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Re: importance of Einstein



There seems to be a small group of folks out there who are
anti-Einstein. Most of this has nothing at all to do with his science.

Dr. Mark H. Shapiro
Professor of Physics, Emeritus
California State University, Fullerton
Phone: 714 278-3884
FAX: 714 278-5810
email: mshapiro@fullerton.edu
web: http://chaos.fullerton.edu/Shapiro.html
travel and family pictures:
http://community.webshots.com/user/mhshapiro



-----Original Message-----
From: Forum for Physics Educators [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu] On
Behalf Of Bernard Cleyet
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 1:58 PM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: Re: importance of Einstein

Yes!

some comments:

I think people who develop experimental techniques are more important
than often given credit. Ms. Franklin developed / invented techniques
without which W and C would be unknown. The numerous people who
developed the techniques and apparatuses necessary for transgenic work
made W & C's discovery practical.

The Robert Hook champion (Michael Nauenberg) is not the first to point
out that the Newton quote is an insult directed at his rival. Note, the
quote has an old history.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShouldersOfGiants

bc

p.s. Curiously, Some of the writer's scientists are also theoreticians
whose work required others to make practical application. My favo
scientist, not in the list, is the one who developed in addition to
discovering N's first law. Little mentioned is his artillery work.



John Denker wrote:

Larry Smith wrote:


What do y'all think of this letter to the editor of Discover Magazine
(Nov
2004, page 8) by Calvin Neill in response to a special Einstein issue
(September):

"I can think of dozens of scientists whose work was more important
than
Einstein's. His work was mostly theoretical and has been of little
use to
humanity. I rate Watson and Crick, Newton, Bernoulli, Faraday,
Clausius,
and dozens of others as being more important scientists than
Einstein."



1) This is fundamentally a silly debate. Scientific achievement,
like many things, is multi-dimensional ... and therefore cannot be
ranked on a one-dimensional scale. The "flower-pressing theorem"
says you cannot have a mapping from one dimensionality to another
that is one-to-one and continuous.

2) When Newton submitted a solution anonymously, Bernoulli recognized
it immediately /tanquam ex ungue leonem/ -- "as the lion is known by
its claw". Much of Einstein's work was of a similar caliber: only
Einstein could have done it, as his colleagues well knew (although
like Newton, he too stood on the shoulders of giants). In contrast,
I hesitate to put Watson & Crick in the same category. I think
Rosalind Franklin would have hesitated, too.

I mention that because along the dimension of "impact on humanity",
only DNA is in the same catetory as E=mc^2, i.e. giving humanity the
capacity to annihilate itself ... something that Newton, Bernoulli,
Faraday, Maxwell and other first-rate geniuses never approached.

====================

Overall, I'm not in a big rush to rank any of these characters as
being vastly more important the others ... or vastly less.

=======================================

In any case, on any reasonable scale, 1905 was a Wunderjahre, and
we would do well to celebrate the centennial. Some valuable
resources are starting to appear. I recently stumbled accross
this site:
http://home.tiscali.nl/physis/HistoricPaper/Historic%20Papers.html#Eins
tein

which contains the original papers (and in most cases English
translations). A couple of years ago not everyone had easy
access to these documents. Read them and decide for yourself
on their importance. (IMHO they're important enough!)