WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.700 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are we're 00:00:03.700 --> 00:00:06.679 looking at a stack of research that is frankly 00:00:06.679 --> 00:00:09.419 it's intimidating. Just a little bit. It is the 00:00:09.419 --> 00:00:12.560 entire biographical and scientific record of 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:14.919 Albert Einstein. And the first thing that jumps 00:00:14.919 --> 00:00:16.960 out at me from these sources isn't the physics. 00:00:17.179 --> 00:00:20.820 It's the the massive gap between the symbol and 00:00:20.820 --> 00:00:23.910 the man. Right. We have this. Cultural shorthand 00:00:23.910 --> 00:00:26.230 for Einstein, you know, the crazy white hair, 00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:28.969 the no socks, the tongue out on the postcard. 00:00:29.230 --> 00:00:32.329 He is the benevolent grandfather of the universe. 00:00:32.450 --> 00:00:35.189 He's the mascot for genius. He's the guy on the 00:00:35.189 --> 00:00:37.969 baby Einstein DVDs. He's a caricature. But when 00:00:37.969 --> 00:00:40.649 you actually read his letters, especially the 00:00:40.649 --> 00:00:42.310 early ones to his first wife, Molly of America, 00:00:42.390 --> 00:00:44.729 his colleagues, you don't find a saint. Not at 00:00:44.729 --> 00:00:47.929 all. You find a guy who is arrogant, obsessed, 00:00:48.310 --> 00:00:52.570 politically radical and often. deeply messy in 00:00:52.570 --> 00:00:54.710 his personal life. That is exactly what we need 00:00:54.710 --> 00:00:56.530 to parse today. We aren't just doing a biography. 00:00:56.770 --> 00:00:59.789 We're trying to map the specific, I guess, cognitive 00:00:59.789 --> 00:01:02.189 architecture of his brain. How did he see the 00:01:02.189 --> 00:01:04.010 universe so differently? And the sources are 00:01:04.010 --> 00:01:05.689 pretty clear that this starts way before the 00:01:05.689 --> 00:01:08.150 patent office. Way before. So we're going to 00:01:08.150 --> 00:01:10.230 dismantle the caricature. We aren't just talking 00:01:10.230 --> 00:01:12.750 about E equals MC squared. We are talking about 00:01:12.750 --> 00:01:17.189 a refugee. A civil rights activist, a musician, 00:01:17.510 --> 00:01:21.170 a man involved in some very intricate romantic 00:01:21.170 --> 00:01:24.109 scandals, and ironically, a scientist who actually 00:01:24.109 --> 00:01:26.150 hated the randomness of the quantum mechanics 00:01:26.150 --> 00:01:28.329 that he helped invent. That is the part that 00:01:28.329 --> 00:01:30.849 always fascinates me. The idea that the man who 00:01:30.849 --> 00:01:33.469 blew up Newtonian physics eventually became the 00:01:33.469 --> 00:01:35.909 conservative old guard. The one trying to stop 00:01:35.909 --> 00:01:38.390 the next revolution. It's the classic cycle of 00:01:38.390 --> 00:01:41.379 scientific life, isn't it? It really is. Our 00:01:41.379 --> 00:01:44.260 mission today is to find the real Albert Einstein. 00:01:44.599 --> 00:01:46.980 And to do that we have to start at the very beginning. 00:01:47.319 --> 00:01:50.040 And I want to immediately address the poster 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:53.560 boy for bad students everywhere. Ah, yes. You're 00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:56.000 referring to the Einstein failed math myth. I 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:58.079 am. It is the most comforting myth in all of 00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:00.500 history. I'm failing algebra the second, but 00:02:00.500 --> 00:02:02.620 it's okay. You know, Einstein failed math too. 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:04.879 Please tell me there is some truth to this. I 00:02:04.879 --> 00:02:06.420 hate to be the one to take that comfort away 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:09.639 from you, but it is completely 100 % false. Oh, 00:02:09.639 --> 00:02:11.419 come on. The records are crystal clear on this. 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:14.479 He excelled at physics and math from a very, 00:02:14.520 --> 00:02:17.240 very young age. By the time he was 12, he was 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:19.219 teaching himself algebra and Euclidean geometry. 00:02:19.479 --> 00:02:22.310 Teaching himself. On his own. There's a quote 00:02:22.310 --> 00:02:24.750 from a family tutor, a guy named Max Talmud, 00:02:24.870 --> 00:02:27.669 who gave the 12 -year -old Einstein a geometry 00:02:27.669 --> 00:02:30.189 textbook. And he said Einstein worked through 00:02:30.189 --> 00:02:32.750 the entire book in just a short time and then, 00:02:32.770 --> 00:02:35.110 quote, devoted himself to higher mathematics. 00:02:36.009 --> 00:02:38.389 Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was 00:02:38.389 --> 00:02:40.789 so high I could not follow. So he wasn't just 00:02:40.789 --> 00:02:43.969 good at it. He was a prodigy, a genuine prodigy. 00:02:44.439 --> 00:02:46.340 Where on earth does the failure myth come from 00:02:46.340 --> 00:02:48.699 then? It seems to come from a conflation of two 00:02:48.699 --> 00:02:50.840 different things. One, he did fail an entrance 00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:53.300 exam later in his teens, which I'm sure we'll 00:02:53.300 --> 00:02:55.699 get to. But primarily it comes from his time 00:02:55.699 --> 00:02:58.919 at the Leutpold Gymnasium in Munich. Okay. He 00:02:58.919 --> 00:03:01.460 didn't fail the subjects. He failed the system. 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:03.400 And we have to remember the context here, right? 00:03:03.439 --> 00:03:05.879 We're talking about late 19th century Germany. 00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:09.379 The education system was incredibly militaristic. 00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:12.180 Oh, absolutely. It was all about rote memorization. 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:14.599 You stand up when the teacher enters the room. 00:03:14.699 --> 00:03:18.199 You recite facts on command. You do not, under 00:03:18.199 --> 00:03:20.960 any circumstances, ask why. And that would have 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:23.460 been poison to a mind like Einstein's. Total 00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:27.319 poison. He hated it. He felt that that kind of, 00:03:27.319 --> 00:03:30.439 you know, military style regimen just killed 00:03:30.439 --> 00:03:33.060 creativity. He was what they called a fractious 00:03:33.060 --> 00:03:35.419 pupil. He clashed with his teachers constantly. 00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:37.620 I can imagine. There's a story that one teacher 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:40.439 actually told him he would never amount to anything, 00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:43.919 not because he was stupid, but because his rebellious 00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:46.099 attitude was destroying the discipline of the 00:03:46.099 --> 00:03:48.280 entire class. So he wasn't struggling with the 00:03:48.280 --> 00:03:49.879 content at all. He was struggling with authority. 00:03:50.870 --> 00:03:53.030 Precisely. And that is a theme that runs through 00:03:53.030 --> 00:03:55.930 his entire life. He had a sort of pathological, 00:03:56.009 --> 00:03:58.729 allergic reaction to authority figures. But before 00:03:58.729 --> 00:04:00.750 he drops out, because he does eventually drop 00:04:00.750 --> 00:04:03.590 out, there is one specific moment from his childhood 00:04:03.590 --> 00:04:05.789 that the sources point to as being even more 00:04:05.789 --> 00:04:08.729 important than all the school trouble. It's the 00:04:08.729 --> 00:04:11.009 story of the compass. It's a famous story, but 00:04:11.009 --> 00:04:13.039 I think... People often miss the true significance 00:04:13.039 --> 00:04:16.139 of it. He's five years old, sick in bed, and 00:04:16.139 --> 00:04:18.560 his father, Herman, hands him a standard pocket 00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:20.319 compass to play with. And most kids would just 00:04:20.319 --> 00:04:22.240 treat it like a toy, right? You spin it around, 00:04:22.379 --> 00:04:24.379 the needle wobbles back and forth. It's fun for 00:04:24.379 --> 00:04:27.959 five minutes, maybe. Exactly. But Einstein freezes. 00:04:29.019 --> 00:04:31.620 He sees that the needle is behaving in a very 00:04:31.620 --> 00:04:35.199 determined way. It always, always seeks north. 00:04:35.339 --> 00:04:38.800 No matter how he turns the case, the needle corrects 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:41.100 itself and he realized in that moment that the 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:43.240 needle was interacting with something he couldn't 00:04:43.240 --> 00:04:45.500 see something he couldn't touch couldn't hear 00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:48.480 he later described this experience as a trembling 00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:51.879 he realized that something deeply hidden had 00:04:51.879 --> 00:04:54.480 to be behind things and that phrase something 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:58.220 deeply hidden that is the key to his entire scientific 00:04:58.220 --> 00:05:01.220 career You have to understand, Newtonian physics, 00:05:01.319 --> 00:05:03.500 which was the absolute law of the land at the 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:06.319 time, was very much about contact forces. Billiard 00:05:06.319 --> 00:05:08.959 balls hitting billiard balls. Right. Gears turning 00:05:08.959 --> 00:05:12.740 gears. You push something, it moves. But the 00:05:12.740 --> 00:05:15.500 compass suggested something else entirely. It 00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:18.779 suggested a field, an invisible structure to 00:05:18.779 --> 00:05:22.490 reality that permeates empty space. So at five 00:05:22.490 --> 00:05:24.629 years old, he's already intuiting field theory. 