Classic Physics

“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.