Einstein on the Run Read online

  Thomson’s awed, but slightly sceptical, praise was to be expected from physicists in England, given the Cambridge school’s commitment to the electronic theory of matter (ETM), based on an ether concept that Einstein’s relativity rejected. One of them, the physicist, inventor and writer Sir Oliver Lodge, author of The Ether of Space, left the meeting early, even though he had been expected to speak in the discussion. Later in the month, Lodge expressed his fear in a lecture that ‘Einstein’s theories would dominate all physics and the next generation of mathematical physicists would have a terrible time’. Even Dyson, surprisingly, shared some of the sceptical feeling – unlike his friend and fellow astronomer, Eddington. Despite being the chief organiser of the expeditions in 1919, Dyson wrote in December to another astronomer in the United States: ‘I was myself a sceptic, and expected a different result. Now I am trying to understand the principle of relativity and am gradually getting to think I do.’

  Indeed, general relativity would remain legendarily recondite and incomprehensible for a long time to come among scientists, even many astronomers and physicists. A famous story, originally told by Eddington, relates that as the November 1919 meeting was dispersing, a physicist who had published a textbook on special relativity in 1914 came up to him and said: ‘Professor Eddington, you must be one of the three persons in the world who understands general relativity.’ When Eddington demurred, his colleague persisted ‘Don’t be modest, Eddington,’ and received the reply: ‘On the contrary, I am trying to think who the third person is.’

  Moreover, the author of the challenging new theory, Einstein, was still a virtually unknown personality in England. (Not even Eddington had met him.) To the press, he was a complete blank. The first report of the meeting in The Times, ‘Revolution in science’, referred only to ‘the famous physicist, Einstein’, and did not give his first name or the fact that he worked in Berlin. Was he a German, a Swiss, a Jew, or some unfamiliar fusion of all three? Where did he really belong? The following day, 8 November, The Times briefly introduced him thus:

  Dr Albert Einstein, whose astronomical discoveries were described at the meeting of Royal Society on Thursday as the most remarkable since the discovery of Neptune, and as propounding a new philosophy of the universe, is a Swiss Jew, 45 years of age. He was for some time Professor in Mathematical Physics at the Polytechnic in Zurich, and then Professor at Prague. Afterwards he was nominated a member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy for Research in Berlin, with a salary of 18,000 marks (£900) per annum, and no duties, so that he should be able to devote himself entirely to research work.

  During the war, as a man of liberal tendencies, he was one of the signatories of the protest against the German manifesto of the men of science who declared themselves in favour of Germany’s part in the war, and at the time of the Armistice he signed an appeal in favour of the German revolution. He is an ardent Zionist and keenly interested in the proposed Hebrew University at Jerusalem, and has offered to cooperate in the work there.

  Not only did this report get Einstein’s age significantly wrong (he was actually forty years old in 1919), it also failed even to hint at Einstein’s open admiration for Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and other British physicists, while dwelling on his attitude to the recent war and his Jewishness. An amused Einstein responded accordingly, citing his status as a ‘Swiss Jew’ as an example of relativity when contributing a substantial article on ‘Time, space, and gravitation’ to the newspaper in late November. He remarked:

  The description of me and my circumstances in The Times shows an amusing feat of imagination on the part of the writer. By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a ‘Swiss Jew’. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!

  However, The Times – which had been notably bellicose during the recent war under its proprietor, Lord Northcliffe – was not so amused. ‘He is famous just now,’ it commented with a touch of anti-German asperity. ‘We concede him his little jest. But we note that, in accordance with the general tenor of his theory, Dr Einstein does not supply any absolute description of himself.’

  FAME FOR GENERAL RELATIVITY AND ITS AUTHOR

  By now, the University of Cambridge was electrified by Einstein’s theory. Gone were the empty colleges and the malaise of war, and in their place had emerged a busy and optimistic inquisitiveness. When Eddington gave a lecture on relativity in the hall of Trinity College, his own – and Newton’s – college, on 2 December, the queue for admittance stretched half-way across the Great Court, reported Nature:

  and during the lecture the hall was entirely filled with dons and students listening breathlessly to hear an intelligible account, if one could be given, of the new theory. The keen interest was due, no doubt, largely to curiosity stimulated by the newspaper accounts of the subject, but also partly to the feeling, to which at last some hope of satisfaction can be given, that a further great unifying principle is needed in natural philosophy.

  Einstein’s handwritten German draft of an article attempting to explain relativity published in London in The Times in November 1919 under the title ‘Einstein on his theory: Time, space and gravitation’. This first page begins by expressing his ‘joy and gratitude towards the astronomers and physicists of England’ for their efforts in testing the implications of ‘a theory which was perfected and published during the war in the land of your enemies’.