00:05:24.750 --> 00:05:26.550 He's already looking for the invisible geometry 00:05:26.550 --> 00:05:28.529 of the universe rather than just the objects 00:05:28.529 --> 00:05:31.889 moving within it. He is. And that absolute refusal 00:05:31.889 --> 00:05:35.209 to accept surface level reality is what eventually 00:05:35.209 --> 00:05:37.529 leads him to tear down Newton's entire universe. 00:05:37.810 --> 00:05:40.910 Yeah. But let's get back to the timeline. He's 00:05:40.910 --> 00:05:42.930 a teenager. He hates his German school with a 00:05:42.930 --> 00:05:45.839 passion. What does he do? He pulls a pretty radical 00:05:45.839 --> 00:05:48.360 move. His family had moved to Italy for business. 00:05:48.420 --> 00:05:50.600 His father was in the electrical equipment industry. 00:05:50.839 --> 00:05:53.379 But Albert had stayed behind in Munich to finish 00:05:53.379 --> 00:05:55.800 his schooling. Right. But eventually he just 00:05:55.800 --> 00:05:58.519 quits. He gets a doctor's nose saying he's suffering 00:05:58.519 --> 00:06:01.600 from nervous exhaustion, drops out of the gymnasium 00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:03.800 and crosses the Alps to join his family in Italy. 00:06:04.040 --> 00:06:06.160 And then he tries to get into the Swiss Federal 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:09.680 Polytechnic School in Zurich, the ETH. And this 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:11.899 is where the failure actually happens. But again, 00:06:11.959 --> 00:06:14.500 context is everything here. He was only 16 years 00:06:14.500 --> 00:06:17.920 old. Exactly. The exam was intended for 18 -year 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:20.079 -olds. Yeah. And you have to be clear, he didn't 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:22.839 fail the math or physics sections of the exam. 00:06:23.100 --> 00:06:26.740 He obliterated them. He did. The principal was 00:06:26.740 --> 00:06:30.180 reportedly stunned by his math scores. But he 00:06:30.180 --> 00:06:33.339 failed the general subjects like Watney, zoology. 00:06:33.740 --> 00:06:36.180 and French language. Which makes perfect sense, 00:06:36.259 --> 00:06:38.120 doesn't it? He hadn't attended high school for 00:06:38.120 --> 00:06:40.220 those subjects. He essentially walked in off 00:06:40.220 --> 00:06:42.319 the street as a high school dropout and tried 00:06:42.319 --> 00:06:45.120 to pass a general university entrance exam in 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:47.060 a foreign language. It's an incredible story. 00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:49.560 So the principal, being very impressed, advised 00:06:49.560 --> 00:06:51.939 him to go and finish secondary school in a little 00:06:51.939 --> 00:06:54.560 town called Aral and then come back. Which he 00:06:54.560 --> 00:06:57.199 did. But there is another detail from this period 00:06:57.199 --> 00:06:59.600 that I found really surprising. At 16, he made 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:02.379 a pretty drastic legal decision. He renounced 00:07:02.379 --> 00:07:05.319 his German citizenship. At 16, I mean, who does 00:07:05.319 --> 00:07:07.199 that? It's hard to overstate how big a deal that 00:07:07.199 --> 00:07:09.259 is, especially back then. He wanted to avoid 00:07:09.259 --> 00:07:11.740 the military draft in Germany because he absolutely 00:07:11.740 --> 00:07:13.660 hated that militaristic culture we were talking 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:17.060 about. So for five years, from 1896 to 1901, 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:20.639 Albert Einstein was stateless. No passport, no 00:07:20.639 --> 00:07:23.360 country. He belonged to no country until he was 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:26.240 finally granted Swiss citizenship. It just paints 00:07:26.240 --> 00:07:29.100 this picture of someone who is fiercely, almost 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:31.629 pathologically independent. He doesn't want to 00:07:31.629 --> 00:07:33.269 belong to a school system that tells him how 00:07:33.269 --> 00:07:35.029 to think, and he doesn't want to belong to a 00:07:35.029 --> 00:07:37.310 country that tells him who to fight. He is stripping 00:07:37.310 --> 00:07:39.290 away all the labels so he can just be a thinking 00:07:39.290 --> 00:07:41.769 mind. But that independence definitely came with 00:07:41.769 --> 00:07:44.670 a cost. He graduates from the Polytechnic in 00:07:44.670 --> 00:07:47.889 1900, fully certified to teach mathematics and 00:07:47.889 --> 00:07:51.350 physics, but... He can't get a job. Most famous 00:07:51.350 --> 00:07:53.589 physicist in history couldn't get a job. For 00:07:53.589 --> 00:07:55.790 almost two full years. It's actually kind of 00:07:55.790 --> 00:07:58.490 sad reading the letters from this period. He 00:07:58.490 --> 00:08:00.930 applied for teaching positions and got rejected 00:08:00.930 --> 00:08:04.110 one after the other. He was passed over for university 00:08:04.110 --> 00:08:06.329 assistant jobs because his professors at the 00:08:06.329 --> 00:08:09.449 Polytechnic found him arrogant. One professor, 00:08:09.709 --> 00:08:12.149 Heinrich Weber, actually told him, you're a smart 00:08:12.149 --> 00:08:14.790 boy, Einstein, a very smart boy, but you have 00:08:14.790 --> 00:08:17.850 one great fault. You do not let yourself be told 00:08:17.850 --> 00:08:21.290 anything. The classic double edged sword. The 00:08:21.290 --> 00:08:23.689 same trait that makes him a genius makes him 00:08:23.689 --> 00:08:26.529 completely unemployable. Exactly. So he was essentially 00:08:26.529 --> 00:08:29.790 unemployed and broke. He was tutoring students 00:08:29.790 --> 00:08:33.110 on the side for, you know, pennies. Eventually, 00:08:33.110 --> 00:08:35.789 the father of his good friend, Marcel Grossman, 00:08:35.889 --> 00:08:38.389 pulled some strings and got him a job interview. 00:08:38.549 --> 00:08:41.129 At the Swiss patent office in Bern. The famous 00:08:41.129 --> 00:08:44.250 patent office job, assistant examiner, level 00:08:44.250 --> 00:08:46.590 three. Just sounds so bureaucratic and boring. 00:08:46.909 --> 00:08:50.049 Like. The place where scientific dreams go to 00:08:50.049 --> 00:08:52.950 die. Just a guy in a stiff collar stamping forms 00:08:52.950 --> 00:08:55.269 all day. You would think so. But if we really 00:08:55.269 --> 00:08:57.889 unpack this, the research strongly suggests this 00:08:57.889 --> 00:09:00.470 job was actually the perfect incubator for relativity. 00:09:00.830 --> 00:09:02.730 We have to look at what he was examining every 00:09:02.730 --> 00:09:05.429 day. It wasn't just mousetraps and gravel sorters 00:09:05.429 --> 00:09:08.549 then? Not at all. Bern, Switzerland, in 1902, 00:09:08.710 --> 00:09:11.169 was a hub for the new electromechanical revolution. 00:09:11.690 --> 00:09:13.850 He was looking at patent applications for the 00:09:13.850 --> 00:09:15.889 synchronization of clocks over long distances. 00:09:16.330 --> 00:09:18.159 This was a massive... practical problem at the 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:20.580 time, right? Because of the trains. It was all 00:09:20.580 --> 00:09:22.759 about the trains. The trains were the internet 00:09:22.759 --> 00:09:26.179 of the 19th century. If you want a train to travel 00:09:26.179 --> 00:09:29.039 from Zurich to Bern on a single track, you need 00:09:29.039 --> 00:09:31.200 to know exactly what time it is in both cities 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:34.419 to avoid a head -on collision. Okay, so how do 00:09:34.419 --> 00:09:37.000 you synchronize a clock in Bern with a clock 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:39.480 in Zurich? You send a signal, a telegraph signal. 00:09:39.720 --> 00:09:41.639 Right, and that signal travels at the speed of 00:09:41.639 --> 00:09:44.039 light. So Einstein is sitting at his desk day 00:09:44.039 --> 00:09:46.500 after day looking at these technical diagrams 00:09:46.500 --> 00:09:50.409 of Sender A and Receiver B exchanging signals 00:09:50.409 --> 00:09:53.190 to set their clocks. And he starts asking a question 00:09:53.190 --> 00:09:55.649 that the inventors themselves weren't asking. 00:09:55.769 --> 00:09:57.990 A much deeper question. He asks, what does it 00:09:57.990 --> 00:10:00.250 actually mean to say two things happen at the 00:10:00.250 --> 00:10:02.870 same time? Simultaneity. That is the breakthrough. 00:10:03.309 --> 00:10:05.409 Isaac Newton said, time is like a master clock 00:10:05.409 --> 00:10:07.490 ticking universally for everyone in the cosmos. 00:10:07.789 --> 00:10:11.110 If it's 12 .0 for me, it's 12 .0 for you, no 00:10:11.110 --> 00:10:13.110 matter where you are or how fast you're moving. 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:16.320 It's absolute. But Einstein realizes that if 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:18.620 the speed of light is finite, which Maxwell's 00:10:18.620 --> 00:10:21.519 equations for electromagnetism said it was, then 00:10:21.519 --> 00:10:23.600 the time it takes for a signal to reach you depends 00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:26.379 on how you are moving relative to that signal. 