73a09ae3/1/"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"primeo"
] |
2022-08-30T11:21:09+00:00
|
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on November 9, 1922, “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” He was never given the Nobel for his work on the theory of special relativity, even though he had simultaneously published it with his
|
en
|
https://totallyhistory.com/wp-content/themes/history/images/favicon.ico
|
Totally History
|
https://totallyhistory.com/albert-einsteins-nobel-prize/
|
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on November 9, 1922, “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” He was never given the Nobel for his work on the theory of special relativity, even though he had simultaneously published it with his work on the photoelectric effect in 1905.
The Photoelectric Effect
Around 1900, physicists were already well-aware that some materials could generate electricity when exposed to light. In 1883, an American inventor named Charles Fritts came up with the first functioning solar cell. However, nobody understood back then, even Fritts, how light could generate electric currents. Scientists only knew that light traveled as a wave. If this was true, then it merely caused scientists more questions about why a wave of light could create electricity.
Questions about the nature of light were answered in March 1905, when Einstein published his Nobel-winning paper on the photoelectric effect. In it, he hinted that light, perhaps, is not a wave but a particle. And as a particle, light could, therefore, possibly create electricity. He said that the photoelectric effect “…are more readily understood if one assumes that the energy of light is discontinuously distributed in space. In accordance with the assumption to be considered here, the energy of a light ray spreading out from a point source is not continuously distributed over an increasing space. Still, it consists of a finite number of energy quanta which are localized at points in space, which move without dividing, and which can only be produced and absorbed as complete units.”
Delayed Recognition Due to Prejudices
However, the late recognition of Einstein’s achievements has a dark story behind it. Einstein received the Nobel Prize 17 years after his ground-breaking theory of special relativity. That alone could have earned him recognition many years earlier. Robert Marc Friedman, a science historian, conducted exhaustive research on the matter and learned that Einstein was the victim of deliberate denial of the recognition. He said the physicist was intentionally ignored because of the prevailing bigotries of the time that worked against Jews, pacifists, and theoretical physics. Friedman says that when nominations for Einstein were submitted in 1920, the Nobel Committee members did not like the idea of a “political and intellectual radical, who—it was said—did not conduct experiments, crowned as the pinnacle of physics.” The prize for that year eventually went to a Swiss named Charles-Edouard Guillaume for discovering a type of nickel-steel alloy.
Despite Einstein’s growing popularity in 1921, a member of the committee named Allvar Gullstrand said, “Einstein must never receive a Nobel Prize, even if the whole world demands it.” This piece of information was discovered by Friedman in a Swedish mathematician’s diary. Unfortunately, Gullstrand’s opinion influenced the other committee members, and no prize was awarded for physics that year.
When 1922 came around, Einstein’s popularity soared even further. The committee members now worried that their credibility would be tarnished if they did not grant the physicist recognition. Einstein had been enjoying numerous nominations in the past two years for his work on the relativity theory, but in 1922, he had been nominated by Carl Wilhelm Oseen for his work on the photoelectric effect.
Friedman discovered that Oseen recommended the committee to recognize the photoelectric effect as a basic law of nature. According to Friedman, Oseen did this not because he admired Einstein but because he admired another physicist named Neils Bohr, and there were two available prizes for physics in 1922. Oseen then overemphasized the close link between Einstein’s law of nature and Bohr’s work on the atom and eventually was able to convince the committee. Thus, Bohr was awarded the 1922 prize and Einstein the overdue 1921 prize. However, Einstein could not attend the ceremonies because he was on his way to Japan for a series of lectures. He also needed to disappear to a faraway country because the German Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, had been assassinated by anti-Semites. A police investigation eventually found a list of targets with Einstein’s name on it. Friedman states that Einstein did not care about the medal but only about the prize money. The physicist used that money to keep his ex-wife and sons financially stable, and later, when one of his sons, Edouard, developed schizophrenia and had to be entered into an asylum.
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 64
|
https://www.britannica.com/contributor/Albert-Einstein/9536716
|
en
|
Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/cam/profile/31d183ac-ee43-44dd-b12f-dcff67a5dee7_1.jpeg?w=200&h=200",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/cam/profile/a4761bcb-22fb-4008-98ef-536a2fa940e4_1.jpeg?w=300&h=300",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel-resources/3-121/images/shared/default3.png?v=3.121.12",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel-resources/3-121/images/shared/default3.png?v=3.121.12",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/cam/profile/fc58b854-3285-4b2f-a778-61698eb6e883_2.jpeg?w=300&h=300"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"britannica",
"reference",
"online",
"encyclopedia",
"encyclopaedia",
"store",
"dictionary",
"thesaurus"
] | null |
[] | null |
German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. photograph: Prints and Photographs Division/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-60242)
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
https://www.britannica.com/contributor/Albert-Einstein/9536716
|
BIOGRAPHY
German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
photograph: Prints and Photographs Division/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-60242)
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 90
|
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/einstein-vs-the-nobel-prize
|
en
|
Einstein vs. the Nobel Prize
|
[
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/globalAssets/DSC_white_small.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/facebook.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/instagram.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/twitter.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/youtube.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/soundcloud.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/rss.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Virginia Hughes"
] |
2006-09-28T05:00:00+00:00
|
Why the Nobel Committee repeatedly dissed this "world-bluffing Jewish physicist"
|
en
|
/assets/favicon/favicon16.png
|
Discover Magazine
|
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/einstein-vs-the-nobel-prize
|
When Albert Einstein listed the most important honors of his life, he began with the German Physical Society's Max Planck Medal, named for a physicist he revered. He went on from there to list the prizes and honorary doctorate degrees awarded him in many nations. Conspicuously absent was the plaudit with the highest profile and payout: the Nobel Prize. But in context this omission isn't so surprising. The Nobel nod—17 years after Einstein published his special theory of relativity—came long after recognition by the physics world and even the general public. Even more bizarre, the prize was awarded to Einstein not for his relativity revolution, but for the comparatively obscure discovery of the photoelectric effect. Why? After years of sifting through letters and diaries of the Scandinavian archives, science historian Robert Marc Friedman says it was an intentional snub fueled by the biases of the day—a prejudice against pacifists, Jews, and, most of all, theoretical physics.
In 1905, while working as a patent clerk in Switzerland, 26-year-old Albert Einstein published five seminal papers on the nature of space, light, and motion. One paper introduced the special theory of relativity, which dramatically broke with Newton's universally accepted description of how physics worked. Special relativity did away with the notion of absolute space and time—Einstein said they were instead "relative" to the observer's conditions—effectively flipping the Newtonian model on its apple-bruised head. In 1915, Einstein expanded the theory by incorporating gravity: it was not just a force of attraction between bodies, he said, but the result of distortions in space itself. This new, more robust version was called the theory of general relativity.
Today, general relativity is celebrated as Einstein's most impressive work. But as Friedman wrote in his 2001 book, The Politics of Excellence, in post-War Germany Einstein was despised as a pacifist Jew who renounced his German citizenship, went to meetings of radical groups, and publicly supported socialism. His theories were dismissed as "world-bluffing Jewish physics" by some prominent German physicists, who claimed to practice "true" German science based on observations of the natural world and hypotheses that could be tested in a laboratory.
Luckily for Einstein, British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington believed there was a way to test the general theory. If massive objects curved space itself, as Einstein proposed, then they should bend nearby rays of light, as well. During six minutes of a total solar eclipse on May 29, 1919, Eddington measured the positions of stars that appeared next to the blotted-out sun. Sure enough, they followed the predictions of Einstein's general theory.
Eddington revealed the results of his eclipse experiment on November 6, and Einstein became a household name throughout the world practically overnight—literally overnight in some places; the next day, the London Times ran the headline, "Revolution in Science, New Theory of the Universe." Within a month, the news traveled through the American press; a New York Times headline declared, "Given the Speed, Time Is Naught."
The nominations for Einstein that poured into the laps of the Nobel Committee members as they were reviewing candidates for the 1920 prize were not exactly well received. The committee did not want a "political and intellectual radical, who—it was said—did not conduct experiments, crowned as the pinnacle of physics," says Friedman. So the 1920 prize was given to the Swiss Charles-Edouard Guillaume for his ho-hum discovery of an inert nickel-steel alloy. When the announcement was made, Friedman says the previously unknown Guillaume "was as surprised as the rest of the world."
By the next year, "Einstein-mania" was in full bloom. During his first trip to the United States he gave many public lectures on relativity, and received the prestigious Barnard Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. After one particularly crowded lecture at Princeton, legend has it that Einstein said wryly to the chairman, "I never realized that so many Americans were interested in tensor analysis."
As his quirky personality and untamed tresses gained more popularity with the general public, his momentous theory gained more credibility in the scientific community. In 1921, swarms of both theoreticians and experimentalists again nominated Einstein for his work on relativity. Reporters kept asking him, to his great annoyance, if this would be the year that he received a Nobel Prize.
But 1921 was not the year, thanks to one stubborn senior member of the prize committee, ophthalmologist Allvar Gullstrand. "Einstein must never receive a Nobel Prize, even if the whole world demands it," said Gullstrand, according to a Swedish mathematician's diary dug up by Friedman. Gullstrand's arguments, however biased, convinced the rest of the committee. In 1921, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded no physics prize.
Two prizes were thus available in 1922. By this time, Einstein's popularity was so great that many members of the committee feared for their international reputations if they didn't recognize him in some way. As in the previous two years, Einstein received many nominations for his relativity theory. But this year there was one nomination—from Carl Wilhelm Oseen—not for relativity, but for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. In another of his 1905 papers, Einstein had proposed that light, which had been thought to act only as a wave, sometimes acted as a particle—and laboratory experiments conducted in 1916 showed he was right.
In his exhaustive research, Friedman realized that Oseen lobbied the committee to recognize the photoelectric effect not as a "theory," but as a fundamental "law" of nature–not because he cared about recognizing Einstein, but because he had another theoretical physicist in mind for that second available prize: Niels Bohr. Bohr had proposed a new quantum theory of the atom that Oseen felt was "the most beautiful of all the beautiful" ideas in recent theoretical physics. In his report to the committee, Oseen exaggerated the close bond between Einstein's proven law of nature and Bohr's new atom. "In one brilliant stroke," Friedman says, "he saw how to meet the objections against both Einstein and Bohr."
The committee was indeed won over. On November 10, 1922, they gave the 1922 prize to Bohr and the delayed 1921 prize to Einstein, "especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." Einstein, en route to Japan (and perhaps huffy after the committee's long delay) did not attend the official ceremony. According to Friedman, Einstein didn't care much about the medal, anyway, though he did care about the money. As the German mark decreased in value after the war, Einstein needed a hard foreign currency for alimony payments to his ex-wife. Moreover, under the terms of his 1919 divorce settlement, she was already entitled to all the money "from an eventual Nobel Prize." Bruce Hunt, an Einstein historian at the University of Texas at Austin, says that calling attention to these financial arrangements "brings out the fact that Einstein was a much more worldly and savvy man than his later public image would suggest."
Of course, Einstein isn't the only player who emerges as being not quite angelic. "The decisions of the Nobel Committees are often treated by the press and public as the voice of god," Hunt says. But Friedman's research brought to light "how political the deliberations of the Nobel Committees sometimes were—and presumably still are."
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 89
|
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/einstein
|
en
|
Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/portrait/public/einstein.jpeg?itok=mXUGRcM6",
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/related_teaser_small/public/images/featured-thumbnails/ideas/EB-225_Einstein-Eclipse_Hi-res.png?itok=gLUBA_XJ",
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/related_teaser_small/public/images/featured-thumbnails/ideas/web-Einstein-high-res.jpg?itok=Kb18hktb",
"https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/styles/related_teaser_small/public/media-assets/cameron-higres.png?itok=6nWNMV-V"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2019-12-09T16:45:06-05:00
|
en
|
/themes/custom/veblen/images/favicons/favicon.ico
|
Institute for Advanced Study
|
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/einstein
|
Physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was one of the Institute’s first Faculty members, serving from 1933 until his death in 1955, and he played a significant part in its early development.
Einstein came to the United States to take up his appointment at the Institute at the invitation of Abraham Flexner, the Institute’s founding Director. During his time as an Institute Faculty member, Einstein pursued the goal of a unified field theory, and did so at a time when the goal of unifying the four fundamental forces of nature—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—had been set aside by the majority of working physicists. In recent years, this has again become a central goal of physicists and string theory has become the favored candidate to provide a framework for a unified understanding of the basic laws of the physical universe.
Nobel Laureate, Physics Prize, 1921
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 33
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/questions-and-answers/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Questions and answers
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/questions-and-answers/
|
Albert Einstein
Questions and Answers
Question: When was Albert Einstein born?
Answer: Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879.
Question: Where was he born?
Answer: He was born in Ulm, Germany.
Question: When did he die?
Answer: He died 18 April 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Question: Who were his parents?
Answer: His father was Hermann Einstein and his mother was Pauline Einstein (born Koch).
Question: Did he have any sisters and brothers?
Answer: He had one sister named Maja.
Question: Did he marry and have children?
Answer: He was married to Mileva Marić between 1903 and 1919. They had three children, Lieserl (born 1902), Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910). He married Elsa Löwenthal in 1919 and they lived together until her death in 1936.
Question: Where did he receive his education?
Answer: He received his main education at the following schools:
Catholic elementary school in Munich, Germany (1885-1888)
Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, Germany (1888-1894)
Cantonal school in Aarau, Switzerland (1895-1896)
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland (1896-1900)
Ph.D. from Zurich University, Switzerland (1905)
Question: When was Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics?
Answer: The Nobel Prize Awarding Institution, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, decided to reserve the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and therefore no Physics Prize was awarded that year. According to the statutes, a reserved prize can be awarded the year after, and Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
Question: Did Albert Einstein attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony?
Answer: The Nobel Prize was announced on 9 November 1922. Being too remote from Sweden, Albert Einstein could not attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December the same year.
Question: For what did he receive the Nobel Prize?
Answer: Einstein was rewarded for his many contributions to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
Question: What is the photoelectric effect?
Answer: The photoelectric effect is a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from the surface of matter (usually metals) when light shines upon it. Einstein explained the effect by proposing that light consists of small particles, or quanta, called photons, which carry energy that is proportional to the frequency of light. The electrons in the matter that absorb the energy of the photon get ejected. These findings were published in 1905 in the paper “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light”. Einstein’s observations that the photoelectric effect could only be explained if light behaves like a particle, not a wave, was instrumental in establishing the hypothesis that light can behave both like a wave and a particle.
Question: What are the practical applications of the photoelectric effect?
Answer: The photoelectric effect is very important for our daily life. It is the basis for photosynthesis, which is like a very effective solar cell where sunlight is absorbed by plants to make them grow. The effect also forms the basis for a variety of devices such as photodiodes, which are used in light detection within fibre optics, telecommunications networks, solar cells, imaging and many other applications.
Question: When did he deliver his Nobel Lecture?
Answer: He gave his Nobel Lecture on 11 July 1923 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Question: What other scientific accomplishments is Albert Einstein known for?
Answer: Albert Einstein is one of the most influential physicists in the 20th century. In 1905 Einstein published four landmark papers in physics – on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity and equivalence of matter and energy (E=mc2). The year 2005 was named the “World Year of Physics” in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s publications. Einstein is also well known for his general relativity theory published 1915 that complements his special relativity theory of 1905.
First published 25 January 2008
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 82
|
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202011/nobel-physics.cfm
|
en
|
2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
|
[
"https://www.aps.org/_ipx/w_256/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fi2z87pbo%2Fproduction%2F1b73fb5428556ac46efc630a7d9068c2524d12d0-1166x355.svg%3Fauto%3Dformat%26fit%3Dmax%26w%3D256 1x, /_ipx/w_640/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fi2z87pbo%2Fproduction%2F1b73fb5428556ac46efc630a7d9068c2524d12d0-1166x355.svg%3Fauto%3Dformat%26fit%3Dmax%26w%3D640 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
APS Archives
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/202011/nobel-physics.cfm
|
Learn about our first 125 years
Research coverage, news, and interviews to inspire and spark curiosity
Instructions and best practices for a successful event
APS supports physicists and other scientists from the beginning of their education to every stage of their careers.
Explore the benefits of mentoring and get involved
Options and discounts, including for international, students, and more
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 38
|
https://www.bartbeemsterboer.nl/story-life-awards.html
|
en
|
Einstein in 2 minutes
|
[
"https://www.bartbeemsterboer.nl/img/story-life-awards.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Bart Beemsterboer"
] | null |
Albert Einstein
|
en
|
favicon/apple-icon-144x144.png
| null |
The Nobel Prize
Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect and for "Merits in theoretical physics". The mystery was why it had taken so long for the greatest physics of his generation received this greatest tribute in physics. Einstein was passed in 1920 because of the massive wave of publicity that followed the confirmation of his general theory of relativity. In 1921, the Nobel Committee chose not to award a prize that year. Only in 1922 did the committee see reason to award him the 1921 prize. Einstein's reaction was typical, he went to Japan and did not personally accept the award.
Relativity
Einstein had always expected to win the Nobel Prize someday. He was so convinced that when negotiating the divorce with Mileva in 1918 he offered her the full amount of a future Nobel Prize. The 1921 price was 121,572 Swedish kronor, or $32,250 - nowadays, approximately $400,000. Whether he has ever kept this promise is historically doubted by historians. Evidence found in 2006 shows that Einstein instead invested a large portion of the money and then lost it in the economically noisy period of the Great Depression.
The 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for the photoelectric effect and the possibly deliberately vague formulation of "merits in theoretical physics" was the only Nobel Prize to be awarded. Perhaps one of the greatest injustices in science is that the Nobel Committee has never acknowledged its theory of relativity. Together with quantum theory, it turned out to be one of the two major pillars of 20th-century physics. Einstein has been nominated many times for his special theory of relativity from 1905 between 1910 and 1922. However, he never won, because his theory was so revolutionary that the committee claimed the supporting evidence was too thin. Posthumous nominations are not allowed, so there will be no Nobel Prize for Albert Einstein's greatest spiritual achievement.
Other prices
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 23
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/en/embassies/switzerland-bern/current/calendar/einstein-was-convinced-he-would-get-it-at-some-point/
|
en
|
"Einstein was convinced he would get it at some point"
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/wwwroot/favicons/favicon.ico
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/wwwroot/favicons/favicon.ico
|
[
"https://www.swedenabroad.se/globalassets/hero/sa-country-pattern-sweden-embassy.svg",
"https://www.swedenabroad.se/globalassets/ambassader/schweiz-bern/images/personer/professor-hans-rudolf-ott---president-of-einstein-society-bern.jpg?w=727&h=415&mode=crop"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/wwwroot/favicons/favicon.ico
|
Sweden Abroad
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/en/embassies/switzerland-bern/current/calendar/einstein-was-convinced-he-would-get-it-at-some-point/
|
"Einstein was convinced he would get it at some point" Interview with Hans-Rudolf Ott on what the Nobel Prize meant to Albert Einstein
05 Oct 2021, 9.00 AM
In 1922 Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize of Physics for the year 1921. In a letter to the Nobel Committee after being informed about the prize Albert Einstein wrote: “I am very glad to have received the Nobel Prize – also because there is no longer any reason for people to ask me the accusing question: Why don’t you get the Nobel Prize?”. Was the prize important to Albert Einstein and if so, why?
Hans-Rudolf Ott is an expert on Albert Einstein. He is also the president of the Einstein Society Bern and Professor of Physics, working at ETH Zürich where Albert Einstein taught between 1912 and 1914.
“Albert Einstein counted on the Nobel Prize. In 1914 when he separated from his wife Mileva Maric, she would not agree to a formal divorce. Later, in 1918, he asked her again to agree to a divorce and offered her to receive the Nobel Prize money if he ever would get the prestigious award”, says Hans-Rudolf Ott.
He continues: “In 1915 Albert Einstein succeeded in formulating the General Theory of Relativity and Gravitation. The theory used mathematical tools that were not widely known at the time and therefore, only a few specialists were able to appreciate its content. A year later, another of Einstein’s theories, the Law of the Photoelectric Effect which is based on the light-quantum hypothesis, was experimentally verified by Robert Millikan. In 1919 one of the predictions of the General Theory of Relativity was verified by a British team. The data collected by the British team was claimed to quantitatively confirm Einstein’s theoretical prediction. This made a headline in the British newspaper The Times. Albert Einstein gained world prominence, but was still not awarded the Nobel Prize.”
Difficult task for the Nobel Committee
Hans-Rudolf Ott thinks the Nobel Committee for the Physics award faced, and still does, a difficult task. Alfred Nobel’s will states that the Nobel Prize be awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
“It was not easy to interpret the will, the Nobel Prize was still quite young, and it was not clear at the time what Einstein’s work meant for humankind. A lot of his discoveries were proven and valued only much later. With respect of his General Theory of Relativity, just a few of his contemporary peers actually understood what he had done.”
When the Nobel Committee finally awarded Albert Einstein with the 1921 prize in 1922, he had been nominated more than 60 times. He was honoured with the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the Law of the Photoelectric Effect and his contributions to theoretical physics in general.
“Einstein’s Law of Photoelectric Effect had been experimentally verified in 1916. Therefore it was, to some extent, more in line with the Nobel committee’s directives to award Einstein for this work.”
In his otherwise so detailed diary Albert Einstein doesn’t mention the day he finds out he is laureated:
“Because he was so sure he deserved it and eventually would get it”, says Hans- Rudolf Ott.
Financial problems
Shortly after having moved to Berlin in 1914, Albert Einstein separated from his wife Mileva Maric, a former study colleague at the Zürich Polytechnic. Maric returned to Zürich with the couple’s two sons, while Einstein stayed in Berlin.
“At the time of the separation Einstein had a high income. However, after the first world war the German currency lost its value and suddenly Einstein found it impossible to pay the agreed allowance to his former wife who lived in Switzerland”, says Hans-Rudolf Ott.
The Nobel Prize being paid in Swedish kronor gave Einstein the economic freedom to offer his former wife what he had promised. The prize sum was 121 572 kronor, almost 50 times Einstein’s yearly salary at the time. Part of the money was used to buy a house in Zürich and the rental income of the rest of the money secured the living costs of Mileva Maric and the two sons.
“Viewed in this light, the award of the Nobel Prize was not only a well deserved recognition of Einstein’s scientific achievements, it also prevented his financial ruin and secured the financial support for his former wife and the children”, says Hans-Rudolf Ott.
_ _ _ _ _ _
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 80
|
https://www.voanews.com/a/things-to-know-about-the-nobel-prizes/7292854.html
|
en
|
Things to Know About the Nobel Prizes
|
[
"https://ssc.voanews.com/b/ss/bbgprod,bbgentityvoa/1/G.4--NS/1820658934?pageName=voa%3aeng%3aw%3aarticle%3athings%20to%20know%20about%20the%20nobel%20prizes&c6=things%20to%20know%20about%20the%20nobel%20prizes&v36=8.32.0.0.278&v6=D=c6&g=https%3a%2f%2fwww.voanews.com%2fa%2fthings-to-know-about-the-nobel-prizes%2f7292854.html&c1=D=g&v1=D=g&events=event1,event52&c16=voa%20english&v16=D=c16&c5=europe&v5=D=c5&ch=europe&c15=english&v15=D=c15&c4=article&v4=D=c4&c14=7292854&v14=D=c14&v20=no&c17=web&v17=D=c17&mcorgid=518abc7455e462b97f000101%40adobeorg&server=www.voanews.com&pageType=D=c4&ns=bbg&v29=D=server&v25=voa&v30=461&v105=D=User-Agent ",
"https://www.voanews.com/Content/responsive/img/player-spinner.png",
"https://www.voanews.com/Content/responsive/VOA/en-US/img/logo-compact.svg",
"https://www.voanews.com/Content/responsive/VOA/en-US/img/logo.svg",
"https://www.voanews.com/Content/responsive/VOA/en-US/img/logo-print.gif",
"https://www.voanews.com/Content/responsive/VOA/en-US/img/logo-print_color.png",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-4474-08dbc2f8efc4_w250_r1_s.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-5320-08dbb499cb63_tv_w100_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-5320-08dbb499cb63_tv_w33_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0a00-0242-f567-08dbbddaa8aa_w100_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0a00-0242-f567-08dbbddaa8aa_w33_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-c3c9-08db9fe42480_w100_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-c3c9-08db9fe42480_w33_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/92f71561-a46d-4017-8fd8-44f2f28553fe_cx0_cy5_cw0_w100_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/92f71561-a46d-4017-8fd8-44f2f28553fe_cx0_cy5_cw0_w66_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/34b3f2ef-d2c0-4963-ade0-8232960c69d0_cx0_cy4_cw0_w100_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/34b3f2ef-d2c0-4963-ade0-8232960c69d0_cx0_cy4_cw0_w66_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-cd7e-08dca80cec32_w160_r1.jpg",
"https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-cd7e-08dca80cec32_w100_r1.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Europe",
"Nobel Prize"
] | null |
[
"Associated Press"
] |
2023-10-02T03:41:02+00:00
|
First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which will be announced Monday by a panel of judges at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital.
|
en
|
/Content/responsive/VOA/img/webApp/favicon.svg
|
Voice of America
|
https://www.voanews.com/a/things-to-know-about-the-nobel-prizes/7292854.html
|
Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here.
The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards.
First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which will be announced Monday by a panel of judges at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9.
Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes:
An Idea More Powerful Than Dynamite
The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel, a 19th-century businessman and chemist from Sweden. He held more than 300 patents, but his claim to fame before the Nobel Prizes was having invented dynamite by mixing nitroglycerine with a compound that made the explosive more stable.
Dynamite soon became popular in construction and mining as well as in the weapons industry. It made Nobel a very rich man. Perhaps it also made him think about his legacy, because toward the end of his life he decided to use his vast fortune to fund annual prizes "to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind."
The first Nobel Prizes were presented in 1901, five years after his death. In 1968, a sixth prize was created, for economics, by Sweden's central bank. Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it's always presented together with the others.
Peace in Norway
For reasons that are not entirely clear, Nobel decided that the peace prize should be awarded in Norway and the other prizes in Sweden. Nobel historians suspect Sweden's history of militarism may have been a factor.
During Nobel's lifetime, Sweden and Norway were in a union, which the Norwegians reluctantly joined after the Swedes invaded their country in 1814. It's possible that Nobel thought Norway would be a more suitable location for a prize meant to encourage "fellowship among nations."
To this day, the Nobel Peace Prize is a completely Norwegian affair, with the winners selected and announced by a Norwegian committee. The peace prize even has its own ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death — while the other prizes are presented in Stockholm.
What's politics got to do with it?
The Nobel Prizes project an aura of being above the political fray, focused solely on the benefit of humanity. But the peace and literature awards, in particular, are sometimes accused of being politicized. Critics question whether winners are selected because their work is truly outstanding or because it aligns with the political preferences of the judges.
The scrutiny can get intense for high-profile awards, such as in 2009, when President Barack Obama won the peace prize less than a year after taking office.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is an independent body that insists its only mission is to carry out the will of Alfred Nobel. However, it does have links to Norway's political system. The five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, so the panel's composition reflects the power balance in the legislature.
To avoid the perception that the prizes are influenced by Norway's political leaders, sitting members of the Norwegian government or Parliament are barred from serving on the committee. Even so, the panel isn't always viewed as independent by foreign countries. When imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the peace prize in 2010, Beijing responded by freezing trade talks with Norway. It took years for Norway-China relations to be restored.
Gold and glory
One reason the prizes are so famous is they come with a generous amount of cash. The Nobel Foundation, which administers the awards, raised the prize money by 10% this year to 11 million kronor (about $1 million). In addition to the money, the winners receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.
Most winners are proud and humbled by joining the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa. But two winners refused their Nobel Prizes: French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, who turned down the literature prize in 1964, and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, who declined the peace prize that he was meant to share with U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973.
Several others were not able to receive their awards because they were imprisoned, such as Belarusian pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, who shared last year's peace prize with human rights groups in Ukraine and Russia.
Lack of diversity
Historically, the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners have been white men. Though that's started to change, there is still little diversity among Nobel winners, particularly in the science categories.
To date, 60 women have won Nobel Prizes, including 25 in the scientific categories. Only four women have won the Nobel Prize in physics and just two have won the economics prize.
In the early days of the Nobel Prizes, the lack of diversity among winners could be explained by the lack of diversity among scientists in general. But today critics say the judges need to do a better job at highlighting discoveries made by women and scientists outside Europe and North America.
The prize committees say their decisions are based on scientific merit, not gender, nationality or race. However, they are not deaf to the criticism. Five years ago, the head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it had started to ask nominating bodies to make sure they don't overlook "women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations."