  Oxford was almost equally fascinated. Now the classicists and philosophers who had challenged Lindemann (in person) and Einstein (in absentia) earlier in 1919 were compelled to listen to the physicists and astronomers, whether they liked it or not. That December, the world’s very first extensive account of Einstein’s theory in English aimed at both scientists and non-scientists was published in Oxford. Written by a little-known, German-speaking physicist at the university, Henry Brose, The Theory of Relativity: An Introductory Sketch based on Einstein’s Original Writings including a Biographical Note was reprinted by its publisher, Basil Blackwell, an astonishing four times over the next four months – such was the curiosity aroused by the solar eclipse expeditions.

  Soon, Punch magazine compared Einstein’s sudden, mysterious celebrity to the simultaneous, if less mysterious celebrity of the sculptor Epstein, in a witty verse:

  Einstein and Epstein are wonderful men,

  Bringing new miracles into our ken.

  Einstein upset the Newtonian rule;

  Epstein demolished the Pheidian School.

  Einstein gave fits to the Royal Society

  Epstein delighted in loud notoriety.

  Einstein made parallels meet in infinity

   Epstein remodelled the form of divinity.

  An Einstein Society was started by British Members of Parliament. ‘Its formation was due more to the curiosity of those of us who had unexpectedly survived the First World War than to any profound scientific search,’ recalled one of its members, Sir Colin Coote, who subsequently became editor of the Daily Telegraph.

  Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean, the leading popular-science magazine Scientific American offered a prize of $5,000 for the best essay from any part of the globe explaining Einstein’s theories of relativity. During 1920, there were 300 submissions from all parts of Europe and North America, and from India, South Africa and South America. The winner was an Englishman, Lyndon Bolton, who had long been employed as a senior examiner in the British Patent Office – a curious coincidence with Einstein’s Patent Office job in Switzerland when he conceived special relativity in 1905.

  In his very first letter to Einstein, written at the time of his December 1919 Cambridge lecture, Eddington enthused:

  All England has been talking about your theory. . . . There is no mistaking the genuine enthusiasm in scientific circles and perhaps more particularly in this Uni
versity. It is the best possible thing that could have happened for scientific relations between England and Germany. I do not anticipate rapid progress towards official reunion, but there is a big advance towards a more reasonable frame of mind among scientific men, and that is even more important than the renewal of formal associations.

  Eddington quickly became a fluent and entertaining lecturer on relativity, who captivated large popular audiences in both person and writing. But his students and fellow specialists saw a different side of him, which was often confused and hesitant, as he wrestled with difficulties in the theory during the very process of lecturing. A student parodied the beginning of a typical Eddington lecture with a touch of cruelty as follows: ‘[He] gave a moan and then stopped for what seemed a very long time. He then moaned again and stopped again for a very long time. Then he shook his head vigorously and said: “No! That’s wrong.”’ An American professor specialising in relativity, W. H. Williams, captured this bemusement more affectionately in ‘The Einstein and the Eddington’, a poem based on Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, written for a faculty club dinner in Eddington’s honour (quoted here in extract):

  The time has come, said Eddington,

  To talk of many things;

  Of cubes and clocks and meter-sticks,

  And why a pendulum swings,

  And how far space is out of plumb,

  And whether time has wings.

  I learned at school the apple’s fall

  To gravity was due,

  But now you tell me that the cause

  Is merely G mu nu.

  I cannot bring myself to think

  That this is really true.

  . . .

  And space, it has dimensions four,

  Instead of only three.

  The square on the hypotenuse

  Ain’t what it used to be.

  It grieves me sore, the things you’ve done

  To plane geometry.

  You hold that time is badly warped,

  That even light is bent;

  I think I get the idea there,

  If this is what you meant:

  The mail the postman brings today,

  Tomorrow will be sent.

  . . .

  The shortest line, Einstein replied,

  Is not the one that’s straight;

  It curves around upon itself,

  Much like the figure eight,

  And if you go too rapidly

  You will arrive too late.

  But Easter day is Christmas time

  And far away is near,

  And two and two is more than four

  And over there is here.

  You may be right, said Eddington,

  It seems a trifle queer.

  Another letter to Einstein in late 1919, this one from an English physicist much less well known than Eddington – living in industrial Sheffield rather than establishment Cambridge – struck a remarkably similar note to Eddington’s letter. Regarding the eclipse observations: ‘People here have been talking of nothing else for the past few weeks.’ And regarding their potential impact on Anglo-German relations: ‘Now that I am back in my home country, it is my dearest wish to work towards healing the deep wounds inflicted on the hearts of mankind by this war as quickly as possible and towards reviving opportunities for continued collaboration.’

  Its author, Robert Lawson, a Quaker scientist (like Eddington), had attended a lecture by Einstein, followed by a lively discussion, in Vienna in 1913, while working as a postgraduate student in the Radium Institute. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Lawson had been confined as an enemy alien. But then, for four years, his Austrian physicist colleagues at Vienna University had looked after him and enabled him to continue his experiments, for which Lawson was deeply grateful, despite his difficult living conditions. After he explained this background to Einstein in two introductory letters, they immediately struck up a relationship. Einstein replied to Lawson: ‘thank God, the solar eclipse and the theory of relativity have nothing in common with politics. In this work, English men of science have behaved splendidly throughout, and to my delight your letter shows me that the feelings of English colleagues have not been influenced as much by the war as one might have feared.’ Within the last few days, he added, he had received ‘a very charming letter’ from Eddington, which had greatly pleased him. Using these favourable circumstances he planned to work as much as possible towards reconciliation between German and English colleagues.

