sir hargobindh khorana

The other great indian scientist
Har Gobind Khorana (born 1922) was an Indian organic chemist and cowinner of the 1968 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. His research in chemical genetics vastly extended our understanding of how the chemicals of a cell nucleus transmit information to succeeding generations of cells.

Har Gobind Khorana was born in Raipur on January 9, 1922. After obtaining a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Liverpool, he worked with V. Prelog at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and with Sir Alexander Todd at Cambridge University. From 1952 to 1960 he was head of the Organic Chemistry Group of the British Commonwealth Research Council in Vancouver, and for part of this period he was visiting research professor at the Rockefeller University in New York City. He moved to the University of Wisconsin in 1960 and in 1964 was named to the Conrad A. Elvehjem chair in life sciences at the Institute of Enzyme Research.

Khorana's research embraced many fields: peptides and proteins; chemistry of phosphate esters, nucleic acids, and viruses; and chemical genetics. It was his work in chemical genetics that secured for him three coveted prizes: the Merck Award of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 1958, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in 1968, and the Nobel Prize in the same year.

Khorana's work supplements the research of Marshall Nirenberg and Robert Holley. In 1961, while experimenting with the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli, Nirenberg had deciphered the coded messages that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sends to RNA (ribonucleic acid), which in turn prescribes the synthesis of new proteins. Further experiments revealed codes for most of the known amino acids normally present in proteins. But, although the nucleotide composition became known, gaps in the knowledge about the order of the nucleotide remained.

With his coworkers Khorana resolved this gap by synthesizing all of the 64 possible trinucleotides. He used synthetic polydeoxyribonucleotides of known sequence to direct the synthesis of long, complementary, polyribonucleotides in reactions catalyzed by the enzyme RNA polymerase. By preparing RNA-like polymers with alternating sequence, he demonstrated that such a polymer directs the synthesis of a polypeptide with alternating amino acids—leucine and serine.

After testing a large number of such polymers, Khorana afforded a clear proof of codon assignments and confirmed that the genetic language is linear and consecutive and that three nucleotides specify an amino acid. In addition, he proved the direction in which the information of the messenger RNA is read and that the code words cannot overlap. The manner in which polyribonucleotides are manufactured afforded the clearest proof that the sequence of nucleotides in DNA specifies the sequence of amino acids in proteins through the intermediary of an RNA.

In 1970 Khorna left the University of Wisconsin for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, becoming the Alfred P. Sloan Professor. He was associated with Cornell University from 1974 to 1980 as well. Also in 1970, Khorana made a major breakthrough when he announced the synthesis of the first artificial gene. Six years later, Khorana and his team created a second artificial gene, this one capable of functioning in a living cell. This valuable work laid the foundation for a future in which scientists could use artificial genes to synthesize important proteins or to cure hereditary diseases in humans. In recent years, Khorana has synthesized the gene for bovine rhodopsin, the retinal pigment that converts light energy into electrical energy.

Khorana, who became an American citizen in 1966, has developed a reputation as a tireless worker who once went 12 years without a vacation. He enjoys hiking, listening to music, and often takes his scientific inspiration from long daily walks. With his wife, Esther Elizabeth Sibler, he raised two daughters, Julia Elizabeth and Emily Anne, and one son, Dave Roy.

sorry incomplete will be completed soon

sir chandra shakera venkata raman

The most great indian scientist our raman

Born: Thiruchinapalli, India; November 7, 1888

Died: Bangalore, India; November 21, 1970

Nobel Prize: 1930 Physics, for his discovery of the "Raman" effect

Biography:

Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman, popularly known as C.V. Raman, was born in Thiruchinapalli, in Tamil Nadu, India on November 7, 1888. He was the second of children of Chandrasekhar Iyer and Parvathi Ammal. His father was a professor of mathematics. At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Visakhapatnam, in the present day state of Andhra Pradesh, where his father accepted a position at the Mrs. A.V.N. College. Raman's academic brilliance was established at a very young age. At eleven, he finished his secondary school education and entered Mrs. A.V.N. College and two years later moved to the prestigious Presidency College in Madras (present name, Chennai). When he was fifteen, he finished at the head of the class to receive B.A. with honors in Physics and English. During that time students who did well academically were typically sent abroad (England) for further studies. Because of Raman's poor health he was not allowed to go abroad and he continued his studies at the Presidency college.In 1907, barely seventeen, Raman again graduated at the top of his class and received his M.A. with honors. In the same year he married Lokasundari.

At the time of Raman's graduation, there were few opportunities for scientists in India. This forced Raman to accept a position with the Indian Civil Services as an Assistant Accountant General in Calcutta. While there, he was able to sustain his interest in science by working, in his spare time, in the laboratories of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. He studied the physics of stringed instruments and Indian drums.

In 1917, with his scientific standing established in India, Raman was offered the position of Sir Taraknath Palit Professorship of Physics at Calcutta university, where he stayed for the next fifteen years. During his tenure there, he received world wide recognition for his work in optics and scattering of light. He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1924 and the British made him a knight of the British Empire in 1929. The following year he was honored with the prestigious Hughes medal from the Royal Society. In 1930, for the first time in its history, an Indian scholar, educated entirely in India has received the highest honor in science, the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In 1934, Raman became the director of the newly established Indian Institute of Sciences in Bangalore, where two years later he continued as a professor of physics. In 1947, he was appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of Independent India. He retired from the Indian Institute in 1948 and a year later he established the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, served as its director and remained active there until his death on November 21, 1970, at the age of eighty two. Raman was honored with the highest award, the "Bharat Ratna"(Jewel of India), by the Government of India.

Bibliography:

General:

Chamberland, Dennis, "Nobel Prize", edited by , pages 373-380
Mehra, Jagdish, "Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman", in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillespie, New York, Charles Scribner and Sons
Blaniped, Williams A., "Pioneer Scientists in Pre-Independent India", Physics Today, 39: page 36 (May, 1986)
Jayaraman, Aiyasami and Ramdas, Anant Krishna, "Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman", Physics Today, 56: p56-64 (August, 1988)
Weber, Robert L, "Pioneers of Science: Nobel Prize winners in Physics:, eidted by Lenihan, J.M.A., Bristol, Adam Higler, 1980
Physics:

"Dynamical Theory of the Motion of Bowed Strings", Bulletin, Indian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1914
"On the molecular scattering of light in water and the colour of the sea", Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1922
"A new type of Secondary Radiation", Nature, 1928
"A new radiation", Indian Journal of Physics, 1928
Aspects of Science, 1948
The New Physics: Talks on Aspects of Science, 1951
Lectures on Physical Optics, 1959