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 60
|
https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/albert-einstein-got-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-for-class-12-physics-cbse-5fa8aa51b0ec2513fe7d2373
|
en
|
Albert Einstein got a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on:(A) Special theory of relativity(B) General theory of relativity(C) Photoelectric effect(D) Theory of specific heats
|
[
"https://vmkt.vedantu.com/vmkt/PROD/svg%2Bxml/d4520270-6e40-4273-a48f-e1c595f1ce26-1709193411767-4001376723323670.svg%2Bxml",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/seo-qna.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-left.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-down-qna.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://seo-fe.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/navbar-down-arrow.svg",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/green-check.svg",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png",
"https://www.vedantu.com/cdn/images/seo-templates/arrow-right.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2020-11-09T02:32:49+05:30
|
Albert Einstein got a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on:(A) Special theory of relativity(B) General theory of relativity(C) Photoelectric effect(D) Theory of specific heats. Ans: Hint: All the theories in the given options are proposed by Albert...
|
en
|
https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/albert-einstein-got-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-for-class-12-physics-cbse-5fa8aa51b0ec2513fe7d2373
|
Hint: All the theories in the given options are proposed by Albert Einstein. Recall these theories year wise and identify in which theory Albert Einstein proved the particle nature of light. For the same theory he was awarded with the Nobel Prize, the most honorable award in the world.
Complete step by step answer:
-We know that special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity were proposed by Albert Einstein in 1905 and 1915 respectively. Also, the theory of specific heats is proposed by Albert Einstein in 1906. But none of these theories got a Nobel Prize for his extraordinary work.
-Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize for photoelectric effect that he proposed in 1905 in the same year he proposed the special theory of relativity. The phenomenon of photoelectric effect is also observed by other scientists before Einstein, but none of them can explain the phenomenon with proper proof.
Additional information:
According to photoelectric effect, the metal emits electrons when the photon of certain energy incident on it. The energy of the incident photon should be greater than the binding energy of the electron in the atom. Therefore, we call the energy of the photon as threshold energy to emit the electron from the metal surface. The energy of the photon is express as,
\[\Delta E = h\nu \]
Here, h is the Planck’s constant and \[\nu \] is the frequency of the photon.
According to Einstein as he proposed in the special theory of relativity, no object can attain the speed of light. Only massless objects like photons whose rest mass is zero can have the speed of light.
Note:The special theory of relativity links the space and time of the objects having the consistent speeds. This theory grabbed so much attention but could not get awarded with the Nobel Prize. The photoelectric effect was like the beginning of the new era, it has tremendous applications. In the same theory he proved that light can also behave as a particle.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 96
|
https://home.cern/news/announcement/cern/unconventional-music-concert-cern-celebrate-100-years-albert-einsteins-nobel
|
en
|
Unconventional music concert at CERN to celebrate 100 years of Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize
|
https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2022-169-1/file?size=medium
|
https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2022-169-1/file?size=medium
|
[
"https://home.cern/sites/default/files/logo/cern-logo.png",
"https://home.cern/sites/default/files/inline-images/pkatyaya/1209226_01-A5-at-72-dpi.jpg",
"https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2022-169-1/file?size=large"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"physics",
"CERN",
"Large Hadron Collider",
"LHC",
"high-energy physics",
"particles",
"science"
] | null |
[] |
2024-07-18T13:27:08+00:00
|
In December 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize in honour of his contributions to theoretical physics and his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. He received it in 1922. A hundred years on, Einstein is considered as the father of modern physics, but he was also an accomplished violinist who loved music. “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of music.” - Albert Einstein At the time Einstein received the Nobel Prize, a Russian engineer, Lev Termen, was laying the foundations of modern electronic music with his invention, the theremin. Curious to find out more about this instrument, Einstein attended various concerts and even tried to play it. To celebrate the anniversary of Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize, CERN, in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy in Switzerland, will host an unconventional music concert at the Globe of Science and Innovation at 8.00 p.m. on Wednesday 19 October 2022. The event will comprise an unconventional music concert in which a Swiss artist (Roland Bucher) featuring a noise table, and a Swedish artist (Henrik Rylander), featuring a theremin, will enter in musical conversations with CERN scientists and musicians Paula Collins, Angela Ricci, Anne Marie Magnan, Patrick Robbe and Chiara Mariotti. Music performances will be preceded by lectures on Einstein by Professor Brian Foster (Oxford University) and on the sonification of LHC data by Professor Domenico Vicinanza (GEANT and Anglia Ruskin University). Come and celebrate Einstein’s life, music and science in a unique and unconventional event! Programme and registration on the Indico page of the event.
|
en
|
/sites/default/themes/custom/cernpublic/favicon.ico
|
CERN
|
https://home.cern/news/announcement/cern/unconventional-music-concert-cern-celebrate-100-years-albert-einsteins-nobel
|
In December 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize in honour of his contributions to theoretical physics and his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. He received it in 1922. A hundred years on, Einstein is considered as the father of modern physics, but he was also an accomplished violinist who loved music.
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of music.” - Albert Einstein
At the time Einstein received the Nobel Prize, a Russian engineer, Lev Termen, was laying the foundations of modern electronic music with his invention, the theremin. Curious to find out more about this instrument, Einstein attended various concerts and even tried to play it.
To celebrate the anniversary of Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize, CERN, in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy in Switzerland, will host an unconventional music concert at the Globe of Science and Innovation at 8.00 p.m. on Wednesday 19 October 2022.
The event will comprise an unconventional music concert in which a Swiss artist (Roland Bucher) featuring a noise table, and a Swedish artist (Henrik Rylander), featuring a theremin, will enter in musical conversations with CERN scientists and musicians Paula Collins, Angela Ricci, Anne Marie Magnan, Patrick Robbe and Chiara Mariotti.
Music performances will be preceded by lectures on Einstein by Professor Brian Foster (Oxford University) and on the sonification of LHC data by Professor Domenico Vicinanza (GEANT and Anglia Ruskin University).
Come and celebrate Einstein’s life, music and science in a unique and unconventional event!
|
||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 79
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/photo-gallery/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Photo gallery
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/einstein_lecture_photo.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/nernst-einstein-planck-millikan-laue-1931-e1533737663378.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/einstein_group_photo.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-bohr-walking-photo-3461-landscape-gallery.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/solvay-conference-1927-e1533737729699.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/bohr-einstein-sitting-photo-3463-landscape-gallery.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-1921-portrait-photo-3469-landscape-gallery.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-lorentz-photo-3468-landscape-gallery.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/einstein_zeeman_ehrenfest_photo.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-wife-boat-photo-3466-landscape-gallery.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-office-photo-3467-landscape-gallery.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/photo-gallery/
| ||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 7
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/honours-prizes-awards/
|
en
|
Honours, prizes, awards – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/rostock_ehrenpromotion_small1.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/uni_logo_200.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/Pour-le-merite.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/gold-medal.gif",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/MPM-Vs.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/MPM-Rs.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ETH1905.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/blackboard.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/Franklin-Medal-K.jpg",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/HarvCamp-1935.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/honours-prizes-awards/
|
University of Geneva
Dr. h. c. – awarded on July 9, 1909
On Friday, July 9, 1909, the University of Geneva awarded Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate on occasion of the 350th founding year of the university. 110 persons were honored during this ceremony. Among the honored persons were also the French chemist and physicist Marie Curie (1867-1934) and the German chemist and philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). Einstein was awarded the honorary doctorate following the proposal of the experimental physicist and Director of the Physical Institute of the University of Geneva Charles Eugène Guye (1866-1942). Einstein was present during the ceremony. On the day of the award he wrote in a letter to Lucien Chavan (1868-1942) and his wife Jeanne: “… I send you an affectionate greeting from the hospitable Geneva. I am delighted about the friendliness and kindness of the people …”
It was Chavan who had convinced Einstein to take part in the ceremony which is connected with the award, after Einstein had, accidentally, thrown the invitation into the “official wastepaper basket” of the Bernese patent-office.
In his memories concerning the end of the ceremony it says:
“The ceremony ended with the most opulent feast that I have taken part in during my whole life. Then I said to a patrician from Geneva who was sitting next to me: ‘Do you know what Calvin would have made if he was still alive?’ As he said no, and asked me for my opinion, I said: ‘He would have erected a large pyre, and he would have burned us all because of sinful gluttony.’ The man did no longer speak to me, and this is the last thing I can remember with regard to the noteworthy ceremony.”
Source: “Albert Einstein – A biography” Albrecht Fölsing, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 1993
It was the reformer Johannes Calvin (1509-1564) who had, in 1559, founded the Geneva Academy, the predecessor of the University of Geneva.
It was Albert Einstein‘s first honorary doctorate, but many more were to follow.
University of Rostock
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 12, 1919
On the day of the celebration of the 500th anniversary (Wednesday, November 12, 1919) of the University of Rostock, Albert Einstein and Max Planck (German physicist and Nobel laureate, 1858-1947) were awarded the honorary doctorate.
Einstein was awarded a honorary doctorate in medicine “in recognition of the enormous work of his mind”. In his letter of thanks to the dean of the medical faculty Einstein wrote: “I thank you very much for sending me the certificate which represents your excellent taste, and for your friendly covering letter. The wonderful celebration of your venerable university and the heartfelt hospitality which I was allowed to experience in Rostock will always be a nice memory for me.”
The honorary doctorate which Einstein was awarded in Rostock is the only one he was given in Germany!
Translation:
„On the day of the celebration of five hundred years Rostock University, the Medical Faculty awards professor Albert Einstein, Doctor of Philosophy, the honorary Doctor of Medicine in recognition of the enormous work of his mind, through which he has renewed the terms of space and time, gravity and matter from scratch.
Rostock, November 12, 1919.
The Dean“
Illustration Credit:
Courtesy Universitaetsarchiv Rostock
Signature: Prom. med. Nr. 150/ 1919, Albert Einstein
Princeton University
Dr. h. c. – awarded on May 9, 1921
“We greet the new Columbus of science, who travels lonesome through the foreign seas of thinking.” The German speech held by the president and head of the Princeton University John Hibben, began with these words. It was held on the occasion of awarding Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate on Monday, May 9, 1921. The celebration took place in Alexander Hall.
Albert Einstein, who visited the United States for the first time, accompanied Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) to succeed in financing the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They stayed from the beginning of April until the end of May. In Washington, Einstein was welcomed in the White House by President Warren G. Harding (1865-1923). After that he visited, among other cities, Princeton, Chicago and Cleveland. In Princeton he held the first of five lectures on the theory of relativity – Stafford Little Lectures (May 9 to May 13) after being awarded the honorary doctorate. The lecture hall was overcrowded. Not only students and members of the faculty, but also many curious and sensation-seeking people were present. Einstein spoke German, so only few people could follow his explanations. After he had finished his speech, Einstein’s lecture was summed up in English by a member of staff of the physical faculty. The demand for the second and the three following lectures was no longer that great and all the interested people found a comfortable place.
These lectures have been translated into English and published entitled “The Meaning of Relativity.” The German text was published in 1922 entitled: “Four Lectures on the Theory of Relativity.”
Approximately ten years later, the little town of Princeton, New Jersey, should become Albert Einstein’s new home.
University of Manchester
Dr. h. c. – awarded on June 9, 1921
Albert Einstein was awarded the honorary doctorate in natural sciences in the big lecture hall of the University of Manchester on Thursday, June 9, 1921. He was honored by the Vice Chancellor of the University, the English mineralogist Sir Henry Alexander Miers (1858-1942). Einstein said German words of thanks, and also held his lecture in German language.
In its evening edition of June 10, the Vossische Zeitung reported about the ceremony:
“Einstein honored in Manchester. The yesterday lecture of Prof. Einstein at the University of Manchester was, as our London reporter says, a homage to the German scholar. The big lecture hall of the university was filled with approximately thousand persons who gave Einstein a warm welcome. Before the lecture was held, the chemist Prof. Diron, who explained Einstein‘s merits, stood up and explained that the name of the discoverer of the theory of relativity may be mentioned next to the ones of the greatest researchers. He had done more for the progress of the world than statesmen and conquerors. The Vice Chancellor of the university, Sir Henry Miers, then awarded Einstein the honorary doctorate and explained that science was independent from the blood feud between the people. Manchester was proud to be able to honor the German scholar. Einstein then held his lecture in German. He thanked for the honors that were awarded to him, and expressed his hope that the demonstration would contribute to the improvement of the international relationships.”
During the time from June 8 until June 17, Einstein was on a lecture tour through England (Liverpool, Manchester, London and Oxford). Politically significant was his London encounter with the British politician Lord Richard Haldane (1856-1928) and with Prime Minister David Lloyd Georg (1863-1945).
Nobel Foundation, Stockholm
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize – awarded on December 10, 1922
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1921. He was awarded the prize “for his work on theoretical physics, especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. It is remarkable that Einstein was not awarded the Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity.
During the presentation of awards, the laureate is awarded the Nobel Certificate and the golden Nobel Medal with the picture of the founder Alfred Nobel (Swedish chemist and industrial, 1833-1896) by the Swedish king. The prize money is only payed when the Nobel speech has been held.
Einstein was on a journey through Japan when he was awarded the prize on December 10, 1922. Who should take receipt of the prize for him? Shortly before the presentation of awards there were still differences of opinion about the nationality of Einstein. Was he a German or a Swiss citizen? Finally it was the German legate in Sweden who received the prize in Einstein’s name. Einstein himself was handed over the document and the medal in Berlin by the Swedish ambassador in Germany. As the statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that the Nobel laureate has to hold his Nobel speech before he receives the prize money, Einstein still had to wait for some time until he received the money.
Einstein held his Nobel speech on July 11, 1923 in the Jubilee Hall in Goeteborg in presence of the king and in front of about 2000 listeners. He spoke about “fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity”. After the speech King Gustav V had a vivid chat with Einstein.
The total amount of the prize money – about 120.000 Swedish Krones (back then converted about 180.000 Swiss Francs) – Einstein made available to his first wife Mileva and his two sons Hans Albert and Eduard.
University of Madrid
Dr. h. c. – awarded on March 8, 1923
Fulfilling the traditional customs Albert Einstein received the degree of an honorary doctor on Thursday, March 8, 1923 – in the morning and during a special meeting of the University of Madrid. Speeches were among others held by the Principal of the University, Professor José Rodríguez Carracido (1856-1928), Professor José Maria Plans (1878-1934), a student of the University, and the German ambassador in Madrid, Ernst Langwerth von Simmern (1865-1942). He held his speech in Spanish language. Albert Einstein held his acceptance speech in German.
Einstein‘s entry into his travel log dated March 8, 1923:
„Ehrendoktor Aecht spanische Reden mit zugehörigem bengalischem Feuer Lange aber inhaltlich gute Rede des d. Gesandten über deutsch-span. Beziehungen; (aber ins) ächt deutsch. Nichts rhetorisches. (Abends) Dann Besuch bei techn. Studenten. Reden und nichts als Reden, aber gut gemeint. Abends Vortrag Dann bei Kuno 1) musizieren. Ein Künstler (Direktor des Konservatoriums 2)) Poras spielte herrlich Violine.”
Translation:
“Honorary doctor Aecht Spanish speeches with corresponding Bengal firework Long but contentwise good speech of the German ambassador concerning German-Spanish relationships; (however) into ächt German. Nothing rhetorical. (in the evening) Then visiting technical students. Speeches and nothing but speeches, however, well-meant. In the evening lecture. Then playing music with Kuno 1). An artist (Director of the Conservatory 2)) Poras plays the violin – magnificent!”
Source:
Publisher: Diana Kormos Buchwald, among others, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 13, Princeton 2012
1) Kuno Kocherthaler, a relative of Einstein
2) Antonio Fernandez Bordas (1870-1950)
Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa were on a lecture tour through Spain with the stations Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza. They stayed in Spain from February 22 until March 15, 1923.
During Einstein‘s stay in Madrid he was awarded the diploma of a corresponding foreign member by the Academia de Ciencias on March 4. It was a formal meeting under the presidency of the Spanish King.
Order “Pour le mérite”
admission to the order – June 7, 1923
On Thursday, June 7, 1923 Albert Einstein was admitted to the order “Pour le mérite”. He received the medal Pour le mérite for science and arts, with which persons were and still are awarded “who have made themselves a name through widely spread recognition of their work in science and arts”.
The poet Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946), the mathematician Felix Klein (1849-1925), the sculptor Hugo Lederer (1871-1940) and the painter Max Liebermann (1847-1935) were also admitted to the order on this day.
Due to the political situation and thus the incidents in nazi Germany, Einstein renounced the membership to the order in 1933. An attempt of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss (1884-1963), at the beginning of the 1950ies to persuade Einstein to renew his membership was in vain.
The order Pour le mérite for science and arts was founded by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia (1795-1861) in May 1842. The first civil Order of Merit of this kind in Europe should complete the military order of Frederick II, King of Prussia (1712-1786, “Frederick the Great”) of 1740. In 1924 it was converted into an “independent organisation of excellent scientists and artists” with new statutes. In the 30ies the fate of the order was uncertain and its disbanding was given a serious thought. Only through the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, the order was revived and again entered the public consciousness in May 1952.
The order Pour le mérite is nowadays regarded as one of the highest awards in Germany, which a scientist or artist can achieved.
Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde
Genootschaps Medal – awarded on Dezember 13, 1923
The Dutch society Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde, which was founded in Amsterdam in 1790, promotes and supports activities in the areas of science and medicine. On Thursday, December 13, 1923, the society awarded its highest distinction, the Genootschaps Medal, in the auditorium of the Amsterdam university and thus honoured Albert Einstein and the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928). The list of previous laureates contained names like for example the Dutch physicists and Nobel Prize laureates Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923) and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926).
Albert Einstein took personally part in the celebration taking place on occasion of the annual meeting of the “Genootschap” on December 13. Despite acceptance of the invitation, H. A. Lorentz did not.
In advance there was a letter from the Board of the society to Albert Einstein, which was dated “October 25, 1923”:
„Hochgeehrter Herr Professor Einstein,
im Namen der “Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in Amsterdam” haben wir das Vergnügen Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass die “Genootschap” in ihrer Sitzung vom 22. Oktober 1923 Ihnen und Herrn Professor H. A. Lorentz ihre goldene Medaille zuerkannt hat. Die Verleihung dieser Medaillen wird am 31. Oktober 1923 in der Jahresversammlung der Gen. in der Aula der Universität nachmittags um 4 Uhr stattfinden.
Es würde uns eine ganz besondere Ehre sein, wenn Sie der Verleihung dieser Medaillen durch Herrn Prof. J. D. v. d. Waals, Professor der Physik an unserer Universität, persönlich beiwohnen könnten, wie auch Herr Professor Lorentz es uns versprochen hat. …
Mit einer zustimmenden Antwort würden Sie uns eine besondere Freude machen. …”
Translation:
“Highly honoured Professor Einstein,
in the name of the “Genootschap ter Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in Amsterdam” we have the pleasure to inform you that the “Genootschap” has awarded you and Professor H. A. Lorentz its golden medal in its meeting dated October 22, 1923. The presentation of these medals will take place in the annual meeting of the Gen. in the auditorium of the university on October 31, 1923 at 4 pm.
It would be a very special honour for us if you could personally attend to the presentation of these medals by Prof. J. D. v. d. Waals, professor of physics at our university, like also Professor Lorentz has promised to do. …
You would specially please us if you sent us a positive answer. …“
The presentation date which is mentioned in the letter seems to have been postponed.
Royal Society of London
Copley Medal – awarded on November 30, 1925
Albert Einstein was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London in a ceremony on Monday, November 30, 1925. As tradition has it, the highest award of the society was handed over during its annual celebration. In 1925 the celebration took place in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in London. At the annual celebration the Royal Society awarded also other medals and prizes.
Einstein was awarded the Copley Medal by the English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), the retiring president of the society. The presentation of the medal was one of the last official actions of Sherrington. After the presentation of the medals he handed over the position of the president after one term of office (five years) to the British physicist from New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), from 1931 on Lord Rutherford of Nelson.
Some of the people who were awarded the Copley Medal before and after Einstein were the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1838), the British physicist Sir William Thomson (1883), from 1892 on Lord Kelvin of Largs, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1918), the German physicist Max Planck (1929), the Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1938) and the English physicist Paul A.M. Dirac (1952).
Sir Geoffrey Copley made money available to the Royal Society to promote scientific work (1709). A few years later the Copley Medal was suggested:
“…a medal or other honorary prize should be bestowed on the person whose experiment should be best approved…”
The English physicist Stephen Gray (1666-1736) was awarded the first Copley Medal in 1731. The medal consists of silver and gold. It was and still is awarded for special scientific work.
Royal Astronomical Society
Gold Medal – awarded on February 12, 1926
Some weeks after Einstein had been awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London, he was awarded another prize in England. This time the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) awarded him, also in London, its highest award, the Gold Medal. The Gold Medal was awarded for special performance in the field of astronomy. It is still awarded by the RAS, which also awards the Eddington and the Herschel Medal.
It was not possible for Einstein to receive the Gold Medal personally. In a letter of thanks which he had written before the award he wrote to the RAS: “…He who finds a thought which lets us look into the secret of nature – even if only a little bit deeper – has won mercy. He who then still experiences the recognition, sympathies and promotion of the greatest persons of his time almost obtains more luck than a human being is able to bear. In this consciousness I thank you in humble attitude for the great award you judged I deserve. I would like to come to you personally to receive the Medal awarded to me; but unfortunately I am not able to…”
Already in 1919 the RAS had, on proposal of the English astronomer and astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), decided to award Albert Einstein the Gold Medal for the year 1920. But “patriotic” members of the RAS prevented this. The result was that no medal was awarded in 1920. Einstein still had to wait for six years until he received the highest award of the RAS.
University of Paris
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 9, 1929
On Saturday, November 9, 1929, the University of Paris awarded Albert Einstein the honorary doctorate in the hall of the Sorbonne. The principal of the university, the French historian Sébastien Charléty (1867-1945), awarded Einstein the honorary doctorate diploma.
On November 12, the Vossische Zeitung reported about the ceremony what follows:
“Einstein honorary doctorate of the Sorbonne. From Paris we hear: In the large amphitheater of the Sorbonne there was, on Sunday evening, under the chairmanship of the principal Professor Charléty and in the presence of the whole scientific and intellectual Paris, a festive presentation of the honorary doctorate and the insignias of an honorary doctorate of the University of Paris for Professor Albert Einstein. The dean of the faculty for mathematics and natural sciences, Professor Maurain, celebrated the merits and the work of Einstein in a speech which the audience interrupted through minute-long applause. Einstein stood up and thanked with a bow. The applause was even longer when the principal awarded Einstein the doctorate diploma and covered his shoulder with the “Robenschleife” in the colors of the city of Paris. The ceremony was also attended by the German ambassador v. Hösch, with whom Professor Einstein stays during his visit in Paris.”
The dean of the faculty for mathematics and sciences, who is mentioned in the article, was the French geophysicist Charles Honoré Maurain (1871-1967). The German ambassador in Paris was Leopold von Hoesch (1881-1936).
Einstein‘s stay in Paris began on November 7 and ended on November 14. During his stay he held two lectures in the Institute Henri Poincaré and took part in a meeting of the Académie des sciences and the academic society Societé française de Philosophie.
ETH, Zurich
Dr. h. c. – awarded on November 7, 1930
On occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule, ETH), Albert Einstein was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Science in a ceremony on Friday, November 7, 1930. The nomination was initiated by the department of mathematics of the ETH.
In the letter of the nomination it said: “To the completer of classical physics in the theory of relativity and the pioneer of quantum physics, its former student and teacher, in recognition of his excellent scientific performance and in thankful remembrance of his work which he performed for Switzerland and the college.”
The honorary doctorate of his Alma mater surely meant a lot to Albert Einstein.
From October 1896 to July 1900 Einstein had studied at the ETH and from October 1912 to March 1914 he worked there as full professor for theoretical physics.
Yeshiva College, New York
Dr. h. c. – awarded on October 8, 1934
On Monday, October 8, 1934, Albert Einstein received in a ceremony the degree of an honorary doctor (Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa) of the Yeshiva College in New York, USA.
Einstein had approved of the award of the degree of an honorary doctor in a letter to the College dated September 1, 1934. Dr. Bernard Revel (1885-1940), the first President of the Yeshiva College in New York, USA, which was founded in 1928, welcomed the attendees to the ceremony on occasion of the award of the degree of an honorary doctor, which at the same time was the official beginning of the academic year 1934/35.
After the award of the degree of an honorary doctor Einstein held his acceptance speech. He spoke in German: „Es erfüllt mich mit besonderer Freude und Genugtuung …” (“It is my special pleasure and satisfaction…“). Further speakers were among others the Governor of the Federal State of New York, Herbert Henry Lehman (1878-1963), and Herman Bernstein (1876-1935), editor of the Jewish Daily Bulletin.
Franklin Institute, Philadelphia
Franklin Medal – awarded on May 15, 1935
On Wednesday, May 15, 1935 Albert Einstein received the Benjamin Franklin Medal (Benjamin Franklin, American politician, author and scientist, 1706–1790) in a ceremony. It was awarded in recognition of his fundamental contributions to theoretical physics; especially for his theories of relativity and his work on the photoelectric effect.
The Franklin Medal is one of the highest awards of the Franklin Institute. It was and still is awarded for special performance in the field of science and the arts. The Franklin Institute also awards other medals than the Franklin Medal.
In the ceremony, which took place in the evening at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, USA, not only the two Franklin Medals, but also five Longstreth Medals and seven Wetherill Medals were awarded. Einstein did not hold any speech.
Harvard University
Dr. h. c. – awarded on June 20, 1935
In 1935 Albert Einstein received a new honorary doctorate, this time by the most traditional and most important university of the USA, the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was Thursday, June 20, 1935 when he was awarded in a ceremony the Doctor of Science in a ceremony. The president of the university, J.B. Conant, said in a speech about Einstein: “…Acclaimed by the world as a great revolutionist of theoretical physics, his bold speculations, now become basis doctrine, will be remembered when mankind`s present troubles are long forgotten…”
Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, July 5, 1935
At the same time like Einstein, the German author Thomas Mann (1857-1955) was honoured. He was awarded the Doctor of Letters. About Mann, Conant said in his speech: “… Novelist of rare distinction, an interpreter of life to many in the western world, one of the few contemporary guardians of the great tradition of Germany culture …”
Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, July 5, 1935
Like Einstein, Mann and his family had also emigrated to the USA in 1933. Both the emigrants received long lasting applause from the people present at the presentation of awards. Thomas Mann later stated in a letter to his publisher that his and Einstein’s honorary doctorate “had not been possible without any interference of president Roosevelt“.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 94
|
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/albert-einstein/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/logo-nuc-home-1.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ahf-footer-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/logo-nuc-home-1.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ahf-footer-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/voices-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rangerinyourpocket_horz-1024x154.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/ahf-mainlogo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Einstein from E Archives Hebrew U.jpg",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ahf-footer-logo.png",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/fb.svg",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/tw.svg",
"https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ig.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Einstein influenced the beginning of the Manhattan Project. In collaboration with Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, warning of possible German nuclear weapons research and proposing that the United…
|
en
|
Nuclear Museum
|
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/albert-einstein/
|
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Einstein influenced the beginning of the Manhattan Project. In collaboration with Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, warning of possible German nuclear weapons research and proposing that the United States begin its own research into atomic energy.
Einstein played no role in the Manhattan Project, having been denied a security clearance in July 1940 due to his pacifist tendencies. After World War II, he worked to control nuclear proliferation. He later regretted signing the letter to Roosevelt, saying in a Newsweek interview that “had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing.”
Scientific Contributions
In 1896, Einstein began studying to be a physics and mathematics teacher at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. He graduated in 1901, the same year he became a citizen of Switzerland. He then worked at the Swiss Patent Office. Einstein earned his Ph.D from the University of Zurich during his “miracle year,” 1905, where he published four groundbreaking papers and won notice from academics.
Einstein’s special theory of relativity sought to harmonize the laws of mechanics and laws of the electromagnetic field. His investigations also helped establish the photon theory of light. Based on the special theory of relativity, he proposed a theory of gravitation, and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” For more on Einstein’s scientific contributions, visit the Nobel Prize website.
