“God does not play dice!”
– Albert Einstein, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in
Physics “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his
discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”
“Stop telling God what to do!”
– Niels Bohr, winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize in
Physics “for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of
the radiation emanating from them.”
Ah, repartee like this never grows old. Just ran
across it, again, in Einstein’s Universe,
by Nigel Calder, an old pop sci physics book I’ve had for ages.
A unique dynamism played out with aging Einstein. No
longer the theoretical ax-wielding revolutionary, proudly venturing into curmudgeon
country, he cage-match sparred with the Young Turks of Quantum Mechanics over
the inherent, quintessential feature of the physics of the subatomic – its uncertainty,
where matter is manifested ultimately in waves of probability.
More to come as the Muse is urging me to read up on
Relativity and there’s a bio of the grand old man on the shelf behind me
calling, long in need of a good read.
N.B. – I made a pilgrimage to Einstein’s house at
Princeton fifteen years or so ago. Nothing particularly special about it, unless
you knew of the eclectic, eccentric man who inhabited it once upon a time.
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