Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set

by Walter Isaacson

  But, she asked, what if the experiments had shown his theory to be wrong?

  He replied, “Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord; the theory is correct.”22

  As more precise news of the eclipse results spread, Max Planck was among those who gently noted to Einstein that it was good to have his own confidence confirmed by some actual facts. “You have already said many times that you never personally doubted what the result would be,” Planck wrote, “but it is beneficial, nonetheless, if now this fact is indubitably established for others as well.” For Einstein’s stolid patron, the triumph had a transcendent aspect. “The intimate union between the beautiful, the true and the real has again been proved.” Einstein replied to Planck with a veneer of humility: “It is a gift from gracious destiny that I have been allowed to experience this.”23

  Einstein’s celebratory exchange with his closer friends in Zurich was more lighthearted. The physics colloquium there sent him a piece of doggerel:

  All doubts have now been spent

  At last it has been found:

  Light is naturally bent

  To Einstein’s great renown!24

  To which Einstein replied a few days later, referring to the eclipse:

  Light and heat Mrs. Sun us tenders

  Yet loves not he who broods and ponders.

  So she contrives many a year

  How she may hold her secret dear!

  Now came the lunar visitor kind;

  For joy, she almost forgot to shine.

  Her deepest secrets too she lost

  Eddington, you know, has snapped a shot.25

  In defense of Einstein’s poetic prowess, it should be noted that his verse works better in German, in which the last two lines end with “gekommen” and “aufgenommen.”

  The first unofficial announcement came at a meeting of the Dutch Royal Academy. Einstein sat proudly onstage as Lorentz described Eddington’s findings to an audience of close to a thousand cheering students and scholars. But it was a closed meeting with no press, so the leaks about the results merely added to the great public anticipation leading up to the official announcement scheduled for two weeks later in London.

  The distinguished members of the Royal Society, Britain’s most venerable scientific institution, met along with colleagues from the Royal Astronomical Society on the afternoon of November 6, 1919, at Burlington House in Piccadilly, for what they knew was likely to be a historic event. There was only one item on the agenda: the report on the eclipse observations.

  Sir J. J. Thomson, the Royal Society’s president and discoverer of the electron, was in the chair. Alfred North Whitehead, the philosopher, had come down from Cambridge and was in the audience, taking notes. Gazing down on them from an imposing portrait in the great hall was Isaac Newton. “The whole atmosphere of tense interest was exactly that of the Greek drama,” Whitehead recorded. “We were the chorus commenting on the decree of destiny . . . and in the background the picture of Newton to remind us that the greatest of scientific generalizations was, now, after more than two centuries, to receive its first modification.”26

  The Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, had the honor of presenting the findings. He described in detail the equipment, the photographs, and the complexities of the calculations. His conclusion, however, was simple. “After a careful study of the plates, I am prepared to say that there can be no doubt that they confirm Einstein’s prediction,” he announced. “The results of the expeditions to Sobral and Principe leave little doubt that a deflection of light takes place in the neighborhood of the sun and that it is of the amount demanded by Einstein’s generalized theory of relativity.”27

  There was some skepticism in the room. “We owe it to that great man to proceed very carefully in modifying or retouching his law of gravitation,” cautioned Ludwig Silberstein, gesturing at Newton’s portrait. But it was the commanding giant J. J. Thomson who set the tone. “The result is one of the greatest achievements of human thought,” he declared.28

  Einstein was back in Berlin, so he missed the excitement. He celebrated by buying a new violin. But he understood the historic impact of the announcement that the laws of Sir Isaac Newton no longer fully governed all aspects of the universe. “Newton, forgive me,” Einstein later wrote, noting the moment. “You found the only way which, in your age, was just about possible for a man of highest thought and creative power.”29

  It was a grand triumph, but not one easily understood. The skeptical Silberstein came up to Eddington and said that people believed that only three scientists in the world understood general relativity. He had been told that Eddington was one of them.

  The shy Quaker said nothing. “Don’t be so modest, Eddington!” said Silberstein.

  Replied Eddington, “On the contrary. I’m just wondering who the third might be.”30

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FAME 1919

  With Charlie Chaplin and Elsa at the Hollywood premiere of City Lights, January 1931

  “Lights All Askew”

  Einstein’s theory of relativity burst into the consciousness of a world that was weary of war and yearning for a triumph of human transcendence. Almost a year to the day after the end of the brutal fighting, here was an announcement that the theory of a German Jew had been proven correct by an English Quaker. “Scientists belonging to two warring nations had collaborated again!” exulted the physicist Leopold Infeld. “It seemed the beginning of a new era.”1

  The Times of London carried stories on November 7 about the defeated Germans being summoned to Paris to face treaty demands from the British and French. But it also carried the following triple-decked headline:

  REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE

  New Theory of the Universe

  NEWTONIAN IDEAS OVERTHROWN

  “The scientific concept of the fabric of the Universe must be changed,” the paper proclaimed. Einstein’s newly confirmed theory will “require a new philosophy of the universe, a philosophy that will sweep away nearly all that has hitherto been accepted.”2