Later Years
As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Einstein left for the United States and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ in 1933. Einstein became an American citizen in 1940. Einstein turned down an offer to serve as President of Israel, and was a co-founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He died on April 18, 1955.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 37
|
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
|
en
|
Albert Einstein | Biography, Education, Discoveries, & Facts
|
[
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-004-CFE09F17/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/87/21087-004-DCB2DAA6/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/80/222280-138-41E211F6/Your-Daily-Equation-01-E-mc2.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/78/142178-004-DD1DBD92/Albert-Einstein-portrait-Doris-Ulmann-1931.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/62/79862-004-49EADD56/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/58/245058-138-A0C6ED7D/J-Robert-Oppenheimer-atomic-bomb.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/89/142189-004-E859D3FB/Albert-Einstein-Phillip-Forman-certificate-citizenship-American-Oct-1-1940.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/61/79861-004-64BBE3D1/Albert-Einstein-birthday-children-home-United-Service.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/25/186825-138-4F923114/indeterminacy-element-interpretation-quantum-mechanics-objections-Niels.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/77/142177-004-4F78FF68/Albert-Einstein-1947.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/232632-131-A2DB4925/King-Speech-at-Sproul-Plaza-in-Berkeley.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/35/142335-131-4742621E/molecule-Model-Atom-Biology-entertainment-Molecular-Structure-2010.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/88/144788-131-ADACA20E/Michael-Faraday-John-Frederic-Daniell.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/01/115001-131-7278E518/Enrico-Fermi-Italian-problem-physics-1950.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/77/142177-131-D37928A6/Albert-Einstein-1947.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/178832-131-78DC370C/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/62/79862-131-71A1D30E/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-131-93B65AAF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/59/23359-131-42CFFC3D/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-131-93B65AAF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/38/114738-131-1EC2D535/assassination-Pres-John-Wilkes-Booth-Abraham-Lincoln-April-14-1865.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/53/130653-131-6C7B3BE8/clock-St-John-the-Baptist-cathedral-Lyon-2019.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/15/95015-131-5E505098/statues-Moai-Easter-Island.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/57/203257-131-48B2BCA1/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-marchers-speech-I-August-28th-1963.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/02/90702-131-2EC3F987/The-Time-Machine-Morlocks-film-version-George-1960.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/22/232222-050-C7D008B3/Hand-ballot-box-vote-election.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/93/173193-131-3EE3B458/Nelson-Mandela.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-050-86D8CBBF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=400&h=300&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/232632-131-A2DB4925/King-Speech-at-Sproul-Plaza-in-Berkeley.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Albert Einstein",
"encyclopedia",
"encyclopeadia",
"britannica",
"article"
] | null |
[
"Michio Kaku"
] |
1998-07-20T00:00:00+00:00
|
Albert Einstein, the brilliant physicist and Nobel laureate, revolutionized our understanding of the universe with his theory of relativity and became a symbol of genius that continues to inspire minds worldwide.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
|
Childhood and education
Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally a featherbed salesman and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. He had one sister, Maria (who went by the name Maja), born two years after Albert.
Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred little geometry book.”
Britannica Quiz
Who Said It? Famous Quotes Quiz
Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything.
Yet another important influence on Einstein was a young medical student, Max Talmud (later Max Talmey), who often had dinner at the Einstein home. Talmud became an informal tutor, introducing Einstein to higher mathematics and philosophy. A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein was 16 years old. Talmud had earlier introduced him to a children’s science series by Aaron Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher (1867–68; Popular Books on Physical Science), in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”).
Einstein’s education was disrupted by his father’s repeated failures at business. In 1894, after his company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich, Hermann Einstein moved to Milan to work with a relative. Einstein was left at a boardinghouse in Munich and expected to finish his education. Alone, miserable, and repelled by the looming prospect of military duty when he turned 16, Einstein ran away six months later and landed on the doorstep of his surprised parents. His parents realized the enormous problems that he faced as a school dropout and draft dodger with no employable skills. His prospects did not look promising.
Fortunately, Einstein could apply directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (“Swiss Federal Polytechnic School”; in 1911, following expansion in 1909 to full university status, it was renamed the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or “Swiss Federal Institute of Technology”) in Zürich without the equivalent of a high school diploma if he passed its stiff entrance examinations. His marks showed that he excelled in mathematics and physics, but he failed at French, chemistry, and biology. Because of his exceptional math scores, he was allowed into the polytechnic on the condition that he first finish his formal schooling. He went to a special high school run by Jost Winteler in Aarau, Switzerland, and graduated in 1896. He also renounced his German citizenship at that time. (He was stateless until 1901, when he was granted Swiss citizenship.) He became lifelong friends with the Winteler family, with whom he had been boarding. (Winteler’s daughter, Marie, was Einstein’s first love; Einstein’s sister, Maja, would eventually marry Winteler’s son Paul; and his close friend Michele Besso would marry their eldest daughter, Anna.)
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 19
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/fig_fy_23_webb3x2_2100x1400-1024x676.png",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/12/agostini_krausz_lHuillier-3_2_v2-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/09/physics-matching.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/123776-landscape-x-large.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-12923-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/marie-curie-12879-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/bohr-12929-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/chadwick-12999-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/thomson-12853-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/rontgen-13540-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/kosterlitz-15202-landscape-x-large.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/53513-landscape-x-large.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/higgs-631-landscape-x-large.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Physics Prize
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/physics-prize-2/
|
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- – -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics …” (Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Physics was the prize area which Alfred Nobel mentioned first in his will from 1895. At the end of the nineteenth century, many people considered physics as the foremost of the sciences, and perhaps Nobel saw it this way as well. His own research was also closely tied to physics.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 57
|
https://unacademy.com/content/general-awareness/albert-einstein-biography/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein Biography: Birth, Early Life, Education, Scientific Career, Inventions, Awards, Honours, and More
|
[
"https://unacademy.com/content/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/mobile-logo.svg",
"https://unacademy.com/content/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/logo-1.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165846/avatar.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165845/user.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165843/settings.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165841/holidays.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165839/logout.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165837/u_facebook-f.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165835/u_youtube.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165834/u_twitter.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165832/u_instagram.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/22165830/u_linkedin.svg",
"https://unacademy.com/content/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/08/faq.svg",
"https://static.uacdn.net/production/_next/static/images/un_white_logo.svg?q=75&w=256 1x, https://static.uacdn.net/production/_next/static/images/un_white_logo.svg?q=75&w=384 2x",
"https://static.uacdn.net/production/_next/static/images/footer/learner.svg?q=75&w=48",
"https://static.uacdn.net/production/_next/static/images/footer/educator.svg?q=75&w=48",
"https://static.uacdn.net/production/_next/static/images/footer/parent.svg?q=75&w=48",
"https://unacademy.com/content/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/mobile-logo.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2022-09-13T09:25:14+00:00
|
Albert Einstein was one of the most recognized and inspirational scientists of the world. He not only postulated several theories that were reliable in physics but also won the Nobel Prize in physics.
|
en
|
Unacademy
|
https://unacademy.com/content/general-awareness/albert-einstein-biography/
|
Albert Einstein, born in the year 1879, was one of the well-known scientists of that era. He was a German physicist who is widely known for his theory of relativity and several other theories that were postulated by him. He was one of the most influential scientists of this generation. He won a Nobel prize for physics as well in the year 1921. However, Albert Einstein was one of the genius boys from a young age. He published his first paper when he was 16 years old. Moreover, he was also a lecturer who used to teach his students physics and mathematics. He was an inspiration to learn, grow and believe in yourself.
Albert Einstein was born in the small state of Ulm in Germany on the 14th of March 1879. He belongs to a middle-class Jewish family, and his father, Herman Einstein, was a featherbed dealer in his initial days. However, he moved on to set up an Electrochemical manufacturing base. Apart from his father, his family had Pauline Koch, who was his mother, and Maria Einstein, who was her sister and only sibling. However, his whole family shifted to Italy, where he had to complete his schooling. Later by the year 1896, he got a job at Swiss Federal Polytechnic school, where he taught physics and maths.
After moving to Italy, he had to complete his schooling in the Swiss town of Arau, After which he continued his study and received his diploma as well as Ph.D. by the year 1905. Moreover, he also got a job as a technical assistant in the company named Swiss Patent Office. However, the education flow of Albert Einstein was not very smooth due to the downfall of his father’s business. Even though in such a condition, Albert continued his study and maintained the strong grounds to achieve his Ph.D. One of the fine facts is that Albert Einstein met Mileva Maric, who was a physics student who relocated from Serbia along with him, and she became his wife in the future.
Albert Einstein was one of those boys who used to be involved in their education and steadiest life. However, as a matter of fact, he found his future wife among one of his physics classmates. Mileva Merrick, who was a physics student who relocated from Serbia, came in contact with Albert Einstein, and later on, by the year 1903, they got married to each other. They were a happy couple with two sons and a daughter until the year 1919. In the year 1919, they both got divorced. However, in the same year, Albert married Elson Leventhal, who was his cousin. Whereas by the year 1936, Elsa died due to natural causes, and Albert didn’t marry any other woman after that.
Considering the fact of the scientific career of Albert Einstein, he had one of the leading and repeated figurines after World War Two under the world government moment. Before joining hands with doctor Jane Weissman at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Albert Einstein was also offered the opportunity of being the president of the state of Israel. Moreover, the paper that Einstein published in 1905 got the attention of one of the influential faces Max Planck. Lastly, Albert Einstein figured out a third of relativity by the end of November 1915. Moreover, he also had the upper hand in the photoelectric effect.
In the last days of his life, Albert Einstein was diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, Due to which type on the 18th of April, 1955. Even after his death, His work is still under-recognized, and there are a number of scientists he’s working with under his thoughts and theories. Moreover, there are a number of Nobel prizes associated with a number of theories that have been postulated by Einstein in his early days. This new generation of scientists using this space ignites to verify as well as identify the cosmology of Albert Einstein.
Advert Einstein was one of the influential and well-known scientists of this generation. He was born and brought up by a middle-class family in the year 1879 in Germany; however, his family had to relocate to Italy, and he completed his education there. Has been a genius boy since his younger age. He had quite a great interest in studying and researching several aspects of physics. Therefore he came forward with the research paper that caught the eyes of the most influential scientists of that time, so stop, which led to the rise of Albert Einstein and his knowledge.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 58
|
https://www.bartbeemsterboer.nl/story-life-awards.html
|
en
|
Einstein in 2 minutes
|
[
"https://www.bartbeemsterboer.nl/img/story-life-awards.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Bart Beemsterboer"
] | null |
Albert Einstein
|
en
|
favicon/apple-icon-144x144.png
| null |
The Nobel Prize
Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect and for "Merits in theoretical physics". The mystery was why it had taken so long for the greatest physics of his generation received this greatest tribute in physics. Einstein was passed in 1920 because of the massive wave of publicity that followed the confirmation of his general theory of relativity. In 1921, the Nobel Committee chose not to award a prize that year. Only in 1922 did the committee see reason to award him the 1921 prize. Einstein's reaction was typical, he went to Japan and did not personally accept the award.
Relativity
Einstein had always expected to win the Nobel Prize someday. He was so convinced that when negotiating the divorce with Mileva in 1918 he offered her the full amount of a future Nobel Prize. The 1921 price was 121,572 Swedish kronor, or $32,250 - nowadays, approximately $400,000. Whether he has ever kept this promise is historically doubted by historians. Evidence found in 2006 shows that Einstein instead invested a large portion of the money and then lost it in the economically noisy period of the Great Depression.
The 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for the photoelectric effect and the possibly deliberately vague formulation of "merits in theoretical physics" was the only Nobel Prize to be awarded. Perhaps one of the greatest injustices in science is that the Nobel Committee has never acknowledged its theory of relativity. Together with quantum theory, it turned out to be one of the two major pillars of 20th-century physics. Einstein has been nominated many times for his special theory of relativity from 1905 between 1910 and 1922. However, he never won, because his theory was so revolutionary that the committee claimed the supporting evidence was too thin. Posthumous nominations are not allowed, so there will be no Nobel Prize for Albert Einstein's greatest spiritual achievement.
Other prices
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 41
|
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/einstein-vs-the-nobel-prize
|
en
|
Einstein vs. the Nobel Prize
|
[
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/globalAssets/DSC_white_small.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/facebook.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/instagram.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/twitter.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/youtube.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/soundcloud.png",
"https://www.discovermagazine.com/assets/socialIcons/rss.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Virginia Hughes"
] |
2006-09-28T05:00:00+00:00
|
Why the Nobel Committee repeatedly dissed this "world-bluffing Jewish physicist"
|
en
|
/assets/favicon/favicon16.png
|
Discover Magazine
|
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/einstein-vs-the-nobel-prize
|
When Albert Einstein listed the most important honors of his life, he began with the German Physical Society's Max Planck Medal, named for a physicist he revered. He went on from there to list the prizes and honorary doctorate degrees awarded him in many nations. Conspicuously absent was the plaudit with the highest profile and payout: the Nobel Prize. But in context this omission isn't so surprising. The Nobel nod—17 years after Einstein published his special theory of relativity—came long after recognition by the physics world and even the general public. Even more bizarre, the prize was awarded to Einstein not for his relativity revolution, but for the comparatively obscure discovery of the photoelectric effect. Why? After years of sifting through letters and diaries of the Scandinavian archives, science historian Robert Marc Friedman says it was an intentional snub fueled by the biases of the day—a prejudice against pacifists, Jews, and, most of all, theoretical physics.
In 1905, while working as a patent clerk in Switzerland, 26-year-old Albert Einstein published five seminal papers on the nature of space, light, and motion. One paper introduced the special theory of relativity, which dramatically broke with Newton's universally accepted description of how physics worked. Special relativity did away with the notion of absolute space and time—Einstein said they were instead "relative" to the observer's conditions—effectively flipping the Newtonian model on its apple-bruised head. In 1915, Einstein expanded the theory by incorporating gravity: it was not just a force of attraction between bodies, he said, but the result of distortions in space itself. This new, more robust version was called the theory of general relativity.
Today, general relativity is celebrated as Einstein's most impressive work. But as Friedman wrote in his 2001 book, The Politics of Excellence, in post-War Germany Einstein was despised as a pacifist Jew who renounced his German citizenship, went to meetings of radical groups, and publicly supported socialism. His theories were dismissed as "world-bluffing Jewish physics" by some prominent German physicists, who claimed to practice "true" German science based on observations of the natural world and hypotheses that could be tested in a laboratory.
Luckily for Einstein, British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington believed there was a way to test the general theory. If massive objects curved space itself, as Einstein proposed, then they should bend nearby rays of light, as well. During six minutes of a total solar eclipse on May 29, 1919, Eddington measured the positions of stars that appeared next to the blotted-out sun. Sure enough, they followed the predictions of Einstein's general theory.
Eddington revealed the results of his eclipse experiment on November 6, and Einstein became a household name throughout the world practically overnight—literally overnight in some places; the next day, the London Times ran the headline, "Revolution in Science, New Theory of the Universe." Within a month, the news traveled through the American press; a New York Times headline declared, "Given the Speed, Time Is Naught."
The nominations for Einstein that poured into the laps of the Nobel Committee members as they were reviewing candidates for the 1920 prize were not exactly well received. The committee did not want a "political and intellectual radical, who—it was said—did not conduct experiments, crowned as the pinnacle of physics," says Friedman. So the 1920 prize was given to the Swiss Charles-Edouard Guillaume for his ho-hum discovery of an inert nickel-steel alloy. When the announcement was made, Friedman says the previously unknown Guillaume "was as surprised as the rest of the world."
By the next year, "Einstein-mania" was in full bloom. During his first trip to the United States he gave many public lectures on relativity, and received the prestigious Barnard Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. After one particularly crowded lecture at Princeton, legend has it that Einstein said wryly to the chairman, "I never realized that so many Americans were interested in tensor analysis."
As his quirky personality and untamed tresses gained more popularity with the general public, his momentous theory gained more credibility in the scientific community. In 1921, swarms of both theoreticians and experimentalists again nominated Einstein for his work on relativity. Reporters kept asking him, to his great annoyance, if this would be the year that he received a Nobel Prize.
But 1921 was not the year, thanks to one stubborn senior member of the prize committee, ophthalmologist Allvar Gullstrand. "Einstein must never receive a Nobel Prize, even if the whole world demands it," said Gullstrand, according to a Swedish mathematician's diary dug up by Friedman. Gullstrand's arguments, however biased, convinced the rest of the committee. In 1921, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded no physics prize.
Two prizes were thus available in 1922. By this time, Einstein's popularity was so great that many members of the committee feared for their international reputations if they didn't recognize him in some way. As in the previous two years, Einstein received many nominations for his relativity theory. But this year there was one nomination—from Carl Wilhelm Oseen—not for relativity, but for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. In another of his 1905 papers, Einstein had proposed that light, which had been thought to act only as a wave, sometimes acted as a particle—and laboratory experiments conducted in 1916 showed he was right.
In his exhaustive research, Friedman realized that Oseen lobbied the committee to recognize the photoelectric effect not as a "theory," but as a fundamental "law" of nature–not because he cared about recognizing Einstein, but because he had another theoretical physicist in mind for that second available prize: Niels Bohr. Bohr had proposed a new quantum theory of the atom that Oseen felt was "the most beautiful of all the beautiful" ideas in recent theoretical physics. In his report to the committee, Oseen exaggerated the close bond between Einstein's proven law of nature and Bohr's new atom. "In one brilliant stroke," Friedman says, "he saw how to meet the objections against both Einstein and Bohr."
The committee was indeed won over. On November 10, 1922, they gave the 1922 prize to Bohr and the delayed 1921 prize to Einstein, "especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." Einstein, en route to Japan (and perhaps huffy after the committee's long delay) did not attend the official ceremony. According to Friedman, Einstein didn't care much about the medal, anyway, though he did care about the money. As the German mark decreased in value after the war, Einstein needed a hard foreign currency for alimony payments to his ex-wife. Moreover, under the terms of his 1919 divorce settlement, she was already entitled to all the money "from an eventual Nobel Prize." Bruce Hunt, an Einstein historian at the University of Texas at Austin, says that calling attention to these financial arrangements "brings out the fact that Einstein was a much more worldly and savvy man than his later public image would suggest."
Of course, Einstein isn't the only player who emerges as being not quite angelic. "The decisions of the Nobel Committees are often treated by the press and public as the voice of god," Hunt says. But Friedman's research brought to light "how political the deliberations of the Nobel Committees sometimes were—and presumably still are."
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 43
|
https://www.mintageworld.com/videos/detail/31-albert-einstein-is-awarded-the-nobel-prize-in-physics-9th-november-1921/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (9th November, 1921)
|
https://www.mintageworld.com/assets/img/favicon.ico
|
https://www.mintageworld.com/assets/img/favicon.ico
|
[
"https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1544108752349640&ev=PageView &noscript=1",
"https://www.mintageworld.com/assets/img/logo.png",
"https://www.mintageworld.com/assets/images/inside-banner/default-banner.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://www.mintageworld.com/assets/img/favicon.ico
|
Mintage World
|
https://www.mintageworld.com/videos/detail/31-albert-einstein-is-awarded-the-nobel-prize-in-physics-9th-november-1921/
|
Einstein was not only a visionary physicist but also a pre-eminent scientist whose theories and discoveries profoundly affected the way people viewed the universe. In this episode, Rusted Post Box traces the life journey of Albert Einstein through various philatelic, notaphily and numismatic issues. A global science icon, he brought to the world a fuller understanding of the interaction of space, time and gravity through his visionary papers.<br><br> Rusted Post Box is a series of docudramas that relates various stamps, coins and notes to significant historic events. With the help of the newly established online museum, www.mintageworld.com, this series aims at imparting knowledge and creating interest in the areas of Philately, Numismatics and Notaphily within the general public, collectors, students and scholars alike.<br><br> Promoted by the “Ultra” group, mintageworld.com is the first website of its kind in the world, where all the three fields have been brought under one roof.
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 5
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_honors_received_by_Albert_Einstein
|
en
|
List of awards and honors received by Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/icons/wikipedia.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-wordmark-en.svg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/mobile/copyright/wikipedia-tagline-en.svg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Albert_Einstein_stamp_1956.jpg/220px-Albert_Einstein_stamp_1956.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Einstein_stamp.jpg/220px-Einstein_stamp.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Symbol_category_class.svg/16px-Symbol_category_class.svg.png",
"https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/wikimedia-button.svg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
] |
2011-05-09T18:44:12+00:00
|
en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_honors_received_by_Albert_Einstein
|
In 1922 Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Noble Prize in Physics,[1] "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". This refers to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", which was well supported by the experimental evidence by that time. The presentation speech began by mentioning "his theory of relativity [which had] been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles [and] also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time".
Awards[edit]
It was long reported that in accord with the divorce settlement,[2] the Nobel Prize money had been deposited in a Swiss bank account for his wife Mileva Marić to invest for herself and their two sons, while she could only use the capital by agreement with Einstein. However, personal correspondence made public in 2006[3] shows that he invested much of it in the United States, and saw much of it wiped out in the Great Depression. Ultimately, however, he paid Marić more money than he received with the prize.[4]
On November 12, 1913, Einstein was granted full membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences. On March 28, 1933, he resigned membership, explaining in a letter to the academy that he did not want to be associated with the Prussian government of the time.[5]
On November 12, 1919, the University of Rostock awarded an honorary doctorate of medicine (Dr. med. h.c.) to Einstein, on the occasion of its 500th anniversary and following a suggestion by Moritz Schlick. This is the only honorary doctorate he received from a German university.[6]
In 1921, Einstein accepted a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Manchester. In addition to receiving the degree, Einstein gave a lecture in Manchester on June 9. [7]
In 1925 the Royal Society awarded Einstein the Copley Medal.[8]
In 1926, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.[9]
In 1929, Max Planck presented Einstein with the Max Planck medal of the German Physical Society in Berlin, for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics.[10]
In 1931, he received the Prix Jules Janssen, In 1934 Einstein gave the Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture.[11][12]
In 1936, Einstein was awarded the Franklin Institute's Franklin Medal for his extensive work on relativity and the photo-electric effect.[10]
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics named 2005 the "World Year of Physics" in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the annus mirabilis papers.[13]
The chemical element 99, einsteinium, was named for him in August 1955, four months after Einstein's death.[14][15] 2001 Einstein is an inner main belt asteroid discovered on 5 March 1973.[16]
In 1999 Time magazine named him the Person of the Century,[17][18] ahead of Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt, among others. In the words of a biographer, "to the scientifically literate and the public at large, Einstein is synonymous with genius".[19] Also in 1999, an opinion poll of 100 leading physicists ranked Einstein the "greatest physicist ever".[20] A Gallup poll recorded him as the fourth most admired person of the 20th century in the U.S.[21]
In 1990, his name was added to the Walhalla temple for "laudable and distinguished Germans",[22] which is located in Donaustauf in Bavaria.[23]
The United States Postal Service honored Einstein with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 8¢ postage stamp.
In 2008, Einstein was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.[24]
In 2018, Einstein was an inaugural inductee into the Royal Albert Hall's Walk of Fame. In October 1933 he made a speech before a packed out British audience in the Hall on his fear of the looming crisis in Europe, and in recognition of this his name was among those viewed as "key players" in the building's history.[25][26]
The bust of Albert Einstein, installed in Mexico City's Parque México, commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.[27]
Mount Einstein, a massive mountain in Alaska, was named in his honor in 1955.[28]
Things named after Einstein[edit]
The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes called the Albert Einstein Medal because it is accompanied with a gold medal) is an award in theoretical physics, established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein's 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and included a prize money of $15,000,[29][30] which was later reduced to $5,000.[31][32] The winner is selected by a committee (the first of which consisted of Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann and Weyl[33]) of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administers the award.[30] The Albert Einstein Medal is an award presented by the Albert Einstein Society in Bern, Switzerland. First given in 1979, the award is presented to people who have "rendered outstanding services" in connection with Einstein.[34] The Albert Einstein Peace Prize is given yearly by the Chicago, Illinois-based Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation. Winners of the prize receive $50,000.[35]
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. The Albert Einstein Science Park is located on the hill Telegrafenberg in Potsdam, Germany. The best known building in the park is the Einstein Tower which has a bronze bust of Einstein at the entrance. The Tower is an astrophysical observatory that was built to perform checks of Einstein's theory of General Relativity.[36] The Albert Einstein Memorial in central Washington, D.C. is a monumental bronze statue depicting Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. The statue, commissioned in 1979, is located in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue.
References[edit]
[edit]
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 97
|
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202011/nobel-physics.cfm
|
en
|
2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
|
[
"https://www.aps.org/_ipx/w_256/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fi2z87pbo%2Fproduction%2F1b73fb5428556ac46efc630a7d9068c2524d12d0-1166x355.svg%3Fauto%3Dformat%26fit%3Dmax%26w%3D256 1x, /_ipx/w_640/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fi2z87pbo%2Fproduction%2F1b73fb5428556ac46efc630a7d9068c2524d12d0-1166x355.svg%3Fauto%3Dformat%26fit%3Dmax%26w%3D640 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
APS Archives
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/202011/nobel-physics.cfm
|
Learn about our first 125 years
Research coverage, news, and interviews to inspire and spark curiosity
Instructions and best practices for a successful event
APS supports physicists and other scientists from the beginning of their education to every stage of their careers.
Explore the benefits of mentoring and get involved
Options and discounts, including for international, students, and more
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 61
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/08/einstein-nobel-prize-relativity
|
en
|
Why Einstein never received a Nobel prize for relativity
|
[
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=6035250&cv=2.0&cj=1&cs_ucfr=0&comscorekw=Physics%2CAstronomy%2CScience%2CNobel+prizes%2CScience+prizes",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/3/13/1331656224558/Albert-Einstein-he-was-an-007.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2012/10/10/1349890185526/Robert-Lefkowitz-and-Bria-010.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2012/10/10/1349890185526/Robert-Lefkowitz-and-Bria-010.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Environment/Pix/columnists/2012/10/10/1349863064242/2012-Nobel-Prize-in-Chemi-011.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/9/1349787534200/2012-Nobel-Prize-in-physi-010.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/9/1349777892958/Physics-Nobel-announcemen-011.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Environment/Pix/columnists/2010/10/5/1286292681291/Nobel-Prize-medal-Bearing-002.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Science/contributors/2012/10/7/1349624057379/IMG931.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none",
"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/8/1349721691220/James-Watson-And-Francis--008.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Stuart Clark",
"www.theguardian.com",
"dr-stuart-clark"
] |
2012-10-08T00:00:00
|
<p><strong>Stuart Clark: </strong>Nobel prizes often attract controversy, but usually after they have been awarded. Albert Einstein's physics prize was the subject of argument for years before it was even a reality</p>
|
en
|
the Guardian
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/08/einstein-nobel-prize-relativity
|
There was a lot riding on Einstein winning a Nobel prize. Beyond his academic reputation, and that of the Nobel Institute for recognising greatness, the wellbeing of his former wife and their two sons depended upon it.
In the aftermath of the first world war, defeated Germany was being consumed by hyper-inflation. The government was printing more money to pay the war reparations and, as a result, the mark went into freefall against foreign currencies. Living in Berlin, Einstein was naturally affected by the crisis.
He had divorced Mileva in 1919, several years after she had returned to Switzerland with the boys, Hans-Albert and Eduard. As part of the settlement, Einstein pledged any eventual Nobel prize money to her for their upkeep. As the hyper-inflation bit ever deeper, so he needed that cash.
By this time, Einstein had a decade's worth of Nobel nominations behind him. Yet each year, to mounting criticism, the committee decided against his work on the grounds that relativity was unproven. In 1919, that changed. Cambridge astrophysicist Arthur Eddington famously used a total eclipse to measure the deflection of stars' positions near the Sun. The size of the deflection was exactly as Einstein had predicted from relativity in 1915. The prize should have been his, but the committee snubbed him again.
Why? Because now dark forces were at work.
Antisemitism was on the rise in Germany; Jews were being scapegoated for the country's defeat in the war. As both Jew and pacifist, Einstein was an obvious target. The complexity of relativity did not help either. Opponents such as Ernst Gehrcke and Philipp Lenard found it easy to cast doubt upon its labyrinthine mathematics.
The situation reached crisis point in 1921 when, paralysed by indecision, the Nobel Committee decided it was better not to award a prize at all than to give it to relativity. The arguments raged for another year until a compromise was reached.
At the suggestion of Carl Wilhelm Oseen, Einstein would receive the deferred 1921 prize, but not for relativity. He would be given it for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from a metal sheet only under certain illuminations. The work had been published back in 1905.
It has been argued that this work, which introduced the concept of photons, has had more impact than relativity. I'm not sure. With relativity, Einstein gave us a way to understand the Universe as a whole. It was a staggering leap forward in our intellectual capability.
The Nobel citation reads that Einstein is honoured for "services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". At first glance, the reference to theoretical physics could have been a back door through which the committee acknowledged relativity. However, there was a caveat stating that the award was presented "without taking into account the value that will be accorded your relativity and gravitation theories after these are confirmed in the future".
To many, and to Einstein himself, this felt like a slap in the face. Hadn't Eddington proved the theory? Yes, but the trouble was Eddington's observations had not been perfect and he had discarded data he considered poor from his final analysis. To some, as related in Jeffrey Crelinsten's Einstein's Jury, this smacked of cooking the books in Einstein's favour. In reality it was just good scientific practice.
There is also another way to read the Nobel caveat. Could it have been that the committee was leaving the door open for a second Nobel prize in the future, once relativity had been more rigorously tested? We will never know. As Einstein's fame spread, so he alienated himself from the physics community by refusing to accept quantum theory. A Nobel prize for relativity was never awarded.
