ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project began after I gave several public lectures at Aspen and at Yale on Einstein, Planck, and the beginning of quantum theory, when it became clear that most of this story was completely unknown both to the interested layman and to most working physicists. While several eminent historians of science, T. S. Kuhn, Martin Klein, Abraham Pais, and John Stachel for example, have written excellent but relatively technical works analyzing various facets of Einsteinâs work on quantum theory, no book for the general reader had attempted to synthesize all this into a complete picture. I have tried to fill that void with this book, while making it a fun read along the way. The book is based on the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and the large body of outstanding historiography that has been produced on the history of quantum theory, blended with material from a number of biographies of Einstein, with a particular debt to the recent ones by Albrecht Folsing and Walter Isaacson. While I chose not to footnote quotations in the text, all their sources are identified in extensive notes at the back of the book.
I want to thank the late Martin Klein for his encouragement at the very early stages of this project, and Walter Isaacson for his generous advice and assistance, which was so important to a first-time author. I am very grateful to my editor, Ingrid Gnerlich, for her critical reading of the manuscript and useful guidance, and to Deborah Chasman, who made key suggestions for improving my initial draft. I also want to thank Samantha Hasey and Eric Henney at Princeton University Press, who helped with the final stages of preparation for publication. Barbara Wollf at the Albert Einstein Archive of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was very generous with her advice and experience relating to the copyright permissions I was seeking, and Andy Shimp helpedme navigate the library systems at Yale and retrieve difficult-to-find items. Both my father, Alan Stone, and my wife, Mary Schwab Stone, read the work with a keen eye and helped me immeasurably, not the least in keeping up my enthusiasm for the project. My son, Will Stone, found time between his journalistic pursuits to work as my editorial assistant in assembling the final version of the manuscript.
EINSTEIN AND THE QUANTUM
INTRODUCTION
A HUNDRED TIMES MORE THAN RELATIVITY THEORY
âLetâs see if Einstein can solve our problem.â This was not an idea I had ever entertained, much less verbalized, during my previous twenty-six years doing research in quantum physics. Physicists donât read the works of the great masters of earlier generations. We learn physics from weighty textbooks in which the ideas are stated with cold-blooded logical inevitability, and the history that is mentioned is sanitized to eliminate the passions, egos, and human frailties of the great ânatural philosophers.â After all, since physical science (we believe) is a cumulative discipline, why shouldnât we downplay or even censor the missteps and misunderstandings of our predecessors? It is daunting enough to attempt to master and then extend the most complex concepts produced by the human mind, such as the bizarre description of the atomic world provided by quantum theory. Wouldnât telling the real human history of discovery just confuse people?
Thus, while I had studied history and philosophy of science avidly as an undergraduate, I had not read a single word written by Einstein during my actual career as a research physicist. I was of course aware that Einstein had contributed to the subject of quantum physics. Even freshman physics students learn that Einstein explained the photoelectric effect and said something fundamental about the quantized nature of light. And both atomic and solid-state physics (my specialty) have specific equations of quantum theory named for Einstein. So clearly the guy did something important in the subject. But the
This project began after I gave several public lectures at Aspen and at Yale on Einstein, Planck, and the beginning of quantum theory, when it became clear that most of this story was completely unknown both to the interested layman and to most working physicists. While several eminent historians of science, T. S. Kuhn, Martin Klein, Abraham Pais, and John Stachel for example, have written excellent but relatively technical works analyzing various facets of Einsteinâs work on quantum theory, no book for the general reader had attempted to synthesize all this into a complete picture. I have tried to fill that void with this book, while making it a fun read along the way. The book is based on the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and the large body of outstanding historiography that has been produced on the history of quantum theory, blended with material from a number of biographies of Einstein, with a particular debt to the recent ones by Albrecht Folsing and Walter Isaacson. While I chose not to footnote quotations in the text, all their sources are identified in extensive notes at the back of the book.
I want to thank the late Martin Klein for his encouragement at the very early stages of this project, and Walter Isaacson for his generous advice and assistance, which was so important to a first-time author. I am very grateful to my editor, Ingrid Gnerlich, for her critical reading of the manuscript and useful guidance, and to Deborah Chasman, who made key suggestions for improving my initial draft. I also want to thank Samantha Hasey and Eric Henney at Princeton University Press, who helped with the final stages of preparation for publication. Barbara Wollf at the Albert Einstein Archive of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was very generous with her advice and experience relating to the copyright permissions I was seeking, and Andy Shimp helpedme navigate the library systems at Yale and retrieve difficult-to-find items. Both my father, Alan Stone, and my wife, Mary Schwab Stone, read the work with a keen eye and helped me immeasurably, not the least in keeping up my enthusiasm for the project. My son, Will Stone, found time between his journalistic pursuits to work as my editorial assistant in assembling the final version of the manuscript.
EINSTEIN AND THE QUANTUM
INTRODUCTION
A HUNDRED TIMES MORE THAN RELATIVITY THEORY
âLetâs see if Einstein can solve our problem.â This was not an idea I had ever entertained, much less verbalized, during my previous twenty-six years doing research in quantum physics. Physicists donât read the works of the great masters of earlier generations. We learn physics from weighty textbooks in which the ideas are stated with cold-blooded logical inevitability, and the history that is mentioned is sanitized to eliminate the passions, egos, and human frailties of the great ânatural philosophers.â After all, since physical science (we believe) is a cumulative discipline, why shouldnât we downplay or even censor the missteps and misunderstandings of our predecessors? It is daunting enough to attempt to master and then extend the most complex concepts produced by the human mind, such as the bizarre description of the atomic world provided by quantum theory. Wouldnât telling the real human history of discovery just confuse people?
Thus, while I had studied history and philosophy of science avidly as an undergraduate, I had not read a single word written by Einstein during my actual career as a research physicist. I was of course aware that Einstein had contributed to the subject of quantum physics. Even freshman physics students learn that Einstein explained the photoelectric effect and said something fundamental about the quantized nature of light. And both atomic and solid-state physics (my specialty) have specific equations of quantum theory named for Einstein. So clearly the guy did something important in the subject. But the
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