Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set

by Walter Isaacson

  For a few months after producing the Entwurf, Einstein was both pleased and depleted. “I finally solved the problem a few weeks ago,” he wrote Elsa. “It is a bold extension of the theory of relativity, together with a theory of gravitation. Now I must give myself some rest, otherwise I will go kaput.”23

  However, he was soon questioning what he had wrought. And the more he reflected on the Entwurf, the more he realized that its equations did not satisfy the goal of being generally or even broadly covariant. In other words, the way the equations applied to people in arbitrary accelerated motion might not always be the same.

  His confidence in the theory was not strengthened when he sat down with his old friend Michele Besso, who had come to visit him in June 1913, to study the implications of the Entwurf theory. They produced more than fifty pages of notes on their deliberations, each writing about half, which analyzed how the Entwurf accorded with some curious facts that were known about the orbit of Mercury.24

  Since the 1840s, scientists had been worrying about a small but unexplained shift in the orbit of Mercury. The perihelion is the spot in a planet’s elliptical orbit when it is closest to the sun, and over the years this spot in Mercury’s orbit had slipped a tiny amount more—about 43 seconds of an arc each century—than what was explained by Newton’s laws. At first it was assumed that some undiscovered planet was tugging at it, similar to the reasoning that had earlier led to the discovery of Neptune. The Frenchman who discovered Mercury’s anomaly even calculated where such a planet would be and named it Vulcan. But it was not there.

  Einstein hoped that his new theory of relativity, when its gravitational field equations were applied to the sun, would explain Mercury’s orbit. Unfortunately, after a lot of calculations and corrected mistakes, he and Besso came up with a value of 18 seconds of an arc per century for how far Mercury’s perihelion should stray, which was not even halfway correct. The poor result convinced Einstein not to publish the Mercury calculations. But it did not convince him to discard his Entwurf theory, at least not yet.

  Einstein and Besso also looked at whether rotation could be considered a form of relative motion under the equations of the Entwurf theory. In other words, imagine that an observer is rotating and thus experiencing inertia. Is it possible that this is yet another case of relative motion and is indistinguishable from a case where the observer is at rest and the rest of the universe is rotating around him?

  The most famous thought experiment along these lines was that described by Newton in the third book of his Principia. Imagine a bucket that begins to rotate as it hangs from a rope. At first the water in the bucket stays rather still and flat. But soon the friction from the bucket causes the water to spin around with it, and it assumes a concave shape. Why? Because inertia causes the spinning water to push outward, and therefore it pushes up the side of the bucket.

  Yes, but if we suspect that all motion is relative, we ask: What is the water spinning relative to? Not the bucket, because the water is concave when it is spinning along with the bucket, and also when the bucket stops and the water keeps spinning inside for a while. Perhaps the water is spinning relative to nearby bodies such as the earth that exert gravitational force.

  But imagine the bucket spinning in deep space with no gravity and no reference points. Or imagine it spinning alone in an otherwise empty universe. Would there still be inertia? Newton believed so, and said it was because the bucket was spinning relative to absolute space.

  When Einstein’s early hero Ernst Mach came along in the mid-nineteenth century, he debunked this notion of absolute space and argued that the inertia existed because the water was spinning relative to the rest of the matter in the universe. Indeed, the same effects would be observed if the bucket was still and the rest of the universe was rotating around it, he said.25

  The general theory of relativity, Einstein hoped, would have what he dubbed “Mach’s Principle” as one of its touchstones. Happily, when he analyzed the equations in his Entwurf theory, he concluded that they did seem to predict that the effects would be the same whether a bucket was spinning or was motionless while the rest of the universe spun around it.

  Or so Einstein thought. He and Besso made a series of very clever calculations designed to see if indeed this was the case. In their notebook, Einstein wrote a joyous little exclamation at what appeared to be the successful conclusion of these calculations: “Is correct.”

  Unfortunately, he and Besso had made some mistakes in this work. Einstein would eventually discover those errors two years later and realize, unhappily, that the Entwurf did not in fact satisfy Mach’s principle. In all likelihood, Besso had already warned him that this might be the case. In a memo that he apparently wrote in August 1913, Besso suggested that a “rotation metric” was not in fact a solution permitted by the field equations in the Entwurf.

  But Einstein dismissed these doubts, in letters to Besso as well as to Mach and others, at least for the time being.26 If experiments upheld the theory, “your brilliant investigations on the foundations of mechanics will have received a splendid confirmation,” Einstein wrote to Mach days after the Entwurf was published. “For it shows that inertia has its origin in some kind of interaction of the bodies, exactly in accordance with your argument about Newton’s bucket experiment.”27

  What worried Einstein most about the Entwurf, justifiably, was that its mathematical equations did not prove to be generally covariant, thus deflating his goal of assuring that the laws of nature were the same for an observer in accelerated or arbitrary motion as they were for an observer moving at a constant velocity. “Regrettably, the whole business is still so very tricky that my confidence in the theory is still rather hesitant,” he wrote in reply to a warm letter of congratulations from Lorentz.“The gravitational equations themselves unfortunately do not have the property of general covariance.”28