NEWTON`S BIOGRAPHY

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727), English natural philosopher, generally regarded as the most original and influential theorist in the history of science. In addition to his invention of the infinitesimal calculus and a new theory of light and color, Newton transformed the structure of physical science with his three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. As the keystone of the scientific revolution of the 17th century, Newton's work combined the contributions of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and others into a new and powerful synthesis. Three centuries later the resulting structure - classical mechanics - continues to be a useful but no less elegant monument to his genius.
Life & Character - Isaac Newton was born prematurely on Christmas day 1642 (4 January 1643, New Style) in Woolsthorpe, a hamlet near Grantham in Lincolnshire. The posthumous son of an illiterate yeoman (also named Isaac), the fatherless infant was small enough at birth to fit 'into a quartpot.' When he was barely three years old Newton's mother, Hanna (Ayscough), placed her first born with his grandmother in order to remarry and raise a second family with Barnabas Smith, a wealthy rector from nearby North Witham. Much has been made of Newton's posthumous birth, his prolonged separation from his mother, and his unrivaled hatred of his stepfather. Until Hanna returned to Woolsthorpe in 1653 after the death of her second husband, Newton was denied his mother's attention, a possible clue to his complex character. Newton's childhood was anything but happy, and throughout his life he verged on emotional collapse, occasionally falling into violent and vindictive attacks against friend and foe alike.

With his mother's return to Woolsthorpe in 1653, Newton was taken from school to fulfill his birthright as a farmer. Happily, he failed in this calling, and returned to King's School at Grantham to prepare for entrance to Trinity College, Cambridge. Numerous anecdotes survive from this period about Newton's absent-mindedness as a fledging farmer and his lackluster performance as a student. But the turning point in Newton's life came in June 1661 when he left Woolsthorpe for Cambridge University. Here Newton entered a new world, one he could eventually call his own.

Although Cambridge was an outstanding center of learning, the spirit of the scientific revolution had yet to penetrate its ancient and somewhat ossified curriculum. Little is known of Newton's formal studies as an undergraduate, but he likely received large doses of Aristotle as well as other classical authors. And by all appearances his academic performance was undistinguished. In 1664 Isaac Barrow, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, examined Newton's understanding of Euclid and found it sorely lacking. We now know that during his undergraduate years Newton was deeply engrossed in private study, that he privately mastered the works of René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, and other major figures of the scientific revolution. A series of extant notebooks shows that by 1664 Newton had begun to master Descartes' Géométrie and other forms of mathematics far in advance of Euclid's Elements. Barrow, himself a gifted mathematician, had yet to appreciate Newton's genius.

In 1665 Newton took his bachelor's degree at Cambridge without honors or distinction. Since the university was closed for the next two years because of plague, Newton returned to Woolsthorpe in midyear. There, in the following 18 months, he made a series of original contributions to science. As he later recalled, 'All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in my prime of age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since.' In mathematics Newton conceived his 'method of fluxions' (infinitesimal calculus), laid the foundations for his theory of light and color, and achieved significant insight into the problem of planetary motion, insights that eventually led to the publication of his Principia (1687).

In April 1667, Newton returned to Cambridge and, against stiff odds, was elected a minor fellow at Trinity. Success followed good fortune. In the next year he became a senior fellow upon taking his master of arts degree, and in 1669, before he had reached his 27th birthday, he succeeded Isaac Barrow as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The duties of this appointment offered Newton the opportunity to organize the results of his earlier optical researches, and in 1672, shortly after his election to the Royal Society, he communicated his first public paper, a brilliant but no less controversial study on the nature of color.

In the first of a series of bitter disputes, Newton locked horns with the society's celebrated curator of experiments, the bright but brittle Robert Hooke. The ensuing controversy, which continued until 1678, established a pattern in Newton's behavior. After an initial skirmish, he quietly retreated. Nonetheless, in 1675 Newton ventured another yet another paper, which again drew lightning, this time charged with claims that he had plagiarized from Hooke. The charges were entirely ungrounded. Twice burned, Newton withdrew.

In 1678, Newton suffered a serious emotional breakdown, and in the following year his mother died. Newton's response was to cut off contact with others and engross himself in alchemical research. These studies, once an embarrassment to Newton scholars, were not misguided musings but rigorous investigations into the hidden forces of nature. Newton's alchemical studies opened theoretical avenues not found in the mechanical philosophy, the world view that sustained his early work. While the mechanical philosophy reduced all phenomena to the impact of matter in motion, the alchemical tradition upheld the possibility of attraction and repulsion at the particulate level. Newton's later insights in celestial mechanics can be traced in part to his alchemical interests. By combining action-at-a-distance and mathematics, Newton transformed the mechanical philosophy by adding a mysterious but no less measurable quantity, gravitational force.

In 1666, as tradition has it, Newton observed the fall of an apple in his garden at Woolsthorpe, later recalling, 'In the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon.' Newton's memory was not accurate. In fact, all evidence suggests that the concept of universal gravitation did not spring full-blown from Newton's head in 1666 but was nearly 20 years in gestation. Ironically, Robert Hooke helped give it life. In November 1679, Hooke initiated an exchange of letters that bore on the question of planetary motion. Although Newton hastily broke off the correspondence, Hooke's letters provided a conceptual link between central attraction and a force falling off with the square of distance. Sometime in early 1680, Newton appears to have quietly drawn his own conclusions.

Meanwhile, in the coffeehouses of London, Hooke, Edmund Halley, and Christopher Wren struggled unsuccessfully with the problem of planetary motion. Finally, in August 1684, Halley paid a legendary visit to Newton in Cambridge, hoping for an answer to his riddle: What type of curve does a planet describe in its orbit around the sun, assuming an inverse square law of attraction? When Halley posed the question, Newton's ready response was 'an ellipse.' When asked how he knew it was an ellipse Newton replied that he had already calculated it. Although Newton had privately answered one of the riddles of the universe--and he alone possessed the mathematical ability to do so--he had characteristically misplaced the calculation. After further discussion he promised to send Halley a fresh calculation forthwith. In partial fulfillment of his promise Newton produced his De Motu of 1684. From that seed, after nearly two years of intense labor, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica appeared. Arguably, it is the most important book published in the history of science. But if the Principia was Newton's brainchild, Hooke and Halley were nothing less than midwives.

Although the Principia was well received, its future was cast in doubt before it appeared. Here again Hooke was center stage, this time claiming (not without justification) that his letters of 1679-1680 earned him a role in Newton's discovery. But to no effect. Newton was so furious with Hooke that he threatened to suppress Book III of the Principia altogether, finally denouncing science as 'an impertinently litigious lady.' Newton calmed down and finally consented to publication. But instead of acknowledging Hooke's contribution Newton systematically deleted every possible mention of Hooke's name. Newton's hatred for Hooke was consumptive. Indeed, Newton later withheld publication of his Opticks (1704) and virtually withdrew from the Royal Society until Hooke's death in 1703.