00:10:26.879 --> 00:10:29.320 Exactly. And if the speed of light must remain 00:10:29.320 --> 00:10:31.960 constant for all observers, which was the one 00:10:31.960 --> 00:10:35.240 postulate he refused to budge on, then something 00:10:35.240 --> 00:10:38.360 else has to give. If I'm on a train moving near 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:40.279 the speed of light and I measure a light beam 00:10:40.279 --> 00:10:42.500 and you're standing on the platform measuring 00:10:42.500 --> 00:10:45.740 that same beam, we must get the exact same speed. 00:10:45.960 --> 00:10:47.779 But we're moving differently, so how is that 00:10:47.779 --> 00:10:50.460 possible? For the math to work, the distance 00:10:50.460 --> 00:10:52.980 and the time have to change for the moving observer. 00:10:53.340 --> 00:10:56.539 Space shrinks and time slows down. He realized 00:10:56.539 --> 00:10:59.649 that the concept of now... is not universal. 00:10:59.950 --> 00:11:03.929 It's a local illusion. Your now and my now are 00:11:03.929 --> 00:11:06.850 relative to our motion. And he's actually figured 00:11:06.850 --> 00:11:08.830 this out because he was obsessed with how to 00:11:08.830 --> 00:11:10.889 coordinate train clocks at the patent office. 00:11:11.129 --> 00:11:13.990 It's just incredible. He's taking a boring bureaucratic 00:11:13.990 --> 00:11:16.730 problem and turning it into a complete metaphysical 00:11:16.730 --> 00:11:18.649 revolution. And he wasn't doing this entirely 00:11:18.649 --> 00:11:21.450 in a vacuum. We have to mention the Olympia Academy. 00:11:21.690 --> 00:11:23.909 Right, which sounds incredibly prestigious and 00:11:23.909 --> 00:11:25.509 formal. It sounds like it should be in a marble 00:11:25.509 --> 00:11:28.110 hall somewhere. But it was basically just Einstein 00:11:28.110 --> 00:11:30.850 and two of his friends, Maurice Solovine and 00:11:30.850 --> 00:11:33.450 Conrad Habicht, drinking cheap wine and eating 00:11:33.450 --> 00:11:35.950 sausage in his tiny burn apartment. But they 00:11:35.950 --> 00:11:38.970 were reading some really heavy stuff. David Hume, 00:11:39.090 --> 00:11:42.210 Henri Poincaré, Ernst Ma. And this is crucial. 00:11:42.370 --> 00:11:44.149 They weren't just reading physics textbooks. 00:11:44.470 --> 00:11:46.590 They were reading philosophy that questioned 00:11:46.590 --> 00:11:50.490 the very nature of absolute truths. Hugh and 00:11:50.490 --> 00:11:52.970 Mach in particular taught Einstein to be deeply 00:11:52.970 --> 00:11:55.690 skeptical of concepts that you couldn't actually 00:11:55.690 --> 00:11:58.870 observe. So Newton said absolute space and time 00:11:58.870 --> 00:12:01.090 existed. But Mach basically said if you can't 00:12:01.090 --> 00:12:04.000 measure it, it doesn't exist. That philosophical 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.980 priming allowed Einstein to look at the luminiferous 00:12:06.980 --> 00:12:09.279 ether the invisible substance light was supposed 00:12:09.279 --> 00:12:11.200 to travel through and just say, we don't need 00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:13.120 it. It's a supercilious concept. So you have 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:14.919 the technical puzzle of the clocks from the patent 00:12:14.919 --> 00:12:17.220 office, the philosophical skepticism from the 00:12:17.220 --> 00:12:20.059 Olympia Academy, and the sheer stubbornness of 00:12:20.059 --> 00:12:22.600 his personality. And it all culminates in the 00:12:22.600 --> 00:12:26.059 year 1905. The Annus Mirabilis. The miracle year. 00:12:26.409 --> 00:12:28.870 I honestly don't think Miracle Year is an exaggeration. 00:12:28.929 --> 00:12:32.169 He is 26 years old. He is a patent clerk, level 00:12:32.169 --> 00:12:35.370 three. He is not a professor at a major university. 00:12:36.049 --> 00:12:39.269 And in a single year, he publishes four papers 00:12:39.269 --> 00:12:41.990 in the Annalen der Physik that completely change 00:12:41.990 --> 00:12:44.570 our understanding of the universe. It is unparalleled 00:12:44.570 --> 00:12:47.600 in the history of science. I mean... Newton had 00:12:47.600 --> 00:12:49.840 a similar productive run during the plague years, 00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:52.279 but Einstein did this while working six days 00:12:52.279 --> 00:12:54.659 a week at a full -time day job. Let's walk through 00:12:54.659 --> 00:12:56.440 these papers, because I think most people know 00:12:56.440 --> 00:12:58.899 the last one, but the others are just as huge, 00:12:58.899 --> 00:13:01.500 if not bigger in some ways. Let's start with 00:13:01.500 --> 00:13:03.919 the first one, the photoelectric effect. Right, 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:05.899 and this is actually the paper that won him the 00:13:05.899 --> 00:13:08.320 Nobel Prize in 1921. It wasn't for relativity. 00:13:08.600 --> 00:13:11.379 Which is so ironic. It is, because this paper 00:13:11.379 --> 00:13:13.500 planted the seeds for quantum mechanics, the 00:13:13.500 --> 00:13:16.279 very theory he would later fight against so vehemently. 00:13:16.570 --> 00:13:18.909 so what was the central idea here what was the 00:13:18.909 --> 00:13:21.610 problem he was solving at the time the prevailing 00:13:21.610 --> 00:13:24.769 theory was that light was a wave like a ripple 00:13:24.769 --> 00:13:27.730 in a pond but there was a persistent experimental 00:13:27.730 --> 00:13:30.429 problem when you shine light on a piece of metal 00:13:30.429 --> 00:13:33.330 it can knock electrons off okay now if light 00:13:33.330 --> 00:13:38.009 is a wave simply making the light brighter increasing 00:13:38.009 --> 00:13:40.529 its intensity or amplitude, should knock off 00:13:40.529 --> 00:13:42.970 more electrons with more energy. But experiments 00:13:42.970 --> 00:13:44.950 showed that wasn't happening at all. Right. It 00:13:44.950 --> 00:13:46.730 depended on the color of the light, the frequency, 00:13:46.850 --> 00:13:49.870 not just how bright it was. Precisely. A dim 00:13:49.870 --> 00:13:53.190 blue light could knock electrons off. But a super 00:13:53.190 --> 00:13:55.710 bright red light did nothing. It made no sense. 00:13:56.009 --> 00:13:58.769 So Einstein proposed a radical solution. He said, 00:13:58.850 --> 00:14:01.409 let's stop thinking of light as just a continuous 00:14:01.409 --> 00:14:04.110 wave. And think of it as what? As being made 00:14:04.110 --> 00:14:06.879 of discrete packets of energy. Little bullets 00:14:06.879 --> 00:14:09.320 of light. He called them light quanta, or what 00:14:09.320 --> 00:14:12.559 we now call photons. He treated light as a particle. 00:14:12.779 --> 00:14:15.080 Which was complete heresy at the time. Absolute 00:14:15.080 --> 00:14:18.059 heresy. A scientist named Max Planck had used 00:14:18.059 --> 00:14:20.000 the idea of quanta as a kind of mathematical 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:22.460 trick to solve a different problem, but he didn't 00:14:22.460 --> 00:14:24.759 think it was physically real. Einstein was the 00:14:24.759 --> 00:14:27.399 first to say, no, this is physically real. Light 00:14:27.399 --> 00:14:29.860 itself is granular. It fundamentally changed 00:14:29.860 --> 00:14:32.519 how we see reality. It's not smooth and continuous. 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:35.440 It's chunky. It's quantized. That's the word. 00:14:35.580 --> 00:14:39.059 Okay, so paper one invents the concept of the 00:14:39.059 --> 00:14:41.879 photon and starts quantum mechanics. Not a bad 00:14:41.879 --> 00:14:44.340 spring break. What's paper number two? Brownian 00:14:44.340 --> 00:14:47.580 motion. This one is less famous to the public, 00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:50.080 but arguably just as important, especially for 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:52.639 the world of chemistry. In this paper, he proved 00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:55.460 that atoms exist. Wait, hold on a second. People 00:14:55.460 --> 00:14:58.039 didn't know for sure that atoms existed in 1905. 00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:01.860 It was still a huge debate. Major respected scientists 00:15:01.860 --> 00:15:04.480 like Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Ostwald thought atoms 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:06.220 were just a convenient mathematical fiction, 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:09.379 not a physical reality. Just a useful idea for 00:15:09.379 --> 00:15:12.000 calculations. Exactly. They believed matter was 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:14.460 ultimately continuous. So how did Einstein go 00:15:14.460 --> 00:15:17.289 about proving them wrong? He looked at a phenomenon 00:15:17.289 --> 00:15:20.169 that had been observed for decades called Brownian 00:15:20.169 --> 00:15:23.409 motion. If you suspend tiny particles like pollen 00:15:23.409 --> 00:15:25.769 grains in water and look under a microscope, 00:15:25.990 --> 00:15:28.450 the pollen grains dance around erratically. They 00:15:28.450 --> 00:15:31.149 just jiggle. Einstein used statistical analysis 00:15:31.149 --> 00:15:33.190 to show that this jittery motion could only be 00:15:33.190 --> 00:15:34.870 explained if the pollen was being constantly 00:15:34.870 --> 00:15:37.710 bombarded by millions of invisible tiny particles, 00:15:37.830 --> 00:15:39.830 the water molecules themselves, hitting them 00:15:39.830 --> 00:15:41.990 from random directions. He made the invisible 00:15:41.990 --> 00:15:45.320 visible through statistics. Perfectly put. He 00:15:45.320 --> 00:15:47.600 even calculated the approximate size of atoms 00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:50.299 based on how much the pollen moved. It was the 00:15:50.299 --> 00:15:52.620 nail in the coffin. It ended the debate. Matter 00:15:52.620 --> 00:15:55.950 is made of atoms. So two papers down, two revolutions 00:15:55.950 --> 00:15:58.149 started. Let's go to paper three, special relativity. 