  He was soon able to convince himself, at least for a while, that this was inevitable. In part he did so through a thought experiment, which became known as the “hole argument,”29 that seemed to suggest that the holy grail of making the gravitational field equations generally covariant was impossible to reach, or at least physically uninteresting. “The fact that the gravitational equations are not generally covariant, something that quite disturbed me for a while, is unavoidable,” he wrote a friend. “It can easily be shown that a theory with generally covariant equations cannot exist if the demand is made that the field is mathematically completely determined by matter.”30

  For the time being, very few physicists embraced Einstein’s new theory, and many came forth to denounce it.31 Einstein professed pleasure that the issue of relativity “has at least been taken up with the requisite vigor,” as he put it to his friend Zangger. “I enjoy controversies. In the manner of Figaro: ‘Would my noble Lord venture a little dance? He should tell me! I will strike up the tune for him.’ ”32

  Through it all, Einstein continued to try to salvage his Entwurf approach. He was able to find ways, or so he thought, to achieve enough covariance to satisfy most aspects of his principle about the equivalence of gravity and acceleration. “I succeeded in proving that the gravitational equations hold for arbitrarily moving reference systems, and thus that the hypothesis of the equivalence of acceleration and gravitational field is absolutely correct,” he wrote Zangger in early 1914. “Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I have no doubt that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself all at once. We see him only the way a louse that sits upon him would.”33

  Freundlich and the 1914 Eclipse

  There was, Einstein knew, one way to quell doubts. He often concluded his papers with suggestions for how future experiments could confirm whatever he had just propounded. In the case of general relativity, this process had begun in 1911, when he specified with some precision how much he thought light from a star would be deflected by the gravity of the sun.

  This was something that could, he hoped, be measured by photographing
stars whose light passed close to the sun and determining whether there appeared to be a tiny shift in their position compared to when their light did not have to pass right by the sun. But this was an experiment that had to be done during an eclipse, when the starlight would be visible.

  So it was not surprising that, with his theory arousing noisy attacks from colleagues and quiet doubts in his own mind, Einstein became keenly interested in what could be discovered during the next suitable total eclipse of the sun, which was due to occur on August 21, 1914. That would require an expedition to the Crimea, in Russia, where the path of the eclipse would fall.

  Einstein was so eager to have his theory tested during the eclipse that, when it seemed there might be no money for such an expedition, he offered to pay part of the costs himself. Erwin Freundlich, the young Berlin astronomer who had read the light-bending predictions in Einstein’s 1911 paper and become eager to prove him correct, was ready to take the lead. “I am extremely pleased that you have taken up the question of the bending of light with so much zeal,” Einstein wrote him in early 1912. In August 1913, he was still bombarding the astronomer with encouragement.“Nothing more can be done by the theorists,” he wrote. “In this matter it is only you, the astronomers, who can next year perform a simply invaluable service to theoretical physics.”34

  Freundlich got married in August 1913 and decided to take his honeymoon in the mountains near Zurich, in the hope that he could meet Einstein. It worked. When Freundlich described his honeymoon schedule in a letter, Einstein invited him over for a visit. “This is wonderful because it fits in with our plans,” Freundlich wrote his fiancée, whose reaction to the prospect of spending part of her honeymoon with a theoretical physicist she had never met is lost to history.

  When the newlyweds pulled into the Zurich train station, there was a disheveled Einstein wearing, as Freundlich’s wife recalled, a large straw hat, with the plump chemist Fritz Haber at his side. Einstein brought the group to a nearby town where he was giving a lecture, after which he took them to lunch. Not surprisingly, he had forgotten to bring any money, and an assistant who had come along slipped him a 100 franc note under the table. For most of the day, Freundlich discussed gravity and the bending of light with Einstein, even when the group went on a nature hike, leaving his new wife to admire the scenery in peace.35

  At his speech that day, which was on general relativity, Einstein pointed out Freundlich to the audience and called him “the man who will be testing the theory next year.”The problem, however, was raising the money. At the time, Planck and others were trying to lure Einstein from Zurich to Berlin to become a member of the Prussian Academy, and Einstein used the courtship to write Planck and urge him to provide Freundlich the money to undertake the task.

  In fact, on the very day that Einstein formally accepted the Berlin post and election to the Academy—December 7, 1913—he wrote Freundlich with the offer to reach into his own pocket. “If the Academy shies away from it, then we will get that little bit of mammon from private individuals,” said Einstein. “Should everything fail, then I will pay for the thing myself out of the little bit that I have saved, at least the first 2,000 marks.” The main thing, Einstein stressed, was that Freundlich should proceed with his preparations. “Just go ahead and order the photographic plates, and do not let the time be squandered because of the money problem.”36

  As it turned out, there were enough private donations, mainly from the Krupp Foundation, to make the expedition possible. “You can imagine how happy I am that the external difficulties of your undertaking have now more or less been overcome,” Einstein wrote. He added a note of confidence about what would be found: “I have considered the theory from every angle, and I have every confidence in the thing.”37

  Freundlich and two colleagues left Berlin on July 19 for the Crimea, where they were joined by a group from the Córdoba observatory in Argentina. If all went well, they would have two minutes to make photographs that could be used to analyze whether the starlight was deflected by the sun’s gravity.