After publishing the Principia, Newton became more involved in public affairs. In 1689 he was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament, and during his stay in London he became acquainted with John Locke, the famous philosopher, and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a brilliant young mathematician who became an intimate friend. In 1693, however, Newton suffered a severe nervous disorder, not unlike his breakdown of 1677-1678. The cause is open to interpretation: overwork; the stress of controversy; the unexplained loss of friendship with Fatio; or perhaps chronic mercury poisoning, the result of nearly three decades of alchemical research. Each factor may have played a role. We only know Locke and Samuel Pepys received strange and seemingly deranged letters that prompted concern for Newton's 'discomposure in head, or mind, or both.' Whatever the cause, shortly after his recovery Newton sought a new position in London. In 1696, with the help of Charles Montague, a fellow of Trinity and later earl of Halifax, Newton was appointed Warden and then Master of the Mint. His new position proved 'most proper,' and he left Cambridge for London without regret.

During his London years Newton enjoyed power and worldly success. His position at the Mint assured a comfortable social and economic status, and he was an active and able administrator. After the death of Hooke in 1703, Newton was elected president of the Royal Society and was annually reelected until his death. In 1704 he published his second major work, the Opticks, based largely on work completed decades before. He was knighted in 1705.

Although his creative years had passed, Newton continued to exercise a profound influence on the development of science. In effect, the Royal Society was Newton's instrument, and he played it to his personal advantage. His tenure as president has been described as tyrannical and autocratic, and his control over the lives and careers of younger disciples was all but absolute. Newton could not abide contradiction or controversy - his quarrels with Hooke provide singular examples. But in later disputes, as president of the Royal Society, Newton marshaled all the forces at his command. For example, he published Flamsteed's astronomical observations - the labor of a lifetime - without the author's permission; and in his priority dispute with Leibniz concerning the calculus, Newton enlisted younger men to fight his war of words, while behind the lines he secretly directed charge and countercharge. In the end, the actions of the Society were little more than extensions of Newton's will, and until his death he dominated the landscape of science without rival. He died in London on March 20, 1727 (March 31, New Style).


Scientific Achievements
Mathematics - The origin of Newton's interest in mathematics can be traced to his undergraduate days at Cambridge. Here Newton became acquainted with a number of contemporary works, including an edition of Descartes Géométrie, John Wallis' Arithmetica infinitorum, and other works by prominent mathematicians. But between 1664 and his return to Cambridge after the plague, Newton made fundamental contributions to analytic geometry, algebra, and calculus. Specifically, he discovered the binomial theorem, new methods for expansion of infinite series, and his 'direct and inverse method of fluxions.' As the term implies, fluxional calculus is a method for treating changing or flowing quantities. Hence, a 'fluxion' represents the rate of change of a 'fluent'--a continuously changing or flowing quantity, such as distance, area, or length. In essence, fluxions were the first words in a new language of physics.

Newton's creative years in mathematics extended from 1664 to roughly the spring of 1696. Although his predecessors had anticipated various elements of the calculus, Newton generalized and integrated these insights while developing new and more rigorous methods. The essential elements of his thought were presented in three tracts, the first appearing in a privately circulated treatise, De analysi (On Analysis),which went unpublished until 1711. In 1671, Newton developed a more complete account of his method of infinitesimals, which appeared nine years after his death as Methodus fluxionum et serierum infinitarum (The Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series, 1736). In addition to these works, Newton wrote four smaller tracts, two of which were appended to his Opticks of 1704.

Newton and Leibniz. Next to its brilliance, the most characteristic feature of Newton's mathematical career was delayed publication. Newton's priority dispute with Leibniz is a celebrated but unhappy example. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Newton's most capable adversary, began publishing papers on calculus in 1684, almost 20 years after Newton's discoveries commenced. The result of this temporal discrepancy was a bitter dispute that raged for nearly two decades. The ordeal began with rumors that Leibniz had borrowed ideas from Newton and rushed them into print. It ended with charges of dishonesty and outright plagiarism. The Newton-Leibniz priority dispute--which eventually extended into philosophical areas concerning the nature of God and the universe--ultimately turned on the ambiguity of priority. It is now generally agreed that Newton and Leibniz each developed the calculus independently, and hence they are considered co-discoverers. But while Newton was the first to conceive and develop his method of fluxions, Leibniz was the first to publish his independent results.

Optics. Newton's optical research, like his mathematical investigations, began during his undergraduate years at Cambridge. But unlike his mathematical work, Newton's studies in optics quickly became public. Shortly after his election to the Royal Society in 1671, Newton published his first paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This paper, and others that followed, drew on his undergraduate researches as well as his Lucasian lectures at Cambridge.

In 1665-1666, Newton performed a number of experiments on the composition of light. Guided initially by the writings of Kepler and Descartes, Newton's main discovery was that visible (white) light is heterogeneous--that is, white light is composed of colors that can be considered primary. Through a brilliant series of experiments, Newton demonstrated that prisms separate rather than modify white light. Contrary to the theories of Aristotle and other ancients, Newton held that white light is secondary and heterogeneous, while the separate colors are primary and homogeneous. Of perhaps equal importance, Newton also demonstrated that the colors of the spectrum, once thought to be qualities, correspond to an observed and quantifiable 'degree of Refrangibility.'

The Crucial Experiment. Newton's most famous experiment, the experimentum crucis, demonstrated his theory of the composition of light. Briefly, in a dark room Newton allowed a narrow beam of sunlight to pass from a small hole in a window shutter through a prism, thus breaking the white light into an oblong spectrum on a board. Then, through a small aperture in the board, Newton selected a given color (for example, red) to pass through yet another aperture to a second prism, through which it was refracted onto a second board. What began as ordinary white light was thus dispersed through two prisms.

Newton's 'crucial experiment' demonstrated that a selected color leaving the first prism could not be separated further by the second prism. The selected beam remained the same color, and its angle of refraction was constant throughout. Newton concluded that white light is a 'Heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible Rays' and that colors of the spectrum cannot themselves be individually modified, but are 'Original and connate properties.'

Newton probably conducted a number of his prism experiments at Cambridge before the plague forced him to return to Woolsthorpe. His Lucasian lectures, later published in part as Optical Lectures (1728), supplement other researches published in the Society's Transactions dating from February 1672.

The Opticks. The Opticks of 1704, which first appeared in English, is Newton's most comprehensive and readily accessible work on light and color. In Newton's words, the purpose of the Opticks was 'not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments.' Divided into three books, the Opticks moves from definitions, axioms, propositions, and theorems to proof by experiment. A subtle blend of mathematical reasoning and careful observation, the Opticks became the model for experimental physics in the 18th century.

