Einstein's Death
There are a few individuals that so dominate their profession or field of activity that for generations after they cease to be active, or even pass away, their name remains synonymous with the highest level of accomplishment in that profession. Somehow what they are able to do does not fall on the regular continuum of proficiency, and they are in a category of their own. When I was a kid, the name Pele was synonymous with superhuman, almost divine, ability to play soccer, and at least until he was diagnosed with AIDS Magic Johnston was a veritable basketball superhero. Unsurprisingly most of these individuals are associated with popular culture, with the achievements that are highly conspicuous in the public conscience. Much more rare are those who transcend even the relative obscurity of their field and become household names. Perhaps no better example of this is Albert Einstein, who not only became a paragon of a brilliant Physicist, but someone who defines the absolute gold standard of what human intelligence is capable of achieving. However, if someone does call you “Einstein” you should most probably not flatter yourself: it is assumed that his level of intellectual brilliance was so rare that not many people (if any) are able to match it, and hence comparison to him is meant to be a ridicule.
When I was a budding Physics major I started to discount the perceived brilliance of Einstein’s genius. I thought it was mostly due to some sort of childish and naïve public perception, shaped mostly by the ignorance and the general inability to appreciate what theoretical Physics research was all about. At that time I equated the mastery of physics with the mastery of incredibly involved and sophisticated mathematical manipulations, and from everything I knew about him Einstein was not someone of whom you could say that he was a mathematical super wiz. However, when I started learning more about General Relativity and other very fundamental Physical theories, I started appreciating the unique and profound insights that Einstein had. His was never a search for yet another equation or law that can be added to the storeroom of similar important laws. He wanted to know the Truth with a capital “T,” and the truth he was pursuing was simple, yet incredibly subtle. It is this philosophical understanding of what the ultimate truth is about that has influenced me more than any particular thing that I had ever learned. From that perspective Einstein is indeed the greatest scientist of the 20th century, and perhaps ever.
Today, April 18, 2010, is the 55th anniversary of Einstein’s death. He died after suffering a heart attack at the age 76. I always found it rather poignant and sad that we’ll never know what his last words were – he was slipping in and out of comma, and said something in German, his native tongue. Unfortunately, the American nurse who attended to him spoke only English.
Shortly after his death, a young photojournalist for Life magazine named Ralph Morse took a few photographs of Einstein’s office at Princeton and other places and events surrounding that sad day. For whatever reason, those photographs have not been published until just recently. You can see many of them here. I find them incredibly touching.