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Albert Einstein (14 Mar 1879 - 18 Apr 1955) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Short biography of Albert Einstein >>

Albert Einstein
“There exists a passion for comprehension”

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“There exists a passion for comprehension… Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.”

— Albert Einstein

In Scientific American (1950)

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The editors of Scientific Americanasked Albert Einstein to write an article explaining his work on the foundations of field physics, and in April 1950 issue published the “On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation.” After presenting the question, “What, then, impels us to devise theory after theory?” Einstein answers that there exists the subtle motive of “striving toward unification of the premises of the theory as a whole (that is, Mach’s principle of economy, interpreted as a logical principle.” He continues:

“There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.”

To introduce the rise of the concept of fields, Einstein begins with the classical Greek concept of atomism leading two thousand years later to Bernouilli explaining the pressure that gas exerts on the walls of a container in terms of the collisions of the particles of gas with the walls. Such a concept relates to everyday experience, like a bouncing ball impacting on a surface. However, with his theory of gravitation, Newton introduced something less familiar: action at a distance. This seems contrary to everyday experience. Eventually, formulating the laws of electrodynamics required a similarly unconventional way of thinking introducing the idea of the “field.” About this, Einstein remarked:

“Would Faraday have discovered the law of electromagnetic induction if he had received a regular college education?”

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Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)

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