  The New York Times caught up with the story two days later.3 Not having a science correspondent in London, the paper assigned the story to its golf expert, Henry Crouch, who at first decided to skip the Royal Society announcement, then changed his mind, but then couldn’t get in. So he telephoned Eddington to get a summary and, somewhat baffled, asked him to repeat it in simpler words.4

  Perhaps due to Eddington’s enthusiasm in the retelling, or due to Crouch’s enthusiasm in the reporting, Eddington’s appraisal of Einstein’s theory was enhanced to read “one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—of achievements in the history of human thought.”5 But given the frenzy about to ensue, the headline was rather restrained:

  The following day, the New York Times apparently decided that it had been too restrained. So it followed up with an even more excited story, its six-deck headline a classic from the days when newspapers knew how to write classic headlines:

  For days the New York Times, with a bygone touch of merry populism, played up the complexity of the theory as an affront to common sense. “This news is distinctly shocking, and apprehensions for confidence even in the multiplication table will arise,” it editorialized on November 11. The idea that “space has limits” was most assuredly silly, the paper decided. “It just doesn’t, by definition, and that’s the end of it—for common folk, however it may be for higher mathematicians.” It returned to the theme five days later: “Scientists who proclaim that space comes to an end somewhere are under some obligation to tell us what lies beyond it.”

  Finally, a week after its first story, the paper decided that some words of calm, more amused than bemused, might be useful. “British scientists seem to have been seized with something like an intellectual panic when they heard of photographic verification of the Einstein theory,” the paper pointed out, “but they are slowly recovering as they realize that the sun still rises—apparently—in the east and will continue to do so for some time to come.”6r />
  An intrepid correspondent for the newspaper in Berlin was able to get an interview with Einstein in his apartment on December 2, and in the process launched one of the apocryphal tales about relativity. After describing Einstein’s top-floor study, the reporter asserted, “It was from this lofty library that he observed years ago a man dropping from a neighboring roof—luckily on a pile of soft rubbish—and escaping almost without injury. The man told Dr. Einstein that in falling he experienced no sensation commonly considered as the effect of gravity.” That was how, the article said, Einstein developed a “sublimation or supplement” of Newton’s law of gravity. As one of the stacked headlines of the article put it, “Inspired as Newton Was, But by the Fall of a Man from a Roof Instead of the Fall of an Apple.”7

  This was, in fact, as the newspaper would say, “a pile of soft rubbish.” Einstein had done his thought experiment while working in the Bern patent office in 1907, not in Berlin, and it had not involved a person actually falling. “The newspaper drivel about me is pathetic,” he wrote Zangger when the article came out. But he understood, and accepted, how journalism worked. “This kind of exaggeration meets a certain need among the public.”8

  There was, indeed, an astonishing public craving to understand relativity. Why? The theory seemed somewhat baffling, yes, but also very enticing in its mystery. Warped space? The bending of light rays? Time and space not absolute? The theory had the wondrous mix of Huh? and Wow! that can capture the public imagination.

  This was lampooned in a Rea Irvin cartoon in the New Yorker, which showed a baffled janitor, fur-clad matron, doorman, kids, and others scratching their heads with wild surmise as they wandered down the street. The caption was a quote from Einstein: “People slowly accustomed themselves to the idea that the physical states of space itself were the final physical reality.” As Einstein put it to Grossmann, “Now every coachman and waiter argues about whether or not relativity theory is correct.”9

  Einstein’s friends found themselves besieged whenever they lectured on it. Leopold Infeld, who later worked with Einstein, was then a young schoolteacher in a small Polish town. “At the time, I did what hundreds of others did all over the world,” he recalled. “I gave a public lecture on the theory of relativity, and the crowd that lined up on a cold winter night was so great that it could not be accommodated in the largest hall in town.”10

  The same thing happened to Eddington when he spoke at Trinity College, Cambridge. Hundreds jammed the hall, and hundreds more were turned away. In his attempt to make the subject comprehensible, Eddington said that if he was traveling at nearly the speed of light he would be only three feet tall. That made newspaper headlines. Lorentz likewise gave a speech to an overflow audience. He compared the earth to a moving vehicle as a way to illustrate some examples of relativity.11

  Soon many of the greatest physicists and thinkers began writing their own books explaining the theory, including Eddington, von Laue, Freundlich, Lorentz, Planck, Born, Pauli, and even the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. In all, more than six hundred books and articles on relativity were published in the first six years after the eclipse observations.

  Einstein himself had the opportunity to explain it in his own words in The Times of London, which commissioned him to write an article called “What Is the Theory of Relativity?”12 The result was actually quite comprehensible. His own popular book on the subject, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, had first appeared in German in 1916. Now, in the wake of the eclipse observation, Einstein published it in English as well. Filled with many thought experiments that could be easily visualized, it became a best seller, with updated editions appearing over the ensuing years.

  The Publicity Paradox

  Einstein had just the right ingredients to be transformed into a star. Reporters, knowing that the public was yearning for a refreshing international celebrity, were thrilled that the newly discovered genius was not a drab or reserved academic. Instead, he was a charming 40-year-old, just passing from handsome to distinctive, with a wild burst of hair, rumpled informality, twinkling eyes, and a willingness to dispense wisdom in bite-sized quips and quotes.

