One of my enlightening experiences has been to visit the Einstein's house in Bern and walk on the same path that he did every day to get to the patent office. The question in my mind had always been how Einstein suddenly started thinking about synchronizing clocks using light signals out of nowhere? My walk had the answer:
In Bern, you see clocks everywhere! Towers after towers, buildings after buildings have clocks of varying sizes and shapes and artwork. The city of Bern is crazy about having giant clocks all over. In 1905, all these clocks must be manually synchronized and people may have often noticed slight differences as they walked and you cannot not think about synchronization every day!
Inventors in Bern were working on how to synchronize them automatically. One of those patents landed on Einstein's desk which started his thought process on synchronizing clocks using the fastest signals possible, i.e., light. But then things got weird when you think about light signal taking time to arrive. What if the clock is on the railway station and we need to synchronize the clock on the train? Now the train is moving away and the light signal is taking longer and longer. And so the relativity begins... It is very likely that these ideas would not have born if Einstein wasn't in Bern and working in that damn patent office!
In that era, railroads were expanding across Europe and needed to sync time. Likely those patent application crossed his desk so he was forced to deeply think about "relative time" according to something I watched.
But his Brownian motion and photoelectric effect papers ...
There's also this NYTimes article (paywalled, unfortunately) discussing Galison's research for "Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Map."
> Einstein's relativity has long been regarded by scholars as a monument to the power of abstract thought. But if Dr. Peter Galison, 48 -- a Harvard professor of the history of science and of physics, a pilot, art lover and nascent filmmaker -- is right, physics and Einstein have flourished more in their connections to the world than in any ivory tower aloofness. And one clue to the origin of relativity can be found in something as mundane and practical as a 19th-century train schedule.
I'd add that a genius like Einstein would have thought of fantastic things wherever he was – it just so happened that this was the experience he was exposed to which led him to think about time and light, per your story.
I wonder what sort of amazing discoveries he would have made if he had been exposed to, say, biology and healthcare instead!
> I'd add that a genius like Einstein would have thought of fantastic things wherever he was – it just so happened that this was the experience he was exposed to which led him to think about time and light, per your story.
I don't think this is true. Because of survivor bias, we have no idea how many Einsteins never had the opportunity. It seems likely there have been a million people with similar cognitive capabilities, yet very few make such progress.
> It seems likely there have been a million people with similar cognitive capabilities
That not a valid counterpoint to my claim in that itdoesn't negate the fact that he could have been a genius in many other fields if he had touched them and assuming he "had the opportunity". Similar to how someone who's highly athletic is usually great in pretty much every sport across the board at a young age and then later specialize into one (or more!) to get to a professional level.
Can you say a little more about SJG? I've heard the name and been meaning to read something of his, but never got around to it. Would appreciate a good rec!
I really don't think this is the case. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people in the world just as smart as Einstein. But they won't all revolutionize a field or do anything of real significance. Having talent is only a piece of a large puzzle.
Your passage on Bern feels like if it were from the "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino. As far as I remember, it would fit in the "Cities & Signs" or "Cities & Eyes" line.
I just wanted to respond to "just another physicist". In university about a million years ago, I was very unhappy. I loved being a programmer, but I found my CS courses very limiting and actually boring. I decided to switch to honours physics. At my university, the school realised that there is no demand for a huge number of physicists. In the honours program, they simply gear the course for the top 2 or three students, with the intent on only graduating those few people after 4 years. Everybody else they expect to drop out of the honours program and do a general science degree.
I always thought of myself as a pretty smart guy, but honours physics kicked my ass really badly. I remember getting assignments with differential equations before I had ever seen them before. I asked my prof what I should do. He indicated that there were several good books in the library on the topic. After spending virtually every night studying and only just barely able to keep my head above water, I realised. I am not going to get a PhD in physics. it was a valuable lesson. I went back to CS and ate it up (my god it was easy after that).