The final twist in this story is that Einstein did not attend his prize giving. Despite being informed that he was about to receive the prize, he chose to continue with a lecture tour of Japan. Partly, this was because he no longer valued the prize and partly it was because he needed to disappear.
German foreign minister Walther Rathenau had been murdered by anti-Semites. In the subsequent investigation, the police had found Einstein's name on a list of targets. In the face of such a death treat, leaving Germany to spend months in the Far East, rather than a few days in Stockholm, must have seemed prudent.
In the end, perhaps the best thing that came out of Einstein's Nobel prize was the money. It went towards keeping Mileva and the boys secure, and became essential when Eduard developed schizophrenia as a young adult and needed to be hospitalised.
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded on Tuesday. This week's prize schedule is here. You can watch each announcement live in the viewer below.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 78
|
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/10/03/555320681/nobel-winners-work-in-physics-began-with-albert-einstein
|
en
|
Nobel Winners' Work In Physics Began With Albert Einstein
|
[
"https://media.npr.org/chrome_svg/npr-logo.svg",
"https://media.npr.org/chrome/programs/logos/morning-edition.jpg",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/02/26/we_otherentitiestemplatesat_sq-cbde87a2fa31b01047441e6f34d2769b0287bcd4-s100-c85.png",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/02/26/we_otherentitiestemplatesun_sq-4a03b35e7e5adfa446aec374523a578d54dc9bf5-s100-c85.png",
"https://media.npr.org/chrome/programs/logos/all-things-considered.png",
"https://media.npr.org/chrome/programs/logos/fresh-air.png",
"https://media.npr.org/chrome/programs/logos/up-first.jpg?version=2",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/01/11/podcast-politics_2023_update1_sq-be7ef464dd058fe663d9e4cfe836fb9309ad0a4d-s100-c100.jpg",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/05/15/throughline_tile-art_sq-b72bcfb6d8705d7761d4f421f0be3047631b709c-s100-c100.jpg",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/11/10/trumps-trial_tile-art_small_sq-71cfb7f3a96f3029db4ca7230c5704c61a351b81-s100-c100.jpg",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/19/tile-wild-card-with-rachel-martin_sq-c9e842a167bab21c50f45fbde9d7d33776e87eda-s100-c100.jpg",
"https://media.npr.org/chrome_svg/music-logo-dark.svg",
"https://media.npr.org/chrome_svg/music-logo-light.svg",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/10/03/istock-458953639-857cdca4a8bf39062b68cd951b62b5a017b35cc9.jpg?s=1100&c=50&f=jpeg",
"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/10/03/ap_487908856896-ab0a786d02f1f011bcb1e9eff877ef66f0ce299a.jpg?s=1100&c=50&f=jpeg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Marcelo Gleiser"
] |
2017-10-03T00:00:00
|
Three scientists won the prize after a 25-year-long search of the cosmos for gravitational waves — the waving of space — the one test missing for Einstein, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.
|
en
|
NPR
|
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/10/03/555320681/nobel-winners-work-in-physics-began-with-albert-einstein
|
In 1915, Albert Einstein concluded his General Theory of Relativity, a theory that would revise our understanding of gravity in radical ways.
Before Einstein, the dominant description of gravitational phenomena was based on Isaac Newton's theory, proposed in 1687. According to Newton, every two objects with mass attract one another with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance: double the distance, the attraction falls by a factor of four.
Newton knew that his theory had a fundamental flaw, a mysterious "action at a distance." Somehow, and he wouldn't speculate how, the force of gravity propagated instantaneously across space like a sort of omnipresent ghost. Despite this, the theory was so successful at describing so many phenomena that Newton rested his case: "I feign no hypotheses," he famously wrote.
Einstein would have none of that. In 1905, in his Special Theory of Relativity, he established that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. If something happened to the sun right now, we would only find out in 8.3 minutes, the time it takes for light to travel from there to here. How could gravity act instantaneously then? Einstein knew that Newton's action-at-a-distance had to go.
For 10 years, he worked to figure how to do that. The result, his General Theory of Relativity, was an intellectual triumph rarely equaled in history. Einstein's theory transformed Newton's notions of space and time. To Newton, space was an inert stage where things happened. Time just flowed solemnly forward like a river. In Einstein's theory, space and time became plastic, deformable due to the presence of mass and energy. An image we use, even though it's only in two dimensions, is that of a trampoline. If you place a heavy ball in the middle of the trampoline it will sag down, its geometry deformed. Something similar happens to space in the presence of a mass; and the bigger the mass, the more dramatic the deformation. Einstein's theory thus predicted that space is bent by mass (and energy). Time is also affected, as clocks tick slower near a big mass.
Strange as it may seem, Einstein's theory works like a charm; it has passed every experimental test over the past 100 years. GPS uses corrections from it to increase accuracy.
The one test that was missing was the waving of space itself. Einstein realized that if masses moved about, the deformations in space would also move about, propagating like waves, somewhat like what happens when you throw a rock on a pond. Gravitational waves are a bit more complicated and require a bit of asymmetry: slightly deformed spheres or, more dramatically, two bodies orbiting one another — like the Earth around the sun. However, gravity being such a weak force, the effect is truly tiny and needs something very dramatic to create a signal we can detect here. Ideally, two big black holes spiraling around each other and finally colliding. (See my piece from last week about this here.) This is exactly what was found by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO.
In the fall of 2015, physicists were stunned by the signal they detected: the spiraling and final collision of two huge black holes, with 36 and 29 solar masses, merging into one.
The road from prediction to detection was very long, taking more than 25 years. Three Nobel Prize winners, announced Tuesday, were key to the discovery, each in his own way. Janna Levin's book Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, tells the story in detail.
Rainer Weiss, an emeritus professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was awarded half the prize for his work in the concept, design and construction of LIGO. Kip Thorne, from the California Institute of Technology, a gentle man and wonderful mentor — whom I have known since my postdoctoral days — made key theoretical predictions of what a detection of gravitational waves would look like and how to distinguish the signal from the data. Barry Barish, also from the California Institute of Technology, used his formidable knowledge of physics and administrative prowess to get the experiment off the ground, rescuing it from almost certain demise in 1994 and spearheading its construction with funds from the National Science Foundation.
The waving of space is very subtle. LIGO, with its L-shaped arms, is capable of detecting distortions in space (essentially in the distances between two points) one thousandth the diameter of an atomic nucleus across a 2.5-mile laser beam. (Maybe you should read this again; it's truly amazing.) To reach this kind of spectacular precision, all sorts of interferences must be eliminated. A truck driving by the road could affect the experiment, as could seismic noise, and thermal vibrations.
As the two black holes circled one another faster and faster, the disturbances in the space around them intensified. By the time they were orbiting each other 30 times a second, LIGO picked up the signal. They had only 20 millisecond of data (20 thousandths of a second), when the two accelerated to 250 orbits a second before the violent final collision that led to a single black hole. An important detail: This happened about 1.3 billion light years away, in a galaxy far away. In other words, the signal traveled through space for more than 1 billion years before it reached Earth and the LIGO detector. If that doesn't amaze you, you must be, as Einstein once wrote "as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle."
Einstein didn't mean it in a nasty way. The full quote reads:
"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science. He who does not know it and can no longer wonder, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle."
I am sure the three physicists who deservedly received the Nobel Prize would definitely agree. Engaging with the mysterious is not always easy, and the pay-off may take a long time. But how sweet it is to push ideas to the limit and beyond to open a new window into reality.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 95
|
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nobel_Prize
|
en
|
New World Encyclopedia
|
[
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/images/nwe_header.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/9/92/Norske_nobelinstiutt_1.jpg/250px-Norske_nobelinstiutt_1.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/2/26/AlfredNobel.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/6/6a/Stockholm_Konserthuset_2002.jpg/225px-Stockholm_Konserthuset_2002.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/d/d3/Albert_Einstein_Head.jpg/200px-Albert_Einstein_Head.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/5/50/Nikola_Tesla.jpg/150px-Nikola_Tesla.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/0/04/Thomas_Edison.jpg/150px-Thomas_Edison.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/9/97/Banting_and_Best.jpg/200px-Banting_and_Best.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/2/2b/Dalai_Lama_%26_Bishop_Tutu._Carey_Linde.jpg/250px-Dalai_Lama_%26_Bishop_Tutu._Carey_Linde.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/d/d1/Portrait_Gandhi.jpg/180px-Portrait_Gandhi.jpg",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/d/d9/Mariecurie.jpg/200px-Mariecurie.jpg",
"https://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/skins/common/images/Cc.logo.circle.png",
"https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/resources/assets/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/favicon.ico
|
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nobel_Prize
|
The Nobel Prizes are prizes instituted by the will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel. They are awarded to people, and some organizations, which have done outstanding research, invented groundbreaking techniques or equipment, or made outstanding contributions to society. The Nobel Prizes, which are generally awarded annually in the categories of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and economics, are widely regarded as the supreme commendation in the world. Unfortunately, those who select and those who receive the prizes do not always live up to the standard envisioned by Nobel. Nevertheless, the incentive to benefit humankind inspires many recipients to strive to fulfill their potential, offering their best work for the sake of all.
Introduction
Between 1901 and 2010, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 543 times. These include 817 Laureates and 23 organizations (since some individuals and organizations have been honored more than once, a total of 813 different individuals and 20 unique organizations have received awards). A prize may be given to two works if they are both considered worthy of the prize. Also, a prize may be awarded jointly to two or three persons who collaborated on the work that is being rewarded. A few prize winners have declined the award. The prize cannot be revoked and nominees must be living at the time of their nomination. Since 1974, the award cannot be given out posthumously.
There are years in which one or more prizes are not awarded, usually because no work was found to be of the required standard stipulated by Alfred Nobel. However, the prizes must be awarded at least once every five years. During World War II, no prizes were awarded in any category from 1940 through 1942. The selection of the peace prize in particular was greatly hampered by Nazi Germany's occupation of Norway.
Nobel's Will
The prizes were instituted by the final will of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, industrialist, and the inventor of dynamite. Alfred Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last one written on November 27, 1895, more than a year before he died. He signed it at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on November 27, 1895. Nobel's work had directly involved the creation of explosives, and he became increasingly uneasy with the military usage of his inventions. It is said that his will was motivated in part by his reading of a premature obituary of himself, published in error by a French newspaper on the occasion of the death of Nobel's brother Ludvig, which condemned Alfred as a "merchant of death." After his death, Alfred left 94 percent of his worth to the establishment of five prizes:
The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way:
The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical works by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.
Although Nobel's will established the prizes, his plan was incomplete and took five years before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901.
Prize Categories
Alfred Nobel's will made provision for only five prizes; the economics prize was added later in his memory. The six prizes awarded are:
Nobel Prize in Physics – Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Awarded by the Karolinska Institute
Nobel Prize in Literature – Awarded by the Swedish Academy
Nobel Prize in Peace – Awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics – Also known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, it was instituted in 1969 by Sveriges Riksbank, the Bank of Sweden. Although it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with the official Nobel prizes, it is not paid for by his money, and is technically not a Nobel Prize.
Nomination and Selection
As compared with other prizes, the Nobel Prize nomination and selection process is long and rigorous. This is an important reason why the prizes have grown in importance and prestige over the years to become the most important prizes in their field.
Forms, which amount to a personal and exclusive invitation, are sent to about 3,000 selected individuals to invite them to submit nominations for noteworthy candidates. The strictly enforced submission deadline for nominations is January 31. Self-nominations are automatically disqualified and only living persons are eligible for the Nobel Prize. Unlike many other awards, the Nobel Prize nominees are never publicly announced, and they are not supposed to be told that they were ever considered for the prize. These records are sealed for 50 years.
After the nomination deadline, a committee compiles and reduces the number of nominations to a list of 200 preliminary candidates. The list is sent to selected experts in the field of each nominee's work and the list is further shortened to around 15 final candidates. The committee then writes a report with recommendations and sends it to the academy or other corresponding institution, depending on the category of the prize. As an example of institute size, the Assembly for the Prize for Medicine has 50 members. The members of the institution then vote to select the winner.
Posthumous nominations for the Prize have been disallowed since 1974. This has sometimes sparked criticism that people deserving of a Nobel Prize did not receive the award because they died before being nominated. In two cases, the prize has been awarded posthumously to people who were nominated when they were still alive. This was the case with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld (1961 Peace Prize) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931 Prize in Literature); both of whom were awarded the prize in the years they died.
Awarding Ceremonies
The committees and institutions that serve as selection boards for the prizes typically announce the names of the laureates in October. The prizes are awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
Each prize can be given to a maximum of three recipients per year. The prizes constitute a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money. The monetary award is currently about 10 million Swedish Kronor, which is slightly more than one million Euros or about $1.3 million dollars. This was originally intended to allow laureates to continue working or researching without the pressures of raising money. In actual fact, many prize winners have retired before winning. If there are two winners in one category, the award money is split equally between them. If there are three winners, the awarding committee has the option of splitting the prize money equally among all three, or awarding half of the prize money to one recipient and one-quarter to each of the other recipients. It is common for the winners to donate the prize money to benefit scientific, cultural, or humanitarian causes.
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded annually to the person (or persons) who is recognized as having made the most impact, be it discovery or invention, to the field of physics. It is bestowed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Award Winners
In 1903, husband and wife Pierre and Marie Curie were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their influential research regarding radiation, a phenomena originally discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. In 1911, Curie received her second Nobel Prize in Physics for isolating radium. She is one of only two women ever to have received the award.
The 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the first-ever father-son team recognizing Sir William Henry Bragg and his son, Sir William Lawrence Bragg, for their analyses of crystal structure through means of x-rays. As of 2006, Sir William Lawrence Bragg remains as the youngest award winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, receiving the award at age 25.
In 1921, Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the 1905 photoelectric effect. When receiving this award, Einstein was also commended "for his services to Theoretical Physics,” which is believed to have incorporated the often counter-intuitive concepts and advanced constructs of his relativity theory. At the time, a large portion of his theory was believed to be in too far advance of possible experimental verification. In the years following, and with aid of advancing technologies, many of these aspects were physically proven, including Einstein’s discovery of gravitational waves, the bending of light, and the structure of black holes.
Controversies
In 1915, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were mentioned as potential laureates, though it is believed that due to their animosity toward each other that neither was ever given the award despite the enormous scientific contributions of each. There is some indication that each sought to minimize the other one's achievements, that both refused to ever accept the award if the other received it first, and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it—as was rumored in the press at the time. Tesla had a greater financial need for the award than Edison: in 1916, he filed for bankruptcy.
In 1939, Lise Meitner contributed directly to the discovery of nuclear fission but received no Nobel Prize recognition. In fact, it was she, not winner Otto Hahn, who first analyzed the accumulated experimental data and discovered fission. In his defense, Hahn claimed to be under strong pressure from the Nazis to minimize Meitner's role since she was Jewish. He maintained this position even after the war.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to the person or persons who are believed to have made the most important contribution to the field of chemistry, be it in research, analysis, or discovery.
Award Winners
The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jacobus Van’t Hoff of the Netherlands for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressures in solutions.
In 1911, Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize, this time in the field of chemistry. She was awarded the prize for her discovery of radium, its subsequent isolation, and further in-depth analysis of the element. In 1935, Curie’s daughter, Irene Joliot Curie, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with husband Frederic Joliot for their synthesis of new radioactive elements.
In 2006, American Roger D. Kornberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription, or the process of which genetic information from DNA is copied to RNA. Kornberg’s father, Arthur Kornberg, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1959.
Controversies
Dmitri Mendeleev, who originated the periodic table of chemical elements, was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Mendeleev died in 1907; six years after the first Nobel Prizes were awarded. He came within one vote of winning the prize in 1906.
In 1938, German chemist Richard Kuhn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in recognition of his work regarding carotenoids and vitamins. In 1939, German chemist Adolf Butenant was awarded the prize for his work regarding sex hormones. Both winners were forced to decline the award in the consecutive years due to pressures from the German government. In later years, both chemists received the award’s diploma and medal.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded every year since 1901 and recognizes a person or persons who have made outstanding contributions to the fields of physiology or medicine. Recognized contributions have included the discovery of penicillin, genetic engineering, and blood typing.
Award Winners
The first Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Emil Von Behing of Germany for his work on serum therapy, particularly for its use in treating diphtheria.
In 1932, Canadians Frederick Banting and John Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of insulin. Associate Charles Best first isolated insulin, but was excluded from the Nobel Prize in favor of Macleod. This snub so incensed Best's colleague, Frederick Banting, that he later voluntarily shared half of his 1923 Nobel Prize award money with Best.
The most recognized discovery was awarded in 1962, given to Francis Harry Compton Crick, James Dewey Watson, and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material," or the discovery of DNA.
Controversies
Oswald Theodore Avery, best known for his 1944 discovery that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are composed, never received a Nobel Prize, though two Nobel Laureates Joshua Lederberg and Arne Tiselius unfailingly praised him for his work and service as a pioneering platform for further genetic research and advance.
Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, who discovered, respectively, the injected and oral vaccines for polio, never received Nobel Prizes even though their discoveries have enabled humankind to conquer a dreaded disease and have saved the lives of thousands of people since the late 1950s.
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually to an author from any country that has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, produced "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency." The work in this case generally refers to an author's collection as a whole, not to any individual work, though individual works are sometimes cited in the awards. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year.
Award Winners
The first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature was French poet and philosopher Sully Prudhomme, who was commended for his poetic combination of both heart and intellect within his work.
In 1902, the prize was awarded to Theodor Mommsen in recognition of his contribution to historical writing, in particular A History of Rome. Mommsen received the award at age 85, and remains the oldest prize winner in literature to date.
In 1907, Englishman Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his talents regarding narration, originality, and imagination within his collected works. Kipling is the youngest prize winner in literature to date, receiving the award at age 42.
In 1953, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the Sir Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom for “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” One year later American Ernest Hemingway received the prize for his mastery of narration, particularly commended for his work The Old Man and the Sea.
Controversies
The original citation of this Nobel Prize has led to much controversy. In the original Swedish translation, the word idealisk can mean either "idealistic" or "ideal." In earlier years the Nobel Committee stuck closely to the intent of the will, and left out certain world-renowned writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Henrik Ibsen for the prize because their works were not deemed "idealistic" enough. In later years the wording has been interpreted more liberally, and the prize has been awarded for lasting literary merit.
The choice of the 2004 winner, Elfriede Jelinek, drew criticism from within the academy itself. Knut Ahnlund, who had not played an active role in the academy since 1996, resigned after Jelinek received the award, saying that picking the author had caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation.
TV and radio personality Gert Fylking started the tradition of shouting Äntligen!, Swedish for "At last!," at the announcing of the award winner, as a protest to the academy’s constant nomination of "authors more or less unknown to the general public." Fylking later agreed to stop his outburst, though the tradition has been carried on by others.
Nobel Prize in Peace
According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Norway’s capital city of Oslo, unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden.
The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, given by the President of Norwegian Parliament until the establishment of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 1904. The five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, or the Stortinget, and it is entrusted both with the preparatory work related to prize adjudication and with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. Its members are independent and do not answer to lawmakers. Members of the Norwegian government are not allowed to take any part in it.
Award Winners
In 1901, winners Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, and renowned pacifist Frederic Passy shared the first Nobel Prize in Peace for their influential humanitarian efforts and peace movements.
Nobel Peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate); civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964 laureate); the worldwide human rights organization Amnesty International (1977 laureate); missionary leader Mother Teresa (1979 laureate); Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy activist (1991 laureate); and Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli prime minister (1994 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter (1992 laureate) and Mohamed ElBaradei (2005 laureate).
Controversies
Some award winners have been quite controversial, often due to the recipient's political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate), Mikhail Gorbachev (1990 laureate), or Yasser Arafat (1994 laureate) whose Fatah movement began, and still serves as a terrorist organization. The 2007 prize awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), given for efforts to raise awareness on climate-change and to develop measures to counteract it, was criticized because the work was not directly related to ending conflict. The 2009 prize awarded to Barack Obama in the first year of Obama's presidency was criticized as being premature. The 2010 prize awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was viewed negatively in China, with some in the government arguing that Liu did not promote "international friendship, disarmament, and peace meetings." Perhaps the most controversial award winners were Le Duc Tho and Kissinger, whose recognition prompted two dissenting committee members to resign.
All Nobel Peace Prize nominations from 1901 to 1951 have been released in a database, and showed Adolf Hitler to be nominated in 1939. The nomination was retracted in February of the same year. Other infamous nominees include Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.
Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, though he was nominated for it five times between 1937 and 1948. Decades after Ghandi’s death, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission and may have tacitly acknowledged its error when in 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the committee made no award, stating "there was no suitable living candidate." Similarly, when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi."
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
The Nobel Prize in Economics is a prize awarded each year for outstanding intellectual contributions in the field of economics. The award was instituted by the Bank of Sweden, the world's oldest central bank, at its 300th anniversary in 1968. Although it was not one of the awards established in the will of Alfred Nobel, economics laureates receive their diploma and gold medal from the Swedish monarch at the same December 10th ceremony in Stockholm as the other Nobel laureates. The amount of money awarded to the economics laureates is also equal to that of the other prizes.
The prestige of the prize derives in part from its association with the awards created by Alfred Nobel's will, an association which has often been a source of controversy. The prize is commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics or, more correctly, as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
In February 1995, it was decided that the economics prize be essentially defined as a prize in social sciences, opening the Nobel Prize to great contributions in fields like political science, psychology, and sociology. The Economics Prize Committee has also undergone changes to require two non-economists to decide the prize each year, whereas previously the prize committee had consisted of five economists.
The economics laureates, like the Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics, are chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Nominations of about one hundred living persons are made each year by qualified nominators and are received by a five to eight member committee, which then submits its choice of winners to the Nobel Assembly for its final approval. As with the other prizes, no more than three people can share the prize for a given year and they must be living at the time the prize is awarded.
Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics have included Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen (1969) for their development of dynamic economic models, Wassily Leontief (1973) for the development of the input-output method, and Edmund S. Phelps (2006) for his analysis of inter-temporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy.
Criticisms of the Nobel Prizes
The Nobel Prizes have been criticized over the years, with people suggesting that formal agreements and name recognition are more important than actual achievements in the process of deciding who is awarded a prize. Perhaps the most infamous case of this was in 1973 when Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the Peace Prize for bringing peace to Vietnam, even though the Vietnam War was ongoing at the time. Le Duc Tho declined the award, for the stated reason that peace had not been achieved.
The strict rules against a Nobel Prize being awarded to more than three people at once is also a cause for controversy. Where a prize is awarded to recognize an achievement by a team of more than three collaborators, inevitably one or more will miss out. For example, in 2002, a prize was awarded to Koichi Tanaka and John Fenn for the development of mass spectrometry in protein chemistry, failing to recognize the achievements of Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt.
Similarly, the rule against posthumous prizes often fails to recognize important achievements by a collaborator who happens to have died before the prize is awarded. For example, Rosalind Franklin made some of the key developments in the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, but she died of ovarian cancer in 1958 and the Prize was awarded to Francis Crick, James D. Watson, and Maurice Wilkins, Franklin's collaborators, in 1962.
Criticism was levied towards the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, specifically the recognition of Roy Glauber and not George Sudarshan for the award. Arguably, Sudarshan's work is the more accepted of the two. Though Glauber did publish his work first in 1963, Sudarshan's work later that same year is the work upon which most of quantum optics is based.
Mathematics
The Nobel Prizes are also criticized for their lack of a mathematics award. There are several possible reasons why Nobel created no prize for mathematics. Nobel's will speaks of prizes for those "inventions or discoveries" of greatest practical benefit to mankind, possibly having in mind practical rather than theoretical works. Mathematics was not considered a practical science from which humanity could benefit, a key purpose for the Nobel Foundation.
One other possible reason was that there was already a well-known Scandinavian prize for mathematicians. The existing mathematical awards at the time were mainly due to the work of Gösta Mittag-Leffler, who founded the Acta Mathematica, a century later still one of the world's leading mathematical journals. Through his influence in Stockholm, he persuaded King Oscar II to endow prize competitions and honor distinguished mathematicians all over Europe, including Hermite, Joseph Louis François Bertrand, Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass, and Henri Poincaré.
In 2001, the government of Norway began awarding the Abel Prize, specifically with the intention of being a substitute for the missing mathematics Nobel. Beginning in 2004, the Shaw Prize, which resembles the Nobel Prize, included an award in mathematical sciences. The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics," but the comparison is not very apt because the Fields is limited to mathematicians not over forty years old.
Repeat Recipients
In the history of the Nobel Prize, there have been only four people to have received two Nobel Prizes: Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger.
Curie was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics after discovering radioactivity. She was later awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry after her isolation of radium.
Linus Pauling received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for construction of the Hybridized Orbital Theory, and later the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for activism in regards to the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
John Bardeen was awarded both the 1956 and 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the transistor, and later for his theory of superconductivity.
Frederick Sanger was awarded both the 1958 and 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for identifying the structure of the insulin molecule, and later for his virus nucleotide sequencing.
Additionally, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, 1944, and 1963. The first two prizes were specifically in recognition of the group's work during the world wars.
Recipients In Absentia
Carl von Ossietzky, the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was at first required by the Nazi German government to decline the Nobel Prize, a demand that Ossietzky did not honor, and then was prevented by the same government from going to Oslo personally to accept the Nobel Prize. He was kept under surveillance—a virtual house arrest—in a civilian hospital until his death in 1938, even though the German Propaganda Ministry was known to have publicly declared Ossietzky's freedom to go to Norway to accept the award. After this incident, in 1937, the German government decreed that in the future no German could accept any Nobel Prize.
Andrei Sakharov, the first Soviet citizen to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1975, was not allowed to receive or personally travel to Oslo to accept the prize. He was described as "a Judas" and a "laboratory rat of the West" by the Soviet authorities. His wife, Elena Bonner, who was in Italy for medical treatment, received the prize in her husband's stead and presented the Nobel Prize acceptance speech by proxy.
Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, but was not allowed to make any formal acceptance speech or statement of any kind to that effect, nor leave Myanmar (Burma) to receive the prize. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.
Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, but declined to go in person to Stockholm to receive the prize, citing severe social phobia and mental illness. She made a video instead and wrote out the speech text to be read out in lieu.
Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, but was unable to attend the ceremonies owing to poor health. He, too, delivered his controversial, "all-defying" speech via video.
Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." He was imprisoned in his country at the time of the award and neither he nor his family were allowed to attend the ceremony.
References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Abrams, Irwin. The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates. Watson Publishing International, 2001. ISBN 0881353884
Feldman, Burton. The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige. Arcade Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1559705922
Fredholm, Lotta. “The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA – The Double Helix.” Nobel Foundation. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
Nobel Foundation. “Nobel Prize Facts.” Retrieved December 9, 2019.
Nobel Foundation. “Nomination and selection of Nobel Laureates ” Retrieved December 9, 2019.
Spinney, Laura. “Nobel Prize controversy.” The Scientist December 11, 2002. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
The Nobel Prize Internet Archive. “Why is there no Nobel Prize in Mathematics?” Retrieved December 9, 2019.
Tønnesson, Øyvind. “With Fascism on the Doorstep: The Nobel Institution in Norway, 1940–1945.” Retrieved December 9, 2019.
Worek, Michael. The Nobel Prize: The Story of Alfred Nobel and the Most Famous Prize in the World. Firefly Books, 2010. ISBN 978-1554077113
All links retrieved November 15, 2022.
Nobelprize.org — Official site
The Nobel Prize Internet Archive
The Nobel Peace Prize
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 63
|
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/albert-einstein-1921-nobel-prize.html
|
en
|
Albert einstein 1921 nobel prize hi
|
[
"https://s.alamy.com/logos/1.68.0/alamy.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/logos/1.68.0/alamy-black.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/logos/1.68.0/alamy-black.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/logos/1.68.0/alamy.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/assets/latest/footer/mastercard.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/assets/latest/footer/visa.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/assets/latest/footer/amex.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/assets/latest/footer/paypal.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/assets/latest/footer/apple-pay.svg",
"https://s.alamy.com/assets/latest/footer/google-pay.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Alamy Limited"
] | null |
Find the perfect albert einstein 1921 nobel prize stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. Available for both RF and RM licensing.
|
en
|
Alamy
|
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/albert-einstein-1921-nobel-prize.html
|
Alamy and its logo are trademarks of Alamy Ltd. and are registered in certain countries. Copyright © 20/07/2024 Alamy Ltd. All rights reserved.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 36
|
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-win-physics-nobel-prize-for-proving-einstein-wrong
|
en
|
Scientists Win Physics Nobel Prize For Proving Einstein Wrong
|
[
"https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2022/10/EntangledLightBulb-642x260.jpg",
"https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191884/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic",
"https://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=10055482&cv=2.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"The Conversation"
] |
2022-10-05T00:37:55+00:00
|
The 2022 Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists for pioneering experiments in quantum mechanics, the theory covering the micro-world of atoms and particles.
|
en
|
ScienceAlert
|
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-win-physics-nobel-prize-for-proving-einstein-wrong
|
The 2022 Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists for pioneering experiments in quantum mechanics, the theory covering the micro-world of atoms and particles.