  His friend Paul Ehrenfest found the press attention rather ridiculous. “The startled newspaper ducks flutter up in a hefty bout of quacking,” he joked. To Einstein’s sister, Maja, who grew up at a time before people actually liked publicity, the attention was astonishing, and she assumed that he found it completely distasteful. “An article was published about you in a Lucerne paper!” she marveled, not fully appreciating that he had made front pages around the world. “I imagine this causes you much unpleasantness that so much is being written about you.”13

  Einstein indeed bemoaned his newfound fame, repeatedly. He was being “hounded by the press and other riff-raff,” he complained to Max Born. “It’s so dreadful that I can barely breathe anymore, not to mention getting around to any sensible work.” To another friend, he painted an even more vivid picture of the perils of publicity: “Since the flood of newspaper articles, I’ve been so deluged with questions, invitations, and requests that I dream I’m burning in Hell and the postman is the Devil eternally roaring at me, hurling new bundles of letters at my head because I have not yet answered the old ones.”14

  Einstein’s aversion to publicity, however, existed a bit more in theory than in reality. It would have been possible, indeed easy, for him to have shunned all interviews, pronouncements, pictures, and public appearances. Those who truly dislike the public spotlight do not turn up, as the Einsteins eventually would, with Charlie Chaplin on a red carpet at one of his movie premieres.

  “There was a streak in him that enjoyed the photographers and the crowds,” the essayist C. P. Snow said after getting to know him. “He had an element of the exhibitionist and the ham. If there had not been that element, there would have been no photographers and no crowds. Nothing is easier to avoid than publicity. If one genuinely doesn’t want it, one doesn’t get it.”15

  Einstein’s response to adulation was as complex as that of the cosmos to gravity. He was attracted and repelled by the cameras, loved publicity and loved to complain about it. His love-hate relationship with fame and reporters might seem unusual until one reflects on how similar it was to the mix of enjoyment, amusement, aversion, and annoyance that so many other famous people have felt.

  One reason that Einstein—unlike Planck or Lorentz or Bohr—became such an icon was because he looked the part and because he could, and would, play the role. “Scientists who become icons must not only be geniuses but also performers, playing to the crowd and enjoying public acclaim,” the physicist Freeman Dyson (no relation to the Astronomer Royal) has noted.16 Einstein performed. He gave interviews readily, peppered them with delightful aphorisms, and knew exactly what made for a good story.

  Even Elsa, or perhaps especially Elsa, enjoyed the attention. She served as her husband’s protector, fearsome in her bark and withering in her near-sighted gaze when unwanted intruders barged into his orbit. But even more than her husband, she reveled in the stature and deference that came with fame. She began charging a fee to photograph him, and she donated the money to charities that fed hungry children in Vienna and elsewhere.17

  In the current celebrity-soaked age, it is hard to recall the extent to which, a century ago, proper people recoiled from publicity and disdained those who garnered it. Especially in the realm of science, focusing on the personal seemed discordant. When Einstein’s friend Max Born published a book on relativity right after the eclipse observations, he included, in his first edition, a frontispiece picture of Einstein and a short biography of him. Max von Laue and other friends of both men were appalled. Such things did not belong in a scientific book, even a popular one, von Laue wrote Born. Chastened, Born left these elements out of the next edition.18

  As a result, Born was dismayed when it was announced in 1920 that Einstein had cooperated on a forthcoming biography by a Jewish journalist, Alexander Moszkowski, who h
ad mainly written humor and occult books. The book advertised itself, in the title, as being based on conversations with Einstein, and in fact it was. During the war, the gregarious Moszkowski had befriended Einstein, been solicitous of his needs, and brought him into a semiliterary circle that hung around at a Berlin café.

  Born was a nonpracticing Jew eager to assimilate into German society, and he feared that the book would stoke the simmering antiSemitism. “Einstein’s theories had been stamped as ‘Jewish physics’ by colleagues,” Born recalled, referring to the growing number of German nationalists who had begun decrying the abstract nature and supposed moral “relativism” inherent in Einstein’s theories. “And now a Jewish author, who had already published several books with frivolous titles, came along and wanted to write a similar book on Einstein.” So Born and his wife, Hedwig, who never shied from berating Einstein, launched a crusade with their friends to stop its publication.

  “You must withdraw permission,” Hedwig hectored, “at once and by registered letter.” She warned him that the “gutter press” would use it to tarnish his image and portray him as a self-promoting Jew. “A completely new and far worse wave of persecution will be unleashed.” The sin, she emphasized, was not what he said but the fact that he was permitting any publicity for himself:

  If I did not know you well, I would certainly not concede innocent motives under these circumstances. I would put it down to vanity. This book will constitute your moral death sentence for all but four or five of your friends. It could subsequently be the best confirmation of the accusation of self-advertisement.19

  Her husband weighed in a week later with a warning that all of Einstein’s anti-Semitic antagonists “will triumph” if he did not block publication. “Your Jewish ‘friends’ [i.e., Moszkowski] will have achieved what a pack of anti-Semites have failed to do.”