The Corpuscular Theory. But the Opticks contained more than experimental results. During the 17th century it was widely held that light, like sound, consisted of a wave or undulatory motion, and Newton's major critics in the field of optics--Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens--were articulate spokesmen for this theory. But Newton disagreed. Although his views evolved over time, Newton's theory of light was essentially corpuscular, or particulate. In effect, since light (unlike sound) travels in straight lines and casts a sharp shadow, Newton suggested that light was composed of discrete particles moving in straight lines in the manner of inertial bodies. Further, since experiment had shown that the properties of the separate colors of light were constant and unchanging, so too, Newton reasoned, was the stuff of light itself-- particles.

At various points in his career Newton in effect combined the particle and wave theories of light. In his earliest dispute with Hooke and again in his Opticks of 1717, Newton considered the possibility of an ethereal substance--an all-pervasive elastic material more subtle than air--that would provide a medium for the propagation of waves or vibrations. From the outset Newton rejected the basic wave models of Hooke and Huygens, perhaps because they overlooked the subtlety of periodicity.

The question of periodicity arose with the phenomenon known as 'Newton's rings.' In book II of the Opticks, Newton describes a series of experiments concerning the colors of thin films. His most remarkable observation was that light passing through a convex lens pressed against a flat glass plate produces concentric colored rings (Newton's rings) with alternating dark rings. Newton attempted to explain this phenomenon by employing the particle theory in conjunction with his hypothesis of 'fits of easy transmission [refraction] and reflection.' After making careful measurements, Newton found that the thickness of the film of air between the lens (of a given curvature) and the glass corresponded to the spacing of the rings. If dark rings occurred at thicknesses of 0, 2, 4, 6... , then the colored rings corresponded to an odd number progression, 1, 3, 5, 7, .... Although Newton did not speculate on the cause of this periodicity, his initial association of 'Newton's rings' with vibrations in a medium suggests his willingness to modify but not abandon the particle theory.

The Opticks was Newton's most widely read work. Following the first edition, Latin versions appeared in 1706 and 1719, and second and third English editions in 1717 and 1721. Perhaps the most provocative part of the Opticks is the section known as the 'Queries,' which Newton placed at the end of the book. Here he posed questions and ventured opinions on the nature of light, matter, and the forces of nature.

Mechanics. Newton's research in dynamics falls into three major periods: the plague years 1664-1666, the investigations of 1679-1680, following Hooke's correspondence, and the period 1684-1687, following Halley's visit to Cambridge. The gradual evolution of Newton's thought over these two decades illustrates the complexity of his achievement as well as the prolonged character of scientific 'discovery.'

While the myth of Newton and the apple maybe true, the traditional account of Newton and gravity is not. To be sure, Newton's early thoughts on gravity began in Woolsthorpe, but at the time of his famous 'moon test' Newton had yet to arrive at the concept of gravitational attraction. Early manuscripts suggest that in the mid-1660's, Newton did not think in terms of the moon's central attraction toward the earth but rather of the moon's centrifugal tendency to recede. Under the influence of the mechanical philosophy, Newton had yet to consider the possibility of action- at-a-distance; nor was he aware of Kepler's first two planetary hypotheses. For historical, philosophical, and mathematical reasons, Newton assumed the moon's centrifugal 'endeavour' to be equal and opposite to some unknown mechanical constraint. For the same reasons, he also assumed a circular orbit and an inverse square relation. The latter was derived from Kepler's third hypothesis (the square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun), the formula for centrifugal force (the centrifugal force on a revolving body is proportional to the square of its velocity and inversely proportional to the radius of its orbit), and the assumption of circular orbits.

The next step was to test the inverse square relation against empirical data. To do this Newton, in effect, compared the restraint on the moon's 'endeavour' to recede with the observed rate of acceleration of falling objects on earth. The problem was to obtain accurate data. Assuming Galileo's estimate that the moon is 60 earth radii from the earth, the restraint on the moon should have been 1/3600 (1/602) of the gravitational acceleration on earth. But Newton's estimate of the size of the earth was too low, and his calculation showed the effect on the moon to be about 1/4000 of that on earth. As Newton later described it, the moon test answered 'pretty nearly.' But the figures for the moon were not exact, and Newton abandoned the problem.

In late 1679 and early 1680 an exchange of letters with Hooke renewed Newton's interest. In November 1679, nearly 15 years after the moon test, Hooke wrote Newton concerning a hypothesis presented in his Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth (1674). Here Hooke proposed that planetary orbits result from a tangential motion and 'an attractive motion towards the centrall body.' In later letters Hooke further specified a central attracting force that fell off with the square of distance. As a result of this exchange Newton rejected his earlier notion of centrifugal tendencies in favor of central attraction. Hooke's letters provided crucial insight. But in retrospect, if Hooke's intuitive power seems unparalleled, it never approached Newton's mathematical power in principle or in practice.

When Halley visited Cambridge in 1684, Newton had already demonstrated the relation between an inverse square attraction and elliptical orbits. To Halley's 'joy and amazement,' Newton apparently succeeded where he and others failed. With this, Halley's role shifted, and he proceeded to guide Newton toward publication. Halley personally financed the Principia and saw it through the press to publication in July 1687.

The Principia. Newton's masterpiece is divided into three books. Book I of the Principia begins with eight definitions and three axioms, the latter now known as Newton's laws of motion. No discussion of Newton would be complete without them: (1) Every body continues in its state of rest, or uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it (inertia). (2) The change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and is made in the direction of the straight line in which that force is impressed (F = ma). (3) To every action there is always an opposed and equal reaction. Following these axioms, Newton proceeds step by step with propositions, theorems, and problems.

In Book II of the Principia, Newton treats the Motion of bodies through resisting mediums as well as the motion of fluids themselves. Since Book II was not part of Newton's initial outline, it has traditionally seemed somewhat out of place. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that near the end of Book II (Section IX) Newton demonstrates that the vortices invoked by Descartes to explain planetary motion could not be self-sustaining; nor was the vortex theory consistent with Kepler's three planetary rules. The purpose of Book II then becomes clear. After discrediting Descartes' system, Newton concludes: 'How these motions are performed in free space without vortices, may be understood by the first book; and I shall now more fully treat of it in the following book.'

In Book III, subtitled the System of the World, Newton extended his three laws of motion to the frame of the world, finally demonstrating 'that there is a power of gravity tending to all bodies, proportional to the several quantities of matter which they contain.' Newton's law of universal gravitation states that F = G Mm/R2; that is, that all matter is mutually attracted with a force (F) proportional to the product of their masses (Mm) and inversely proportional to the square of distance (R2) between them. G is a constant whose value depends on the units used for mass and distance. To demonstrate the power of his theory, Newton used gravitational attraction to explain the motion of the planets and their moons, the precession of equinoxes, the action of the tides, and the motion of comets. In sum, Newton's universe united heaven and earth with a single set of laws. It became the physical and intellectual foundation of the modern world view.