00:15:58.330 --> 00:16:00.529 We touched on this with the trains and the clocks. 00:16:00.789 --> 00:16:02.789 This is the paper that reconciles electricity 00:16:02.789 --> 00:16:05.690 and magnetism with classical mechanics. And in 00:16:05.690 --> 00:16:08.529 doing so, it completely destroys the concept 00:16:08.529 --> 00:16:12.210 of absolute time and absolute space. This is 00:16:12.210 --> 00:16:15.330 where he lays down his two postulates. One, that 00:16:15.330 --> 00:16:17.250 the laws of physics are the same for all non 00:16:17.250 --> 00:16:20.149 -accelerating observers. And two, that the speed 00:16:20.149 --> 00:16:22.350 of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers. 00:16:23.149 --> 00:16:25.070 those two simple ideas, everything else falls 00:16:25.070 --> 00:16:28.250 out. Time dilation, length contraction. And as 00:16:28.250 --> 00:16:31.389 a sort of addendum, a few months later, E equals 00:16:31.389 --> 00:16:33.669 mc squared falls out of the math as well. Which 00:16:33.669 --> 00:16:35.409 is actually the fourth paper, right? It's almost 00:16:35.409 --> 00:16:37.250 like a postscript. Yes, there's a tiny three 00:16:37.250 --> 00:16:40.110 -page paper titled, Does the Inertia of a Body 00:16:40.110 --> 00:16:42.970 Depend Upon Its Energy Content? And the answer, 00:16:43.090 --> 00:16:46.929 famously, was yes. The equation E equals mc squared 00:16:46.929 --> 00:16:49.429 means that mass and energy are just two different 00:16:49.429 --> 00:16:52.759 sides of the same coin. Mass is just congealed 00:16:52.759 --> 00:16:55.659 energy. And because C, the speed of light, is 00:16:55.659 --> 00:16:59.120 a gigantic number, squaring it gives you a gargantuan 00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:01.620 number. Which means a tiny amount of mass contains 00:17:01.620 --> 00:17:04.680 a massive, almost unimaginable amount of energy. 00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:07.640 This is the secret of the stars. It's the reason 00:17:07.640 --> 00:17:09.880 the sun shines. It's converting a tiny bit of 00:17:09.880 --> 00:17:12.519 its mass into a huge amount of energy every second. 00:17:12.740 --> 00:17:14.859 And tragically, it's the secret of the atomic 00:17:14.859 --> 00:17:17.420 bomb. The very same principle. So in one year, 00:17:17.500 --> 00:17:19.750 he redefines the nature of light. proves atoms 00:17:19.750 --> 00:17:22.309 exist, changes our concept of space and time, 00:17:22.430 --> 00:17:25.309 and unifies mass and energy, it is truly staggering. 00:17:25.589 --> 00:17:28.410 But while he is having this unprecedented intellectual 00:17:28.410 --> 00:17:31.609 explosion, his personal life is, well, let's 00:17:31.609 --> 00:17:33.569 just say complex is a very polite word for it. 00:17:33.650 --> 00:17:35.609 We absolutely have to talk about Mileva Maric. 00:17:35.730 --> 00:17:37.910 Mileva was a fellow student at the Polytechnic 00:17:37.910 --> 00:17:40.109 in Zurich, and in fact, she was the only woman 00:17:40.109 --> 00:17:42.210 in his physics program. Which tells you right 00:17:42.210 --> 00:17:44.349 away that she must have been incredibly brilliant 00:17:44.349 --> 00:17:47.710 just to be there in the 1890s. A force to be 00:17:47.710 --> 00:17:50.519 reckoned with. Absolutely. She was a formidable 00:17:50.519 --> 00:17:53.559 intellect. And they fell deeply in love. They 00:17:53.559 --> 00:17:56.859 were true intellectual partners. In his letters 00:17:56.859 --> 00:17:59.900 to her from this period, before and during 1905, 00:18:00.460 --> 00:18:04.599 Einstein constantly refers to our work, our investigation, 00:18:04.619 --> 00:18:07.680 and our theory of relative motion. This is a 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:10.299 huge hot -button issue among historians, isn't 00:18:10.299 --> 00:18:12.599 it? Did maleva marriage co -author relativity? 00:18:13.019 --> 00:18:15.380 It is a significant and very passionate debate. 00:18:15.960 --> 00:18:18.299 Some historians argue she was a full collaborator 00:18:18.299 --> 00:18:20.700 who did the heavy mathematical lifting, especially 00:18:20.700 --> 00:18:22.859 since Einstein himself sometimes admitted to 00:18:22.859 --> 00:18:24.819 struggling with the higher level math. And what's 00:18:24.819 --> 00:18:27.000 the other side of the argument? Others argue 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:28.700 she was more of an essential sounding board, 00:18:28.839 --> 00:18:31.279 someone brilliant he could trust to bounce ideas 00:18:31.279 --> 00:18:33.799 off of, who understood the concepts intimately 00:18:33.799 --> 00:18:36.200 and could check his work, but didn't originate 00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:38.559 the core theories herself. Where does the consensus 00:18:38.559 --> 00:18:41.319 seem to land on this? I think the consensus for 00:18:41.319 --> 00:18:43.819 now seems to be that while she is an absolutely 00:18:43.819 --> 00:18:46.339 essential intellectual support and a partner 00:18:46.339 --> 00:18:48.900 who helped him develop and check his work, there 00:18:48.900 --> 00:18:51.680 isn't concrete documentary proof like notebooks 00:18:51.680 --> 00:18:54.539 or drafts in her handwriting that she co -authored 00:18:54.539 --> 00:18:57.000 the central concepts. But it's fair to say that 00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:58.880 without her, he might not have had the stability 00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:00.960 or the intellectual sounding board to produce 00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:03.299 those 1905 papers. I think that's very fair to 00:19:03.299 --> 00:19:05.859 say. Yeah. But their relationship had a. very 00:19:05.859 --> 00:19:09.099 dark and tragic chapter early on their daughter 00:19:10.349 --> 00:19:13.509 Yes. In 1902, before they were married, Mileva 00:19:13.509 --> 00:19:15.869 went back to her family in Serbia and gave birth 00:19:15.869 --> 00:19:18.769 to a daughter named Lyser. Einstein was in Switzerland, 00:19:19.170 --> 00:19:22.170 working. He never saw the child. Never. Never 00:19:22.170 --> 00:19:25.210 once. The correspondence is heartbreaking. It 00:19:25.210 --> 00:19:27.410 shows she either died of scarlet fever as an 00:19:27.410 --> 00:19:29.269 infant or was quietly given up for adoption. 00:19:29.470 --> 00:19:32.009 She just vanishes from the historical record. 00:19:32.250 --> 00:19:34.769 Einstein asks about her in his letters. Is she 00:19:34.769 --> 00:19:37.269 healthy? Does she cry properly? But he never 00:19:37.269 --> 00:19:40.170 went to see her. It's a tragic, hidden part of 00:19:40.170 --> 00:19:43.890 his life that suggests a certain emotional detachment. 00:19:44.069 --> 00:19:46.390 And the marriage itself didn't last. They married 00:19:46.390 --> 00:19:49.109 in 1903, had two sons, Hans Albert and Edward, 00:19:49.289 --> 00:19:51.789 but by 1914, the relationship had completely 00:19:51.789 --> 00:19:55.309 imploded. It had. And Einstein could be incredibly 00:19:55.309 --> 00:19:58.289 cruel when the love faded. He actually wrote 00:19:58.289 --> 00:20:00.690 a manifesto of rules for Mileva if they were 00:20:00.690 --> 00:20:02.569 to continue living together in the same apartment 00:20:02.569 --> 00:20:04.490 for the sake of the children. What kind of rules? 00:20:04.609 --> 00:20:07.190 It's shocking to read. It included things like, 00:20:07.190 --> 00:20:09.650 you will not expect any intimacy from me, you 00:20:09.650 --> 00:20:11.630 will stop talking to me if I request it, and 00:20:11.630 --> 00:20:13.869 you will keep my study and bedroom neat and you 00:20:13.869 --> 00:20:16.670 will not use my desk. Yikes. That is, that's 00:20:16.670 --> 00:20:19.099 brutal. A contract for a roommate. Not a wife. 00:20:19.299 --> 00:20:23.559 It is. They separated soon after, in 1914. Einstein 00:20:23.559 --> 00:20:26.000 moved to Berlin for a prestigious professorship, 00:20:26.039 --> 00:20:28.799 and Mileva took the boys back to Zurich. But 00:20:28.799 --> 00:20:31.000 here's a fascinating detail about their divorce. 00:20:31.420 --> 00:20:34.400 When they finally divorced in 1919, Einstein 00:20:34.400 --> 00:20:36.940 didn't have much money to his name, so he made 00:20:36.940 --> 00:20:40.059 a bet. The Nobel Prize bet. He told her, in essence, 00:20:40.319 --> 00:20:42.740 I'm going to win the Nobel Prize one day. If 00:20:42.740 --> 00:20:44.579 you grant me a divorce now, I will give you all 00:20:44.579 --> 00:20:46.660 the prize money when I win it. That is supreme. 00:20:47.379 --> 00:20:50.279 Almost breathtaking confidence. And Mileva, being 00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:52.279 a physicist herself, knew he was good enough 00:20:52.279 --> 00:20:54.900 to win. She took the bet. And he did pay it, 00:20:54.920 --> 00:20:58.279 right, when he won in 1921. He did. He paid her 00:20:58.279 --> 00:21:01.059 the full amount. But by then, he had already 00:21:01.059 --> 00:21:03.980 moved on and married his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal. 00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:06.420 His cousin. We have to say it out loud. First 00:21:06.420 --> 00:21:08.680 cousin on his mother's side, second cousin on 00:21:08.680 --> 00:21:10.640 his father's side. Different times, I suppose. 00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:13.259 Very different times. And Elsa was a very different 00:21:13.259 --> 00:21:15.599 kind of partner for him. She wasn't a physicist. 00:21:15.960 --> 00:21:19.059 She was more of a manager, a caretaker. She organized 00:21:19.059 --> 00:21:22.420 his chaotic life, handled his growing fame, cooked 00:21:22.420 --> 00:21:24.839 his meals, and basically treated him like a brilliant 00:21:24.839 --> 00:21:27.299 child who needed protection from the world. She 00:21:27.299 --> 00:21:29.059 created the environment where he could just think. 