  Lawson forthwith proposed that he should translate Einstein’s German introduction to relativity, published in 1916, into English; and Einstein quickly agreed. He had never been satisfied by his book, which was too demanding for the general reader. (He liked to quote against himself a remark once made by Planck, that ‘Einstein believes his books will become more readily intelligible if every now and again he drops in the words “Dear reader”’.) However, its English version, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, published in London in August 1920 – nine months after the pioneering Oxford introduction by Brose – was a bestseller: it was reprinted six times in nineteen months, and remains in print a century later. This short book is probably still the best non-academic treatment of relativity, thanks to Lawson’s careful and creative work, with the active assistance of Einstein.

  Some idea of Lawson’s achievement can be divined from a letter sent to him by the book’s forthcoming publisher, Methuen, which Lawson passed on to Einstein with great amusement in February 1920. The publisher requested Lawson:

  When you send in the matter for the prospectus of Einstein’s book I shall be glad if you will make the description of its contents as intelligible as possible to the ordinary man. Our travellers tell us that there is complete ignorance in the public mind as to what Relativity means. A good many people seem to think that the book deals with the relations between the sexes. Perhaps you would explain the meaning of the word and say something about the epoch-making character of the book and how Einstein’s discovery affects Newton’s law. Most people have heard of Newton and his apple and that will give some kind of clue.

  At this time, such a formidable level of public ignorance of relativity would still have been mildly surprising to Einstein. But not for much longer. From 1920 onwards, as the ‘relativity circus’ got going and his fame spread around the world, the very incomprehensibility of Einstein’s theory made newspapers all the hungrier for information about the personality behind it. And once he was contacted and interviewed – initially by The Times and the New York Times in November 1919 – Einstein rapidly proved to be a deft, witty, occasionally mischievous and often eminently quotable populariser of his own ideas. Never, or at least hardly ever, did he lay down the law as a recognised authority and expect others to defer; rather he showed a genuine humility and willingness to learn from those he respected. While he was not by nature a great teacher, because he had too many original ideas, Einstein had a gift for making himself understood (though generally in German). For press reporters, a willing Einstein interview almost always made for excellent copy. Even he, though, could not transform relativity into more than a tantalising concept for the non-mathematically minded. During the 1920s, it became widely believed that ‘Einstein taught everything is relative, including truth; that all observations are subjective; that anything is possible’, according to the authors of Einstein as Myth and Muse. In his later years, besieged with requests from journalists and the public, Einstein was reduced to telling his secretary to give casual enquirers the following light-hearted explanation of relativity: ‘An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.’

  FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND

  Consider the earliest national newspaper coverage of Einstein’s first visit to England in 1921, accompanied by his second wife, Elsa, on his way back to Germany from giving lectures in the United States. At the University of Manchester, a major centre for p
hysics (home to Rutherford before he moved to Cambridge, and also to Rutherford’s collaborator and Einstein’s friend, Niels Bohr), Einstein accepted an honorary doctorate in science and delivered a lecture on 9 June 1921 to an audience of about 1,000 staff, students and others, on ‘Relativity’. Speaking in German, he stuck closely to science, and did not allow himself even a single sentence on the philosophical implications of his discoveries, ‘though that would, no doubt, have been appreciated by his audience’, noted a serious report of the lecture in the Manchester Guardian.

  But his wise forbearance did not prevent the newspaper from publishing the following additional commentary by an anonymous staff writer:

  Einstein himself has become, with amazing rapidity, the hero not only of the scientist and the scholar, but also of the populace. The reason is not hard to seek. The man in the street, a traveller between life and death, is compact of all elements, and is neither wholly devoid of science nor of poetry. He may have few ideas in either, but he probably cherishes what he has, and whatever touches them nearly is of moment to him.

  Professor Einstein’s theory of Relativity, however vaguely he [the man in the street] may comprehend it, disturbs fundamentally his basic conceptions of the universe and even of his own mind. It challenges somehow the absolute nature of his thought. The very idea that he can use his mind in a disinterested way is assailed by a conception which gives partiality to every perception. And with this keen thrust at personal things, the idea of Relativity stretches out to the very conceptions of the universe, as can be seen from the mere titles of the closing chapters in Professor Einstein’s little book on the subject.

  Definite ideas emerge, even, on the shape of the universe itself, and the finite and the infinite are made to lie down comfortably together by deductions from the relativity of our daily observations. Everything, it has been said, assimilates to the nature of music. Professor Einstein is a musician in his leisure moments, and his science seems to bear some relation to that art, in which everything is thought of in terms of movement and relation, and the fixed only as something arbitrary.