Einstein

February 28th marks a grand click start of year long celebrations in India of 1905 – the magnificent year in which Einstein published three of his major works. 2005 has been designated as International year of Physics by United Nations. The grand toast has already been raised by international scientific community particularly physicists to honour a great personality of our times – Dr. Albert Einstein (born Ulm - Germany March 14, 1879 to April 18, 1955). Except Issac Newton, no other physicist changed our version and vision of Universe and its understanding as Dr. Einstein did. Much credit is given to his inventions and postulations because they came at a time when two world wars were fought and much of the socio-economic and scientific developments were blurred by exponsionist political dogmas. An average student at Zurich (Switzerland) who even failed to get admission to graduate school, Einstein was packed off to Federal Patent Office in Born (Switzerland) to serve as a patent clerk. Far removed from extraordinary gadgets and facilities of laboratory and library, Albert worked ferociously for long hours to publish five papers in one year each of which is a gem by itself. He was all of just 26 years in 1905 when he achieved this unsurpassed feat. The year 1905 has just one comparable year of science before 1665 to 1666. This is the time when in span of 18 months Sir Issac Newton invented calculus, constructed a theory of optics, explained how gravity works and discovered his laws of motion. It was such a sustained sprint of intellectual achievement that, at that time no one thought it could be equaled. Newton, hence stood as the tallest physicist. Einstein too gave the world new forms of mathematics to support his arguments in physics. He showed that atoms (the smallest divisible particles of matter) are real (it was a controversy at that time). His first paper which fetched him a Nobel Prize in 1921 proved existence of photons particles in light. In 1922 he had received a paper from unknown Indian physicist (then) Satyendra Nath Bose who worked on behaviour of these light particles – photons. In laboratory situation, Bose – Einstein condensate was proved to be correct only in 1995 nearly forty years after death of Einstein. His paper triggered a flurry of research by a whole generation of young physicists which has codified the universe now. Quantum mechanics took firm shape in 1920s and 1930s after that paper from him. As such, Albert Einstein was not considered to be an adroit mathematician. His power lay in that he could visualize physical consequences of experimental results. In the same year 1905, Einstein realized that nothing can travel faster than light. His first relativity paper later lead to general theory of relativity. The consequence of his observation E=mc2 where ‘E’ represents energy, ‘m’ is the mass of a body and ‘c’ denotes speed of light – lead to creation of a bomb which caused the holocaust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. One particular paper which served as doctoral thesis (Princeton, N.J.,U.S.) was beautiful but brief. It explained how sugar dissolves in water! He explained motion was caused by molecules hitting the particles. Till then the question of “Brownian motion” remained unexplained as how suspended particle in a solution behaved. Einstein’s theory proved that molecules are real and they exist!! Einstein wrote profound things in simplistic terms. He himself admitted this in 1932, “the real goal of my research has always been simplification and unification of the system of theoretical physics”. He once remarked about Newton calling him lucky ——“there is only one Universe to discover and he did it”, Of course, Albert was referring to laws of gravity of Issac Newton. There are many legends about intellectual capabilities of Einstein. He is even held to be a demigod of physics. Between 1905 and 1925 – Einstein transformed human understanding of nature on every scale. From smallest particles (atom) to the biggest (cosmos as a whole). The problems that he left behind uncracked, continue to form cutting edge technology studies. When the scientific community around the world is relocating itself to use all their knowledge of, geology, remote sensing, space science, weather forecast to understand Tsunami, memories of a saint scientist, Dr. Albert Einstein stands tall in our memory. (PIB Features)