00:21:29.220 --> 00:21:31.440 But Einstein wasn't exactly faithful to her either. 00:21:31.599 --> 00:21:34.079 No. The sources mention a string of affairs. 00:21:34.730 --> 00:21:38.849 Betty Newman, his secretary. A woman named Margarita 00:21:38.849 --> 00:21:41.710 Konnikova. The alleged Russian spy. That's a 00:21:41.710 --> 00:21:44.369 whole other story. It is. Einstein was a very 00:21:44.369 --> 00:21:46.769 complex romantic figure. He once described his 00:21:46.769 --> 00:21:50.230 own love life as misguided. He was definitely 00:21:50.230 --> 00:21:52.750 not the chaste, grandfatherly figure people imagine. 00:21:53.029 --> 00:21:55.789 He seemed to need constant female companionship, 00:21:55.789 --> 00:21:58.430 but he also deeply resented the obligations and 00:21:58.430 --> 00:22:00.559 constraints of marriage. It's just interesting 00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:03.059 how we compartmentalize the work from the man, 00:22:03.220 --> 00:22:05.400 because while his personal life is getting this 00:22:05.400 --> 00:22:07.900 messy in Berlin, his professional life is hitting 00:22:07.900 --> 00:22:10.460 another crisis point. We've talked about 1905, 00:22:10.599 --> 00:22:12.980 but that was special relativity. He then spent 00:22:12.980 --> 00:22:15.200 the next 10 years banging his head against the 00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:17.140 wall trying to figure out general relativity. 00:22:17.539 --> 00:22:20.619 This is such a crucial distinction to make. Special 00:22:20.619 --> 00:22:23.380 relativity only applies to special cases uniform 00:22:23.380 --> 00:22:26.680 motion in a straight line. It didn't explain 00:22:26.680 --> 00:22:28.819 gravity, and it didn't explain acceleration. 00:22:29.579 --> 00:22:32.180 If you speed up, slow down, or turn a corner, 00:22:32.579 --> 00:22:35.079 special relativity breaks down. And Einstein 00:22:35.079 --> 00:22:37.619 knew the theory was incomplete. He knew it was 00:22:37.619 --> 00:22:39.680 just one piece of the puzzle. And this struggle 00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:43.920 took a full decade, from 1905 to 1915. And this 00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:46.220 is where we see the sheer grit. He wasn't just 00:22:46.220 --> 00:22:48.420 struck by a single bolt of lightning. He worked 00:22:48.420 --> 00:22:51.900 for this. He called his key realization the equivalence 00:22:51.900 --> 00:22:53.680 principle, the happiest thought of his life. 00:22:54.029 --> 00:22:55.930 Let's break that down for a second. What is the 00:22:55.930 --> 00:22:58.250 equivalence principle? Okay, so imagine a man 00:22:58.250 --> 00:23:01.309 is in an elevator and the cable snaps. The elevator 00:23:01.309 --> 00:23:03.369 is now in free fall, plummeting toward the ground. 00:23:03.490 --> 00:23:05.670 Right. Inside that falling box, the man would 00:23:05.670 --> 00:23:08.990 float. He would feel his own weight. If he took 00:23:08.990 --> 00:23:11.450 a coin out of his pocket and let go, it would 00:23:11.450 --> 00:23:13.750 just float there next to him. So falling freely 00:23:13.750 --> 00:23:16.230 is the same as being weightless. It cancels out 00:23:16.230 --> 00:23:19.190 gravity. Exactly. Now imagine that same elevator 00:23:19.190 --> 00:23:22.190 is out in deep space, far away from any planet 00:23:22.190 --> 00:23:25.769 or star. It's just floating. The man inside floats. 00:23:26.470 --> 00:23:29.130 From his perspective, the two situations are 00:23:29.130 --> 00:23:31.390 indistinguishable. He can't tell the difference 00:23:31.390 --> 00:23:33.430 between being in free fall and being in zero 00:23:33.430 --> 00:23:36.190 gravity. Right. So Einstein realized that gravity 00:23:36.190 --> 00:23:39.829 and acceleration... are equivalent if you are 00:23:39.829 --> 00:23:42.109 in a closed box in space that is accelerating 00:23:42.109 --> 00:23:44.849 upwards it feels exactly like you're standing 00:23:44.849 --> 00:23:47.089 still on the surface of the earth this is what 00:23:47.089 --> 00:23:49.869 led him to the radical idea that gravity isn't 00:23:49.869 --> 00:23:52.349 a force pulling you down it's not a force at 00:23:52.349 --> 00:23:55.829 all it's a curvature of space -time itself the 00:23:55.829 --> 00:23:58.009 famous analogy is a bowling ball on a trampoline 00:23:58.009 --> 00:24:01.460 the heavy ball creates a dip and a marble rolling 00:24:01.460 --> 00:24:04.140 nearby will circle around that dip. Matter tells 00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:06.500 space -time how to curve, and space -time tells 00:24:06.500 --> 00:24:08.440 matter how to move. That's John Wheeler's summary. 00:24:08.980 --> 00:24:11.940 It's all geometry, not force. But describing 00:24:11.940 --> 00:24:14.660 that geometry required math that Einstein didn't 00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:17.160 actually know at the time. He didn't. He needed 00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:20.039 something called Riemannian geometry, which deals 00:24:20.039 --> 00:24:22.440 with curved surfaces in multiple dimensions. 00:24:22.839 --> 00:24:25.000 He actually had to go back to his old friend, 00:24:25.079 --> 00:24:27.119 Marcel Grossman. The same guy who got on the 00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:29.519 patent office job and say, Grossman, you must 00:24:29.519 --> 00:24:31.480 help me or I'll go crazy. So the math genius 00:24:31.480 --> 00:24:34.539 needed a math tutor. He absolutely did. Yeah. 00:24:34.579 --> 00:24:37.500 And he was in a frantic race against David Hilbert, 00:24:37.619 --> 00:24:39.920 who was probably the greatest living mathematician 00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:42.599 at the time. And it was also trying to solve 00:24:42.599 --> 00:24:44.900 the final equations. He was a real nail biter. 00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:49.099 In November 1915, Einstein finally cracked it. 00:24:49.240 --> 00:24:51.720 He presented the field equations of general relativity. 00:24:52.250 --> 00:24:54.150 But a theory on paper isn't enough in science, 00:24:54.289 --> 00:24:56.710 is it? You need proof. You need a testable prediction. 00:24:57.089 --> 00:24:59.490 And the prediction he made was audacious. He 00:24:59.490 --> 00:25:02.049 said that because gravity curves space, a beam 00:25:02.049 --> 00:25:04.150 of light from a distant star passing near the 00:25:04.150 --> 00:25:06.470 sun should bend. But you can't see stars near 00:25:06.470 --> 00:25:08.210 the sun during the day because the sun is too 00:25:08.210 --> 00:25:11.069 bright. Unless the sun's light is blocked out. 00:25:11.130 --> 00:25:14.230 A total solar eclipse. Exactly. And this brings 00:25:14.230 --> 00:25:16.470 us to the British astronomer Arthur Eddington. 00:25:16.750 --> 00:25:19.390 Now, you have to remember the year. It's 1919. 00:25:19.769 --> 00:25:22.609 World War I has just ended. Germany and Britain 00:25:22.609 --> 00:25:25.029 have been slaughtering each other for four years. 00:25:25.289 --> 00:25:28.269 German science is being boycotted across the 00:25:28.269 --> 00:25:30.869 allied world. And here is a prominent British 00:25:30.869 --> 00:25:33.809 scientist leading an expedition to try and prove 00:25:33.809 --> 00:25:37.009 the theory of a German -born Jewish scientist. 00:25:37.430 --> 00:25:40.390 It was a beautiful moment of post -war internationalism. 00:25:41.039 --> 00:25:43.140 Eddington led an expedition to the island of 00:25:43.140 --> 00:25:45.799 Principe off the coast of Africa to photograph 00:25:45.799 --> 00:25:48.240 the eclipse. He needed to measure the position 00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:50.599 of the Hyades star cluster, which would be right 00:25:50.599 --> 00:25:53.160 behind the sun. So if Newton was right, the light 00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:55.180 would travel in a straight line or bend just 00:25:55.180 --> 00:25:57.500 a tiny bit. But if Einstein was right, the light 00:25:57.500 --> 00:25:59.880 would bend by a specific, much larger amount 00:25:59.880 --> 00:26:02.200 that he had calculated. I can just imagine the 00:26:02.200 --> 00:26:04.779 tension, developing those fragile photographic 00:26:04.779 --> 00:26:06.940 plates in the jungle heat, not knowing if the 00:26:06.940 --> 00:26:09.140 clouds ruined everything. And when they finally 00:26:09.140 --> 00:26:11.980 analyzed the data back in England, it was a perfect 00:26:11.980 --> 00:26:13.940 match for Einstein's prediction. What was the 00:26:13.940 --> 00:26:16.160 reaction in the world? An absolute explosion. 00:26:16.849 --> 00:26:20.829 On November 7, 1919, the London Times ran the 00:26:20.829 --> 00:26:23.829 now -famous headline, Revolution in Science, 00:26:24.069 --> 00:26:26.890 New Theory of the Universe, Newtonian Ideas Overthrown. 