Einstein: His Life and Universe

A report from the previous year had discussed Einstein’s “theory of the photoelectric effect,” but Oseen made clear his different approach with the title of his report: “Einstein’s Law of the Photoelectric Effect” (emphasis added). In it, Oseen did not focus on the theoretical aspects of Einstein’s work. He specified instead what he called a fundamental natural law, fully proven by experiment, that Einstein propounded: the mathematical description of how the photoelectric effect was explained by assuming that light was absorbed and emitted in discrete quanta, and the way this related to the frequency of the light.

Oseen also proposed that giving Einstein the prize delayed from 1921 would allow the Academy to use that as a basis for simultaneously giving Niels Bohr the 1922 prize, because his model of the atom built on the laws that explained the photoelectric effect. It was a clever coupled-entry ticket for making sure that the two greatest theoretical physicists of the time became Nobel laureates without offending the Academy’s old-line establishment. Gullstrand went along. Arrhenius, who had met Einstein in Berlin and been charmed, was now also willing to accept the inevitable. On September 6, 1922, the Academy voted accordingly, and Einstein and Bohr were awarded the 1921 and 1922 prizes, respectively.

Thus it was that Einstein became the recipient of the 1921 Nobel Prize, in the words of the official citation, “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” In both the citation and the letter from the Academy’s secretary officially informing Einstein, an unusual caveat was explicitly inserted. Both documents specified that the award was given “without taking into account the value that will be accorded your relativity and gravitation theories after these are confirmed in the future.”¹¹ Einstein would not, as it turned out, ever win a Nobel for his work on relativity and gravitation, nor for anything other than the photoelectric effect.

There was a dark irony in using the photoelectric effect as a path to get Einstein the prize. His “law” was based primarily on observations made by Philipp Lenard, who had been the most fervent campaigner to have him blackballed. In his 1905 paper, Einstein had credited Lenard’s “pioneering” work. But after the 1920 anti-Semitic rally in Berlin, they had become bitter enemies. So Lenard was doubly outraged that, despite his opposition, Einstein had won the prize and, worse yet, done so in a field that Lenard pioneered. He wrote an angry letter to the Academy, the only official protest it received, in which he said that Einstein misunderstood the true nature of light and was, in addition, a publicity-seeking Jew whose approach was alien to the true spirit of German physics.¹²

Einstein was traveling by train through Japan and missed the official award ceremony on December 10. After much controversy over whether he should be considered German or Swiss, the prize was accepted by the German ambassador, but he was listed as both nationalities in the official record.

The formal presentation speech by Arrhenius, the committee chair, was carefully crafted. “There is probably no physicist living today whose name has become so widely known as that of Albert Einstein,” he began. “Most discussion centers on his theory of relativity.” He then went on to say, almost dismissively, that “this pertains essentially to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles.”

After touching briefly on Einstein’s other work, Arrhenius explained the Academy’s position on why he had won. “Einstein’s law of the photoelectrical effect has been extremely rigorously tested by the American Millikan* and his pupils and passed the test brilliantly,” he said. “Einstein’s law has become the basis of quantitative photo-chemistry in the same way as Faraday’s law is the basis of electro-chemistry.”¹³

Einstein gave his official acceptance speech the following July at a Swedish science conference with King Gustav Adolf V in attendance. He spoke not about the photoelectric effect, but about relativity, and he concluded by emphasizing the importance of his new passion, finding a unified field theory that would reconcile general relativity with electromagnetic theory and, if possible, with quantum mechanics.¹⁴

The prize money that year amounted to 121,572 Swedish kronor, or $32,250, which was more than ten times the annual salary of the average professor at the time. As per his divorce agreement with Mari, Einstein had part of it sent directly to Zurich to reside in a trust for her and their sons, and the rest went into an American account with the interest directed for her use.

This prompted another row. Hans Albert complained that the trust arrangement, which had previously been agreed to, made only the interest on the money accessible to the family. Once again, Zangger intervened and calmed the dispute. Einstein jokingly wrote to his sons, “You all will be so rich that some fine day I may ask you for a loan.”The money was eventually used by Mari to buy three homes with rental apartments in Zurich.¹⁵

Newton’s Bucket and the Ether Reincarnated

“Anything truly novel is invented only during one’s youth,” Einstein lamented to a friend after finishing his work on general relativity and cosmology. “Later one becomes more experienced, more famous—and more blockheaded.”¹⁶

Einstein turned 40 in 1919, the year that the eclipse observations made him world-famous. For the next six years, he continued to make important contributions to quantum theory. But after that, as we shall see, he would begin to seem, if not blockheaded, at least a bit stubborn as he resisted quantum mechanics and embarked on a long, lonely, and unsuccessful effort to devise a unified theory that would subsume it into a more deterministic framework.

Over the ensuing years, researchers would discover new forces in nature, besides electromagnetism and gravity, and also new particles. These would make Einstein’s attempts at unification all the more complex. But he would find himself less familiar with the latest data in experimental physics, and he thus would no longer have the same intuitive feel for how to wrest from nature her fundamental principles.

If Einstein had retired after the eclipse observations and devoted himself to sailing for the remaining thirty-six years of his life, would science have suffered? Yes, for even though most of his attacks on quantum mechanics did not prove to be warranted, he did serve to strengthen the theory by coming up with a few advances and also, less intentionally, by his ingenious but futile efforts to poke holes in it.

That raises another question: Why was Einstein so much more creative before the age of 40 than after? Partly, it is an occupational hazard of mathematicians and theoretical physicists to have their great breakthroughs before turning 40.¹⁷ “The intellect gets crippled,” Einstein explained to a friend, “but glittering renown is still draped around the calcified shell.”¹⁸

More specifically, Einstein’s scientific successes had come in part from his rebelliousness. There was a link between his creativity and his willingness to defy authority. He had no sentimental attachment to the old order, thus was energized by upending it. His stubbornness had worked to his advantage.

But now, just as he had traded his youthful bohemian attitudes for the comforts of a bourgeois home, he had become wedded to the faith that field theories could preserve the certainties and determinism of classical science. His stubbornness henceforth would work to his disadvantage.

It was a fate that he had begun fearing years before, not long after he finished his famous flurry of 1905