Title: Einstein’s Mistakes – The
Human Failings of Genius
Author: Hans C Ohanian
Publisher: W W Norton & Co, 2009 (First)
ISBN: 978-0-393-33768-6
Pages: 338
Albert Einstein is a towering
personality in the intellectual landscape of the world of all time. Being a
genius won’t ensure a person his place on this coveted setting. Einstein was
more than that – he was a physicist of stellar caliber, a philosopher, a
humanist, and altogether a great man. At least that was what we had conceived –
until we get hold of this book. Ohanian, who is himself a physicist and has
written many books on the subject handles the personality and professional
career of the great scientist in an incisive fashion. He proceeds by first
stripping Einstein of all the sheen generously endowed by an over-eager media
constantly on the lookout for a marketable icon and delves into the fallacies
and mistakes committed by him – in his theoretical papers and conceptual
formulations. Some of his earlier mistakes were mathematical in nature – Einstein
was uncomfortable with mathematics. But in an era when physics was reputed to
be difficult even for physicists, he couldn’t go on much with his unsure grasp
of mathematics. We come across such inadvertent errors in early derivations of
relativity theories. Later, he employed mathematical assistants to do the
tedious calculations for him. Though the author claims to describe only those
errors committed by the genius in his professional capacity, any discussion
about Einstein is bound to get tied up in a bit of sensationalism and charisma
pervading his person. So we read about his adulterous liaisons and partisan
leanings towards the fair sex.
Einstein completed his schooling
and graduation in Zurich, Switzerland. After 2 years spent in a futile search
for a job, he was accommodated as a third-class clerk in Federal Patent Office
in Berne which left him with ample time for his pet theories and research.
Though he managed to publish several insignificant papers earlier, the year
1905 turned out to be the year of miracles. He published five original papers
in the journal Annalen der Physik, all of which proved to be milestones
in the growth saga of physics of all time. His papers included a postulation
that light is emitted in discrete packets called quanta (singular, quantum),
description of Brownian motion – a random movement of liquid particles due to
collisions at the atomic level, special relativity and the energy-mass
equivalence – the most famous equation, E = mc2.
Einstein’s relativity principle was
first proposed not in so many words by Galileo (1578 – 1642). Elements of
references to a relativistic structure can also be seen in Isaac Newton’s
magnum opus Principia Mathematica. The real momentum came only in the
latter half of 19th century,
when Maxwell discovered the laws of electromagnetism. He observed that
his equations yielded a result for the velocity of light which is the same
irrespective of the speed of light sources, which was contrary to natural
expectation. We observe that if we move in any direction, the object which
comes to us with a particular speed will appear to be moving faster than an
object receding from us with the same speed. Not so, in the case of light.
Lorentz and Poincare developed the idea further, publishing papers on relativity
in 1895 and 1904 whereas Einstein published only in 1905. Till the end of World
War I, before Einstein’s everlasting fame was not assured with his discovery of
general relativity, the principle was known in academic circles as the
Lorentz-Einstein Principle. Einstein’s proof of his paper on special relativity
(1905) contained several mistakes, some of them related to physical ideas and
many of them to mathematical concepts.
Among the stunning revelations
made by the author in this book, nothing shocks us more than the assertion that
E = mc2 is not an original Einstein contribution! In fact the
equation has acquired legendary status owing to associations with him and its
contribution to the making of the atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The author affirms that the equation was known in physics circles several years
before Einstein’s attempted proof of it in 1905. J J Thomson, the discoverer of
electron had tinkered with it. Einstein’s contribution was the proof of it and
in fact it was riddled with mistakes. Max von Laue published the correct proof,
followed by Felix Klein. Einstein himself came up with alternate proof over the
years, but all contained errors of some kind or the other. That von Laue and
Klein didn’t get the credit due to them is one of the injustices of scientific
literature. It may also be seen that Einstein had no significant impact on the
making of the A-bomb. His letter to Roosevelt urging him to make one citing
recent developments in Nazi Germany on the same lines is claimed to have not
made much headway in the U.S. Administration. In any case, for nuclear fission,
it is possible to calculate the energy released from electric repulsive forces
whereas for nuclear fusion, mass-energy relation is the only way. It is curious
to note that in Einstein’s autobiography in which he waxes eloquent on his
contributions to physics, he is silent on the famous equation. May be he had
identified that his grounds for priority is shaky, or else he might have got
bored with the long-held association with the equation.