Perhaps the most powerful and influential scientific treatise ever published, the Principia appeared in two further editions during Newton's lifetime, in 1713 and 1726.

Other Researches. Throughout his career Newton conducted research in theology and history with the same passion that he pursued alchemy and science. Although some historians have neglected Newton's nonscientific writings, there is little doubt of his devotion to these subjects, as his manuscripts amply attest. Newton's writings on theological and biblical subjects alone amount to about 1.3 million words, the equivalent of 20 of today's standard length books. Although these writings say little about Newtonian science, they tell us a good deal about Isaac Newton.

Newton's final gesture before death was to refuse the sacrament, a decision of some consequence in the 18th century. Although Newton was dutifully raised in the Protestant tradition his mature views on theology were neither Protestant, traditional, nor orthodox. In the privacy of his thoughts and writings, Newton rejected a host of doctrines he considered mystical, irrational, or superstitious. In a word, he was a Unitarian.

Newton's research outside of science--in theology, prophecy, and history--was a quest for coherence and unity. His passion was to unite knowledge and belief, to reconcile the Book of Nature with the Book of Scripture. But for all the elegance of his thought and the boldness of his quest, the riddle of Isaac Newton remained. In the end, Newton is as much an enigma to us as he was, no doubt, to himself.

Robert A. Hatch
University of Florida

EINSTEIN BIO-DATA

Albert Einstein (German pronunciation (help·info)) (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for the theory of relativity (and specifically mass-energy equivalence, E = mc2). 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.”[1]

Einstein’s many contributions to physics include his special theory of relativity, which reconciled mechanics with electromagnetism, and his general theory of relativity which extended the principle of relativity to non-uniform motion, creating a new theory of gravitation. His other contributions include relativistic cosmology, capillary action, critical opalescence, classical problems of statistical mechanics and their application to quantum theory, an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules, atomic transition probabilities, the quantum theory of a monatomic gas, thermal properties of light with low radiation density (which laid the foundation for the photon theory), a theory of radiation including stimulated emission, the conception of a unified field theory, and the geometrization of physics.

Works by Albert Einstein include more than fifty scientific papers but also non-scientific works, including About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein. (1930), “Why War?” (1933, co-authored by Sigmund Freud), The World As I See It (1934), Out of My Later Years (1950), and a book on science for the general reader, The Evolution of Physics (1938, co-authored by Leopold Infeld).[2]

In 1999 Einstein was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Century”, and a poll of prominent physicists named him the greatest physicist of all time.[3] In popular culture the name “Einstein” has become synonymous with genius.Contents [hide]

Youth and schooling
Young Albert before the Einsteins moved from Germany to Italy.

Albert Einstein was born into a Jewish family in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman. His mother was Pauline Einstein, (née Koch).

Although Albert had early speech difficulties, he was a top student in elementary school (Rosenkranz 2005, p. 29).[4]

In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded a company, Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, that manufactured electrical equipment, providing the first lighting for the Oktoberfest and cabling for the Munich suburb of Schwabing. The Einsteins were not observant, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school. At his mother’s insistence, he took violin lessons, and although he disliked them and eventually quit, he would later take great pleasure in Mozart’s violin sonatas.

When Albert was five, his father showed him a pocket compass. Albert realized that something in empty space was moving the needle and later stated that this experience made “a deep and lasting impression”.[5] As he grew, Albert built models and mechanical devices for fun, and began to show a talent for mathematics.

In 1889, a family friend named Max Talmud (later: Talmey), a medical student,[6] introduced the ten-year-old Albert to key science and philosophy texts, including Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid’s Elements (Einstein called it the “holy little geometry book”).[6] From Euclid, Albert began to understand deductive reasoning (integral to theoretical physics), and by the age of twelve, he learned Euclidean geometry from a school booklet. He soon began to investigate calculus.

In his early teens, Albert attended the new and progressive Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Albert clashed with authorities and resented the school regimen. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning.

In 1894, when Einstein was fifteen, his father’s business failed and the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, after a few months, to Pavia. During this time, Albert wrote his first “scientific work”, “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”.[7] Albert had been left behind in Munich to finish high school, but in the spring of 1895, he withdrew to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor’s note.

Rather than completing high school Albert decided to apply directly to the ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Without a school certificate, he was required to take an entrance examination. He did not pass. Einstein wrote that it was in that same year, at age 16, that he first performed his famous thought experiment, visualizing traveling alongside a beam of light.[citation needed]

The Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school. While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with the family’s daughter, Sofia Marie-Jeanne Amanda Winteler, called “Marie”. (Albert’s sister, Maja, his confidant, later married Paul Winteler.)[8] In Aarau, Albert studied Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. In 1896, he graduated at age 17, renounced his German citizenship to avoid military service (with his father’s approval), and finally enrolled in the mathematics program at ETH. On February 21, 1901, he gained Swiss citizenship, which he never revoked.[9] Marie moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post.

In 1896, Mileva Marić also enrolled at ETH, the only woman studying mathematics. During the next few years, Einstein and Marić’s friendship developed into romance. Einstein’s mother objected because she thought Marić too old, not Jewish and “physically defective”.[10] Einstein and Marić had a daughter, Lieserl Einstein, born in early 1902.[11] Her fate is unknown.

In 1900, Einstein’s friend Michele Besso introduced him to the work of Ernst Mach. The next year, Einstein published a paper in the prestigious Annalen der Physik on the capillary forces of a straw (Einstein 1901). He graduated from ETH with a teaching diploma.[citation needed]

The patent office
The ‘Einsteinhaus’ in Bern where Einstein lived with Mileva on the First floor during his Annus Mirabilis

After graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. After almost two years of searching, a former classmate’s father helped him get a job in Bern, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property,[12] the patent office, as an assistant examiner. His responsibility was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. He learned to discern the essence of applications despite applicants’ sometimes poor descriptions, and the director taught him “to express [him]self correctly”.[citation needed] Einstein occasionally corrected design errors while evaluating patent applications. In 1903, Einstein’s position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he “fully mastered machine technology”.[13]

Einstein’s college friend, Michele Besso, also worked at the patent office. With friends they met in Bern, they formed a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy, jokingly named “The Olympia Academy”. Their readings included Poincaré, Mach and Hume, who influenced Einstein’s scientific and philosophical outlook.[14]

While this period at the patent office has often been cited as a waste of Einstein’s talents,[15] or as a temporary job with no connection to his interests in physics,[16] the historian of science Peter Galison has argued that Einstein’s work there was connected to his later interests. Much of that work related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time: two technical problems of the day that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time.[13][14]

Einstein married Mileva Marić on January 6, 1903, and their relationship was, for a time, a personal and intellectual partnership. In a letter to her, Einstein wrote of Mileva as “a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am.”[17] There has been debate about whether Marić influenced Einstein’s work; most historians do not think she made major contributions, however.[18][19][20] On May 14, 1904, Albert and Mileva’s first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born. Their second son, Eduard Einstein, was born on July 28, 1910.