00:26:26.990 --> 00:26:29.529 And just like that, overnight, he's a global 00:26:29.529 --> 00:26:32.250 celebrity. Instantaneously. He becomes the first 00:26:32.250 --> 00:26:34.869 celebrity scientist. He's mobbed by crowds in 00:26:34.869 --> 00:26:37.650 America, Japan, England. People who had no idea 00:26:37.650 --> 00:26:39.450 what a tensor was just wanted to be near him. 00:26:39.569 --> 00:26:42.490 He was like a movie star. Charlie Chaplin invited 00:26:42.490 --> 00:26:44.589 him to a movie premiere. And there's that famous 00:26:44.589 --> 00:26:47.029 exchange with Chaplin, right? Yes. Chaplin reportedly 00:26:47.029 --> 00:26:49.309 said to him, the people applaud me because everybody 00:26:49.309 --> 00:26:51.430 understands me and they applaud you because nobody 00:26:51.430 --> 00:26:53.990 understands you. That sums it up perfectly. He 00:26:53.990 --> 00:26:56.670 became the symbol of a higher, almost mystical 00:26:56.670 --> 00:26:59.650 intelligence. But here is where the story takes 00:26:59.650 --> 00:27:02.490 such a fascinating and ironic turn. He is now 00:27:02.490 --> 00:27:05.650 the undisputed king of physics. He has revolutionized 00:27:05.650 --> 00:27:08.319 our understanding of the universe. And yet, the 00:27:08.319 --> 00:27:10.619 next big revolution in physics quantum mechanics 00:27:10.619 --> 00:27:13.339 is something he spends the rest of his life fighting 00:27:13.339 --> 00:27:16.619 against. It is the great tragedy, or irony, depending 00:27:16.619 --> 00:27:18.619 on how you look at it, of his later scientific 00:27:18.619 --> 00:27:22.730 life. Remember, his 1905 paper on the photoelectric 00:27:22.730 --> 00:27:25.769 effect helped start quantum theory. He was one 00:27:25.769 --> 00:27:27.730 of its fathers. Right. He gave us the photon. 00:27:27.970 --> 00:27:30.970 But in the 1920s, a new generation of physicists 00:27:30.970 --> 00:27:33.670 like Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg developed 00:27:33.670 --> 00:27:35.789 the theory further, and they found that at the 00:27:35.789 --> 00:27:38.809 subatomic level, nature is fundamentally probabilistic. 00:27:39.009 --> 00:27:41.430 You can't know exactly where an electron is and 00:27:41.430 --> 00:27:43.490 how fast it's going at the same time. You can 00:27:43.490 --> 00:27:45.609 only know the probability of where it might be. 00:27:45.710 --> 00:27:48.579 The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. And Einstein 00:27:48.579 --> 00:27:51.900 detested this. He was a classical realist. He 00:27:51.900 --> 00:27:54.319 believed that an electron has a definitive position 00:27:54.319 --> 00:27:57.119 and speed, whether we are looking at it or not. 00:27:57.259 --> 00:27:59.119 This is where he famously wrote in a letter to 00:27:59.119 --> 00:28:01.680 Max Born, God does not play dice with the universe. 00:28:01.940 --> 00:28:04.940 He believed in a deterministic universe, clockwork, 00:28:05.079 --> 00:28:08.319 cause and effect, no randomness. So he gets into 00:28:08.319 --> 00:28:11.039 these legendary public debates with Niels Bohr, 00:28:11.059 --> 00:28:14.470 mostly at the Solvay conferences. Einstein would 00:28:14.470 --> 00:28:16.289 come up with these brilliant, elaborate thought 00:28:16.289 --> 00:28:18.609 experiments designed to break quantum mechanics 00:28:18.609 --> 00:28:21.730 to find a logical inconsistency. And Bohr would 00:28:21.730 --> 00:28:24.710 stay up all night muttering to himself and come 00:28:24.710 --> 00:28:26.890 back the next morning with a solution that proved 00:28:26.890 --> 00:28:29.329 Einstein wrong again. But Einstein didn't give 00:28:29.329 --> 00:28:33.029 up. In 1935, he published the famous EPR paper. 00:28:33.329 --> 00:28:36.609 The Einstein -Podolsky -Rosen paper. And this 00:28:36.609 --> 00:28:38.869 is where he weaponized the weirdest part of quantum 00:28:38.869 --> 00:28:42.500 theory against itself. Entanglement. Okay, explain 00:28:42.500 --> 00:28:44.619 entanglement for us. The math of quantum mechanics 00:28:44.619 --> 00:28:46.960 suggested that two particles could become linked 00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:51.160 or entangled in a special way. If you then separate 00:28:51.160 --> 00:28:53.640 them by a billion miles and measure a property 00:28:53.640 --> 00:28:56.420 of one, say, its spin, the other one instantly 00:28:56.420 --> 00:28:59.119 snaps into the opposite state. Instantly. Faster 00:28:59.119 --> 00:29:00.799 than the speed of light. Faster than the speed 00:29:00.799 --> 00:29:03.059 of light, which seemed to violate his own theory 00:29:03.059 --> 00:29:05.980 of relativity. Einstein derisively called this 00:29:05.980 --> 00:29:08.380 spooky action at a distance. He thought it was 00:29:08.380 --> 00:29:12.150 absurd. Completely. He used it as what he thought 00:29:12.150 --> 00:29:15.170 was definitive proof that quantum mechanics must 00:29:15.170 --> 00:29:18.329 be incomplete. He thought there must be hidden 00:29:18.329 --> 00:29:20.930 variables we aren't seeing, local information 00:29:20.930 --> 00:29:23.470 that the particles carry with them. He was wrong, 00:29:23.630 --> 00:29:27.230 wasn't he? He was. Decades after his death, experiments 00:29:27.230 --> 00:29:30.049 by John Bell and others proved that this spooky 00:29:30.049 --> 00:29:33.950 action is real. The universe really is that weird. 00:29:34.750 --> 00:29:36.910 Entanglement is a fundamental fact of nature. 00:29:37.369 --> 00:29:39.890 We use it as a basis for quantum computing and 00:29:39.890 --> 00:29:42.490 quantum cryptography today. So he was wrong about 00:29:42.490 --> 00:29:45.069 the physics in the end, but his constant rigorous 00:29:45.069 --> 00:29:47.029 challenging of the theory forced the quantum 00:29:47.029 --> 00:29:49.609 physicists to sharpen their arguments and understand 00:29:49.609 --> 00:29:52.309 their own creation better. Exactly. He was the 00:29:52.309 --> 00:29:54.329 greatest and most important critic that theory 00:29:54.329 --> 00:29:57.160 ever had. He strengthened it by trying to tear 00:29:57.160 --> 00:29:59.259 it down. Let's shift gears a bit to politics, 00:29:59.319 --> 00:30:01.400 because you can't talk about Einstein in the 00:30:01.400 --> 00:30:03.099 20th century without talking about the world 00:30:03.099 --> 00:30:05.339 he lived in. He was a German Jew during the rise 00:30:05.339 --> 00:30:08.640 of the Nazis. And he was, from a very early age, 00:30:08.740 --> 00:30:12.740 an outspoken pacifist. During World War I, while 00:30:12.740 --> 00:30:15.160 other prominent German intellectuals were signing 00:30:15.160 --> 00:30:17.740 manifestos supporting the Kaiser's war, Einstein 00:30:17.740 --> 00:30:20.680 signed a countermanifesto calling for peace in 00:30:20.680 --> 00:30:23.000 the United States of Europe. He was decades ahead 00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:26.349 of his time on that. But by 1933, his brand of 00:30:26.349 --> 00:30:28.930 pacifism wasn't really an option anymore. No. 00:30:29.150 --> 00:30:32.650 Hitler comes to power in January 1933. Einstein 00:30:32.650 --> 00:30:34.630 and Elso were actually in the U .S. at the time, 00:30:34.630 --> 00:30:37.589 visiting Caltech. And he realized immediately... 00:30:37.900 --> 00:30:40.140 I can never go back to Germany. And the Nazis 00:30:40.140 --> 00:30:42.119 went after him hard. They knew he was the most 00:30:42.119 --> 00:30:44.119 famous Jew in the world, a symbol of everything 00:30:44.119 --> 00:30:46.500 they hated. They raided his summer cottage in 00:30:46.500 --> 00:30:48.220 Cape Uth. They turned it into a Hitler youth 00:30:48.220 --> 00:30:50.920 camp. They burned his books in the massive bonfires 00:30:50.920 --> 00:30:53.160 in Berlin. They seized his bank accounts, his 00:30:53.160 --> 00:30:56.160 property, his beloved sailboat. There was a Nazi 00:30:56.160 --> 00:30:58.140 magazine that published a list of enemies of 00:30:58.140 --> 00:31:00.079 the regime with his picture on the front and 00:31:00.079 --> 00:31:02.400 the caption. Not yet hanged. Not yet hanged. 00:31:02.400 --> 00:31:05.059 It's chilling. There was essentially a $5 ,000 00:31:05.059 --> 00:31:08.519 bounty on his head. He renounced his German citizenship 00:31:08.519 --> 00:31:11.640 for the second time, this time permanently, and 00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:14.759 became a refugee. He eventually settled in Princeton, 00:31:14.920 --> 00:31:16.819 New Jersey at the New Institute for Advanced 00:31:16.819 --> 00:31:19.900 Study. And this leads to one of the most consequential 00:31:19.900 --> 00:31:22.640 letters ever written in human history, the letter 00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:26.779 to FDR. It's August 1939. The war hasn't officially 00:31:26.779 --> 00:31:29.440 started, but everyone knows it's coming. The 00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:32.109 physicist Leo Szilard an old friend of Einstein's 00:31:32.109 --> 00:31:34.250 from Berlin, realized that the recent discovery 00:31:34.250 --> 00:31:36.950 of nuclear fission meant that an atomic bomb 00:31:36.950 --> 00:31:39.910 was now theoretically possible. And he knew the 00:31:39.910 --> 00:31:42.250 Germans had the scientists and the industrial 00:31:42.250 --> 00:31:44.750 capacity to build it. He was terrified the Nazis 00:31:44.750 --> 00:31:46.529 would get it first, so he knew he needed someone 00:31:46.529 --> 00:31:49.190 with real clout to warn the president. He went 00:31:49.190 --> 00:31:51.670 to Einstein. And Einstein signed the letter to 00:31:51.670 --> 00:31:54.210 President Roosevelt warning that extremely powerful 00:31:54.210 --> 00:31:56.690 bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. 