Einstein’s undying fame came with
the experimental verification (1919) of the predictions of General Relativity
published in 1915. The theory itself was opaque to most people, including
prominent physicists and from what is described in the book, it appears that
Einstein himself was also unaware of some of the finer nuances. He tinkered
freely with the proof of the theorem, and modifying the final statement of it
by adding another term called cosmological constant to account for the idea
believed to be true at that time that the universe is static. His theory
predicted an expanding universe, but to make it static, Einstein added the
constant. When Edwin Hubble proved 10 years later that the universe was indeed
expanding, a shamefaced Einstein deleted the factor and declared it to be his
greatest blunder in life. This fiasco is evident of the fact that the great
physicist hadn’t had any clear intuition about what he was driving at. The
story didn’t end there. The cosmological constant actually provided for a
repellant force at great distances, contrary to gravity which is always
attractive. In 2000, observations found that its universe’s acceleration was
increasing. This could be accounted for only by adding the factor back into the
equation. Physicists term this phenomenon as ‘dark energy’ which is
thought to comprise of 71% of all that is in the universe in terms of matter
and energy. Fortunately, Einstein was not alive to swallow his words again.
After 1915, when he was 36 years
of age, his productivity sagged and no major discovery could be attributed to
him. Apart from some occasional sparks of creativity like the Bose-Einstein
condensation and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox, nothing worthwhile came out.
During the last two decades of life, in which he had to flee Germany owing to
Hitler’s rise to power, he was absorbed in developing a unified theory of
everything, which attempted to integrate electromagnetism and gravity which
were the only two fundamental forces known at that time. His papers containing
highly abstract mathematical constructs didn’t take him anywhere and as time
progressed and Einstein grew old, he was treated as an anachronistic old-timer
by his colleagues. He passed away in sleep in 1955 at the age of 76 due to a
burst aneurism.
Several glimpses of Einstein’s
personal life is also glanced at, in the book. We need not go into the details,
except for a brief remark that it was not at all a model for any one. He is
portrayed as greedy, having laborious disputes and arguments about his salary.
He evaded tax from German authorities by secretly opening an account in Holland
and transferring royalties from his publishers to this account. He was a
womanizer and having no paternal affection to his own offsprings.
Ohanian’s uncompromising position
against superstition and organised religion is commendable. He really loses his
temper when narrating the brief biography of Galileo and his ordeals with the
Pope and Dominican friars on the issue of whether the sun or the earth moves
around on which religion had no locus standi. In confirmity to the iconoclastic
treatment of holy or divine authority throughout the text, Ohanian maintains an
irreverent attitude to great physicists, like Newton or Einstein. Of course,
their contributions are respected and their caliber appreciated, but their
weaknesses as human beings is clearly brought out in detail like Newton’s
spiteful tricks against competitors and Einstein’s heartless treatment of his
first child who was born out of wedlock.
On the down side, the book takes
long detours not much relevant to the main topic of discussion like Galileo’s
and Newton’s somewhat detailed biographies. Such unnecessary digressions don’t
add any specific interest to the argument. On a more serious note, Ohanian’s
aversion to use metric units in describing physical phenomena is surprising and
abhorrent at the same time. Units of measurement like the mile is
expected in an American publication, but unwillingness for using the kilometer
is begging contempt from modern readers. Instead of straightaway using kilometer,
he employs klicks, which is a term used by U.S. military to denote the
same concept. Such American chauvinism is highly deplorable.
Altogether, the book is
recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
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