The Annus Mirabilis
Albert Einstein, 1905

In 1905, while working in the patent office, Einstein published four times in the Annalen der Physik. These are the papers that history has come to call the Annus Mirabilis Papers:
His paper on the particulate nature of light put forward the idea that certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect, could be simply understood from the postulate that light interacts with matter as discrete “packets” (quanta) of energy, an idea that had been introduced by Max Planck in 1900 as a purely mathematical manipulation, and which seemed to contradict contemporary wave theories of light. This was the only work of Einstein’s that he himself pronounced as “revolutionary”. (Einstein 1905a)
His paper on Brownian motion explained the random movement of very small objects as direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory. (Einstein 1905c)
His paper on electrodynamics of moving bodies proposed the radical theory of special relativity, which showed that the independence of an observer’s state of motion on the observed speed of light requires fundamental changes to the notion of simultaneity, with consequences such as clocks appearing to slow down and rulers contract when in 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. (Einstein 1905d)
In his paper on the equivalence of matter and energy (previously considered to be distinct concepts), Einstein deduced from his equations of special relativity what would later become the most famous expression in all of science: E = mc2, suggesting that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy.(Einstein 1905e)

All four papers are today recognized as tremendous achievements—and hence 1905 is known as Einstein’s “Wonderful Year”. At the time, however, they were not noticed by most physicists as being important, and many of those who did notice them rejected them outright. Some of this work—such as the theory of light quanta—would remain controversial for years.[21] (Pais 1982, pp. 382-386)

At the age of 26, having studied under Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics, Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. His dissertation was entitled “A new determination of molecular dimensions.” (Einstein 1905b)

General relativity

In 1906, the patent office promoted Einstein to Technical Examiner Second Class, but he was not giving up on academia. In 1908, he became a privatdozent at the University of Bern (Pais 1982, p. 522). In 1910, he wrote a paper on critical opalescence that described the cumulative effect of light scattered by individual molecules in the atmosphere, i.e. why the sky is blue (Levenson 2005).

During 1909, Einstein published “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. In this 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 term itself was introduced by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926). Even more importantly, Einstein showed that light must be simultaneously a wave and a particle.[citation needed]

In 1911, Einstein became an associate professor at the University of Zurich. However, shortly afterward, he accepted a full professorship at the Charles University of Prague. While in Prague, Einstein published a paper about the effects of gravity on light, specifically the gravitational redshift and the gravitational deflection of light. The paper appealed to astronomers to find ways of detecting the deflection during a solar eclipse.[22] German astronomer Erwin Freundlich publicized Einstein’s challenge to scientists around the world (Crelinsten 2006).

In 1912, Einstein returned to Switzerland to accept a professorship at his alma mater, the ETH. There he met mathematician Marcel Grossmann who introduced him to Riemannian geometry, and at the recommendation of Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita, Einstein began exploring the usefulness of general covariance (essentially the use of tensors) for his gravitational theory. Although for a while Einstein thought that there were problems with that approach, he later returned to it and by late 1915 had published his general theory of relativity in the form that is still used today (Einstein 1915). This theory explains gravitation as distortion of the structure of spacetime by matter, affecting the inertial motion of other matter.

After many relocations, Mileva established a permanent home with the children in Zurich in 1914, just before the start of World War I. Einstein continued on alone to Germany, more precisely to Berlin, where he became a member of the Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. As part of the arrangements for his new position, he also became a professor at the University of Berlin, although with a special clause freeing him from most teaching obligations. From 1914 to 1932 he was also director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physics (Kant 2005).

During World War I, the speeches and writings of Central Powers scientists were only available to Central Powers academics for national security reasons. Some of Einstein’s work did reach the United Kingdom and the USA through the efforts of the Austrian Paul Ehrenfest and physicists in the Netherlands, especially 1902 Nobel Prize-winner Hendrik Lorentz and Willem de Sitter of the Leiden University. After the war ended, Einstein maintained his relationship with the Leiden University, accepting a contract as a buitengewoon hoogleraar; he travelled to Holland regularly to lecture there between 1920 and 1946.[citation needed]

In 1917, Einstein published an article in Physikalische Zeitschrift that proposed the possibility of stimulated emission, the physical technique that makes possible the laser (Einstein 1917b). He also published a paper introducing a new notion, a cosmological constant, into the general theory of relativity in an attempt to model the behavior of the entire universe (Einstein 1917a).

1917 was the year astronomers began taking Einstein up on his 1911 challenge from Prague. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California, USA, published a solar spectroscopic analysis that showed no gravitational redshift (Crelinsten 2006, pp. 103-108). In 1918, the Lick Observatory, also in California, announced that they too had disproven Einstein’s prediction, although their findings were not published (Crelinsten 2006, pp. 114–119, 126–140).
One of the 1919 eclipse photographs taken during Arthur Eddington’s expedition, which confirmed Einstein’s predictions of the gravitational bending of light.

However, in May of 1919, a team led by British astronomer Arthur Eddington claimed to have confirmed Einstein’s prediction of gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun while photographing a solar eclipse in Brazil and Principe (Crelinsten 2006). On November 7, 1919, leading British newspaper The Times printed a banner headline that read: “Revolution in Science – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian Ideas Overthrown”.[23] In an interview Nobel laureate Max Born praised general relativity as the “greatest feat of human thinking about nature”;[24] fellow laureate Paul Dirac was quoted saying it was “probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made” (Schmidhuber 2006).

In their excitement, the world media made Albert Einstein world-famous. Ironically, later examination of the photographs taken on the Eddington expedition showed that the experimental uncertainty was of about the same magnitude as the effect Eddington claimed to have demonstrated, and in 1962 a British expedition concluded that the method used was inherently unreliable.[23] The deflection of light during an eclipse has, however, been more accurately measured (and confirmed) by later observations.[citation needed]

There was some resentment toward the newcomer Einstein’s fame in the scientific community, notably among German physicists, who would later start the Deutsche Physik (German Physics) movement (Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. xxi).[25]

Having lived apart for five years, Einstein and Mileva divorced on February 14, 1919. On June 2 of that year, Einstein married Elsa Löwenthal, who had nursed him through an illness. Elsa was Albert’s first cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally). Together the Einsteins raised Margot and Ilse, Elsa’s daughters from her first marriage.[citation needed]

The Nobel Prize
Einstein, 1921

In 1921, Einstein 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”. 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.” (Einstein 1923)

Einstein travelled to New York City in the United States for the first time on April 2, 1921. When asked where he got his scientific ideas, Einstein explained that he believed scientific work best proceeds from an examination of physical reality and a search for underlying axioms, with consistent explanations that apply in all instances and avoid contradicting each other. He also recommended theories with visualizable results (Einstein 1954).[26]
See also: History of special relativity
Max Planck presents Einstein with the Max-Planck medal, Berlin June 28 1929

Unified field theory

Einstein’s research after general relativity consisted primarily of a long series of attempts to generalize his theory of gravitation in order to unify and simplify the fundamental laws of physics, particularly gravitation and electromagnetism. In 1950, he described this “Unified Field Theory” in a Scientific American article entitled “On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation” (Einstein 1950).