Thinking about "just another physicist" reminds me of the 2 or 3 people who could actually make it through the programme and then go on to do a PhD. Well, in my case, the class I was in eventually graduated 5 people -- the most ever! It turns out they had to turn it up to 11 and still couldn't pare it down, so I don't feel that bad. But I still feel that the ordinary physics PhD is not really so ordinary ;-)
You're probably selling yourself short. Differential equations isn't a bad course if you did well in Calculus and have the patience to grind out a ton of examples. E&M, StatMech and/or Lagrangian Mechanics also ain't bad if it's taught well, but this is a case where you really have to do the diff eqs before you can do the physics piece. Diff Eqs is the language of most of physics; trying to wrap your brain around the other parts and differential equations at the same time is too big a lift even for a galaxy brain. It's like being asked to compile kernel modules without knowing how to use a mouse or keyboard.
I've thought about trying to write something like Lenny Susskind's "theoretical minimum" book, assuming you have the prerequisites of differential equations and linear algebra. I mean, everyone struggles with the complicated problems, but more people should be able to appreciate the results. Meanwhile Susskind's book is pretty good!
I'll echo the grandparent that learning diff eq at the same time as the subject (e.g. mechanics) is "par for the course" for physics programs.
There's many times throughout the progression to Physics PhD where "yes ideally you'd learn the math first" but there is only so much time. And some physics math is uniquely physics.
I get your general point Scott, but I disagree with "trying to wrap your brain around the other parts and differential equations at the same time is too big a lift even for a galaxy brain". Learning both in the same course is doable.
The guy I was responding to, mikekchar, claimed that he was given advanced physics problems requiring diff eqs without having studied them before; this is absolutely not the case in any physics program I've ever heard of. By the time you get to Junior Year physics, you've had diff eqs, or at least an introduction to the ordinary diff eqs you get in late Calculus. You can probably learn them both in the same course; but only if the course is designed for this purpose (aka Boas based "math methods for physicists" or something).
I do remember some guys in grad school who had never seen a Greens function before (I was doing them in sophomore years; guess I was lucky) encountering JD Jackson, but that's about the only disconnect I've seen.
Just speaking from my own expedience, I had advanced (jr year) mechanics before diff eq... but admittedly was taking it early. It was doable but tough.
Greens function were new to me in grad school. Grad school mechanics had be learning math I didn’t know before too... can’t recall what it was at the moment.
And then the advanced AMO class had some more math I hadn’t seen.
I wonder how many people are lost to a particular field like this? It's not just the subject, it's also how it's taught. It is very well possible that you would have been a first rate physicist if you had been exposed to it in a different environment with a different philosophy about teaching it.
You are not alone! I've come across enough of CS folks who wanted to be a physicist but ended up "downgrading" to CS. Within physicists, there are enough folks who wanted to be mathematicians but ended up "downgrading" to physics :).
I am one of those people. I consider myself as above average but I don't think I have ever had the aptitude to make career as a physicist or something more involved for the matter. I like to learn but, sometimes, the stuff I'm trying to learn is just too much.
I am just a mechanical engineer but I remember really well when they introduced three dimensional differential equations. I realized that I had hit the limit where math for me would be hard and not easy like it was until then.
My son went the other way, was struggling with Mechanical Engineering and decided that he needed to switch to something easier. I braced my self for some ridiculous major, instead he switched to Mathematics, he's been a 4.0 student since, and was accepted into an accelerated Masters Degree program, and still kept his 4.0.
Turns out he was enamored with the math, and couldn't focus on the engineering parts.
I was one of those 2-3 I suppose (I think we graduated like 5-10 per year), but there weren't any jobs in physics so now I'm a programmer too. It all ends up the same.
In Bern, you see clocks everywhere! Towers after towers, buildings after buildings have clocks of varying sizes and shapes and artwork. The city of Bern is crazy about having giant clocks all over. In 1905, all these clocks must be manually synchronized and people may have often noticed slight differences as they walked and you cannot not think about synchronization every day!
Inventors in Bern were working on how to synchronize them automatically. One of those patents landed on Einstein's desk which started his thought process on synchronizing clocks using the fastest signals possible, i.e., light. But then things got weird when you think about light signal taking time to arrive. What if the clock is on the railway station and we need to synchronize the clock on the train? Now the train is moving away and the light signal is taking longer and longer. And so the relativity begins... It is very likely that these ideas would not have born if Einstein wasn't in Bern and working in that damn patent office!