Someone out there is yet another genius

Today I was watching a documentary on Albert Einstein's discovery of the famous equivalence of energy and mass equation. It started out by thoughts of Einstein: "it seems gods were laughing at him." This documentary covered a set of unrelated incidents that lead to the realization of E=mc^2. I do appreciate the fact that in science, its invariably a set of non-obvious observations that lead to understanding of something new. Einstein, from his childhood would pursue his fascinations about nature with much interest and determination. From the age of 16 Einstein was obsessed with the nature of light. Every one he met from that time on he badgered with the question about the nature of light. Now that one looks back at his life, only to find his quanta based explanation of light. Perhaps, it was good that he didn't leave his curiosity with his childhood days.

There is a historical allusion to Michael Faraday, son of a blacksmith who worked as a book binder in his youth. The documentary mentions that during early 19th century there was a society divided on the vocation in England. For this reason the son of a blacksmith was perhaps not given an opportunity of formal education and worked at a book-binding company. As a personal nature of Faraday would have it, he used his vocational opportunity to read scientific literature that passed through his work place. During his book publishing work career, one of Faraday's customers was a scientist who offered Faraday a ticket for a scientific seminar of Sir Humphry Davy (a keen follower of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) effects). This ticket that came into the hand of Faraday changed the life of Faraday and that of the scientific-thought in years to come. It is now said that Faraday was the most important discovery of Sir Davy.

Faraday thought of trade (business) to be a selfish enterprise and longed to do science that attempts to unveil the true-self of nature. Sir Davy introduced Faraday to his laboratory and got Faraday started with science. It is now a fact that, with time the pupil surpassed the master in trying to unveil the dual-braided nature of electricity and magnetism.

Scientific literature has been a most important medium in stimulating scientific thoughts and making scientists discuss and explain the observed scientific facts. For Faraday, a fascinating feature was the circular magnetic fields around current carrying wire. Faraday, like Einstein had a nature of thinking in terms of pictures and visualizations. This inclination to visualize is perhaps one of the most important gifts humans have and must attempt to utilize. The visualization based thinking of Faraday lead him to place many compasses around a current wire and to discover the circular magnetic field lines. Faraday now tried the reverse phenomenon by trying to move an electric wire due to the magnetic field of a permanent magnet. Something we now understand as the principle of an electric motor was then discovered by Faraday.

One can perhaps never be objective, being human is its reason. This observation of Faraday was labeled as plagiarism by Sir Davy, perhaps a disadvantage of being human. Sir Davy asked Faraday to take down the new paper on the thoughts of electricity and magnetism, but that was not to happen. Its only a matter of time that Faraday became a recognized member of the Royal Society in London. The observations of Faraday were later proven right by Maxwell by using mathematical basis. I think Faraday was a lucky scientist unlike Boltzmann to see his model come to be accepted during his life time.

The documentary now shifted to the young life of Einstein. His father showed him a compass that invoked a deep curiosity of understanding science. His interests were Physics, Maths, Philosophy and violin. There was a mention that the origins of equivalence of energy and matter were initially thought by a french tax-collector by name Laguarsie (this is my best guess of the name from the documentary).

There is an interesting mention of a French physicist Émilie du Châtelet who questioned the theory of motion of Newton. She supported the theory of Leibnitz about the theory of motion. She even published a book about her thoughts on the prevailing theories of motion. Her French translation of "The Principia" of Newton is considered as a much followed french text book in current day also. As shown in this documentary, all her life she had tried to rise above the limitations placed on her gender during old France days. Her scientific belief was that (Kinetic energy) energy of a moving body is proportional to the square of its velocity. It took another 100 years for this to become acceptable.

The documentary also talked about the contributions of a German scientist Otto Hahn and Austrian scientist Lisa Meitner. Lisa was a physicist working in the Chemistry laboratory of Otto Hahn in Germany. She was also the first women to be credited with professorship in Germany. Lisa had to leave Germany due to the second world war tensions in Germany. Her attempts to leave Germany to Europe on the pretext of conferences were all thwarted by German rule. But with the help of a colleague Lisa managed to get out of Germany to Sweden. Both Lisa and Otto were working on experiments to build up heavy nuclei from smaller ones by introducing neutrons into smaller nucleus. Hahn communicated with Lisa mentioning his confusions of not able to explain the smaller nuclear products from heavy Uranium nucleus. This experimental observation of Hahn was explained by Lisa and her nephew Otto Frisch by using Einstein's E=mc^2 formula, "Lisa had split the atom". But it turned out that it was Hahn who was awarded the 1994 Nobel prize of this finding. Lisa was refused the Nobel prize that she had deserved, according to this documentary.

It is interesting to know about the history of modern physics, all filled with its scientific pursuit, social dimensions, and human behavior.