Although he continued to be lauded for his work in theoretical physics, Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research, and his attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. In his pursuit of a unification of the fundamental forces, he ignored mainstream developments in physics (and vice versa), most notably the strong and weak nuclear forces, which were not well understood until many years after Einstein’s death.[citation needed] Einstein’s goal of unifying the laws of physics under a single model survives in the current drive for the grand unification theory.

Collaboration and conflict

Bose–Einstein statistics

In 1924, Einstein received a statistical model from Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose which showed that light could be understood as a gas. Bose’s statistics applied to some atoms as well as to the proposed light particles, and Einstein published an article in the Zeitschrift für Physik describing Bose’s model and its implications, among them the Bose–Einstein condensate phenomenon that should appear at very low temperatures.[citation needed] It wasn’t until 1995 that the first such condensate was produced experimentally by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman using ultra-cooling equipment built at the NIST-JILA laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[citation needed] Bose–Einstein statistics are now used to describe the behaviors of any assembly of “bosons”.[citation needed] Einstein’s sketches for this project may be seen in the Einstein Archive in the library of the Leiden University (Instituut-Lorentz 2005).

Boltzmann distribution

Einstein worked with Erwin Schrödinger on a refinement of the Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model, although he declined to have his name included on the paper.[citation needed]

The Einstein refrigerator

In 1926, Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd, a Hungarian physicist who later worked on the Manhattan Project and is credited with the discovery of the chain reaction, co-invented (and in 1930, patented) the Einstein refrigerator, revolutionary for having no moving parts and using only heat, not ice, as an input (Goettling 1998).[27]
Einstein and Niels Bohr. Photo taken by Paul Ehrenfest during their visit to Leiden in December 1925.

Bohr vs. Einstein

As quantum theory extended to quantum mechanics, Einstein began to object to the Copenhagen Interpretation developed by physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. The public debate between Einstein and Bohr lasted for years. In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein wrote: “I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.” (Einstein 1969)[28] Bohr told Born to tell Einstein: “Stop telling God what to do.”[citation needed]

Einstein’s disagreement with Bohr revolved around scientific determinism. Although Bohr rebutted all of Einstein’s specific arguments against the prevailing interpretation of quantum theory, Einstein was never satisfied by its intrinsically incomplete description of nature. In 1935, he collaborated with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen on further exploration of his concerns, which became known as the EPR paradox.[citation needed]

Religious views

The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein’s position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein “I believe in Spinoza’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 mankind.”(Brian 1996, p. 127)

By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[29] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[30] In this he says that: “a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value … regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation…In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects.” He argues that conflicts between science and religion “have all sprung from fatal errors.” However “even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other” there are “strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies”… “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind …a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist.” However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that “neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted…by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.” (Einstein 1940, pp. 605-607)

Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[31] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[32]

The most thorough exploration of Einstein’s views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion.(Jammer 1999)

Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995).

Politics
Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore with Einstein during their widely-publicized July 14, 1930 conversation

With increasing public demands, his involvement in political, humanitarian and academic projects in various countries and his new acquaintances with scholars and political figures from around the world, Einstein was less able to get the productive isolation that, according to biographer Ronald W. Clark, he needed in order to work (Clark 1971). As “the smartest man alive”[citation needed] Einstein found himself called on, like Solomon, to give conclusive judgments on matters that had nothing to do with theoretical physics or mathematics. He was not a timid man, and he was a man who was aware of the world around him, with no illusion that ignoring politics would make world events fade away. His very visible position allowed him to speak and write frankly, even provocatively, at a time when many people of conscience could only flee to the underground or keep doubts about developments within their own movements to themselves for fear of internecine fighting. Einstein flouted the ascendant Nazi movement, tried to be a voice of moderation in the tumultuous formation of the State of Israel and braved anti-communist politics and resistance to the civil rights movement in the United States. He became honorary president of the League against Imperialism created in Brussels in 1927.

Nazism
Albert Einstein wearing a kippah and holding a violin during a service in a Berlin Synagogue, 1930

Einstein was a cultural zionist. Einstein was a co-founder of the liberal German Democratic Party.[citation needed] In 1931, The Macmillan Company published About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein.[33] Querido Ferlag, an Amsterdam publishing house, collected eleven of Einstein’s essays into a 1933 book entitled Mein Weltbild, translated to English as The World as I See It; Einstein’s forward dedicates the collection “to the Jews of Germany”.[34] In the face of Germany’s rising militarism Einstein wrote and spoke for peace (American Museum of Natural History 2002).[35]

In January of 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. One of the first actions of Hitler’s administration was the “Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums” (the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service) which removed Jews and politically suspect government employees (including university professors) from their jobs, unless they had demonstrated their loyalty to Germany by serving in World War I. In December of 1932, Einstein had prudently travelled to the USA to become a guest lecturer at Abraham Flexner’s newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein once again renounced his German citizenship and applied for permanent residency in the United States.[citation needed]
Albert Einstein receiving his certificate of American citizenship from Judge Phillip Forman.

The U.S. was not entirely a safe haven for Einstein, however. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s file on him grew to 1,427 pages. Many of the documents in the file were sent to the FBI by concerned citizens, some objecting to his immigration and others asking the FBI to protect him (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2005). Einstein became an American citizen in 1940 although he retained Swiss citizenship.[citation needed]

The Einstein family bought a house in Princeton (where Elsa died in 1936), and Einstein remained an integral contributor to the Institute for Advanced Study until his death in 1955. During the 1930s and into World War II, Einstein wrote affidavits recommending United States visas for a huge number of Europeans, raised money for Zionist organizations and was in part responsible for the formation, in 1933, of the International Rescue Committee (Princeton Online 1995).[36]

Meanwhile, a campaign to eliminate Einstein’s work from the German lexicon as unacceptable “Jewish physics” was led by Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark.[citation needed] Deutsche Physik activists published pamphlets and even textbooks denigrating Einstein; instructors who taught his theories were blacklisted, including Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg who had debated quantum probability with Bohr and Einstein. Einstein’s scientific papers were among those destroyed in public book burnings on May 10, 1933.[citation needed]
In 1946 Einstein and Leó Szilárd recreate the writing of their 1939 letter to President Roosevelt.

