"I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In that case, I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist." -Albert Einstein
A scandal hovers over the history of 20th century physics. Albert Einstein―the century's greatest physicist―was never able to come to terms with quantum mechanics, the century's greatest theoretical achievement. For physicists who routinely use both quantum laws and Einstein's ideas, this contradiction can be almost too embarrassing to dwell on. Yet Einstein was one of the founders of quantum physics and he spent many years preaching the quantum's importance and its revolutionary nature.
The Danish genius Neils Bohr was another founder of quantum physics. He had managed to solve one of the few physics problems that Einstein ever shied away from, linking quantum mathematics with a new model of the atom. This leap immediately yielded results that explained electron behavior and the periodic table of the elements.
Despite their mutual appreciation of the quantum's importance, these two giants of modern physics never agreed on the fundamentals of their work. In fact, they clashed repeatedly throughout the 1920s, arguing first over Einstein's theory of "light quanta"(photons), then over Niels Bohr's short-lived theory that denied the conservation of energy at the quantum level, and climactically over the new quantum mechanics that Bohr enthusiastically embraced and Einstein stubbornly defied.
This contest of visions stripped the scientific imagination naked. Einstein was a staunch realist, demanding to know the physical reasons behind physical events. At odds with this approach was Bohr's more pragmatic perspective that favored theories that worked, even if he might not have a corresponding explanation of the underlying reality. Powerful and illuminating, Einstein Defiant is the first book to capture the soul and the science that inspired this dramatic duel, revealing the personalities and the passions―and, in the end, what was at stake for the world.
Table of Contents
- Front Matter
- A RADICAL FACT RESISTED
1 The Opposite of an Intriguer - 2 Not German at All
- 3 I Never Fully Understood It
- 4 Independence and Inner Freedom
- 5 A Mercy of Fate
- 6 Picturesque Phrases
- 7 Scientific Dada
- 8 Such a Devil of a Fellow
- 9 Intuition and Inspiration
- 10 Bold, Not to Say Reckless
- 11 A Completely New Lesson
- 12 Slaves to Time and Space
- 13 Where All Weaker Imaginations Wither
- 14 A Triumph of Einstein Over Bohr
- A RADICAL THEORY CREATED
15 Something Deeply Hidden - 16 Completely Solved
- 17 Exciting and Exacting Times
- 18 Intellectual Drunkenness
- 19 The Observant Executrix
- 20 It Might Look Crazy
- 21 Taking Nothing Solemnly
- 22 How Much More Gratifying
- A RADICAL UNDERSTANDING DEFIED
23 Sorcerer’s Multiplication - 24 Adding Two Nonsenses
- 25 Admiration and Suspicion
- 26 An Unrelenting Fanatic
- 27 The Secret of the Old One
- 28 Indeterminacy
- 29 A Very Pleasant Talk
- 30 The Dream of His Life
- 31 The Saddest Chapter
- 32 A Reality Independent of Man
- 33 A Certain Unreasonableness
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Sources
- Index
Edmund Blair Bolles, "a genius for explanation" (The Spectator), is the author of 15 books including Galileo's Commandment: An Anthology of Great Science Writing (editor) and The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age.