Alain Aspect from Université Paris-Saclay in France, John Clauser from J.F. Clauser & Associates in the US, and Anton Zeilinger from University of Vienna in Austria, will share the prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (US$915,000) "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science".
The world of quantum mechanics appears very odd indeed. In school, we are taught that we can use equations in physics to predict exactly how things will behave in the future – where a ball will go if we roll it down a hill, for example.
Quantum mechanics is different from this. Rather than predicting individual outcomes, it tells us the probability of finding subatomic particles in particular places. A particle can actually be in several places at the same time, before "picking" one location at random when we measure it.
Even the great Albert Einstein himself was unsettled by this – to the point where he was convinced that it was wrong. Rather than outcomes being random, he thought there must be some "hidden variables" – forces or laws that we can't see – which predictably influence the results of our measurements.
Some physicists, however, embraced the consequences of quantum mechanics. John Bell, a physicist from Northern Ireland, made an important breakthrough in 1964, devising a theoretical test to show that the hidden variables Einstein had in mind don't exist.
According to quantum mechanics, particles can be "entangled", spookily connected so that if you manipulate one then you automatically and immediately also manipulate the other.
If this spookiness – particles far apart mysteriously influencing each other instantaneously – were to be explained by the particles communicating with each other through hidden variables, it would require faster-than-light communication between the two, which Einstein's theories forbid.
Quantum entanglement is a challenging concept to understand, essentially linking the properties of particles no matter how far apart they are. Imagine a light bulb that emits two photons (light particles) that travel in opposite directions away from it.
If these photons are entangled, then they can share a property, such as their polarization, no matter their distance. Bell imagined doing experiments on these two photons separately and comparing the results of them to prove that they were entangled (truly and mysteriously linked).
Clauser put Bell's theory into practice at a time when doing experiments on single photons was almost unthinkable. In 1972, just eight years after Bell's famous thought experiment, Clauser showed that light could indeed be entangled.
While Clauser's results were groundbreaking, there were a few alternative, more exotic explanations for the results he obtained.
If light didn't behave quite as the physicists thought, perhaps his results could be explained without entanglement. These explanations are known as loopholes in Bell's test, and Aspect was the first to challenge this.
Aspect came up with an ingenious experiment to rule out one of the most important potential loopholes in Bell's test. He showed that the entangled photons in the experiment aren't actually communicating with each other through hidden variables to decide the outcome of Bell's test.
This means they really are spookily linked.
In science it is incredibly important to test the concepts that we believe to be correct. And few have played a more important role in doing this than Aspect. Quantum mechanics has been tested time and again over the past century and survived unscathed.
Quantum technology
At this point, you may be forgiven for wondering why it matters how the microscopic world behaves, or that photons can be entangled. This is where the vision of Zeilinger really shines.
We once harnessed our knowledge of classical mechanics to build machines, to make factories, leading to the industrial revolution. Knowledge of the behavior of electronics and semiconductors has driven the digital revolution.
But understanding quantum mechanics allows us to exploit it, to build devices that are capable of doing new things. Indeed, many believe that it will drive the next revolution, of quantum technology.
Quantum entanglement can be harnessed in computing to process information in ways that were not possible before. Detecting small changes in entanglement can allow sensors to detect things with greater precision than ever before.
Communicating with entangled light can also guarantee security, as measurements of quantum systems can reveal the presence of the eavesdropper.
Zeilinger's work paved the way for the quantum technological revolution by showing how it is possible to link a series of entangled systems together, to build the quantum equivalent of a network.
In 2022, these applications of quantum mechanics are not science fiction. We have the first quantum computers. The Micius satellite uses entanglement to enable secure communications across the world. And quantum sensors are being used in applications from medical imaging to detecting submarines.
Ultimately, the 2022 Nobel panel have recognized the importance of the practical foundations producing, manipulating, and testing quantum entanglement and the revolution it is helping to drive.
I am pleased to see this trio receiving the award. In 2002, I started a PhD at the University of Cambridge that was inspired by their work. The aim of my project was to make a simple semiconductor device to generate entangled light.
This was to greatly simplify the equipment needed to do quantum experiments and to allow practical devices for real-world applications to be built. Our work was successful and it amazes and excites me to see the leaps and bounds that have been made in the field since.
Robert Young, Professor of Physics and Director of the Lancaster Quantum Technology Centre, Lancaster University
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 0
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/
|
en
|
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/images/einstein-12923-portrait-medium.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/
|
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1922. During the selection process in 1921, the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of the year's nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied. Albert Einstein therefore received his Nobel Prize for 1921 one year later, in 1922.
To cite this section
MLA style: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Sat. 20 Jul 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/>
Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 75
|
https://www.itechpost.com/articles/114967/20221109/albert-einstein-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-albert-einstein-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-1922.htm
|
en
|
Albert Einstein Won the Nobel Prize in Physics on This Day in 1922
|
[
"https://1126564489.rsc.cdn77.org/static/common/_v3.0.0/img/logo.svg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120613/90/77/50/40/us-postal-service-caught-sharing-customer-data-to-social-media-advertisers.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/119650/90/77/50/40/facebook-is-trying-to-win-back-younger-users-amid-looming-ban-on-tiktok.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120582/90/77/50/40/verizon-looking-to-sell-thousands-of-us-cell-towers.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/119702/90/77/50/40/instagram-is-testing-new-unskippable-ads-while-browsing.png",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/99528/90/77/50/40/mlb-the-show-21-baserunning-tips-how-to-perfectly-slide-in-team-mode.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120040/502/301/50/40/new-microsoft-vulnerability-allows-anyone-to-impersonate-corporate-emails.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120623/502/301/50/40/xiaomi-mix.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120621/502/301/50/40/cybersecurity-firm-crowdstrikes-shares-drop-11-following-global-it-outage.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120624/502/301/50/40/car-dealership-operations-disrupted-again-in-microsoft-crowdstrike-outage.jpg",
"https://1126564489.rsc.cdn77.org/static/common/_v3.0.0/img/logo-plain.svg",
"https://static.getclicky.com/media/links/badge.gif",
"https://in.getclicky.com/66593558ns.gif",
"https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-QzXvCmyt3qj48.gif",
"https://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=14401431&cv=2.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Albert Einstein",
"Einstein",
"Theory of Relativity",
"Photoelectric Effect",
"Nobel Prize",
"physics"
] | null |
[
"Toni Dimaano"
] |
2022-11-09T02:20:00-05:00
|
Commemorating Einstein's 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics, 100 years today since. It has been a whole 100 years since Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in Physics for his expansion of the photoelectric effect in 1922 at only 26 years old.
|
en
|
iTech Post
|
https://www.itechpost.com/articles/114967/20221109/albert-einstein-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-albert-einstein-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-1922.htm
|
It has been a whole 100 years since Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in Physics for his expansion of the photoelectric effect in 1922 at only 26 years old.
While everyone was expecting the genius to win the prize for his theory on relativity, it was his idea on what is behind today's solar energy revolution that earned him the well-coveted merit.
What Was This Award-Winning Photoelectric Effect Explanation
According to The Atlantic, even from the beginning of the turn of the century, scientists already had an idea that light could produce electric current once exposed to certain conditions.
However, despite this observation, no one really understood why light could create electricity since it was then understood that light worked as a wave.
With this contradiction, in 1905, Einstein produced a paper that suggested that light was not a wave but was something discontinuously distributed in space.
According to his explanation of the photoelectric effect, light is spread out and scattered from a point source but is consisted of energy quanta localized at different points in space.
This means that Einstein believed that light behaved like a particle rather than a wave, which is why it can create electric current.
The Nobel Prize Organization adds that photoelectric explains that if metal electrodes are exposed to light, sparks will actualize between them.
For this to happen, light waves would be at a certain frequency, and the light's intensity should be critical for it to work.
This discovery was what warranted Einstein to win the Nobel Prize in 1922, a year after no one won the Nobel Prize in 1921.
According to the Nobel Prize Organization, during the committee's selection process for Physics, they found that nobody met the criteria outlined by the foundation and reserved the 1921 prize for next year.
This made Einstein the 1921 Nobel Prize winner in the field of Physics in the year 1922.
Read More: Israel Allocates Millions for Einstein Museum
Many Thought That Einstein's Nobel Prize Was For The Theory Of Relativity
Contrary to popular belief, despite the theory of relativity being Einstein's most well-known contributions to science, it was what won him the Nobel Prize.
According to Advanced Science News, while he came up with the theory of relativity and the photoelectric effect explanation, Einstein was only awarded for the latter.
The reserved Nobel Prize of 1921 was awarded to Einstein the next year for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect," reports say.
The decision prompted speculations from left and right, relating the controversy to the access that was granted to the official archival materials at the organization.
However, Advanced Science New writes that Einstein not winning an award for his theory of relativity might have been just a case of bias, arrogance, and pettiness among committee members at the time.
In 1954, almost 50 years after the scientist won the award for his contribution to the law of photoelectric effect, solar cells were created to run electrical equipment.
These solar cells have later been developed into the solar energy people use in modern technology today, proving that addressing a gap in knowledge can lead to something useful, The Atlantic writes.
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 20
|
https://byjus.com/question-answer/einstein-got-nobel-prize-on-which-of-the-following-worksmass-energy-relation-special-theory-of-1/
|
en
|
Einstein got Nobel prize on which of the following works
|
[
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/byjus_logo.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/call.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/SearchIcon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/byjus_logo.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/call.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/SearchIcon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/UploadIcon2.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/UploadIcon2.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Search.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Search.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Frame.webp?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Frame.webp?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/thumb.webp?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/thumb.webp?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/simQue.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/simQue.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/relVideos.svg?imwidth=64 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/relVideos.svg?imwidth=128 2x",
"https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=640 640w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=750 750w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=828 828w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1080 1080w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1200 1200w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1920 1920w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=2048 2048w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=3840 3840w",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/lock.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/lock.svg?imwidth=64 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/ExploreMore.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/ExploreMore.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/bottomSearch_selected.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/bottomSearch_selected.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/textbooks.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/textbooks.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/question-papers.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/question-papers.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/app_install.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/app_install.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/cross.webp?imwidth=16 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/cross.webp?imwidth=32 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"BYJU'S"
] |
2022-07-04T10:36:42+05:30
|
Einstein got Nobel prize on which of the following works
|
en
|
https://byjus.com/question-answer/einstein-got-nobel-prize-on-which-of-the-following-worksmass-energy-relation-special-theory-of-1/
|
Q.
Here are some facts from Einstein’s life. Arrange them in chronological order.
[ ] Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity.
[ ] He is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
[ ] Einstein writes a letter to U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and warns against Germany’s building of an atomic bomb.
[ ] Einstein attends a high school in Munich.
[ ] Einstein’s family moves to Milan.
[ ] Einstein is born in the German city of Ulm.
[ ] Einstein joins a university in Zurich, where he meets Mileva.
[ ] Einstein dies.
[ ] He provides a new interpretation of gravity.
[ ] Tired of the school’s regimentation, Einstein withdraws from school.
[ ] He works in a patent office as a technical expert.
[ ] When Hitler comes to power, Einstein leaves Germany for the United States.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 39
|
https://www.livescience.com/16362-nobel-prize-physics-list.html
|
en
|
Nobel Prize in Physics: 1901-Present
|
[
"https://mos.fie.futurecdn.net/nsn8tjxqmqhfgoo4-16455329884552.png",
"https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/j8cKnbQFcGupxZQsTfdL34-320-80.jpg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg",
"https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p/?c1=2&c2=10055482&cv=4.4.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Live Science Staff"
] |
2022-10-04T14:39:22+00:00
|
The history of the winners of the Nobel Prize in physics, including Steven Chu, Aage Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi.
|
en
|
livescience.com
|
https://www.livescience.com/16362-nobel-prize-physics-list.html
|
According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Nobel Prize in Physics was to go to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics." The prize has been awarded every year except for 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941 and 1942.
Here is the full list of winners:
2023: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier won the 2023 prize for devising a way to generate pulses of light measured in attoseconds — one quintillionth of a second. An attosecond is to a second what a second is to the age of the universe, a miniscule slice of time so short that it can be used to peer at the movements of electrons and molecules.
2022: American physicist John Clauser, French physicist Alain Aspect and Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger each shared the 2022 prize "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science,” according to the Nobel Prize organization. Their work demonstrated that what Einstein so famously dubbed "spooky action at a distance" is real and laid the groundwork for early quantum computers.
2021: The 2021 Nobel prize went to three scientists whose work alerted the world to the dangers of climate change. The prize was awarded for "for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems." Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann shared one-half of the prize "for the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming" while Giorgio Parisi won the other half "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."
2020: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided amongst a trio of black hole researchers. One half of the award went to Roger Penrose, "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity", while Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez jointly shared the other half "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy"
2019: Canadian-American James Peebles of Princeton University received one-half of the Nobel "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. The other half of the prize was awarded jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star," the Academy said. Mayor is a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and Queloz is at both the University of Geneva and the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
Together, the trio won the Nobel "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos," the Academy said.
2018: Arthur Ashkin was awarded one half of the prize, and the other half was awarded jointly to Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou, "for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics." This was the first time in 55 years that a woman was part of the Nobel Prize in physics. [Read more about the 2018 prize and Nobel Laureates]
2017: Half of the 9 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million) award went to Rainer Weiss of MIT. The other half was shared jointly to Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of Caltech. The prize honored the trio's "decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves," according to Nobelprize.org. The three scientists were integral in the first detection of the ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. The waves in this case came from the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
2016: One half was awarded to David J. Thouless, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and the other half to F. Duncan M. Haldane, Princeton University, and J. Michael Kosterlitz, Brown University, Providence. Their theoretical discoveries opened the door to a weird world where matter can take on strange states. According to the Nobel Foundation: "Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics."
2015: Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for showing the metamorphosis of neutrinos, which revealed that the subatomic particles have mass and opened up a new realm in particle physics.
2014: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for their invention of an energy-efficient light source: blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
2013: Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom and François Englert of Belgium, two of the scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson nearly 50 years ago. [Related: Higgs Boson Physicists Snag Nobel Prize]
2012: French physicist Serge Haroche and American physicist David Wineland, for their pioneering research in quantum optics.
2011: One half awarded to Saul Perlmutter, the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess, "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae."
2010: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene."
2009: Charles K. Kao, "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor."
2008: Yoichiro Nambu, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics," and Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
2007: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance"
2006: John C. Mather and George F. Smoot, "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."
2005: Roy J. Glauber, "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence," and John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch, "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique."
2004: David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction."
2003: Alexei A. Abrikosov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg and Anthony J. Leggett, "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids."
2002: Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos," and Riccardo Giacconi, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources."
2001: Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E. Wieman, "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates."
2000: Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer, "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics," and Jack S. Kilby "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit."
1999: Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics."
1998: Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations."
1997: Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."
1996: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson, "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3."
1995: Martin L. Perl, "for the discovery of the tau lepton," and Frederick Reines, "for the detection of the neutrino."
1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, "for the development of neutron spectroscopy," and Clifford G. Shull, "for the development of the neutron diffraction technique."
1993: Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr., "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."
1992: Georges Charpak, "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber."
1991: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, "for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers."
1990: Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor, "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."
1989: Norman F. Ramsey, "for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks," and Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul, "for the development of the ion trap technique."
1988: Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino."
1987: J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alexander Müller, "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials."
1986: Ernst Ruska, "for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope," and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, "for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope."
1985: Klaus von Klitzing, "for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect".
1984: Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, "for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction."
1983: Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars," and William Alfred Fowler, "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe."
1982: Kenneth G. Wilson, "for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions."
1981: Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy," and Kai M. Siegbahn, "for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy."
1980: James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch, "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons."
1979: Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current."
1978: Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, "for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics," and Arno Allan Penzias, Robert Woodrow Wilson "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation."
1977: Philip Warren Anderson, Sir Nevill Francis Mott and John Hasbrouck van Vleck, "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems."
1976: Burton Richter and Samuel Chao Chung Ting, "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind."
1975: Aage Niels Bohr, Ben Roy Mottelson and Leo James Rainwater, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection."
1974: Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish, "for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars."
1973: Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, for "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively," and Brian David Josephson, "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects."
1972: John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer, "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory."
1971: Dennis Gabor, "for his invention and development of the holographic method."
1970: Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén, "for fundamental work and discoveries in magnetohydro- dynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics," and Louis Eugène Félix Néel, "for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics."
1969: Murray Gell-Mann, "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions."
1968: Luis Walter Alvarez, "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis."
1967: Hans Albrecht Bethe, "for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars."
1966: Alfred Kastler, "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms."
1965: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard P. Feynman, "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles."
1964: Charles Hard Townes, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle," and Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle."
1963: Eugene Paul Wigner, "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles," and Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure."
1962: Lev Davidovich Landau, "for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium."
1961: Robert Hofstadter, "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons," and Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer, "for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name."
1960: Donald Arthur Glaser, "for the invention of the bubble chamber."
1959: Emilio Gino Segrè and Owen Chamberlain, "for their discovery of the antiproton."
1958: Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Il´ja Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, "for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect."
1957: Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee, "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles."
1956: William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect."
1955: Willis Eugene Lamb, "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum," and Polykarp Kusch, "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron."
1954: Max Born, "for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction," and Walther Bothe, "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith."
1953: Frits (Frederik) Zernike, "for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope."
1952: Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell, "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith."
1951: Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles."
1950: Cecil Frank Powell, "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method."
1949: Hideki Yukawa, "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces."
1948: Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, "for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation."
1947: Sir Edward Victor Appleton, "for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer."
1946: Percy Williams Bridgman, "for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics."
1945: Wolfgang Pauli, "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle."
1944: Isidor Isaac Rabi, "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei."
1943: Otto Stern, "for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton."
1940-1942: No Prizes awarded.
1939: Ernest Orlando Lawrence, "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements."
1938: Enrico Fermi, "for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons."
1937: Clinton Joseph Davisson and George Paget Thomson, "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals."
1936: Victor Franz Hess, "for his discovery of cosmic radiation," and Carl David Anderson, "for his discovery of the positron."
1935: James Chadwick, "for the discovery of the neutron."
1934: No Prize awarded
1933: Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."
1932: Werner Karl Heisenberg, "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen."
1931: No Prize awarded
1930: Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him"
1929: Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, "for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons."
1928: Owen Willans Richardson, "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him."
1927: Arthur Holly Compton, "for his discovery of the effect named after him," and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, "for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapor."
1926: Jean Baptiste Perrin, "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium."
1925: James Franck and Gustav Ludwig Hertz, "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom."
1924: Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn, "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy."
1923: Robert Andrews Millikan, "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."
1922: Niels Henrik David Bohr, "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them."
1921: Albert Einstein, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."
1920: Charles Edouard Guillaume, "in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys."
1919: Johannes Stark, "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields."
1918: Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta."
1917: Charles Glover Barkla, "for his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements."
1916: No Prize awarded.
1915: Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays."
1914: Max von Laue, "for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals."
1913: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, "for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium."
1912: Nils Gustaf Dalén, "for his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys."
1911: Wilhelm Wien, "for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat."
1910: Johannes Diderik van der Waals, "for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids."
1909: Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy."
1908: Gabriel Lippmann, "for his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon of interference."
1907: Albert Abraham Michelson, "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid."
1906: Joseph John Thomson, "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases."
1905: Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, "for his work on cathode rays."
1904: Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies."
1903: Antoine Henri Becquerel, " "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity," and Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
1902: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman, "in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena."
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 22
|
https://byjus.com/question-answer/einstein-got-nobel-prize-on-which-of-the-following-worksmass-energy-relation-special-theory-of-1/
|
en
|
Einstein got Nobel prize on which of the following works
|
[
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/byjus_logo.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/call.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/SearchIcon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/byjus_logo.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/dropdown-yellow-icon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/call.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/SearchIcon.svg",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/photoIcon.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/UploadIcon2.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/UploadIcon2.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Search.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Search.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/myquestions.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Frame.webp?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/Frame.webp?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/thumb.webp?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/thumb.webp?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/simQue.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/simQue.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/relVideos.svg?imwidth=64 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/relVideos.svg?imwidth=128 2x",
"https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=640 640w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=750 750w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=828 828w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1080 1080w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1200 1200w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=1920 1920w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=2048 2048w, https://static.tllms.com/video_thumbnails/production/480/38792.jpg?imwidth=3840 3840w",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/lock.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/lock.svg?imwidth=64 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/ExploreMore.webp?imwidth=48 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/ExploreMore.webp?imwidth=96 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/bottomSearch_selected.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/bottomSearch_selected.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/textbooks.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/textbooks.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/question-papers.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/question-papers.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/app_install.svg?imwidth=32 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/navigation_icons/app_install.svg?imwidth=48 2x",
"https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/cross.webp?imwidth=16 1x, https://search-static.byjusweb.com/assets/cross.webp?imwidth=32 2x"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"BYJU'S"
] |
2022-07-04T10:36:42+05:30
|
Einstein got Nobel prize on which of the following works
|
en
|
https://byjus.com/question-answer/einstein-got-nobel-prize-on-which-of-the-following-worksmass-energy-relation-special-theory-of-1/
|
Q.
Here are some facts from Einstein’s life. Arrange them in chronological order.
[ ] Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity.
[ ] He is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
[ ] Einstein writes a letter to U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and warns against Germany’s building of an atomic bomb.
[ ] Einstein attends a high school in Munich.
[ ] Einstein’s family moves to Milan.
[ ] Einstein is born in the German city of Ulm.
[ ] Einstein joins a university in Zurich, where he meets Mileva.
[ ] Einstein dies.
[ ] He provides a new interpretation of gravity.
[ ] Tired of the school’s regimentation, Einstein withdraws from school.
[ ] He works in a patent office as a technical expert.
[ ] When Hitler comes to power, Einstein leaves Germany for the United States.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
0
| 77
|
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
|
en
|
Albert Einstein | Biography, Education, Discoveries, & Facts
|
[
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/mendel/eb-logo/MendelNewThistleLogo.png",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-004-CFE09F17/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/87/21087-004-DCB2DAA6/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/80/222280-138-41E211F6/Your-Daily-Equation-01-E-mc2.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/78/142178-004-DD1DBD92/Albert-Einstein-portrait-Doris-Ulmann-1931.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/62/79862-004-49EADD56/Albert-Einstein.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/58/245058-138-A0C6ED7D/J-Robert-Oppenheimer-atomic-bomb.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/89/142189-004-E859D3FB/Albert-Einstein-Phillip-Forman-certificate-citizenship-American-Oct-1-1940.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/61/79861-004-64BBE3D1/Albert-Einstein-birthday-children-home-United-Service.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/25/186825-138-4F923114/indeterminacy-element-interpretation-quantum-mechanics-objections-Niels.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/77/142177-004-4F78FF68/Albert-Einstein-1947.jpg",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/232632-131-A2DB4925/King-Speech-at-Sproul-Plaza-in-Berkeley.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/35/142335-131-4742621E/molecule-Model-Atom-Biology-entertainment-Molecular-Structure-2010.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/88/144788-131-ADACA20E/Michael-Faraday-John-Frederic-Daniell.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/01/115001-131-7278E518/Enrico-Fermi-Italian-problem-physics-1950.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/77/142177-131-D37928A6/Albert-Einstein-1947.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-131-93B65AAF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-131-93B65AAF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/59/23359-131-42CFFC3D/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/62/79862-131-71A1D30E/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/178832-131-78DC370C/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/85/203585-131-D4FEE60A/Solar-Eclipse-Flare-Astronomy-Outer-Space.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/38/114738-131-1EC2D535/assassination-Pres-John-Wilkes-Booth-Abraham-Lincoln-April-14-1865.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/48/221848-131-DF541F62/US-presidential-elections-in-maps.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/46/217846-131-DA1A9907/skyline-Detroit-Michigan-circa-2015-2019.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/28/60728-131-36BD65EF/infantrymen-German-Maxim-World-War-I-machine.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/57/203257-131-48B2BCA1/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-marchers-speech-I-August-28th-1963.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/43/193443-131-17ABE1C9/Union-Jack-flag-Great-Britain-united-kingdom.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/09/75509-050-86D8CBBF/Albert-Einstein.jpg?w=400&h=300&c=crop",
"https://cdn.britannica.com/32/232632-131-A2DB4925/King-Speech-at-Sproul-Plaza-in-Berkeley.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Albert Einstein",
"encyclopedia",
"encyclopeadia",
"britannica",
"article"
] | null |
[
"Michio Kaku"
] |
1998-07-20T00:00:00+00:00
|
Albert Einstein, the brilliant physicist and Nobel laureate, revolutionized our understanding of the universe with his theory of relativity and became a symbol of genius that continues to inspire minds worldwide.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
|
Childhood and education
Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally a featherbed salesman and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. He had one sister, Maria (who went by the name Maja), born two years after Albert.
Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred little geometry book.”
Britannica Quiz
Who Said It? Famous Quotes Quiz
Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything.
Yet another important influence on Einstein was a young medical student, Max Talmud (later Max Talmey), who often had dinner at the Einstein home. Talmud became an informal tutor, introducing Einstein to higher mathematics and philosophy. A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein was 16 years old. Talmud had earlier introduced him to a children’s science series by Aaron Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher (1867–68; Popular Books on Physical Science), in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”).
Einstein’s education was disrupted by his father’s repeated failures at business. In 1894, after his company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich, Hermann Einstein moved to Milan to work with a relative. Einstein was left at a boardinghouse in Munich and expected to finish his education. Alone, miserable, and repelled by the looming prospect of military duty when he turned 16, Einstein ran away six months later and landed on the doorstep of his surprised parents. His parents realized the enormous problems that he faced as a school dropout and draft dodger with no employable skills. His prospects did not look promising.
Fortunately, Einstein could apply directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (“Swiss Federal Polytechnic School”; in 1911, following expansion in 1909 to full university status, it was renamed the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or “Swiss Federal Institute of Technology”) in Zürich without the equivalent of a high school diploma if he passed its stiff entrance examinations. His marks showed that he excelled in mathematics and physics, but he failed at French, chemistry, and biology. Because of his exceptional math scores, he was allowed into the polytechnic on the condition that he first finish his formal schooling. He went to a special high school run by Jost Winteler in Aarau, Switzerland, and graduated in 1896. He also renounced his German citizenship at that time. (He was stateless until 1901, when he was granted Swiss citizenship.) He became lifelong friends with the Winteler family, with whom he had been boarding. (Winteler’s daughter, Marie, was Einstein’s first love; Einstein’s sister, Maja, would eventually marry Winteler’s son Paul; and his close friend Michele Besso would marry their eldest daughter, Anna.)
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 81
|
https://www.nist.gov/nist-and-nobel/eric-cornell
|
en
|
Eric Cornell
|
[
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/us_flag_small.png",
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/icon-dot-gov.svg",
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/icon-https.svg",
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/logo/nist_logo_sidestack.svg",
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/logo/logo.svg",
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/usa-icons-bg/search--white.svg",
"https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/images/2017/04/06/eric-cornell_0.png",
"https://www.nist.gov/libraries/nist-component-library/dist/img/logo/NIST-Logo-Brand-White.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2016-09-28T19:12:00-04:00
|
2001 Nobel Prize in Physics Bose-Einstein Condensates Read More
|
en
|
/themes/custom/nist_www/favicon.ico
|
NIST
|
https://www.nist.gov/nist-and-nobel/eric-cornell
|
2001 Nobel Prize in Physics
NIST Fellow Eric A. Cornell received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating a never-before-seen state of matter: the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Cornell and University of Colorado physicist Carl Wieman did the groundbreaking experiment at JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder. In June 1995, after five years of focused effort, Cornell and Wieman’s group created the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a new form of matter in which ultracold atoms coalesce into a single “superatom” with uniform properties. In papers that were published in 1924 and 1925, Albert Einstein predicted that BEC could exist, building on the work of Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. It would be another 70 years until experimental physicists actually created the BEC in the lab.
Cornell shared the prize with Wieman and with Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Wolfgang Ketterle, who also performed seminal work in BECs starting later in 1995.
