Word: einsteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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However that quest may turn out, the father of relativity remains a moving figure, a 20th century Newton who set physics aflame and left an intellectual legacy so rich and profound that its depth is still a source of amazement and discovery. Yet Einstein, for his part, never lost sight of the humanity that new knowledge should serve. Says Einstein's executor, Economist Otto Nathan: "Even if he had never done science at all, he would have been one of the memorable figures of the century." That may be the exaggeration of a loyal friend. But as a centennial assessment...
...would say? 'You see, they are still taking pieces out of my hide.' " Philosopher Paul Schilpp, who is helping arrange a centennial symposium at Southern Illinois University, acknowledges that Einstein "would hate all this uproar...
...April by the National Academy of Sciences on Washington's Constitution Avenue. Critics have attacked Sculptor Robert Berks for his "bubble gum" style, the astrological connotation of the star-studded base and the statue's cost (at least $1.6 million). Others insist that no statue could really be appropriate; Einstein, after all, was so opposed to posthumous veneration that he willed his ashes to be scattered at an undisclosed place. Constantly called upon to pose for photographers, painters and sculptors (including Berks), he once gave his occupation as "artist's model...
Perhaps the most meaningful tribute to Einstein is entirely unplanned: the renaissance of interest in his scientific work. Before his death in 1955 at 76, Einstein had called himself a "museum piece," a fossil who had long since slipped out of the mainstream of physics. Indeed, his greatest work, general relativity, fell into an intellectual limbo. Explains University of Texas Physicist John Wheeler: "For the first half-century of its life, general relativity was a theorist's paradise but an experimentalist's hell. No theory was more difficult to test." Physicists turned to other concepts, mostly concerning atomic structure, that...
...that view has undergone a dramatic change. Says West German Physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker: "Einstein's true greatness lies in the fact that he remains relevant today, in spite of the breakthroughs that have occurred since his death." Indeed, it is many of those breakthroughs that have contributed to the Einstein revival...