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Einstein was no lone genius

nature.com

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Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#41

Post by avn2109 »

vacri wrote: post #19
yk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1905 Einstein was not only working as a patent clerk, he was also finishing his PHD thesis. (He got it for his paper on Brownian motion.) The other two papers, special relativity, for which he is famous, and the photo electric effect, for which he got the Nobel, are actually using the same trick, just take the (already existing) equations seriously. Granted that is the closest to "one weird trick" you will ever se…

> "one weird trick" Reading this, I couldn't help but think "Maintain correct time in orbit by using this one weird trick discovered by a patent clerk. Click to find out how!"... :)

"Newtonians HATE him!"

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#42

Post by LukeShu »

sriku wrote: post #26

What Einstein and others contributed towards GR in a decade is now generally taught in one semester of grad school physics. Ruling out the possibility that grad students are today >20x intelligent than Einstein, and considering that Einstein needed no more experimental results than already available to everyone in 1905, the emphasis ought not to be as simplistic as "lone genius", but on his perseverance and nose for…

I don't disagree with your thesis, but: understanding a solution to a problem, and coming up with the solution are two vastly different things.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#43

Post by nrao123 »

cubano wrote: post #8

Einstein's big year was 1905, not 1915, and the four (five?) papers he produced during that year (one of which won him a Nobel) could easily be described as the work of a "lone genius." He did most of work of that year while working, of course as we all know, as a patent clerk. Obviously, no one lives in a vacuum, and all legendary geniuses stand on the shoulders of other giants, but I can't help but think this artic…

Yes- 1905 is part of the Annus Mirabilis series because of Einstein's work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_mirabilis#1905_.E2.80.93...

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#44

Post by saiya-jin »

tiatia wrote: post #38

in 1881: m=E/c^2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hasen%C3%B6hrl Einstein: E=m x c^2

quoting your own link:

... However, Max von Laue quickly rebutted those claims by saying that the inertia of electromagnetic energy was long known before Hasenöhrl, especially by the works of Henri Poincaré (1900) and Max Abraham (1902), while Hasenöhrl only used their results for his calculation on cavity radiation. Laue continued by saying that credit for establishing the inertia of all forms of energy (the real mass-energy equivalence) goes to Einstein, who was also the first to understand the deep implications of that equivalence in relation to relativity.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#45

Post by tomerico »

LukeShu wrote: post #42
sriku wrote: post #26

What Einstein and others contributed towards GR in a decade is now generally taught in one semester of grad school physics. Ruling out the possibility that grad students are today >20x intelligent than Einstein, and considering that Einstein needed no more experimental results than already available to everyone in 1905, the emphasis ought not to be as simplistic as "lone genius", but on his perseverance and nose for…

I don't disagree with your thesis, but: understanding a solution to a problem, and coming up with the solution are two vastly different things.

Not unlike P and NP

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#46

Post by birbal »

hsitz wrote: post #16
forgingahead wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could upvote this again. There is definitely this shift in the understanding of the world, and I believe it stems from an unwillingness to accept the cruelty of life. Accepting the harshness of the world and of human nature means also accepting the need to act in ways to survive and thrive in such an environment. Standards, dare I say virtues, have fallen to the wayside in pursuit of an easy, sedentary accep…

There is no shift. The question of whether individuals are primary influence on events or whether things are "in the air" and thus almost bound to happen (albeit caused by some individual or other) has been kicked around for at least a couple centuries. Napoleon was one of early examples often used. Was he a unique individual who exerted enormous influence on course of world events? Certainly. Were conditions in the…

An idea who has time has come

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#47

Post by birbal »

api wrote: post #23
robrenaud wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently 107 billion humans have ever lived. 1% of that is greater than a billion. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579 > here are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived. That said, merely being in the top 1% of intelligence doesn't seem to be worthy of the genius title.

If you are in the top 1% or even 5% you are probably capable of genius things if given the opportunity. The majority never are. Genius is much more common than opportunity.

How do i up vote this. I have the genius but lacking the opportunity i think

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#48

Post by thelastguy »

Reminds of me the series Connections, where, no one man invented/created/discovered something all by himself. It was more of like, the thing of one man lead to this other thing of this other man, while this third man over here is also doing this other thing, and then bam! Something new and revolutionary that changed mankind for ever. Pete and repeats.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#49

Post by aschreyer »

Einstein's most genius insight was probably not to make any initial assumptions and simply to follow his thought experiments regardless of the outcome (even if they contradicted contemporary dogma). The idea that time is not constant and space can be bend was certainly genius and as far as I know rejected by others who thought the maths must be wrong. He certainly relied on others for the mathematical foundation but he always mentioned that. Science even today is strongly ego-driven and he surely had the personality to take on the other scientists of his time.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#50

Post by lucozade »

visakanv wrote: post #36
sriku wrote: post #26

What Einstein and others contributed towards GR in a decade is now generally taught in one semester of grad school physics. Ruling out the possibility that grad students are today >20x intelligent than Einstein, and considering that Einstein needed no more experimental results than already available to everyone in 1905, the emphasis ought not to be as simplistic as "lone genius", but on his perseverance and nose for…

He said it himself. "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

I believe he was mistaken.

His talent was to be able to get to the heart of a problem. To find the connection everyone else had missed, or that everyone else had missed the significance of: the constancy of c, mass-energy equivalence, the Equivalence principle.

That's a pretty rare skill and, in my opinion, qualifies as genius.

In terms of what I guess a lot of students see i.e. the field equations, then sure, he was a decent mathematician but no Gauss or Cauchy. He took time and needed help to get to the necessary machinery for GR. But that doesn't, in my eyes, in anyway diminish what was an astonishing intellectual feat.

So no, he wasn't a lone genius but he was a genius.

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