These pages consider Eric Cornell’s 2001 Nobel Prize in more depth by exploring the following questions:
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 59
|
https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/nobel/
|
en
|
Einstein’s Nobel heritage « Einstein
|
[
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/flags/flagge_de.png",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/flags/flagge_gb.png",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/themes/SliderBlogRes/images/logo.png",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/einstein_fuer_einsteiger_kosmologie_1_430x430-150x150.jpg",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/Einstein_fuer_Einsteiger_ART_4_Lichtablenkung_©_Daniela_Leitner_Markus_Poessel_Einstein-Online.jpg-150x150.jpg",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/einstein_fuer_einsteiger_srt_6_430x430-150x150.jpg",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/Einstein_fuer_Einsteiger_Gravitationswellen_1_©_Daniela_Leitner_Markus_Poessel_Einstein-Online-150x150.jpg",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/Vertiefungsthemen_Schwarze_Loecher_und_Co_3_Im_Herzen_der_Milchstraße_©_Daniela_Leitner_Markus_Poessel_Einstein-Online-150x150.jpg",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/uploads/Einstein_fuer_Einsteiger_SRT_1_Bewegungen_©_Daniela_Leitner_Markus_Poessel_Einstein-Online-150x150.jpg",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/themes/SliderBlogRes/images/logo_mpig_hover.png",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/themes/SliderBlogRes/images/logo_max-planck-gesellschaft_hover.png",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/themes/SliderBlogRes/images/icon_relativ_einfach_hover.png",
"https://www.einstein-online.info/wp-content/themes/SliderBlogRes/images/icon_einstein_at_home_hover.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/nobel/
|
An overview of Nobel prizes connected with relativistic physics
An article by Markus Pössel
Einstein’s theories of relativity are the foundation for much of modern physics – small wonder that there is a sizeable number of Nobel prizes related to relativity. Here’s a list with brief descriptions of the most important ones:
1921 – Albert Einstein
Ironically, while relativity has led to so many Nobel prizes, it only played a minor role in Einstein’s own. To be sure, it is prominently featured in the laudatio by Svante Arrhenius, however, the Nobel committee’s brief prize announcement is more vague, referring to Einstein’s “services to Theoretical Physics” with explicit mention given only to his finding the law of the photoelectric effect.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1921
1933 – Paul Dirac (jointly with Erwin Schrödinger)
Dirac’s prize was the first of many given for work on the connection between special relativity and quantum theory. He was the pioneer of relativistic quantum mechanics, formulating what is nowadays called the Dirac equation, the first equation for the quantum behaviour of relativistic matter particles. Using his equation, he discovered a fundamental relativistic quantum phenomenon: the fact that, for every species of relativistic particle, there must be a kind of mirror image, a species of corresponding anti-particles. In a world in which electrons exist, which carry negative electric charge, Dirac’s equation demands the existence of anti-electrons, particles with the same mass as electrons, but a positive electric charge.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1933
1936 – Carl D. Anderson (jointly with Victor F. Hess)
What, at first sight, appeared to be a stumbling stone for Dirac’s theory – where were those anti-electrons he postulated? – later turned into a triumph. Among the particles of cosmic rays, a highly energetic particle radiation reaching the earth’s surface from space, Carl Anderson discovered traces of anti-electrons. Diracs anti-particles, with the same mass as electrons but the opposite electric charge, really do exist! Today, antiparticles are a basic feature of all models of particle physics, and anti-electrons are now commonly called positrons.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1936
1949 – Hideki Yukawa
The force that bonds protons and neutrons together to form atomic nuclei has a strictly limited range: while it keeps the nucleus stable, even a neutron flying by outside, a trillionth of a metre distant, is out of range and will not feel any influence. At the time Yukawa thought about this strange situation, physicists already knew of carrier particles and their role concerning elementary forces: forces are transmitted by particles. For instance, on a quantum level, the electric repulsion between two two electrons is explained by the exchange of photons flitting back and forth. The emission and absorption of these photons by the electrons is the way that the influence is transmitted from one electron to the other. Yukawa found an explanation for the short-range nuclear force that is directly linked to the fact that the carrier particle in question has a non-zero (rest) mass. He was able to derive this directly from a relativistic quantum equation for massive particles called the Klein-Gordon equation.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1949
1951 – John Cockcroft and Ernest T. S. Walton
Cockcroft and Walton bombarded atomic nuclei of the element Lithium with fast protons, thus creating helium nuclei in the first controlled transmutation of one species of nucleus to another. Summing up the energies before and after the transmutation, they managed to test directly the equivalence of mass and energy postulated by Einstein: the helium nuclei that result have a slightly lower mass than that of proton and lithium nucleus combined, and this difference in mass leads to a kinetic energy of the resulting nuclei that is higher than expected by non-relativistic physics, exactly following Einstein’s prediction.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1951
1955 – Willis Eugene Lamb and Polykarp Kusch
Lamb and Kusch performed precision measurements, establishing the reality of two effects that ordinary relativistic quantum theory à la Dirac cannot explained: what’s now called the Lamb shift and a deviation of the electron’s magnetic properties from Dirac’s prediction. These measurements contributed to the eventual development of relativistic quantum field theories, concretely: of quantum electrodynamics, the relativistic quantum theory of the electromagnetic field.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1955
1959 – Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain
In relativistic quantum theories, for every species of particle, there is a species of antiparticles. Segrè and Chamberlain received their prize for the discovery of anti-protons, the antiparticles of protons, one of the two species of particle atomic nuclei are made of.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1959
1963 – Eugene Wigner (jointly with Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen)
At the heart of special relativity is the relativity principle, in brief: observers that are in motion relative to each other are nevertheless on an equal footing; the physical laws are exactly the same for each of them. In physics, such equality is called a symmetry. Whether or not a physical theory, be it a model of electromagnetic phenomena, fluid dynamics or a theory of heat, is consistent with the relativity principle can be examined in a general framework that analyzes the theory’s symmetries. Wigner was the first to apply this framework to quantum theory, laying the foundation of modern relativistic quantum field theories.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1963
1965 – Shin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Richard P. Feynman
The development from earlier relativistic quantum mechanics to relativistic quantum field theories has already been mentioned. In these quantum field theories, not only the matter particles, but also the forces acting between them follow quantum laws. The distinction between matter and forces becomes blurred: The action of a force is represented by the exchange of particles, the corresponding carrier particles. Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman were the first to formulate such a theory of relativistic quantum forces for the simplest case, that of the electromagnetic force, creating what is known as quantum electrodynamics. This was the starting point leading to the formulation of the more general quantum field theories of the standard model of particle physics and to more relativistic Nobel prizes which are not included in this list as they do not add any fundamentally new cross-links with relativity.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1965
1974 – Antony Hewish (jointly with Martin Ryle)
The discovery that won Hewish his prize, although not a consequence of relativity, is nonetheless an important step for relativistic astrophysics. Together with his graduate student Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Hewish discovered the first pulsar, opening up the field of observational astronomy of neutron stars.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1974
1978 – Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson (jointly with Pjotr Leonidovich Kapitsa)
Penzias and Wilson won their Nobel prize for the first detection of the cosmic background radiation, an afterglow from the early, hot days of the universe. With their discovery, they confirmed a prediction made by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman in 1948 on the basis of the relativistic big bang models.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1978
1983 – Subramanyan Chandrasekhar and William A. Fowler
Chandrasekhars work on the stability of White Dwarfs, the final states of low-mass stars, was the beginning of a journey that would lead scientists to stellar black holes. The Chandrasekhar mass named after him is the maximal mass for which the inner pressure of the White Dwarf can resist further collaps. For remnants with higher mass, the collapse continues, forming a neutron star or even a black hole.
Fowler won the prize for his research on the origin of the chemical elements in the universe. Part of that work concerned another prediction of the big bang models of relativistic cosmology, namely that of the formation of light elements in the early universe.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1983
1993 – Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor
Hulse and Taylor discovered the first binary pulsar: a binary in which a pulsar and a companion star orbit each other. Their observations of this pulsar, called PSR1913+16, led to the first indirect detection of gravitational waves.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 1993
2002 – Riccardo Giacconi (jointly with Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba)
Giacconi won the prize for his pioneering work in X-ray astronomy, in part for the first detection of objects that, to the best of our knowledge, are black holes.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 2002
2006 – John C. Mather and George F. Smoot
Mather and Smoot received their prize for their contributions to the COBE satellite mission, in particular for precise measurements of the blackbody nature of the cosmic background radiation (confirming an important prediction of the big bang models) and for detecting the tiny fluctuations in the background radiation which are the first seeds for the large scale structure we can observe in the universe today.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 2006
2011 – Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess
Perlmutter received half of the prize, Schmidt and Riess a fourth each. They were awarded for their discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe. They used the observation of supernovae in distant galaxies. This discovery, published in 1998, shook cosmology to its foundations. Until then, cosmology assumed that expansion would slow down over time. Without knowing exactly what its nature is, the acceleration is attributed to the “dark energy”.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 2011
2017 – Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne
Half of the prize went to Weiss, the other half to Barish and Thorne. They all received the award for their contribution to the LIGO Observatory and the successful first measurement of gravitational waves in 2015.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 2017
2020 – Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez
Roger Penrose received half the prize, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez together received the other half. Roger Penrose’s work on the formation of black holes as a robust prediction of general relativity was honoured, as was the discovery of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy by Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.
Nobelprize.org: Physics 2020
Further Information
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 40
|
https://www.quantamagazine.org/pioneering-quantum-physicists-win-nobel-prize-in-physics-20221004/
|
en
|
Quanta Magazine
|
[
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/10/Physics_Nobel_2880x1620_Lede-scaled.webp",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2021/11/CW_1.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Article.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Mobile.webp",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2021/11/CW_1.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Article.jpg",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/01/JoY-Ads-2024_Mobile.webp",
"https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/10/Nobel_Medicine_Paabo_2880x1220_HP-scaled.webp"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"civil conversation. Abusive",
"self-promotional"
] |
2022-10-04T09:58:00+00:00
|
Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments with entangled particles.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Quanta Magazine
|
https://www.quantamagazine.org/pioneering-quantum-physicists-win-nobel-prize-in-physics-20221004/
|
The physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments that proved the profoundly strange quantum nature of reality. Their experiments collectively established the existence of a bizarre quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, where two widely separated particles appear to share information despite having no conceivable way of communicating.
Entanglement lay at the heart of a fiery clash in the 1930s between physics titans Albert Einstein on the one hand and Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger on the other about how the universe operates at a fundamental level. Einstein believed all aspects of reality should have a concrete and fully knowable existence. All objects — from the moon to a photon of light — should have precisely defined properties that can be discovered through measurement. Bohr, Schrödinger and other proponents of the nascent quantum mechanics, however, were finding that reality appeared to be fundamentally uncertain; a particle does not possess certain properties until the moment of measurement.
Entanglement emerged as a decisive way to distinguish between these two possible versions of reality. The physicist John Bell proposed a decisive thought experiment that was later realized in various experimental forms by Aspect and Clauser. The work proved Schrödinger right. Quantum mechanics was the operating system of the universe.
“I would not call entanglement ‘one,’ but rather ‘the’ trait of quantum mechanics,” Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel committee, quoted Schrödinger as writing in 1935. He observed, “The experiments performed by Clauser and Aspect opened the eyes of the physics community to the depth of Schrödinger’s statement, and provided tools for creating and manipulating and measuring states of particles that are entangled although they are far way.”
In addition to its paradigm-shattering philosophical implications, entanglement is now poised to power an emerging wave of quantum technologies. Zeilinger has been at the forefront of the field, developing techniques that use entanglement to achieve astounding feats of quantum networking, teleportation and cryptography.
“Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field. It has broad potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing, and sensing technology,” said Eva Olsson, another member of the committee. “Its predictions have opened doors to another world, and it has also shaken the very foundations of how we interpret measurements.”
What is quantum entanglement?
Two particles are entangled when together they form one quantum system, regardless of the distance between them.
To understand this kind of quantum connection, consider two electrons. Electrons have a quantum property called spin, which, when measured, can take one of two values, referred to as “up” or “down.” Measuring the spin of each electron is like tossing a coin: It will randomly come out up or down.
Now imagine that two physicists, Alain and John, each receive a series of coins in the mail. As each pair of coins arrives, the physicists flip them at the same time. Alain might get the sequence heads, tails, tails, heads, tails. And John might get heads, heads, tails, tails, tails. The outcome of Alain’s and John’s coin tosses will have nothing to do with each other.
But if they repeat this experiment with a series of entangled electrons instead of coins, they’ll get a strange result: Each time Alain measures an electron that’s spin-up, John will find that his corresponding half of the electron pair comes out spin-down, and vice versa. The two acts of measurement are connected, almost as if flipping one coin could send out a signal that instantaneously ensured the proper outcome of its distant partner at the precise moment of measurement.
It was Einstein, along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, who first described quantum entanglement in a now-infamous 1935 paper. The phenomenon, the effects of which Einstein disparagingly dubbed “spooky action at a distance,” was an unavoidable consequence of the nascent theory of quantum mechanics. Einstein suspected that entanglement would prove the death knell of quantum mechanics because it seemed to fly in the face of a central tenet of relativity — that no information could travel faster than the speed of light. No measurement of one electron should be able to instantly influence a measurement in some distant place.
Instead, their paper would lay the foundation for a complete rethinking of reality and a radical new field of research.
How do you measure entanglement?
By the 1930s, it was clear that Bohr, Schrödinger and the other quantum pioneers were onto something; the theory described experiments with atoms and subatomic particles more accurately than any other theory. The debate was how far one could trust it.
Einstein, for instance, held out hope that the bizarre theory was just a steppingstone on the way to a more complete picture that would philosophically align with classical physics. He suspected that two entangled electrons took on opposing spins because some “hidden variable” caused their spins to point in opposite directions in the first place. In other words, what looked like a random measurement outcome in quantum mechanics was actually the result of some as yet unappreciated deterministic description that created an illusory connection between the particles.
In 1964, John Stewart Bell proposed an experiment that could settle the debate. The details are rather involved, but the general idea was for two physicists to measure the spins of entangled particles along different axes: not just up and down but sometimes, randomly, left and right or in other directions. If Einstein was right, and the particles secretly had predetermined spins all along, then the act of switching the axis of measurement should have no effect on the outcome. Bell calculated that if the universe was truly quantum mechanical, and entanglement was as spooky as it seemed, the axis-switching would lead to correlated spin measurements more often than would be possible in classical theories like relativity.
“John Bell translated the philosophical debate into science and provided testable predictions that launched experimental work,” said Olsson.
Who performed Bell’s experiment?
John Clauser, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, and Stuart Freedman, a graduate student, were the first to take Bell’s experiment from the page into the lab. Clauser realized that the experiment would be more feasible if it involved not spinning electrons but polarized photons — particles of light. Like the spin direction of an electron, the polarization of a photon can take on one of two values relative to the orientation of a filter. Polarized sunglasses, for example, block photons that are polarized one way and let in photons polarized in the other manner.
Initially, physicists including Richard Feynman discouraged Clauser from pursuing the experiment, arguing that quantum mechanics needed no further experimental proof. But Bell personally encouraged Clauser to see the research through, and in 1972 Clauser and Freedman succeeded in realizing Bell’s experiment. They generated pairs of entangled photons and used lenses to measure their polarization directions. Unsure what he would find, Clauser had placed a $2 bet that his experiment would prove Einstein right. To his surprise, his results vindicated Bell’s prediction over Einstein’s. The photons’ states appeared correlated in a way that precluded any hidden-variable theory. Clauser’s lost bet was a huge victory for quantum mechanics.
“I was very sad to see that my own experiment had proven Einstein wrong,” he said years later in an interview.
But Clauser’s evidence still wasn’t ironclad. His experiment used fixed orientations of the lenses, allowing for a loophole: If a hidden variable that coordinates the photons’ polarizations somehow depends on the experimental positioning of the lenses, Einstein could yet be right.
Enter Alain Aspect. He carried out a series of increasingly stringent Bell tests in Paris, culminating in a devilishly sophisticated experiment in 1982. In that test, the orientation of the lenses would randomly change during the billionths of a second that the photons spent flying from the emitter to the lens. In this way, the initial lens configuration was erased and could have no influence on any secret process setting the polarization at the moment of their emission. Once more, the experiment found in favor of Bell and quantum mechanics.
Only the slimmest of loopholes remained. Could a secret and nonrandom process that was somehow set in motion at the beginning of the experiment determine how the lenses would update? Anton Zeilinger’s research at the University of Vienna further narrowed this remaining sliver of doubt. In a 2017 experiment, he led a team that used the colors of photons emitted from distant stars hundreds of years ago to determine the settings of the experiment. If some cosmic conspiracy was creating the illusion of entanglement, it would have had to begin centuries before the births of the experimenters.
Some physicists still float theories that maintain Einstein’s dream. Superdeterminism, for instance, holds that every detail of the universe’s fate, down to the spin and polarization of every last particle, was completely fixed at the Big Bang — before the stars (or Zeilinger’s cosmic Bell test) formed.
But most researchers take the work of Bell, Clauser, Aspect, Zeilinger and their teams at face value. Entanglement is what it seems: The pair of particles is one unified system. For each individual particle, properties like spin and polarization really are undefined until the moment of measurement. In other words, reality has no fixed and predetermined state until you measure it. It’s a dramatic conclusion that most researchers accept but still struggle to fully grasp.
“The very fundamental question — what does this really mean in a basic way? — is unanswered, and is an avenue for new research,” said Zeilinger.
What is entanglement good for?
In the nearly 90 years since Einstein tried to kill quantum mechanics by highlighting the absurdity of entanglement, the phenomenon has become much more than fodder for philosophical debates. It’s one of the main engines driving the booming field of quantum information science.
“Physicists are now starting to understand that entanglement and Bell pairs [are] a quantum resource that you can use to achieve amazing new things,” said Hansson.
Zeilinger is one of the central figures leading the effort to work technological miracles with entanglement. In 1997, he and his colleagues were the first to pull off a feat known as quantum teleportation, which uses a precise protocol of measurements on entangled particles to transfer the polarization direction of one particle over to another without the researchers ever learning the polarization direction that was transported. The technique may come to play a crucial role in quantum computing. “It is not like in the Star Trek films or whatever, transporting something — certainly not a person — over some distance,” Zeilinger said by phone during the Nobel announcement. “The point is, using entanglement, you can transfer all the information that is carried by an object over to another place, where the object is, so to speak, reconstituted.”
Zeilinger also developed a procedure called entanglement swapping, involving the emission of two entangled Bell pairs, for a total of four particles. When you perform a particular measurement on two of the particles that are not entangled, the remaining two become entangled with each other. Swapping entanglement from particle to particle in this way could help link nodes in a quantum communication network. In a landmark 1998 publication, Zeilinger and his collaborators demonstrated the ability to swap entanglement between photons that had never been in contact with each other.
In recent years, such technologies have left the lab and entered the real world. Jian-Wei Pan, a former student of Zeilinger’s, heads up a Chinese group that launched a satellite named Micius in 2016. Micius beamed pairs of photons to labs in China that were separated by more than 1,000 kilometers. The group’s measurements proved that entanglement had survived the journey. Pan’s group later worked with Zeilinger’s group in Austria to distribute pairs of entangled particles across the Eurasian continent. This long-distance entanglement distributed a secret message, a so-called quantum key, which gets destroyed by any attempt to intercept the information. The demonstration paves the way for essentially unbreakable cryptography, which will be guaranteed by the thoroughly tested fundamentals of quantum mechanics.
Who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in recent years?
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 15
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nobelprize_albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-activity-7186740337602621441-WEiL
|
en
|
The Nobel Prize on LinkedIn: Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 "for his…
|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5610AQFTjdLx58guTA/image-shrink_1280/0/1713452419539?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=d9egnEnEQmH9eW3hieljKArtBXd8sITniJ8orQxP4mQ
|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5610AQFTjdLx58guTA/image-shrink_1280/0/1713452419539?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=d9egnEnEQmH9eW3hieljKArtBXd8sITniJ8orQxP4mQ
|
[
"https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4D3DAQHA7z_U5pIOrw/image-scale_191_1128/0/1696924261282/nobelprize_cover?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=l6mYC2BiWwAN7v4EYmDH84xbXDZnTa_CSTQdzbiEBbA"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"The Nobel Prize"
] |
2024-04-18T15:00:19.633000+00:00
|
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the… | 30 comments on LinkedIn
|
en
|
https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/al2o9zrvru7aqj8e1x2rzsrca
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nobelprize_albert-einstein-was-awarded-the-nobel-prize-activity-7186740337602621441-WEiL
|
"I think writing is a kind of gift. A new novel or a new play, it's a gift I get... I need to have breaks or pauses when I don't write. You can't get gifts all the time." Literature laureate Jon Fosse in our new podcast episode: https://lnkd.in/eUA9wtbj #NobelPrize
“They made me fall in love with quantum mechanics and atomic physics,” said physics laureate Anne L’Huillier of two “great teachers”. She benefitted from being taught by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Serge Haroche, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 and 2012 respectively. L'Huillier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter. Learn more about her life and work: https://lnkd.in/egnFT-SC Were you inspired by any great teachers?
What does chess have to do with economics? The answer is game theory. In these games like chess, players must think ahead and devise a strategy based on expected countermoves from other players. These interactions characterise many economic situations. Game theory is a theoretical framework that tries to produce the most optimal decision-making of competing actors in a strategic setting. When describing the economic theory, Reinhard Selten told the New York Times that the theory was like chess: “You may not always be right, but such thinking probably makes you play better and keeps you from making as many dumb moves.” The foundations for using game theory in economics were introduced in a monumental study by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern entitled 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior' (1944). Fifty years later, Selten, John Harsanyi and John Nash were awarded the prize in economic sciences for their contributions to the field. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3zOES62 #WorldChessDay
"The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you're learning, you're not old." Take a look at some snapshots of the pioneering physicist Rosalyn Yalow throughout her life. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977 for developing radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones. Learn more: https://bit.ly/2XFRZ63 Photos (top, and then left to right): Portrait of Rosalyn Yalow, Yalow on her wedding day in June 1943, Yalow in the lab, Yalow receives her Nobel Prize in 1977.
"One of the most important things as a scientist is that you have to be an optimist. If you’re a pessimist, a failed experiment will tell you that the whole idea is bad and you’ll quit. When you fail you have to continue." - chemistry laureate Richard Henderson's advice to young scientists.
“I’m fascinated by my work … I didn’t go into my career just to collect prizes or accolades or even money. I don’t have much money. I went into it for the adventure of it, the mystery of it,” said laureate Edmund Phelps. He was awarded the prize in economic sciences for his analysis of intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy, especially about inflation, wages, and unemployment. In the late 1960s, Phelps began his prize-awarded work, which challenged the assumption that high levels of unemployment corresponded with low levels of inflation and vice versa. He shares wisdom about the quest for “a good life” in his Nobel Prize interview, including this philosophical nugget: “It’s hard to draw lessons from the past about what to avoid in the present.” Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/ebEJA3QG
Rosalyn Yalow described herself as a determined and single-minded child. Growing up, her parents wanted her to become a schoolmistress. Instead, Yalow became a nuclear physicist who revolutionised the medical world. Yalow became a physicist when being a woman was seen as an impediment to success, but she persevered. When she could not pay for her graduate degree, Yalow worked as a biochemist's secretary at Columbia University in exchange for classes. In 1941, Yalow accepted an assistantship at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in the College of Engineering; she was the only woman in a faculty of 400. She earned her PhD in nuclear physics and learned how to build and use equipment to measure radioactive substances. With her research partner Solomon Berson, Yalow made a transformative contribution to medical research: radioimmunoassay, a method for measuring concentrations of substances in the blood. Yalow was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones." With the help of radioimmunoassay, she proved that type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inefficient use, rather than lack, of insulin. Learn more: https://bit.ly/2D64qQd
“I will never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality. Surely, the Nobel Peace Prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic.” – peace laureate Narges Mohammadi. The Iranian human rights advocate has been sentenced to 36 years and 3 months in prison and 154 lashes. She has not seen her children Ali and Kiana since 2015. Yet despite her captivity in the notorious Evin prison, she continues to stand at the forefront of major protests against the Iranian regime and fight for women’s rights. For condemning a "full-scale war against women" by the Iranian regime, there is a possibility that Mohammadi could be punished further. Watch the moving Nobel Prize lecture delivered by her children: https://lnkd.in/eHQzQ63M
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 17
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/en/embassies/switzerland-bern/current/calendar/100-years-anniversary-of-albert-einsteins-nobel-prize/
|
en
|
100 years anniversary of Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/wwwroot/favicons/favicon.ico
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/wwwroot/favicons/favicon.ico
|
[
"https://www.swedenabroad.se/globalassets/hero/sa-country-pattern-sweden-embassy.svg",
"https://www.swedenabroad.se/globalassets/ambassader/schweiz-bern/documents/news/einstein.jpg?w=727&h=415&mode=crop",
"https://www.swedenabroad.se/globalassets/ambassader/schweiz-bern/documents/news/einstein-in-g%C3%B6teborg.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/wwwroot/favicons/favicon.ico
|
Sweden Abroad
|
https://www.swedenabroad.se/en/embassies/switzerland-bern/current/calendar/100-years-anniversary-of-albert-einsteins-nobel-prize/
|
01 Oct 2021, 2.00 PM
Together, the Einstein Society Bern and the Swedish Embassy in Bern, give attention the 100 anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize to Albert Einstein. Each in his own way, Albert Einstein and Alfred Nobel were two great minds whose legacies are as important today as ever.
The Swedish inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel stated in his will that the Nobel Prize should be awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind during the last year”, something that proved difficult to evaluate in the area of physics in the first decades of the 20th century, as Einstein was way ahead of his time. In contrary to many people’s belief, the prize was not awarded to Albert Einstein for the relativity theory, but to honour his contributions to theoretical physics in general and, in particular, his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. The Nobel Prize in Physics was, during this period, postponed or even skipped several years between 1915 and 1920 because of the difficulty to judge the “greatest benefit for human kind.” Nobody could at the time imagine the importance of Einstein’s relativity theory and the significance it has for research still today.
Albert Einstein in Switzerland
Albert Einstein was born in Germany but his family left the country when Einstein was a teenager. He completed his high school education in the Swiss town Aarau and then studied at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zürich. In 1901 Einstein gained Swiss citizenship and later was employed as a technical expert at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Between 1903 and 1905 Einstein lived in an apartment at Kramgasse 49 in Bern which today is the Einstein Haus museum. It was during Albert Einstein’s time in Bern that he produced much of his remarkable work. It is said that the medieval clock tower in Bern, the Zytglogge, which Einstein could see from his apartment, made him think of the particular role of time in the understanding of nature.
Alfred Nobel’s will
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish businessman, inventor and entrepreneur who also wrote poetry and plays. He spoke several languages and had an interest for social and peace issues. Alfred Nobel invented, among other things, the dynamite, which he patented in 1867. When he died almost twenty years later he had 355 patents. He left a will that in one single page created a document that would link his name to the world’s greatest achievements in various fields. The will stated that the interest of his fortune should be divided in five equal parts and be awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace.
Alfred Nobel’s family opposed to his fortune being converted into a prize. Even the Swedish King Oscar II opposed to it as he considered the fact that non-Scandinavian citizens could be awarded the prize unpatriotic. It was not until five years after Nobel’s death that all practical issues were solved and the first Nobel Prizes could be awarded. The first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 was awarded to a Swiss, the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross Jean Henry Dunant from Geneva, together with the French scientist, politician and peace activist Frédéric Passy.
The Nobel Prize in Physics
In 1922 Albert Einstein was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1921. He had by then been nominated on 62 occasions for the prize. Einstein was invited to take part in the yearly festivities in Stockholm in December of 1922, but was travelling to Japan at the time. It was arranged that he instead would deliver his Nobel lecture during the celebrations of the 300 anniversary of the city of Göteborg in July 1923. The city’s anniversary was extensively celebrated and some of Göteborg’s most important landmarks such as the art museum, the museum of natural history and the amusement park Liseberg were inaugurated for this anniversary.
Albert Einsten’s visit was the cherry on top of the 300 anniversary celebration. Einstein held his speech on 11 July on the occasion of the Scandinavian Nature Researchers’ meeting, in a packed congress hall with king Gustav V in the front row. The speech had the title “Grundlagen und Probleme der Relativitätstheorie” and was a one hour overview of the relativity theory and in the laws of physics and our perception of time.
The Nobel Prize awarded 603 times
Between 1901 and 2020 the Nobel Prizes, and the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel which was added in 1968, have been awarded 603 times to 962 people and organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 930 individuals and 25 organizations. In 2020 the prize amounted to 10 million Swedish kronor, approximately 1 million CHF.