00:31:57.390 --> 00:31:59.569 He urged the U .S. government to speed up its 00:31:59.569 --> 00:32:02.349 own nuclear research. That letter basically kickstarted 00:32:02.349 --> 00:32:05.349 the Manhattan Project. It did. And for a lifelong 00:32:05.349 --> 00:32:09.089 committed pacifist, this was a heavy, heavy burden 00:32:09.089 --> 00:32:12.069 to carry. He later said, had I known that the 00:32:12.069 --> 00:32:14.289 Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic 00:32:14.289 --> 00:32:17.150 bomb, I would not have lifted a finger. He called 00:32:17.150 --> 00:32:21.049 signing that letter his one great mistake. Did 00:32:21.049 --> 00:32:24.950 he work on the bomb himself? No. This is a surprise 00:32:24.950 --> 00:32:27.990 to many people. The U .S. military actually considered 00:32:27.990 --> 00:32:30.690 him a security risk. The guy who warned them 00:32:30.690 --> 00:32:33.589 about the bomb was a security risk. How? Because 00:32:33.589 --> 00:32:35.930 of his well -known pacifist history and his socialist 00:32:35.930 --> 00:32:38.569 political leanings, the FBI had already started 00:32:38.569 --> 00:32:41.289 a file on him. So he was excluded from the Manhattan 00:32:41.289 --> 00:32:43.549 Project. He was stuck in Princeton working on 00:32:43.549 --> 00:32:46.029 his own theories while the bomb was being designed 00:32:46.029 --> 00:32:48.450 and built in Los Alamos. He didn't even know 00:32:48.450 --> 00:32:50.349 it was ready until the news of Hiroshima broke 00:32:50.349 --> 00:32:52.450 on the radio. That must have been a devastating 00:32:52.450 --> 00:32:55.430 moment for him. It was. He spent the rest of 00:32:55.430 --> 00:32:57.750 his life campaigning tirelessly against nuclear 00:32:57.750 --> 00:33:00.690 proliferation. He wanted a world government to 00:33:00.690 --> 00:33:02.970 control these weapons. That's when he made his 00:33:02.970 --> 00:33:05.150 famous statement, I do not know with what weapons 00:33:05.150 --> 00:33:07.269 World War III will be fought, but World War II 00:33:07.269 --> 00:33:09.869 will be fought with sticks and stones. He also 00:33:09.869 --> 00:33:12.650 used his considerable fame and moral platform 00:33:12.650 --> 00:33:15.250 for something else in his adopted country, civil 00:33:15.250 --> 00:33:18.650 rights. This is a huge and often overlooked part 00:33:18.650 --> 00:33:22.140 of his legacy. He arrived in America and saw 00:33:22.140 --> 00:33:24.519 how black people were treated, the segregation, 00:33:24.880 --> 00:33:27.619 the daily indignities. And coming directly from 00:33:27.619 --> 00:33:29.660 Nazi Germany, he recognized the smell of it. 00:33:29.740 --> 00:33:32.660 He called racism America's worst disease. He 00:33:32.660 --> 00:33:34.740 lived in Princeton, which was at the time a pretty 00:33:34.740 --> 00:33:37.559 segregated town. Very much so. And Einstein didn't 00:33:37.559 --> 00:33:41.539 just talk the talk. He acted. He joined the NAACP. 00:33:41.559 --> 00:33:44.259 He corresponded with and campaigned for W .E 00:33:44.259 --> 00:33:47.539 .B. Dubois. And there is a beautiful story about 00:33:47.539 --> 00:33:50.119 the great opera singer Marian Anderson. I read 00:33:50.119 --> 00:33:51.920 this in the source material. She came to Princeton 00:33:51.920 --> 00:33:54.819 for a concert. Yes, this was in 1937. She gave 00:33:54.819 --> 00:33:57.000 a stunning performance at the university. But 00:33:57.000 --> 00:33:59.380 the Nassau and the Fancy Historic Hotel in town 00:33:59.380 --> 00:34:01.759 refused to give her a room because she was black. 00:34:02.500 --> 00:34:04.519 Unbelievable. Einstein heard about this and was 00:34:04.519 --> 00:34:07.019 apparently furious. He immediately walked over 00:34:07.019 --> 00:34:09.099 and invited her to stay at his home as his guest. 00:34:09.320 --> 00:34:12.280 Just come stay with me. And she did. And from 00:34:12.280 --> 00:34:14.420 then on... Whenever she visited Princeton for 00:34:14.420 --> 00:34:17.159 the rest of his life, she stayed with the Einsteins. 00:34:17.179 --> 00:34:19.619 It's so consistent with his character. He hated 00:34:19.619 --> 00:34:21.860 arbitrary authority and prejudice, whether it 00:34:21.860 --> 00:34:23.840 was against Jews in Germany or black people in 00:34:23.840 --> 00:34:26.559 America. He famously said. Being a Jew myself, 00:34:26.900 --> 00:34:28.900 perhaps I can understand and empathize with how 00:34:28.900 --> 00:34:31.460 black people feel as victims of discrimination. 00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:34.420 A powerful statement. Speaking of his Jewish 00:34:34.420 --> 00:34:36.719 identity, let's touch on his relationship with 00:34:36.719 --> 00:34:39.940 Zionism and the new state of Israel. It was complicated. 00:34:40.380 --> 00:34:43.139 It was very complicated. He supported the idea 00:34:43.139 --> 00:34:46.380 of a Jewish homeland, specifically as a cultural 00:34:46.380 --> 00:34:49.159 and intellectual center. He was a huge fundraiser 00:34:49.159 --> 00:34:52.000 for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But he 00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:54.599 was culturally Jewish, not religiously observant. 00:34:54.639 --> 00:34:57.519 He famously believed in Spinoza's God, the God 00:34:57.519 --> 00:34:59.739 revealed in the lawful harmony and order of the 00:34:59.739 --> 00:35:02.340 world, not a personal God who answers prayers 00:35:02.340 --> 00:35:04.980 or intervenes in human affairs. And he was very 00:35:04.980 --> 00:35:07.849 wary of nationalism, wasn't he? Very wary. He 00:35:07.849 --> 00:35:10.409 worried about the militarization of Israel. He 00:35:10.409 --> 00:35:13.090 advocated for cooperation and a binational state 00:35:13.090 --> 00:35:15.489 with the Arab population. He didn't want the 00:35:15.489 --> 00:35:17.550 Jewish state to become just another nationalistic 00:35:17.550 --> 00:35:19.969 power acting like the old European nations he 00:35:19.969 --> 00:35:22.849 had fled. But the state of Israel clearly revered 00:35:22.849 --> 00:35:26.550 him. So much so that in 1952, after their first 00:35:26.550 --> 00:35:29.409 president, Chaim Weizmann, died, they actually 00:35:29.409 --> 00:35:32.130 offered the presidency of Israel to Albert Einstein. 00:35:32.210 --> 00:35:35.260 Can you even imagine that? A theoretical physicist 00:35:35.260 --> 00:35:38.380 as president. So why did he turn it down? He 00:35:38.380 --> 00:35:40.219 was very self -aware about his own limitations. 00:35:40.599 --> 00:35:43.659 He wrote a beautiful, humble refusal letter saying 00:35:43.659 --> 00:35:46.760 he lacked the natural aptitude and the experience 00:35:46.760 --> 00:35:49.420 to deal properly with people. He knew he was 00:35:49.420 --> 00:35:51.820 a man of abstract equations, not practical diplomacy. 00:35:52.260 --> 00:35:53.880 And honestly, the prime minister at the time, 00:35:53.880 --> 00:35:56.159 David Ben -Gurion, was kind of relieved, wasn't 00:35:56.159 --> 00:35:58.639 he? There is a widely reported story that Ben 00:35:58.639 --> 00:36:01.130 -Gurion asked his secretary. Tell me what to 00:36:01.130 --> 00:36:03.690 do if he says yes. I've had to offer the post 00:36:03.690 --> 00:36:06.309 to him because it's impossible not to. But if 00:36:06.309 --> 00:36:09.429 he accepts, we are in for trouble. Einstein was 00:36:09.429 --> 00:36:11.250 just too independent to ever follow a party line. 00:36:11.489 --> 00:36:13.650 Let's talk about those final years in Princeton. 00:36:14.349 --> 00:36:16.610 Because there is a sense of scientific isolation 00:36:16.610 --> 00:36:19.789 that sets in. He became known as the great old 00:36:19.789 --> 00:36:22.570 man of physics. He would walk to the institute 00:36:22.570 --> 00:36:25.610 every day in his sweatshirt and sneakers. But 00:36:25.610 --> 00:36:28.309 scientifically, he was very much isolated from 00:36:28.309 --> 00:36:30.710 the mainstream. This is the era of his search 00:36:30.710 --> 00:36:33.210 for unified field theory. What was he trying 00:36:33.210 --> 00:36:35.550 to do with that? He wanted to combine the two 00:36:35.550 --> 00:36:38.849 known forces of his time -gravity and electromagnetism 00:36:38.849 --> 00:36:42.530 into one single elegant mathematical framework. 00:36:42.849 --> 00:36:45.989 He wanted one equation to rule them all. He wanted 00:36:45.989 --> 00:36:48.840 to, as he put it, read the mind of God. But he 00:36:48.840 --> 00:36:50.699 ignored the new discoveries that were coming 00:36:50.699 --> 00:36:53.099 out of particle physics, right? The nuclear forces. 00:36:53.320 --> 00:36:55.300 Exactly. Physics had moved on. They were discovering 00:36:55.300 --> 00:36:57.380 the strong nuclear force that holds atoms together 00:36:57.380 --> 00:36:59.880 and the weak nuclear force that governs radioactive 00:36:59.880 --> 00:37:02.820 decay. Einstein largely ignored them. He kept 00:37:02.820 --> 00:37:04.800 trying to unify just gravity and electricity. 00:37:05.139 --> 00:37:07.139 And he failed. He failed. He filled notebooks 00:37:07.139 --> 00:37:09.320 with complex equations that led to dead ends. 00:37:09.500 --> 00:37:12.300 He was seen as a bit of a tragic figure, a dinosaur, 00:37:12.420 --> 00:37:14.780 by the younger generation of physicists like 00:37:14.780 --> 00:37:17.039 Richard Feynman and Robert Oppenheimer. It's 00:37:17.039 --> 00:37:19.559 a bit sad, the great revolutionary becoming the 00:37:19.559 --> 00:37:22.539 relic. It is, but the sheer ambition is still 00:37:22.539 --> 00:37:26.300 inspiring. He never, ever stopped trying to solve 00:37:26.300 --> 00:37:29.000 the ultimate puzzle of the universe. Let's talk 00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:30.900 about some of his quirks in those later years. 00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:33.960 The violin, for instance. He loved Mozart. He 00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:36.460 carried his violin, which he affectionately named 00:37:36.460 --> 00:37:40.440 Lena, everywhere with him. He once said, I often 00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:43.599 think in music. I live my daydreams in music. 00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:46.780 So it wasn't just a hobby. No, it was a cognitive 00:37:46.780 --> 00:37:49.159 tool for him. When he was stuck in a particularly 00:37:49.159 --> 00:37:51.239 difficult physics problem, he would play the 00:37:51.239 --> 00:37:53.750 violin to clear his mind. And he said that often 00:37:53.750 --> 00:37:55.469 the solution would just appear to him in the 00:37:55.469 --> 00:37:57.889 silence afterwards. And he was an inventor. I 00:37:57.889 --> 00:37:59.409 did not know about the Einstein refrigerator. 