  All did not go well. Twenty days before the eclipse, Europe tumbled into World War I and Germany declared war on Russia. Freundlich and his German colleagues were captured by the Russian army, and their equipment was confiscated. Not surprisingly, they were unable to convince the Russian soldiers that, with all of their powerful cameras and location devices, they were mere astronomers planning to gaze at the stars in order to better understand the secrets of the universe.

  Even if they had been granted safe passage, it is likely that the observations would have failed. The skies were cloudy during the minutes of the eclipse, and an American group that was also in the region was unable to get any usable photographs.38

  Yet the termination of the eclipse mission had a silver lining. Einstein’s Entwurf equations were not correct. The degree to which gravity would deflect light, according to Einstein’s theory at the time, was the same as that predicted by Newton’s emission theory of light. But, as Einstein would discover a year later, the correct prediction would end up being twice that. If Freundlich had succeeded in 1914, Einstein might have been publicly proven wrong.

  “My good old astronomer Freundlich, instead of experiencing a solar eclipse in Russia, will now be experiencing captivity there,” Einstein wrote to his friend Ehrenfest. “I am concerned about him.”39 There was no need to worry. The young astronomer was released in a prisoner exchange within weeks.

  Einstein, however, had other reasons to worry in August 1914. His marriage had just exploded. His masterpiece theory still needed work. And now his native country’s nationalism and militarism, traits that he had abhorred since childhood, had plunged it into a war that would cast him as a stranger in a strange land. In Germany, it would turn out, that was a dangerous position to be in.

  World War I

  The chain reaction that pushed Europe into war in August 1914 inflamed the patriotic pride of the Prussians and, in an equal and opposite reaction, the visceral pacifism of Einstein, a man so gentle and averse to conflict that he even disliked playing chess. “Europe in its madness has now embarked on something incredibly preposterous,” he wrote Ehrenfest that month. “At such times one sees to what deplorable breed of brutes we belong.”40

  Ever since he ran away from Germany as a schoolboy and was exposed to the gauzy internationalism of Jost Winteler in Aarau, Einstein had harbored sentiments that disposed him toward pacifism, one-world federalism, and socialism. But he had generally shunned public activism.

  World War I changed that. Einstein would never forsake physics, but he would henceforth be unabashedly public, for most of his life, in pushing his political and social ideals.

  The irrationality of the war made Einstein believe that scientists in fact had a special duty to engage in public affairs. “We scientists in particular must foster internationalism,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have had to suffer serious disappointments even among scientists in this regard.”41 He was especially appalled by the lockstep pro-war mentality of his three closest colleagues, the scientists who had lured him to Berlin: Fritz Haber, Walther Nernst, and Max Planck.42

  Haber was a short, bald, and dapper chemist who was born Jewish but tried mightily to assimilate by converting, getting baptized, and adopting the dress, manner, and even pince-nez glasses of a proper Prussian. The director of the chemistry institute where Einstein had his office, he had been mediating the war between Einstein and Mari just as the larger war in Europe was breaking out. Although he hoped for a commission as an officer in the army, because he was an academic of Jewish heritage he had to settle for being made a sergeant.43

  Haber reorganized his institute to develop chemical weapons for Germany. He had already found a way to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen, which permitted the Germans to mass-produce explosives. He then turned his attention to making deadly chlorine gas, which, heavier than air, would flow down into the trenches and painfully asphyxiate soldiers by burning through their throats and lun
gs. In April 1915, modern chemical warfare was inaugurated when some five thousand French and Belgians met that deadly fate at Ypres, with Haber personally supervising the attack. (In an irony that may have been lost on the inventor of dynamite, who endowed the prize, Haber won the 1918 Nobel in chemistry for his process of synthesizing ammonia.)

  His colleague and occasional academic rival Nernst, bespectacled and 50, had his wife inspect his style as he practiced marching and saluting in front of their house. Then he took his private car and showed up at the western front to be a volunteer driver. Upon his return to Berlin, he experimented with tear gas and other irritants that could be used as a humane way to flush the enemy out of the trenches, but the generals decided they preferred the lethal approach that Haber was taking, so Nernst became part of that effort.

  Even the revered Planck supported what he called Germany’s “just war.” As he told his students when they went off to battle, “Germany has drawn its sword against the breeding ground of insidious perfidy.”44

  Einstein was able to avoid letting the war cause a personal rift between him and his three colleagues, and he spent the spring of 1915 tutoring Haber’s son in math.45 But when they signed a petition defending Germany’s militarism, he felt compelled to break with them politically.

  The petition, published in October 1914, was titled “Appeal to the Cultured World” and became known as the “Manifesto of the 93,” after the number of intellectuals who endorsed it. With scant regard for the truth, it denied that the German army had committed any attacks on civilians in Belgium and went on to proclaim that the war was necessary. “Were it not for German militarism, German culture would have been wiped off the face of the earth,” it asserted. “We shall wage this fight to the very end as a cultured nation, a nation that holds the legacy of Goethe, Beethoven, and Kant no less sacred than hearth and home.”46