Visit the Einstein House in Bern to learn more about Albert Einstein. Read more about the Nobel Prize here: www.nobelprize.com
Albert Einstein´s speech in Göteborg. Sweden’s King Gustav V in the front row.
|
|||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 42
|
https://www.toppr.com/ask/question/for-his-work-on-which-of-the-following-did-albert-einstein-receive-a-nobel-prize/
|
en
|
For his work on which of the following did Albert Einstein receive a Nobel prize?Black body radiationEther detectionPhotoelectric effectSpecial relativityGeneral relativity
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Toppr"
] |
2020-01-09T00:00:00
|
Click here:point_up_2:to get an answer to your question :writing_hand:for his work on which of the following did albert einstein receive a nobel prize
|
en
|
/ask/images/favicon.ico
|
Toppr Ask
| null |
Question
For his work on which of the following did Albert Einstein receive a Nobel prize?
Black body radiation
Ether detection
Photoelectric effect
Special relativity
General relativity
A
Special relativity
B
General relativity
C
Photoelectric effect
D
Black body radiation
E
Ether detection
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 18
|
https://www.facebook.com/nobelprize/videos/albert-einstein/334932547789246/
|
en
|
Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Stay tuned for the announcement of...
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Stay tuned for the announcement of...
|
de
|
https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yT/r/aGT3gskzWBf.ico
|
https://www.facebook.com/nobelprize/videos/albert-einstein/334932547789246/
| ||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 2
|
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/the-dramatic-story-behind-general-relativitys-nobel-prize-snub/
|
en
|
The dramatic story behind general relativity's Nobel Prize snub
|
[
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ASNlogo_Stacked-color_transp1-1.png",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Albert-Einstein-portrait.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/114999-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/112315-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/112814-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/115315-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/115144-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/114467-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/117388-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/117668-featured-90x90.bmp",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/115042-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/109291-featured-90x90.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/woodpile_Zeichenflache-1-1-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Bi-4K-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/casey-horner-RmoWqDCqN2E-unsplash-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/black-hole-7734792_1280-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/melt-2081770_1280-400x250.jpg",
"https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/aaron-lee-0lv_DR_yfyI-unsplash-400x250.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Robert Friedman"
] |
2022-08-10T07:00:00+00:00
|
More than 100 years on after Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize, some confusion remains around the committee's reasons for omitting relativity.
|
en
|
Advanced Science News
|
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/the-dramatic-story-behind-general-relativitys-nobel-prize-snub/
|
On 9 November 1922, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences voted to award Albert Einstein the previously reserved 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for “his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”
This decision prompted several decades of speculation, especially with respect to the reason for omitting Einstein’s theories of relativity. When changes in the statutes (1974) eventually gave researchers access to official archival materials 50 years and older, historical scholarship could begin challenging conjecture and myth.
Yet, as the 100th-anniversary of this prize approaches, some confusion remains as to what actually transpired and what it means. The Academy of Sciences and related official Nobel sources have long represented this episode along a line that turns out to be incompatible with the historical record. Their version in part draws on physicist Abraham Pais’s account of how Einstein got a Nobel Prize.
Claiming Einstein received a prize for his theory of the photoelectric effect and attributing relativity’s absence simply to an unfortunate error in committee member Allvar Gullstrand’s evaluation, the Academy of Sciences’ narrative represents a misunderstanding and oversimplification of a much more complex and troubling history.
A Swedish prerogative
The Nobel Prize in physics may well be international in scope, but since its beginnings in 1901, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has determined the outcome.
During the first 50 years of proceedings that have been studied in detail, committee members relied largely on their own judgement. No juggling of statistics related to nominations — number, frequency, or origin — explains the awards. Those entitled to nominate rarely provided a clear mandate for any single candidate. Regardless, the committee seldom selected those candidates who enjoyed a consensual or even majority status from the nominators.
The Swedish committee members’ own comprehension of scientific accomplishment, their own priorities as to what was important, and their own group dynamics all proved critical for the outcome. But in order to make sense of the committee reports, and the decisions recorded therein, a deeper understanding is needed of the committee members.
The committee’s well-polished texts represent an after-the-fact justification for its recommendations sent to the Academy of Sciences; the final reports are not repositories of the processes of trying to arrive at a consensus. The act of writing was also an act of erasing the, at times, contentious processes marked by, let’s name it, bias, arrogance, and even pettiness.
1920: Fame, reactionary foes, and a surprise
At a joint meeting of the Royal Society of London and Royal Astronomical Society held on 6 November 1919, the retired Cambridge physicist, J. J. Thomson, announced the results of the now-famous British eclipse expeditions. Notwithstanding a number of inconclusive photographic plates, a sufficient amount of reliable data confirmed the minute bending of starlight by the sun’s mass that Einstein had predicted based on his general theory of relativity.
In Europe, still recovering from the horror of world war and anxious over political and social upheavals in its wake, news of a theory that overthrew the foundations of physics, and glimpses of its highly unconventional creator, attracted media attention. During the first half of 1920, not only did much of the scientific community recognize Einstein for his achievement, but the ever-growing mass media’s attention also helped generate a world-wide fascination with relativity.
Scarcely understood by the general public, relativity nevertheless assumed an unprecedented role as symbol for the new uncertain era emerging from the ruins and upheavals of war and revolution. Political movements on both ends of the political spectrum began to embrace or attack relativity for their causes. Not necessarily to his liking, Einstein was transforming into an international celebrity the likes of which was unprecedented. Not all physicists accepted the British results as valid proof of Einstein’s theory; and not all physicists were intellectually equipped or willing to understand the theory.
Einstein was no stranger to the Nobel committee. He had been nominated as early as 1910; a trickle of nominations turned by 1917 into modest but substantial annual support. Although for 1920 few nominators sent in proposals, Einstein dominated the sparse list. These included nominations from Niels Bohr and several Dutch physicists including laureates, H. A. Lorentz, Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, and Pieter Zeeman.
No doubt, some eligible nominators did not participate as a protest over a German sweep of science prizes in 1919 — Max Planck, Johannes Stark, and Fritz Haber — seemingly in defiance of the Allied nations’ boycott of German science.
The five-member Nobel Committee for Physics was dominated, as it had been from the start, by Swedish physicists with a strong commitment to an experimentalist creed that largely relegated sophisticated theory and mathematics to an insignificant role in the advance of physics.
In its 1920 general report to the Academy, the committee dismissed Einstein based on [a special report by committee member Svante Arrhenius] on the degree to which Einstein’s predictions based on relativity theory had been confirmed — the bending of starlight passing near the sun, the irregularities in Mercury’s orbit, and a shift toward the red end in the solar spectrum.
Much of his brief seven-page report emphasized the negative claims against relativity, including those from some of Einstein’s most ardent German detractors. Arrhenius completed his report during the first half of August 1920, just when German anti-Einstein agitation was becoming more public and more virulent.
Arrhenius refers to some of the extremist anti-relativity literature in his seven-page special report for the Nobel committee. After briefly noting general relativity’s ability to account for the minute irregularities in Mercury’s perihelion motion that Newtonian mechanics fails to explain, he then devotes over a half page to Ernst Gehrcke’s [previously published] criticism of Einstein on this largely undisputed success for relativity.
According to Gehrcke, this anomaly had already been resolved decades earlier by a little-known German researcher, Paul Gerber. Based on classical aether-physics, Gerber’s achievement meant there was no need to accept Einstein’s revolutionary reformulation of space and time to account for this puzzling phenomenon. When Einstein had earlier refused to respond to these claims, Gehrcke began to accuse Einstein of plagiarism, which in turn, became a common charge by the far-right against him and relativity.
Arrhenius failed however to mention that Max von Laue and other [supporters] had earlier decidedly refuted and repeatedly dismissed Gehrcke’s argument, by having demonstrated serious errors in Gerber’s calculations.
Turning to the British eclipse results, Arrhenius accepted the skeptics’ argument that the margin of experimental error was larger than the effect to be measured. He declared that these results cannot be admitted as evidence as questions remain about their degree of exactness. He then notes that all efforts to identify a redshift in the solar spectrum had failed.
Arrhenius closed his report, dated 17 August 1920, with several references to literature by various anti-Einstein writers. In a highly unusual practice, he cites articles published in newspapers, largely the ultranationalist Deutsche Zeitung. These included contributions from scientifically and politically dubious authors, such as Hermann Fricke and Johannes Riem, the latter an openly antisemitic Christian opponent of what he considered “Jewish materialism.”
Also mentioned are the “fanciful and fanatic publications” of Rudolf Mewes, a reactionary anti-Semite who supported restoring the Kaiser and opposed the alleged conspiracy to replace true German science with Jewish abstract, derivative knowledge. Arrhenius includes a comment that for the upcoming national meeting of German natural scientists at Bad Nauheim in September, preparations were underway for a “neutralizing [oskadliggörande]” of Einstein from “all layers of all the natural-science disciplines.” Toward that goal, both Gehrcke and Lenard, among others, were expected to be the main presenters.
Arrhenius concludes his evaluation with a quotation from Lenard’s recently reprinted polemic against relativity followed by an abrupt ending consisting of Lenard’s assertion that much of Einstein’s theory must be recognized as “untrustworthy [ovederhäftig].”
The report takes little notice of what the nominators and others found valuable in Einstein’s work. While he wrote his report, the full extent of the extremist political and racist background to much of the German anti-Einstein movement may not have been clear. Still, Weyland and Lenard’s letters coupled with the fact that Lenard and Gehrcke had long been highly critical of relativity were clear indicators of the evolving situation in Germany. Moreover, he met officially and privately in June 1920 with Einstein-supporters, Planck and von Laue, as well as with the ultranationalist relativity-opponent Stark, when they all attended the Nobel ceremony.
With his deep concern for German science, it is inconceivable that Arrhenius did not discuss current events with them. He enjoyed especially good relations with both Planck and Stark, the latter had recently arranged an honorary doctorate from Greifswald University in which he emphasized nordic Arrhenius’s role in helping German science and the common racial, religious, cultural, and political heritage of their nations.
It remains puzzling why Arrhenius included this literature in his report and why, when he shortly thereafter must have understood the unsavory political and racial views expressed by many of the major German opponents of relativity, he remained silent. What Arrhenius actually thought of Einstein and relativity is difficult to pin down. His extensive correspondence reveals no particular interest in relativity; he was not a passionate opponent as were several others on the Nobel committee. Still, Arrhenius might well have been surprised and dismayed by Einstein’s response to his letter of sympathy and solidarity sent to many German scientists in the aftermath of defeat in November 1918. Einstein expressed glee over the end of the Kaiser’s Empire and declared himself to be a democrat and republican, who was deeply concerned with issues of human rights. Neither Arrhenius nor his many close relationships in German science were democrats or republicans.
1921: Bias and arrogance
By 1921, Einstein’s status in the physics community was consolidated. As part of this process, he had received comparatively broad international public support from Nobel Prize nominators. Some, such as [the Dutch physicist, H. A.] Lorentz and Planck, portrayed Einstein’s status as being that of a scientific giant, the likes of which has not been seen since Newton. Both theoretical and experimental physicists proposed Einstein for the Nobel, especially for his work on relativity. Some claimed that it would be difficult to consider other candidates without first seeing Einstein recognized. Einstein’s mandate overshadowed all other candidates.
Gullstrand took it upon himself to write a detailed report on Einstein’s relativity and gravitational theories. Gullstrand, a brilliant contributor to physiological and geometric optics, defined himself as both ophthalmologist and physicist. He is largely remembered for his path-breaking instrumental innovations for studying the eye and his complex analyses of the eye as an optical system. He received the 1911 Nobel Prize in medicine.
Gullstrand’s extraordinary talents were accompanied by stubbornness and arrogance. For over 25 years, he refused to admit error after concluding that the retinal macula, responsible for color vision, was devoid of yellow coloring. Similarly, he rejected advice to abandon his personal cumbersome and confusing form of mathematical analysis when more expedient, and more readily comprehensible forms, became available. Like Arrhenius, his command of recent theoretical physics was limited.
Gullstrand’s unusually long, 50-page evaluative report appears at first glance to be comprehensive and to engage with details of Einstein’s work. Closer inspection shows an internal logic based on the premise that Einstein cannot be right.
By 1921, the political and racial aspects of the German anti-Einstein campaign was well known, yet Gullstrand explicitly stated that he accepts the content and conclusion of Arrhenius’ 1920 evaluation. Gullstrand aimed at defusing those aspects of Einstein’s theory that called for “an overhaul of the commonsense foundations of mechanics.”
According to Gullstrand that which remained once Einstein’s errors and unproven assertions were eliminated could best be treated successfully by classical mechanics. He refers to literature written by Einstein’s supporters as being subjective, delivering unsound and insufficiently proven claims from a “cult of believers.” “Belief” rather than evidence-based scientific reasoning recurs several times in Gullstrand’s discussions of those who accept Einstein’s theories. No similar criticisms are directed toward Einstein’s opponents.
Gullstrand does not explicitly refer to Gehrcke’s arguments related to Einstein’s treatment of the Mercury perihelion anomaly; no doubt because he presented his own critique and explanation. The British eclipse data, according to Gullstrand, are useless. Even if the minute bending of starlight actually received confirmation, that would not constitute proof of Einstein’s 4D space-time.
He based that conclusion on a little-known Norwegian-language, semipopular scientific article by meteorologist and aether-physicist Vilhelm Bjerknes. Gullstrand refers extensively to Bjerknes’ effort to account for the deflection using classical physics. In the end, Gullstrand asserts that Einstein’s theories are devoid of any real content and have no relationship with physical reality; they lacked “the significance for physics for which an awarding with a Nobel Prize can come into question.”
The committee accepted Gullstrand’s evaluation and recommended to the Academy that because no candidate was deemed worthy, the prize for 1921 should be reserved until 1922. No member of the Nobel committee accepted the British data as valid evidence
As usual, the minutes of the full Academy’s Nobel meeting record only the result of the vote, and little more. Still, a number of archival sources provide some insight into the event. The Academy’s discussion revealed gaps in Gullstrand’s command of physics and, in an emotional outburst, also his prejudice. Indeed, in spite of devoting almost a year aiming to prove Einstein wrong, his efforts to master the mathematical and theoretical details proved insufficient.
While working on his report, Gullstrand occasionally had discussed his objections to Einstein’s theories with [theoretical physicist Carl Wilhelm] Oseen, who tended to respond very quickly by pointing out Gullstrand’s misunderstandings. Oseen told the younger theoretical physicist, Oskar Klein, about these tribulations while noting that Gullstrand was hindering a prize for Einstein. Oseen confessed to Arnold Sommerfeld that it was a misfortune Gullstrand had to evaluate theoretical work that he did not understand.
A rebellion that year in the Academy against the committee was unlikely. Many if not most members of the Academy were staunchly conservative politically and scientifically. Equally important, the Academy’s culture of deference to authority meant that voting against Gullstrand’s conclusions would constitute a grave insult, especially when he, one of Sweden’s most accomplished scientists, was so adamantly opposed to Einstein.
It mattered little that leading international physicists had praised Einstein as the greatest living representative of their discipline and had declared his accomplishments in relativity theory to be among the most significant in the history of science. Local “expertise” had spoken; the Academy guarded its own authority and its own right to assess and judge.
For 1922, Einstein again dominated the nominations. Bohr also received strong support. Gullstrand supplemented his report. He rejected suggestions of bringing in a foreign expert to assist with the evaluation. Privately he declared that Einstein must never receive a Nobel Prize. He continued to adhere to Gehrcke’s argument that mass suggestion created the popular mania over relativity.
Gullstrand agreed that new discoveries will soon reveal Einstein’s hoax; the enormous interest in relativity will then rapidly “evaporate [fördunsta].” Again, Gullstrand ignored the nominators’ enthusiastic declarations and extraordinary praise. From his perspective, even scientists can succumb to mass suggestion.
As in 1921, Gullstrand declared that Einstein’s theories lack the significance for physics needed to be considered for a Nobel Prize. The committee accepted this judgement without any formal dissent.
1922: Enter a master of strategy
In addition to Einstein’s contributions to relativity and gravitation theory, some nominators had also been praising his many other seminal contributions as warranting a prize. These included his work with quantum theory, especially through his theories of the photoelectric effect and of specific heat of solids; others mentioned his work related to Brownian motion and kinetic theory. In both 1921 and 1922, one lone nominator, Oseen, specified Einstein’s discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. He chose his words with care.
The law of the photoelectric effect emerged in connection with Einstein’s 1905 paper “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” where he suggested that light behaves at times as discrete, individual particles. Few physicists at first accepted Einstein’s claim for a corpuscular nature of light. A number of scientists gradually provided experimental data that tended to confirm the law.
When the committee met early in 1922 to assign reports, it accepted the need for greater expertise in theoretical physics. It petitioned the Academy in May to coopt Oseen for the committee as an ad hoc member. Once on the committee in June, he insisted on maintaining a clear demarcation between his own nomination of the discovery of the law and those that specified the theory of the photoelectric effect. Oseen wanted Einstein to receive a prize, but not for relativity; equally significant, he strongly supported awarding a prize to Bohr.
Oseen had long supported Bohr’s professional development and admired his quantum theory of the atom and its unexpected successes as something of great beauty. The Nobel committee had been dismissing Bohr’s candidacy on the basis that his quantum theory of the atom was in conflict with physical reality. Oseen understood the need for caution. He long despaired over the Academy and committee physicists’ lack of understanding of, and antagonism toward quantum theory. Now, with a brilliant strategic plan, Oseen recognized how he could overcome committee resistance to both Einstein and Bohr.
Oseen understood that he not only needed to be wary of the general lack of sympathy for quantum theory among Academy physicists, but he also had to overcome past committee evaluations. In particular, in 1921 Arrhenius wrote a short report for the committee on the theory of the photoelectric effect. He argued that regardless of Einstein’s genius-like insights, quantum theory was largely developed by others. Moreover, he concluded that it would seem odd to recognize Einstein for this considerably “less significant” accomplishment than for relativity and other work, such as related to Brownian motion. He recommended rejecting Oseen’s initial 1921 nomination for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
With Arrhenius’s prior assessment in mind and wanting to defuse potential opposition, Oseen closed his evaluation with a discussion on the relative significance of Einstein’s many accomplishments. Rejecting any universal hierarchy of importance, he suggests that each type of researcher considers its own preferred Einstein achievement as the most significant. He then provides a list, so that, for example, theoretical physicists might be drawn to Einstein’s contributions to quantum theory; mathematical physicists and epistemologists would be most attracted to the general theory of relativity. And for “the measuring physicist” —the type of physical scientist most represented and admired in the Academy—no work of Einstein’s can compete in significance with the discovery of a new fundamental law of nature, the law of the photoelectric effect.
Oseen then wrote an evaluation of Bohr’s quantum model of the atom. By emphasizing the very close bond between Einstein’s empirically proven fundamental law of nature and Bohr’s theory, Oseen overcame the committee’s earlier charges of speculative theory in conflict with the established laws of physics. Oseen convinced his colleagues in the committee to accept his proposals for the two physics prizes to be awarded in 1922.
When the Academy took up the committee recommendations, dissent emerged over the official motivation for Einstein’s prize. According to Mittag-Leffler’s diary entry, a long discussion ensued over competing suggestions for the wording. Finally, a proposal from conservative Former Prime-Minister, Hjalmar Hammarsköld “won”: relativity was not to be mentioned. This would indicate that further criticism of Gullstrand’s evaluation must have emerged. Mittag-Leffler, for one, wished to include both relativity and the discovery of the law in the official motivation for the prize. He disapproved as “a dangerous precedent” the vague general phrase relating to Einstein’s contributions to theoretical physics.
After the vote, the Academy made it clear that relativity should not be mentioned on the Nobel diploma or in any other official documentation.
Historigraphical Remarks
At the Nobel ceremony in December 1922, a tendency began of clouding the record of how the committee and Academy processed Einstein’s strongly supported candidacy (Einstein, who was away in Japan, did not attend). Of course, the statutes required secrecy, yet when Arrhenius delivered introductory comments about Einstein’s prize, he felt compelled to explain why the ever-so-prominent theory of relativity was not being recognized.
Although such ceremonial presentations are normally dubious sources for the history of discovery and of committee’s actions, Arrhenius’s presentation is especially problematic. He presented a misleading narrative. He explained the omission of relativity as it “… pertains essentially to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher [Henri] Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly.”
The message here being that relativity belongs to philosophy and not physics. Regardless, if special and general relativity were at best philosophical exercises, why then did so many prominent physicists nominate Einstein for a Nobel physics prize for his work on relativity? Why, for example, did the Italians award their Medaglia Matteucci physics prize in 1921 to Einstein for relativity?
Arrhenius’s comments subsequently stimulated research and speculation on the role of Swedish philosophers’ attitudes to relativity and their relevance for the outcome in the Academy. Einstein’s differences with Bergson have even been declared to be the reason why relativity was denied a prize. Although Swedish philosophers debated relativity, no evidence exists that they had any influence on committee evaluations or Academy decisions.
In August 1981, the first detailed analysis of the Einstein prize, including the preliminary recognition of the critical roles of Gullstrand and Oseen, was presented at a Nobel Symposium and in Nature. An alternative and less controversial narrative was written the following year by Einstein biographer, Abraham Pais with the help of the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physics, Bengt Nagel. This work is the origin of the mistaken claim that Einstein received a prize for the theory of the photoelectric effect as well as the simplified notion that Gullstrand merely made an unfortunate mistake in his evaluation as the reason for the lack of recognition of relativity.
While this certified — indeed let’s call it what it is — sanitized version of history is certainly the more pleasant, there is very little that we, as a scientific community, can learn from a simple “mistake”. The development of general relativity is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 20th century. The fact that the community’s most prestigious scientific award never recognized this achievement is at best an anomaly and at worst a scandal.
When the time is taken to properly interrogate the deeply flawed process that led to relativity being snubbed, we can see the toxic effect of contemporary politics and bigotry on the science of the day. Whether or not a scientific advancement is worthy of recognition by the scientific establishment should have nothing to do with the race, gender, religion, social background, or the politics of the scientists involved.
These events occurred in the not-too-distant past. While much progress has been made in recent decades within academia to try eradicating bigotry and prejudice from science, we must accept that such pernicious influences can again creep into the community. It is incumbent on scientists to regard history as more than an opportunity for celebration. Only by embracing the full texture of science past and by remembering and understanding what took place not so long ago, can we protect against new incursions of ideas that are antithetical to the ideals we hold for science.
This article was originally published in Annalen der Physik’s ongoing “Then and now” series, which is dedicated to the history of physics. The article has been modified for this website version.
Access the full article here: Robert Marc Friedman, The 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s Nobel Prize: Facts and Fiction, Annalen der Physik (2022). DOI: 10.1002/andp.202200305
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 9
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
en
|
What happened to the Nobel Prize money? – ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
[
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/themes/einsteinwebsite_ohneNav/images/logo-1627948546.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/12/ic_hd_information.png",
"https://einstein-website.de/en/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/de.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://einstein-website.de/en/what-happened-to-the-nobel-prize-money/
|
“Der Nobelpreis würde Dir – im Falle der Scheidung und für den Fall,
dass er mir zuteil wird – a priori vollständig abgetreten.“
“The Nobel Prize – in the event of the divorce and in the event
that it is bestowed upon me – would be ceded to you in full a priori.“
Albert Einstein to his first wife Mileva, 31. January 1918
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 – What happened to the prize money?
One of the many “ingeniously devised tales” adorning Albert Einstein’s life focuses on the prize money that accompanied the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. The actual story deserves a long and detailed account. This paper presents just a brief summary.
It begins in 1918, a long time before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conferred upon him the award. In that year, Albert Einstein signed over the award money to his first wife, Mileva: “[I]n the case of a voluntary divorce… the Nobel Prize… would be ceded to you in full a priori.”
Has this apparently generous gesture to be considered a belated acknowledgement of an ousted co-author – Mileva – of certain scientific papers published between 1901 and 1913 under Albert Einstein’s name alone? There is no document to justify this frequent claim. In fact, correspondence preserved in the archives tells a different story. In 1918, the prize money was still far away, yet confidently expected. It represented the security that Mileva demanded in the event of divorce.
The draft of the divorce agreement stated: “Disposal of the interest would be left entirely to your discretion. The capital would be deposited in Switzerland and placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
As reworded by Mileva’s lawyer, in the divorce decree the phrase “placed in safe-keeping for the children” became “In the case of the remarriage or death of Mrs. Einstein [the capital] shall go to the children.” Even if the practical consequences hardly changed – due to the fact that Mileva “shall have no authority over the capital without the consent of Prof. Einstein” – Albert’s clear statement of intent regarding the children’s heritage was swept under the rug. Yet happy to escape prolonged negotiations, in order to end an unfortunate marriage, Albert may not even have realized the difference.
Almost four years after the divorce, in the fall of 1922, it happened. “[N]ow … you really will be getting the Nobel Prize”, Albert announced to his children in a letter from Japan, once he received notice of the award. Soon Mileva’s plan could materialize: “Look into the matter about the house. The rest will be deposited somewhere in your names. Then, you’ll be so rich that, God knows, someday I may have to squeeze money out of you …“
In 1922, the Nobel Prize in Physics was endowed with 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, a relatively small sum compared with other years, yet the equivalent of more than twelve years’ income for Albert Einstein.
The divorce agreement of February 1919 stipulated that the capital was to be deposited in a Swiss bank account. But by 1923, even Switzerland’s economy was destabilized by political uncertainty. Would not Albert’s jocular forecast be jeopardized if the prize money remained in Europe?
Back from his trip to the Far East in the spring of 1923, Albert transferred 45,000 Swiss francs to Zurich, the amount Mileva planned to invest in real estate. Of the remaining 91,000 Swedish kronor Albert could have retained the equivalent of 40,000 German marks, deposited, in securities, in Zurich in 1918, as an advance payment towards the divorce. But by 1923, galloping inflation in Germany had reduced the original value to a tiny fraction. Following the advice of a financial expert, Albert decided to place the remaining prize money with an American bank “because I regard this as more advantageous and safer in your and the children’s interest“. In Mileva’s name, this capital was invested in a number of different dollar bonds.
By May 1924, Mileva had found the property she wished to own: a five-storey apartment building at the edge of Zurich’s prosperous district of Fluntern. Upon payment of 45,000 Swiss francs she became the owner of Huttenstrasse 62, valued at 195,000 SFr. In late summer, Mileva and her two sons moved into the six-room apartment on the third floor. Albert, visiting in September, expressed his satisfaction at the “visible result of my musings”.
When in the following year the roof required repair work, Albert offered Mileva an interest-free loan to avoid sale of bonds in the United States. That same year, 1925, while revising his last will, Albert noticed that the wording in the divorce decree only partially reflected his original intentions. Concerned, he asked Mileva for a written note stating that the Nobel Prize money will be considered an advance payment of their sons’ inheritance, and that Mileva would not appeal against Albert’s last will. Mileva, fearing that her sons be bamboozled, stubbornly ignored this demand. What she did not know is that in this last will Albert assigned to their sons not merely his violins, books and papers, but explicitly the scientific manuscripts which by now had become an asset of ever-increasing value.
Thanks to rental income, supplemented by the interest flowing in from her American account, and a few smaller loans, in the second half of the 1920s Mileva and Eduard enjoyed a relatively comfortable existence.
In the early summer of 1930, bonds in Mileva’s American account reached their maturity date; a capital of 5,000 US$ needed to be reinvested. With the stock market crash of October 1929 fresh in mind, Albert, circumspectly, suggested that she place this money in real estate rather than in new bonds. After hesitating for a moment, Mileva became enamoured with the idea of owning a second property. The following month such a property was found. Trusting in Mileva’s judgment “because you already once made a good buy” Albert signed the necessary forms. By August 1930, the purchase was finalized.
How could it be, that hardly one month later, Mileva decided to purchase a third house?
In order to make this acquisition, in September 1930 – with Albert’s approval – she sold bonds worth a total of 5,400 US$. The face value of the bonds now left in her account in New York could hardly have been more than 10,000 US$; accordingly, the income from interest “formidably shrunk”.
Albert’s Nobel Prize money reposed now in three apartment buildings situated in Zurich’s rather expensive residential area, on the Zürichberg. Here, only high-earners could afford the rent. This turned out to be a disaster once the economic crisis reached Switzerland. Some tenants delayed the rent payments or paid only a part of it, others moved out; each empty apartment left a bigger dent in Mileva’s budget.
To assist her in escaping from this precarious situation, in the summer of 1932 Albert engaged a lawyer to sort out Mileva’s financial affairs, and to find a way out of the impasse. However, Mileva did not appreciate the expert’s suggestion: to sell property as fast as possible, even at an unfavorable price.
In the same politically explosive summer of 1932, Albert revived the plan to amend his testament and, as he fruitlessly did in 1925, again asked Mileva and the sons to commit to “unconditionally respect” his last will. In return, he offered the sons the interest from a sum of ca. 25,000 Marks he had saved up for them.
“Back then,” he wrote, referring to the year 1918, “I ceded to you the Nobel Prize with the intention to secure your and the children’s future. It ought to be made clear … that this sum, the only assets I had at all by then, was to be credited to the children’s inheritance in the event of my death.”