00:37:59.949 --> 00:38:03.389 The Einstein -Zillard refrigerator. In the 1920s, 00:38:03.389 --> 00:38:06.150 early refrigerators used toxic gases like ammonia. 00:38:06.809 --> 00:38:08.849 Einstein read a news story about an entire family 00:38:08.849 --> 00:38:11.170 in Berlin who were killed in their sleep by leaking 00:38:11.170 --> 00:38:13.889 fumes from their fridge. He was horrified. So 00:38:13.889 --> 00:38:15.929 he decided to build a better one. He and Leo 00:38:15.929 --> 00:38:18.610 Vallelard invented a fridge with no moving parts 00:38:18.610 --> 00:38:21.590 that used a heat source to pressurize a gas mixture. 00:38:22.030 --> 00:38:24.449 is much much safer did it ever get built commercially 00:38:24.449 --> 00:38:27.309 they got a patent And the company Electrolux 00:38:27.309 --> 00:38:29.530 bought it, but then Freon was invented, which 00:38:29.530 --> 00:38:31.329 was cheaper to produce, though we later found 00:38:31.329 --> 00:38:33.210 out it was terrible for the ozone layer. So the 00:38:33.210 --> 00:38:35.130 Einstein fridge never really took off. But it 00:38:35.130 --> 00:38:37.269 just shows his practical humanitarian side. So 00:38:37.269 --> 00:38:40.269 we have the violin, the fridge, and the massive 00:38:40.269 --> 00:38:43.409 FBI file. J. Edgar Hoover was completely obsessed 00:38:43.409 --> 00:38:46.389 with Einstein. By the time Einstein died in 1955, 00:38:46.889 --> 00:38:51.750 his FBI file was 1 ,427 pages long. What were 00:38:51.750 --> 00:38:54.289 they looking for? They viewed him as a radical, 00:38:54.429 --> 00:38:58.019 a subversive. a suspected communist sympathizer 00:38:58.019 --> 00:39:00.900 because of his pacifism and his advocacy for 00:39:00.900 --> 00:39:02.639 world government. They bugged his phone, they 00:39:02.639 --> 00:39:04.559 opened his mail, they interviewed his associates. 00:39:04.920 --> 00:39:07.280 It's wild to think that the lovable genius on 00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:09.380 the poster was being surveilled by the U .S. 00:39:09.380 --> 00:39:11.539 government as a potential enemy of the state. 00:39:11.639 --> 00:39:13.639 It brings us to the end of his life. It's April 00:39:13.639 --> 00:39:17.599 1955. He is 76 years old. He suffered an abdominal 00:39:17.599 --> 00:39:20.440 aortic aneurysm, a rupture in the main artery 00:39:20.440 --> 00:39:23.300 from the heart. Which is extremely painful. He 00:39:23.300 --> 00:39:25.619 was taken to the hospital in Princeton. The doctors 00:39:25.619 --> 00:39:27.400 told him they could operate, try to reinforce 00:39:27.400 --> 00:39:30.159 the artery. It was a risky procedure. And he 00:39:30.159 --> 00:39:33.900 refused. Completely refused. He said, and this 00:39:33.900 --> 00:39:36.420 is a direct quote, I want to go when I want. 00:39:36.719 --> 00:39:39.619 It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. 00:39:39.699 --> 00:39:42.599 I have done my share. It is time to go. I will 00:39:42.599 --> 00:39:45.360 do it elegantly. I will do it elegantly. Even 00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:47.679 in death, he had this incredible dignity and 00:39:47.679 --> 00:39:50.750 sense of control. He actually died working. He 00:39:50.750 --> 00:39:52.510 had taken a draft of a speech he was writing 00:39:52.510 --> 00:39:54.869 for Israel's anniversary to the hospital with 00:39:54.869 --> 00:39:57.289 him, along with a pad of his latest calculations 00:39:57.289 --> 00:40:00.550 for his unified field theory. He was calculating 00:40:00.550 --> 00:40:02.969 until the very end. But the story doesn't quite 00:40:02.969 --> 00:40:05.449 end there, does it? And this is the part that 00:40:05.449 --> 00:40:08.610 is both fascinating and incredibly macabre. The 00:40:08.610 --> 00:40:11.489 theft of his brain. It is a bizarre and unsettling 00:40:11.489 --> 00:40:14.039 postscript. The pathologist who performed the 00:40:14.039 --> 00:40:17.119 autopsy, a man named Thomas Stoltz Harvey, removed 00:40:17.119 --> 00:40:19.159 Einstein's brain during the procedure. Without 00:40:19.159 --> 00:40:20.780 the family's permission. Without permission. 00:40:21.559 --> 00:40:24.139 He later claimed he had a kind of retroactive 00:40:24.139 --> 00:40:27.860 blessing from Einstein's son, Hans Albert. But 00:40:27.860 --> 00:40:31.300 essentially, he stole it. He put it in two jars 00:40:31.300 --> 00:40:34.320 of formaldehyde. He kept it in a cider box hidden 00:40:34.320 --> 00:40:37.039 under a beer cooler in his office for decades. 00:40:37.360 --> 00:40:39.179 Why on earth would he do that? He was obsessed. 00:40:39.710 --> 00:40:41.670 He was convinced that if he could just get the 00:40:41.670 --> 00:40:44.230 brain studied by the right neurologist, he could 00:40:44.230 --> 00:40:46.250 find the physical source of Einstein's genius. 00:40:46.730 --> 00:40:49.170 He thought he would find a genius neuron or some 00:40:49.170 --> 00:40:51.869 unique structure. And did he, after all that? 00:40:52.170 --> 00:40:54.690 Not really. He did send little slices of the 00:40:54.690 --> 00:40:57.610 brain to scientists all over the world. Over 00:40:57.610 --> 00:40:59.349 the years, there have been a few papers published 00:40:59.349 --> 00:41:01.949 claiming his parietal lobe was 15 % wider than 00:41:01.949 --> 00:41:04.510 average or that he had a higher than normal ratio 00:41:04.510 --> 00:41:07.090 of glial cells. But nothing definitive, nothing 00:41:07.090 --> 00:41:09.190 that screams, this is the source of relativity. 00:41:09.630 --> 00:41:11.809 So the secret wasn't just in the meat of the 00:41:11.809 --> 00:41:14.050 brain. It seems the genius was in the software, 00:41:14.250 --> 00:41:16.650 not just the hardware. It was in the curiosity 00:41:16.650 --> 00:41:19.349 that started with that compass. So we've gone 00:41:19.349 --> 00:41:22.050 from the little boy with the compass to the patent 00:41:22.050 --> 00:41:25.369 clerk, the global celebrity, the refugee, the 00:41:25.369 --> 00:41:29.250 activist, and finally the brain in a jar. When 00:41:29.250 --> 00:41:32.010 you look at this whole complicated picture, what 00:41:32.010 --> 00:41:34.989 is the final synthesis for you? For me, it's 00:41:34.989 --> 00:41:38.110 the contradictions. He was a profound loner. 00:41:38.400 --> 00:41:41.960 who loved humanity as a concept, but often struggled 00:41:41.960 --> 00:41:44.159 to connect with the individuals closest to him. 00:41:44.260 --> 00:41:47.159 He was a pacifist who urged the building of the 00:41:47.159 --> 00:41:49.300 deadliest weapon in history. He was the father 00:41:49.300 --> 00:41:51.300 of quantum mechanics who then tried to kill his 00:41:51.300 --> 00:41:53.900 own child, intellectual speaking. Exactly. He 00:41:53.900 --> 00:41:56.619 wasn't a perfect, smooth seer of genius. He was 00:41:56.619 --> 00:42:00.400 rough, complex, difficult, and... deeply, deeply 00:42:00.400 --> 00:42:03.099 human. And stubborn. Incredibly stubborn. But 00:42:03.099 --> 00:42:05.360 that stubbornness is what allowed him to look 00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:07.360 at Isaac Newton, who was a god in physics for 00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:09.980 200 years, and say very respectfully, I think 00:42:09.980 --> 00:42:12.059 you're wrong. It really does all go back to that 00:42:12.059 --> 00:42:13.980 quote from the beginning, something deeply hidden. 00:42:14.260 --> 00:42:17.019 He never stopped looking for it. He never stopped 00:42:17.019 --> 00:42:19.500 being that five -year -old boy, trembling with 00:42:19.500 --> 00:42:21.639 wonder at the mystery of the compass. Here's 00:42:21.639 --> 00:42:23.659 a final thought for you, our listener, to chew 00:42:23.659 --> 00:42:27.400 on. In 1917, Einstein introduced something into 00:42:27.400 --> 00:42:29.719 his equations called the cosmological constant. 00:42:30.179 --> 00:42:32.500 He put it in there because he, like everyone 00:42:32.500 --> 00:42:35.159 else, assumed the universe was static. And he 00:42:35.159 --> 00:42:37.699 needed this little fudge factor to stop his equations 00:42:37.699 --> 00:42:40.199 from predicting a collapse. Right. And then a 00:42:40.199 --> 00:42:43.000 decade later, the astronomer Edwin Hubble proved 00:42:43.000 --> 00:42:46.039 that the universe was, in fact, expanding. Which 00:42:46.039 --> 00:42:48.119 meant the fudge factor wasn't needed. Einstein 00:42:48.119 --> 00:42:50.619 immediately took it out and called the cosmological 00:42:50.619 --> 00:42:53.980 constant his biggest blunder. He felt so stupid 00:42:53.980 --> 00:42:56.039 for having put it in. But here is the kicker. 00:42:56.599 --> 00:42:59.179 Decades later, in the late 1990s, astronomers 00:42:59.179 --> 00:43:01.139 discovered that the expansion of the universe 00:43:01.139 --> 00:43:03.579 is not only happening, it's actually accelerating. 00:43:03.980 --> 00:43:06.500 It's being pushed apart by a mysterious force 00:43:06.500 --> 00:43:09.920 we now call dark energy. And the best mathematical 00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:13.139 way we have to describe that dark energy is Einstein's 00:43:13.139 --> 00:43:15.820 cosmological constant. His biggest blunder turned 00:43:15.820 --> 00:43:17.679 out to be one of his most prescient predictions. 00:43:18.360 --> 00:43:20.920 He was right, even when he was absolutely certain 00:43:20.920 --> 00:43:23.250 he was wrong. If that's not genius, I don't know 00:43:23.250 --> 00:43:26.429 what is. Thanks for diving deep with us today. 00:43:26.630 --> 00:43:28.929 Always a pleasure. Go look up the cosmological 00:43:28.929 --> 00:43:32.070 constant, stare at a compass for a while, and 00:43:32.070 --> 00:43:34.750 stay curious. We'll see you on the next deep 00:43:34.750 --> 00:43:35.010 dive.