In 1939, Leo Szilárd and Einstein wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning that the Third Reich might be developing nuclear weapons based on their own research. Roosevelt formed a committee to investigate the matter and granted Enrico Fermi’s University of Chicago neutron experiments $6,000, the first steps toward the Manhattan Project.[citation needed] According to chemist and author Linus Pauling, Einstein later expressed regret about the Szilárd-Einstein letter.[37] Within five years, the United States created its own nuclear weapons, but used them on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Zionism
Albert Einstein seen here with his wife Elsa Einstein and Zionist leaders, including future President of Israel Chaim Weizmann, his wife Dr. Vera Weizmann, Menachem Ussishkin and Ben-Zion Mossinson on arrival in New York City in 1921.

Despite his years of Zionist efforts, Einstein publicly stated reservations about the proposal to partition the British-supervised British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish countries. In a 1938 speech, “Our Debt to Zionism”, he said: “I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain - especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state.” (Rowe & Schulmann 2007) The United Nations did divide the mandate, demarcating the borders of several new countries including the State of Israel, and war broke out immediately. Einstein was one of the authors of a 1948 letter to the New York Times criticizing Menachem Begin’s Revisionist Herut (Freedom) Party for the Deir Yassin massacre (Einstein et al. 1948). Einstein served on the Board of Governors of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, built in 1918. The Board had also included psychologist Sigmund Freud and philosopher Martin Buber, as well as chemist Chaim Weizmann who became the first President of Israel.[citation needed] In his Will of 1950, Einstein bequeathed literary rights to his writings to The Hebrew University, where many of his original documents are held in the Albert Einstein Archives (Albert Einstein Archives 2007).

When President Weizmann died in 1952, Einstein was asked to be Israel’s second president but he declined . He wrote: “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.” (Princeton Online 1995)

Cold War era
Einstein and Solomon Mikhoels, the chairman of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, in 1943.

When he was a visible figure working against the rise of Nazism, Einstein had sought help and developed working relationships in both the West and what was to become the Soviet bloc. After World War II, enmity between the former allies became a very serious issue for people with international resumes. To make things worse, during the first days of McCarthyism Einstein was writing about a single world government; it was at this time that he wrote, “I do not know how the third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what the they will use in the Fourth–rocks!” (Calaprice 2005, p. 173)[38] In a 1949 Monthly Review article entitled “Why Socialism?” Albert Einstein described a chaotic capitalist society, a source of evil to be overcome, as the “predatory phase of human development” (Einstein 1949). With Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, Einstein lobbied to stop nuclear testing and future bombs. Days before his death, Einstein signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which led to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.[citation needed]

Einstein has been quoted as saying “Racism is America’s greatest disease.”[citation needed] Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups, including the Princeton chapter of the NAACP. He served as co-chair with Paul Robeson of the American Crusade to End Lynching. When the aged W.E.B. DuBois was accused of being a communist spy, Einstein volunteered as a character witness and the case was dismissed shortly afterward. Einstein’s friendship with activist Paul Robeson lasted more than 20 years[citation needed].

In 1946, Einstein collaborated with Rabbi Israel Goldstein, Middlesex heir C. Ruggles Smith, and activist attorney George Alpert on the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc., which was formed to create a Jewish-sponsored secular university, open to all students, on the grounds of the former Middlesex College in Waltham, Massachusetts. Middlesex was chosen in part because it was accessible from both Boston and New York City, Jewish cultural centers of the USA. Their vision was a university “deeply conscious both of the Hebraic tradition of Torah looking upon culture as a birthright, and of the American ideal of an educated democracy.” (Reis 199 The collaboration was stormy, however. Finally, when Einstein wanted to appoint British economist Harold J. Laski as the university’s president, Albert wrote that Laski was “a man utterly alien to American principles of democracy, tarred with the Communist brush.” (Reis 199 Einstein withdrew his support and barred the use of his name (New York Times 1947). The university opened in 1948 as Brandeis University. In 1953, Brandeis offered Einstein an honorary degree, but he declined (Reis 1998).

Death
Albert Einstein laughing with Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban (left), 1952

On April 17, 1955, Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an aortic aneurism[39]. He took a 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 long enough to complete it. (Albert Einstein Archives 1955) He died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, leaving his generalized theory of gravitation incomplete. Einstein’s remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered (O’Connor & Robertson 1997).

Before the cremation, Princeton Hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein’s brain for preservation, in hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.

While travelling, Einstein had written daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters, Margot and Ilse, and the letters were included in the papers bequeathed to The Hebrew University. 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. Barbara Wolff, of the 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 (BBC 2006).

The United States’ National Academy of Sciences commissioned the Albert Einstein Memorial, a monumental bronze and marble sculpture by Robert Berks, erected at its Washington, D.C. campus adjacent to the National Mall.[citation needed]

Einstein bequeathed the royalties from use of his image to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Roger Richman Agency licences the use of his name and associated imagery, as agent for the Hebrew University. (Roger Richman Agency 2007)

Honors
A 5 Israeli pound note from 1968 with the portrait of Einstein.
Albert Einstein, Person of the Century

In 1999, Albert Einstein was named “Person of the Century” by Time magazine (Golden 2000), the Gallup Poll recorded him as the fourth most admired person of the 20th century[citation needed] and according to The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Einstein is “the greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time” (Hart 1978).

A partial list of his memorials:
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.
The Albert Einstein Memorial by Robert Berks
A unit used in photochemistry, the einstein
The chemical element 99, einsteinium
The asteroid 2001 Einstein
The Albert Einstein Award
The Albert Einstein Peace Prize

Einstein in popular culture
Albert Einstein, 1951. Arthur Sasse, photographer

On Einstein’s 72nd birthday in 1951, UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade him to smile for the camera, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead (Kupper 2000).

Australian film maker Yahoo Serious used the birthday photograph as inspiration for his movie Young Einstein,[citation needed] indeed, Albert Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films and plays. For a sample of them, see Jean-Claude Carrier’s 2005 French novel, Einstein S’il Vous Plait (”Please, Mr Einstein”), Nicolas Roeg’s film Insignificance, Fred Schepisi’s film I.Q. (where he was portrayed by Walter Matthau), Alan Lightman’s collection of short stories Einstein’s Dreams, and Steve Martin’s comedic play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. He was the subject of Philip Glass’s groundbreaking 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach and his humorous side is the subject of Ed Metzger’s one-man play Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian.

Einstein is a favorite model for depictions of mad scientists and 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.” (Golden 2000)