In this summary I will not expand on the controversy that Albert’s request brought about, and how it affected the younger son, Eduard. One fact, however, needs to be stated: neither Mileva nor Hans Albert were ready to sign a paper which might, as they surmised, discriminate against them, vis-à-vis Albert’s new family. Mistrust prevailed on both sides.
Soon other concerns made obsolete the smoldering conflict: By January 1933, Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia; it seemed unlikely that he would become (financially) independent in the near future; in May, Albert lost his possessions in Germany, including the savings retained for the sons, all seized by the Nazis. Thanks to some foreign income prudently kept outside Germany, and his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was not left destitute and was still able to aid Mileva.
However, despite the large and small sums Albert sent occasionally in answer to Mileva’s anxious appeals, or at the request of her professional supporters, and despite the monthly allowance – a sum equivalent to a qualified handyman’s salary – for the son who remained with his mother at home, between 1933 and 1938, Mileva’s debts slowly grew to alarming heights.
In 1936, she sold the last American stocks to finance renovations of the house at Huttenstrasse 62, in the hope of yielding higher rental income.
That year, the income from the two apartment houses purchased in 1930 did not even cover the running expenses, let alone the mortgages. It was impossible to sell them; foreclosure approached. Just before the house at Huttenstrasse 62 was about to be seized too, in 1938, Mileva implored Albert to take it over – a formality made legally possible by the 1935 conversion of Mileva’s old debts to Albert into an additional mortgage in his favor.
With the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation, a body founded by Albert Einstein for the one and only purpose of preventing loss of the property, by April 1939, “the house seem[ed] bailed out for the time being, though with substantial sacrifices”.
At this point, it is pertinent to ask how much of the 121,572:54 Swedish kronor, almost 180,000 Swiss francs, or around 31,000 US$, was still at Mileva’s disposal.
Her American account was empty. The two apartment houses acquired in 1930, including all money she invested there later, were lost. If any, the house Huttenstrasse 62, valued at around 200,000 SFr, might have represented the final few Swedish kronor; but this property was now owned by the Corporation. The Corporation held a mortgage of 15,000 SFr; mortgages totaling 135,000 SFr were held by the State Treasury, and two additional mortgages together amounting to 44,000 SFr belonged to Albert. A part of the latter figure, though, was still Nobel Prize money, signed over to Albert in 1935, to prevent intervention by creditors.
Who was to blame for the considerable losses? Did Albert cause them, as some claim, due to his gambling on the stock exchange, and by leaving Mileva, contrary to all promises, in the lurch with the high hospital fees for their sick son? None of these allegations is supported by evidence, even though Mileva’s desperate calls for help seem to suggest it, and her Zurich friends and supporters, compassionately, sided with her. The fact is that Mileva financially overstretched herself by acquiring expensive properties yielding only meager returns and, in a period of economic instability, even no return at all.
When, in 1939, the Corporation had become the property’s official owner, Mileva’s budget problems seemed solved for the time being. An official agreement between the Corporation and Mileva was established. As in previous years, she would collect the rents and from this income pay the mortgage interests and taxes, as well as all necessary expenses. Her official salary amounted to 600 SFr p.a.; the surplus was to go to the Corporation together with regular accounts for income and expenses. Such an agreement met the tax office’s provisions. In practice, things were supposed to continue as was the case prior to the change of hands. The “surplus” including the mortgage interest owed to Albert and the Corporation would flow into Mileva’s household budget. And, of course, she and Eduard could stay in their comfortable home, free of charge. Yet, for a limited transition period, the lawyer who supervised the takeover by the Corporation, had to remain the house’s official manager; unfortunately, he knew too well how to skim off a considerable part of the surplus.
By the end of 1941 the house had become more or less unprofitable. Relenting to Mileva’s begging, Albert promised not to sell it unless the situation should become financially unbearable.
With the entry of the United States into the war, the correspondence between Mileva and Albert was interrupted. While Albert succeeded in ensuring the transfer of his monthly payments for Eduard, for a few years Mileva did not meet her obligation to regularly submit financial statements to the Corporation.
The statements arrived eventually in 1946. They made obvious that the house accumulated even more debts during the war years. Only a considerable investment could have brought about a long-term change, money that Albert would rather invest directly in a pension scheme for Eduard than in this house. The sale had become inevitable.
In 1947, the Corporation entrusted Mileva with the sales negotiations. Since her greatest concern was Eduard’s financial protection, Albert committed himself to sign over the 40,000 SFr mortgage – the only sum which still contained a small part of the Nobel Prize money – to Eduard’s name as soon as a legal guardian had been appointed for him. The 4,000 SFr mortgage would be paid to Mileva after the sale. The sale proceeds, less the profit tax charged in the United States, and less some debts Albert had made to cover the costs of the takeover, were supposed to be placed in a bank account in the Corporation’s name — yet at Mileva’s disposal, thus replacing the revenue Mileva previously obtained from the rents.
Assisted by the House Owners’ Association, in September 1947 Mileva sold the house on behalf of the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation at a price of 235,000 SFr. The buyer took over mortgages of altogether 192,000 SFr and handed out the difference. As suggested by the Corporation, the contract granted Mileva the right to stay in her apartment.
Once the contract was signed, she remained silent about the deal. Despite a number of reminders, by the end of April 1948, the Corporation had not yet received the sales documents and nothing precise was known about how much money Mileva obtained. Instead, she was writing desperate, reproachful letters to Albert and denigrating him with third persons in a quite perfidious way. She was distressed and confused, and no more able to comply with her obligations.
In May 1948, Mileva suffered a stroke. While picking her up from bed, at home, the paramedics discovered cash amounting to more than 87,000 SFr.
Is it reasonable to assume that these 87,000 SFr or a part of this sum was the rest of the Nobel Prize money?
The legal guardian recently appointed for Eduard now was also taking care of Mileva; he deposited the sum with the guardianship authorities. Although unaware of its actual amount, Mileva claimed that the entire sum belonged to her, being the leftover of the Nobel Prize money.
She died in August 1948.
If the full 87,000 SFr did belong to her, then this heritage would be split between her two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, a position immediately endorsed by Hans Albert.
Soon, however, the guardian realized that the case was more complicated. The Corporation made it perfectly clear that any amount handed over to Mileva when she was selling the house legally belonged to the Corporation in the first place. As for the mortgages in Albert’s favor, at a total value of 55,000 SFr, Albert confirmed his commitment to eventually make them available, preferably for Eduard’s care. The whereabouts of the promissory notes, though, still remained in the dark.
So far, the calculation was:
Out of the 87,000 SFr, payments had to be made to Mileva’s doctor and the tax office as well as for her funeral and the liquidation of her household. 43,000 SFr would then go to the Corporation. The remaining sum was to be shared among the sons.
The situation changed drastically when it came to light that Mileva, unauthorized, had sold Albert’s mortgages and the proceeds were contained in the 87,000 SFr.
To make matters worse, the owner of an old bearer mortgage note of 37.000 SFr registered his claim, which had not yet expired.
Hence the calculations looked quite different:
The 87,000 SFr plus a small sum resulting from the sale of Mileva’s household stood counter to the following claims:
43,000 SFr by the Huttenstrasse Realty Corporation
55,000 SFr by Albert related to two mortgages
37,000 SFr by the owner of the promissory note dating from one of the houses that Mileva bought in 1930 = 135,000 SFr
It is pointless to go into details about the dispute which erupted between Hans Albert and his father when Albert showed his inclination to rescue whatever sum he could for the benefit of the younger son. It is, however, worth mentioning that eventually Albert’s perseverance and his insistence on the Corporation’s and his personal entitlements brought the case to a successful conclusion. Confronted with the estate’s impending bankruptcy and the danger of losing the full sum, the owner of the 37,000 SFr mortgage agreed to a settlement payment of 15,000 SFr. Albert then withdrew his own claim and thus allowed Eduard’s legal guardian to accept the succession.
Once all bills and taxes were paid, 70,000 SFr were left.
It is true that this sum could no longer be considered the remains of Albert’s Nobel Prize money; too much additional money had been invested in what for 24 years represented the “visible result of my musings”, as Albert put it in 1924.
But at least these 70,000 SFr eventually ended up in the hands of his sons, as foreseen in 1918: “The capital would be … placed in safe-keeping for the children.”
There is a very last chapter to this story:
In 1950, Hans Albert grudgingly agreed upon an “unjust” sharing of what may be called Mileva’s estate – 30,000 SFr for him, and 40,000 SFr for his far needier brother.
Until the end of his life, another six years, Albert continued to pay a monthly allowance to Eduard. By the time of Albert’s death, in 1955, out of the 40,000 SFr, more than 39,000 SFr were still in Eduard’s account.
Eduard’s share of Albert’s inheritance amounted to 64,256:25 SFr, and by 1956 Eduard owned a little over 100,000 SFr.
For another ten years, Eduard lived off this sum supplemented by occasional small gifts.
At the time of his death, in fall of 1965, 67,000 SFr were still lying in his account.
Eduard’s only heir was his brother Hans Albert.
Taxes and Hans Albert’s contribution to the placement of a headstone for Eduard lowered his inheritance. How much money may eventually have fallen into his hands? 40,000 SFr? 30,000 SFr? In any case, even given some inflation, this amount is more than what he lost when, in 1950, he generously renounced the “fair” or “just” distribution of the money that Mileva had left.
So in the end, the Nobel Prize money, through all the ups and downs and losses and gains, and the political catastrophes and personal tragedies, had served, besides Mileva, one way or another, the two sons, just as it was Albert’s intention.
|
|||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 8
|
https://www.uzh.ch/en/researchinnovation/excellence/nobelprize/einstein.html
|
en
|
Albert Einstein – Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
|
[
"https://www.uzh.ch/docroot/logos/uzh_logo_d_pos.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/docroot/logos/uzh_logo_d_pos.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:eb2710fa-f35f-49c7-a439-8191f4b18e6c/logo_swissuniversities.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:6f9d9cf1-233f-467d-9684-465cdbe258e0/leru.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:26c8d3ca-349c-4308-a5aa-6d4c086ee32e/unaeuropa2.svg",
"https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/dam/jcr:483afe9a-d8eb-4324-93d6-3195b72cf2c6/logo_u21.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/docroot/favicons/apple-touch-icon.png
|
https://www.uzh.ch/en/researchinnovation/excellence/nobelprize/einstein.html
|
1905 was Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis: he published no less than five groundbreaking papers. Among these was his Light Quanta Hypothesis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
In 1905, 26-year-old Albert Einstein submitted to the University of Zurich his dissertation entitled “Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen” (A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions). Within just a few months, he published another four papers, any of which would today be regarded as worthy of a Nobel Prize. His groundbreaking work included the Theory of Special Relativity and the Light Quanta Hypothesis; the latter being singled out for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
Einstein's revolutionary Light Quanta Hypothesis states that light consists of tiny bundles of energy (quanta). If the energy of light shining on a metallic surface is sufficient, the surface will emit electrons. The electrical charge released during this process can be measured. This phenomenon is called the photoelectric effect. Though this effect had long been known in physics, Einstein was the first to explain it correctly, by developing the Light Quanta Hypothesis. Only some twenty years later was the hypothesis confirmed experimentally.
From 1896 to 1900, Einstein studied physics at the Federal Polytechnical School (today’s ETH). Although the only successful student of his year, he was not offered an assistant’s position there when he completed his studies – probably on account of his average grades, and because he often skipped classes. Rather than attend lectures, Einstein preferred to stay at home and study the masters of theoretical physics, with “holy fervor,” as he later recalled.
As he did not obtain a position at ETH, Einstein worked from 1902 to 1909 as an employee of the Federal Patent Office in Berne. In 1909 the University of Zurich created an associate professorship in theoretical physics for him. This was Einstein’s first academic position; he left it in 1911 for a professorship in Prague.
Einstein returned to Zurich from 1912 to 1914 as a professor at ETH. In 1914 he left for Berlin, and even turned down a later offer of a double professorship at the University of Zurich and ETH. He emigrated to America in 1933, never to return to Europe.
|
||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 57
|
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life-and-times/career-scientist
|
en
|
Career Scientist
|
[
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/plan-your-visit/plan-your-visit/3917385-5-eng-US/plan-your-visit_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/plan-your-visit/join-now/5645881-1-eng-US/join-now_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/exhibitions/richard-gilder-center-for-science-education-and-innovation/3482942-16-eng-US/richard-gilder-center-for-science-education-and-innovation_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/exhibitions/allison-and-roberto-mignone-halls-of-gems-and-minerals/5999543-1-eng-US/allison-and-roberto-mignone-halls-of-gems-and-minerals_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/learn--teach/resources-for-learning/3553907-9-eng-US/resources-for-learning_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/learn--teach/children--family-programs/3553954-8-eng-US/children--family-programs_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/explore/climate-change/3555256-2-eng-US/climate-change_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/explore/viruses-vaccines-and-covid-19/5595943-1-eng-US/viruses-vaccines-and-covid-19_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/join-support/become-a-member/3906066-6-eng-US/become-a-member_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/join--support/donate/3906071-3-eng-US/donate_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/amnh2/site-settings/redesign-main-menu/shop/great-for-gifts/5166526-3-eng-US/great-for-gifts_square_650.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/import_exhibits/import_exhibit_images/bern_residence.jpg/232376-1-eng-US/bern_residence.jpg_full_610.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/fuld_hall/542856-1-eng-US/fuld_hall_full_610.jpg",
"https://www.amnh.org/extension/amnh/design/amnh_redesign/images/placeholders/badge_app-store.svg",
"https://www.amnh.org/extension/amnh/design/amnh_redesign/images/logos/amnh-logo-white.svg?2023",
"https://www.amnh.org/extension/amnh/design/amnh_redesign/images/logos/amnh-logo-white.svg?2023"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Einstein recognized early in life that he had a talent for mathematics and abstract thought, and the intellectual freedom of theoretical physics appealed to him. While still establishing himself as...
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
American Museum of Natural History
|
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life-and-times/career-scientist
|
The Path to Princeton
Self-reliant from a young age, Einstein carved out a distinguished career through his unfaltering dedication to science. As a boy, he struggled against a structured education system that wouldn't allow his imagination to flourish. Einstein recognized early in life that he had a talent for mathematics and abstract thought, and the intellectual freedom of theoretical physics appealed to him.
While still establishing himself as a physicist, Einstein had to move to wherever jobs were available. Academic institutions in Berlin, Zurich, Bern, Prague, and other European cities were well known to him. Einstein soon developed a reputation as a brilliant professor and was a visiting scholar at research institutes around the world. During a repeat visit to the California Institute of Technology, a colleague offered Einstein a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1933 Einstein made one final move: to Princeton, where he lived out his last decades as a theoretical physicist at the Institute.
Patent Clerk to Professor
Einstein's first job out of college was that of a patent clerk at the Swiss Federal Office for Intellectual Property in Bern. Einstein later fondly remembered the patent office as the place where he "hatched his most beautiful ideas."
After seven years at the patent office and one year as a guest lecturer at the University of Bern, Einstein moved his family from their Bern residence when he became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich.
The Institute for Advanced Study
Tucked away on a quiet campus off the bustling streets of downtown Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study was for Einstein a "free thinker's" paradise where he could focus solely on theoretical physics. His office in Fuld Hall was sparsely furnished, except for a chalkboard, chairs, a desk, and shelves stacked with papers. There, Einstein and his assistants tried unsuccessfully to formulate the "Grand Unified Theory," which is still pursued by physicists today.
Einstein's Miracles of 1905
One great accomplishment may be enough for some lifetimes but not for Albert Einstein's. Now known as his "annus mirabilis," or miraculous year, 1905 was a great turning point in the young physicist's career. Einstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich, and he wrote four groundbreaking articles that were published in the prestigious journal Annalen der Physik:
On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, Annalen der Physik, 1905
On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat, Annalen der Physik, 1905
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, Annalen der Physik, 1905
Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?, Annalen der Physik, 1905
The 26-year-old scientist knew his work was important, but even he could not predict how the physics world would react. In 1901 he had written to Mileva Mari, "I am now working very eagerly on electrodynamics of moving bodies, which promises to become a capital paper." Better known as the Special Theory of Relativity, that "capital paper" and three others spurred intense discussion in the scientific community; the newly graduated Ph.D. was now seen as a noteworthy physicist. Some historians have noted that if Einstein had never published anything after 1905, he still would have been known as one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
Einstein's Nobel Prize
The path to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize is often long and difficult. In fact, Einstein never actually made it to Stockholm to accept his medal. Famous thanks to a 1919 eclipse that confirmed his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein was in the midst of a world lecture tour when the Nobel committee awarded him the 1921 prize. He won for his distinguished career in physics, most notably for his 1905 theory of light and electrons called the Photoelectric Effect, not his more controversial theory of relativity.
Einstein and his wife Elsa were headed to Japan when the Nobel telegram arrived at their Berlin residence in 1922. The German ambassador to Sweden attended the December award ceremony on Einstein's behalf, overlooking that the scientist had renounced his German citizenship in 1896. After much confusion over whether Einstein was a German or Swiss citizen, the Swedish ambassador hand-delivered the medal to Einstein in Berlin in 1923. Later that year Einstein visited Sweden to give his "Nobel lecture"—on relativity.
Einstein's Nobel Prize Medal
1922
Alfred Nobel (1833–1896), a Swedish inventor of dynamite and other explosive technology, requested that upon his death his estate be used to establish a foundation of good will. Decreed in 1900, the Nobel Foundation provides prize money to Nobel recipients, named by separate committees. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences chooses the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The central image on Einstein's Nobel medal depicts the Genius of Science unveiling Nature, in the form of the goddess Isis. She is emerging from the clouds holding a vessel of abundance. Surrounding the image are the words, "Inventions enhance life which is beautified through art." The reverse side bears an image of Alfred Nobel.
Nobel Prize in Physics Certificate
In 1922, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences retroactively awarded Albert Einstein the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking theory of the Photoelectric Effect. Members of the prize committee had nominated Einstein nearly every year between 1910 and 1922, but there was much debate as to which groundbreaking theory they should cite. Some said General Relativity, but a mere eclipse was not enough proof for all committee members to stake their reputations on Einstein's new theory. With the medal came a sum of 121,592 kronor (roughly $32,000), which Einstein gave to his ex-wife Mileva as part of their divorce agreement.
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 3
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/ceremony-speech/
|
en
|
Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
|
[
"https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/nobelprizes_2023-1024x676.jpg",
"https://www.nobelprize.org/wp-content/themes/nobelprize/assets/images/spinner.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/ceremony-speech/
|
Award ceremony speech
Presentation Speech by Professor S. Arrhenius, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on December 10, 1922*
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
There is probably no physicist living today whose name has become so widely known as that of Albert Einstein. Most discussion centres on his theory of relativity. This pertains essentially to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly. The theory in question also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time.
Throughout the first decade of this century the so-called Brownian movement stimulated the keenest interest. In 1905 Einstein founded a kinetic theory to account for this movement by means of which he derived the chief properties of suspensions, i.e. liquids with solid particles suspended in them. This theory, based on classical mechanics, helps to explain the behaviour of what are known as colloidal solutions, a behaviour which has been studied by Svedberg, Perrin, Zsigmondy and countless other scientists within the context of what has grown into a large branch of science, colloid chemistry.
A third group of studies, for which in particular Einstein has received the Nobel Prize, falls within the domain of the quantum theory founded by Planck in 1900. This theory asserts that radiant energy consists of individual particles, termed “quanta”, approximately in the same way as matter is made up of particles, i.e. atoms. This remarkable theory, for which Planck received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, suffered from a variety of drawbacks and about the middle of the first decade of this century it reached a kind of impasse. Then Einstein came forward with his work on specific heat and the photoelectric effect. This latter had been discovered by the famous physicist Hertz in 1887. He found that an electrical spark passing between two spheres does so more readily if its path is illuminated with the light from another electrical discharge. A more exhaustive study of this interesting phenomenon was carried out by Hallwachs who showed that under certain conditions a negatively charged body, e.g. a metal plate, illuminated with light of a particular colour – ultraviolet has the strongest effect – loses its negative charge and ultimately assumes a positive charge. In 1899 Lenard demonstrated the cause to be the emission of electrons at a certain velocity from the negatively charged body. The most extraordinary aspect of this effect was that the electron emission velocity is independent of the intensity of the illuminating light, which is proportional only to the number of electrons, whereas the velocity increases with the frequency of the light. Lenard stressed that this phenomenon was not in good agreement with the then prevailing concepts.
An associated phenomenon is photo-luminescence, i.e.phosphorescence and fluorescence. When light impinges on a substance the latter will occasionally become luminous as a result of phosphorescence or fluorescence. Since the energy of the light quantum increases with the frequency, it will be obvious that a light quantum with a certain frequency can only give rise to the formation of a light quantum of lower or, at most, equal frequency. Otherwise energy would be created. The phosphorescent or fluorescent light hence has a lower frequency than the light inducing the photo-luminescence. This is Stokes’ rule which was explained in this way by Einstein by means of the quantum theory.
Similarly, when a quantum of light falls on a metal plate it can at most yield the whole of its energy to an electron there. A part of this energy is consumed in carrying the electron out into the air, the remainder stays with the electron as kinetic energy. This applies to an electron in the surface layer of the metal. From this can be calculated the positive potential to which the metal can be charged by irradiation. Only if the quantum contains sufficient energy for the electron to perform the work of detaching itself from the metal does the electron move out into the air. Consequently, only light having a frequency greater than a certain limit is capable of inducing a photo-electric effect, however high the intensity of the irradiating light. If this limit is exceeded the effect is proportional to the light intensity at constant frequency. Similar behaviour occurs in the ionisation of gas molecules and the so-called ionisation potential may be calculated, provided that the frequency of the light capable of ionising the gas is known.
Einstein’s law of the photo-electrical effect has been extremely rigorously tested by the American Millikan and his pupils and passed the test brilliantly. Owing to these studies by Einstein the quantum theory has been perfected to a high degree and an extensive literature grew up in this field whereby the extraordinary value of this theory was proved. Einstein’s law has become the basis of quantitative photo-chemistry in the same way as Faraday’s law is the basis of electro-chemistry.**
* The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was announced on November 9, 1922.
** Being too remote from Sweden, Professor Einstein could not attend the ceremony.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1922
|
|||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 19
|
https://www.toppr.com/ask/question/einstein-got-his-nobel-prize-for/
|
en
|
Einstein got his Nobel Prize Explanation of Photoelectric effectHis theory of relativityHis theory of atomic heats of solidsNone of the above
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Toppr"
] |
2020-01-09T00:00:00
|
Click here:point_up_2:to get an answer to your question :writing_hand:einstein got his nobel prize for
|
en
|
/ask/images/favicon.ico
|
Toppr Ask
| null |
Solution
Verified by Toppr
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
Hence, option B is correct.
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
2
| 43
|
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848815,00.html
|
en
|
How Nobel Winners Spend Their Prize Money
|
[
"https://content.time.com/time/photoessays/2008/nobel_prize/nobel_prize_einstein.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2008-10-10T00:00:00
|
In divorce papers signed in 1919, which finally dissolved Einstein's troubled marriage to his first wife, Mileva Maric, the theoretical physicist left all his Nobel money to Maric and their two sons....
|
en
|
https://content.time.com/time/favicon.ico
|
TIME.com
|
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848815,00.html
|
In divorce papers signed in 1919, which finally dissolved Einstein's troubled marriage to his first wife, Mileva Maric, the theoretical physicist left all his Nobel money to Maric and their two sons. There has been a lot of speculation around that decision. Some have suggested that Einstein felt indebted to Maric it has been rumored that she, herself a budding young scientist, helped author some of Einstein's most famous work. Although there's no clear evidence that she co-wrote any of his papers, few historians doubt that she assisted her husband and often provided him a sounding board.
Perhaps more intriguing is Einstein's bold prescience: He left the money to Maric in 1919 (in a notarized document, no less), yet was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics until 1921. R.F.
|
||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
3
| 58
|
https://stampera.eu/products/NIG210345a
|
en
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Stampera stamps
|
en
|
/icons/touch-icon-iphone.png
|
Stampera
|
https://stampera.opo.lt
| ||||||
correct_award_00024
|
FactBench
|
1
| 41
|
https://www.itechpost.com/articles/114967/20221109/albert-einstein-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-albert-einstein-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-1922.htm
|
en
|
Albert Einstein Won the Nobel Prize in Physics on This Day in 1922
|
[
"https://1126564489.rsc.cdn77.org/static/common/_v3.0.0/img/logo.svg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120613/90/77/50/40/us-postal-service-caught-sharing-customer-data-to-social-media-advertisers.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/119650/90/77/50/40/facebook-is-trying-to-win-back-younger-users-amid-looming-ban-on-tiktok.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120582/90/77/50/40/verizon-looking-to-sell-thousands-of-us-cell-towers.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/119702/90/77/50/40/instagram-is-testing-new-unskippable-ads-while-browsing.png",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/99528/90/77/50/40/mlb-the-show-21-baserunning-tips-how-to-perfectly-slide-in-team-mode.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120040/502/301/50/40/new-microsoft-vulnerability-allows-anyone-to-impersonate-corporate-emails.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120623/502/301/50/40/xiaomi-mix.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120621/502/301/50/40/cybersecurity-firm-crowdstrikes-shares-drop-11-following-global-it-outage.jpg",
"https://1401700980.rsc.cdn77.org/data/thumbs/full/120624/502/301/50/40/car-dealership-operations-disrupted-again-in-microsoft-crowdstrike-outage.jpg",
"https://1126564489.rsc.cdn77.org/static/common/_v3.0.0/img/logo-plain.svg",
"https://static.getclicky.com/media/links/badge.gif",
"https://in.getclicky.com/66593558ns.gif",
"https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-QzXvCmyt3qj48.gif",
"https://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=14401431&cv=2.0&cj=1"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Albert Einstein",
"Einstein",
"Theory of Relativity",
"Photoelectric Effect",
"Nobel Prize",
"physics"
] | null |
[
"Toni Dimaano"
] |
2022-11-09T02:20:00-05:00
|
Commemorating Einstein's 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics, 100 years today since. It has been a whole 100 years since Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in Physics for his expansion of the photoelectric effect in 1922 at only 26 years old.
|
en
|
iTech Post
|
https://www.itechpost.com/articles/114967/20221109/albert-einstein-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-albert-einstein-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-albert-einstein-nobel-prize-physics-1922.htm
|
It has been a whole 100 years since Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in Physics for his expansion of the photoelectric effect in 1922 at only 26 years old.
While everyone was expecting the genius to win the prize for his theory on relativity, it was his idea on what is behind today's solar energy revolution that earned him the well-coveted merit.
What Was This Award-Winning Photoelectric Effect Explanation
According to The Atlantic, even from the beginning of the turn of the century, scientists already had an idea that light could produce electric current once exposed to certain conditions.
However, despite this observation, no one really understood why light could create electricity since it was then understood that light worked as a wave.
With this contradiction, in 1905, Einstein produced a paper that suggested that light was not a wave but was something discontinuously distributed in space.
According to his explanation of the photoelectric effect, light is spread out and scattered from a point source but is consisted of energy quanta localized at different points in space.
This means that Einstein believed that light behaved like a particle rather than a wave, which is why it can create electric current.
The Nobel Prize Organization adds that photoelectric explains that if metal electrodes are exposed to light, sparks will actualize between them.
For this to happen, light waves would be at a certain frequency, and the light's intensity should be critical for it to work.
This discovery was what warranted Einstein to win the Nobel Prize in 1922, a year after no one won the Nobel Prize in 1921.
According to the Nobel Prize Organization, during the committee's selection process for Physics, they found that nobody met the criteria outlined by the foundation and reserved the 1921 prize for next year.
This made Einstein the 1921 Nobel Prize winner in the field of Physics in the year 1922.
Read More: Israel Allocates Millions for Einstein Museum
Many Thought That Einstein's Nobel Prize Was For The Theory Of Relativity
Contrary to popular belief, despite the theory of relativity being Einstein's most well-known contributions to science, it was what won him the Nobel Prize.
According to Advanced Science News, while he came up with the theory of relativity and the photoelectric effect explanation, Einstein was only awarded for the latter.
The reserved Nobel Prize of 1921 was awarded to Einstein the next year for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect," reports say.
The decision prompted speculations from left and right, relating the controversy to the access that was granted to the official archival materials at the organization.
However, Advanced Science New writes that Einstein not winning an award for his theory of relativity might have been just a case of bias, arrogance, and pettiness among committee members at the time.
In 1954, almost 50 years after the scientist won the award for his contribution to the law of photoelectric effect, solar cells were created to run electrical equipment.
These solar cells have later been developed into the solar energy people use in modern technology today, proving that addressing a gap in knowledge can lead to something useful, The Atlantic writes.
|