Why Beauty is Truth (41 page)

Unfortunately, the concept of the aether was problematic. If the aether existed, then the Earth, which revolves round the Sun, must be moving with respect to the aether. It ought to be possible to detect that motion—or else the very concept of the aether would have to be abandoned as inconsistent with experiment.

The answer to this conundrum would completely change the face of physics.

In the summer of 1876, the firm of Israel and Levi, run by two Jewish merchants in the city of Ulm in the state of Württemberg, gained a new
partner, Hermann Einstein. In his youth, Hermann had shown considerable ability in mathematics, but his parents could not afford to send him to university. Now he was becoming a partner in a firm that sold featherbeds.

In August, Hermann married Pauline Koch in Cannstadt synagogue, and the couple eventually made a home in Bahnhofstrasse—Station Road. Less than eight months later, their first child was born. According to the birth certificate, “A child of the male sex, who has received the name Albert, was born in Ulm, in [Hermann's] residence, to his wife Pauline Einstein, née Koch, of the Israelitic faith.” Five years later, Albert was presented with a sister, Maria, and the two became very close.

Albert's parents had a relaxed attitude to their religion and made efforts to integrate themselves into the regional culture. At that time, many German Jews were “assimilationist,” toning down their cultural traditions so that they would fit in better with fellow citizens of other faiths. The names that Hermann and Pauline chose for their children were not traditional Jewish names, although they maintained that Albert was named “after” his grandfather Abraham. Religion was not a frequent topic of discussion in Hermann's house, and the Einsteins did not observe traditional Jewish rituals.

Maria's childhood recollections, published in 1924, are our main source of information about Albert's early experiences and personality. Apparently, he frightened his mother at birth because the back of his head was strangely angular and unusually large. “Much too heavy! Much too heavy!” she cried, when she first saw her baby. Fears that the boy would turn out to be mentally handicapped grew when it took him a long time to start to speak. But Albert was merely waiting until he was confident that he knew what he was doing. He later said that he only began to talk when he could master complete sentences. He would try them out in his head, and then utter them once he was sure the words were correct.

Albert's mother was an accomplished piano player. Between the ages of six and thirteen, Albert was given violin lessons from a teacher named Schmied. In later life, he was devoted to his violin, but in childhood he found the lessons boring.

The featherbed business having flopped, Hermann turned his hand to gas and water supplies, in collaboration with his brother Jakob. Jakob was an engineer and an entrepreneur, and the Einsteins invested heavily in the new venture. Then Jakob decided to diversify into electricity—not installing utilities but manufacturing equipment for power stations. The
company officially came into being in 1885, and the two brothers moved into the same house in Munich, with financial help from Pauline's father and other family members. At first, the business did well, and the Elektronische Fabrik J. Einstein und Co. sold power stations in the Munich area and as far afield as Italy.

Einstein tells us that his interest in physics was triggered when his father showed him a compass. Then aged four or five, Albert was fascinated by its ability to point in the same direction no matter how it was turned, and he gained his first glimpse of the hidden wonders of the physical universe. He found the experience almost mystical.

At school, Albert was competent but initially showed no special brilliance. He was slow and methodical, received good grades, but was a poor mixer. He much preferred to play on his own; he was particularly fond of building houses of cards. He disliked sports. When he moved to the gymnasium in 1888 he developed a talent for Latin, and until he left at fifteen he always was at the top of his class in Latin and mathematics. His mathematical abilities were stimulated by Uncle Jakob, who as an engineer would have studied quite a bit of higher mathematics. Jakob would set young Albert mathematical problems, and Albert was delighted when he solved them. A family friend, Max Talmud, also had a significant effect on Albert's education. Talmud was a poverty-stricken medical student, and Hermann and Pauline had him over for dinner every Thursday evening. He gave Albert several books on popular science; then he initiated the young man into the philosophical writings of Immanuel Kant. The two would discuss philosophy and mathematics for hours. Talmud wrote that he never saw Einstein playing with other children, and that his reading material was always serious, nothing lightweight. His sole relaxation was to play music, including Beethoven and Mozart sonatas accompanied by Pauline.

Albert's enthusiasm for mathematics received a boost in 1891 when he acquired a copy of Euclid that he later called his “holy geometry book.” What impressed him most was the clarity of the logic, the way Euclid had organized the flow of ideas. For a time, Albert became very devout, thanks to compulsory school instruction (in Catholicism, as it happened—there was no choice) and home tuition in the Jewish faith. But all this was brushed aside when he found out about science. His studies of Hebrew and his progress towards his bar mitzvah ground abruptly to a halt; Albert had found a different calling.

By the early 1890s, all was not well in the Elektronische Fabrik J. Einstein und Co. Sales were becoming more difficult in Germany, and the company's Italian agent Lorenzo Garrone suggested that it should move to Italy. In June 1894, the German company was wound up, the family home went on the market, and the Einsteins moved to Milan—with the sole exception of Albert, who had his schooling to complete. While “Einstein and Garrone” set up shop in Pavia, where the family subsequently moved, Albert was left on his own in Munich.

It was a depressing experience, and he hated it. Not only that: the prospect of military service was looming. Without telling his parents, he decided to join them in Italy. He persuaded the family doctor to provide a certificate stating that he suffered from nervous disorders, which may well have been true; permitted to leave school early, he turned up unannounced in Pavia in the spring of 1895. His parents were horrified, so he promised to continue his studies so that he could take the entrance examination to ETH (the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, then as now a leading Swiss institution of higher education) in Zurich.

Albert blossomed in the Italian sunshine. In October he took the ETH entrance examination and failed. He passed easily in mathematics and science but fell down on the humanities. His essay writing was none too good either. But it turned out that there was another way into ETH, which was to start by gaining a high-school diploma, the Matura, which was an automatic entry route. He therefore went to a school in Aarau as a paying guest of the Winteler family. The Wintelers had seven children, and Albert enjoyed their company, developing a lasting affection for his substitute parents. He praised the school's “liberal spirit” and excellent teachers—saying pointedly that the teachers did not bow to outside authority.

For the first time in his life, he was happy at school. He grew in confidence and made his opinions known. One of his school essays, in French, laid out his plans for the future, which were to study mathematics and physics.

In 1896 he entered ETH, renouncing his Württemberg citizenship and becoming stateless. He saved one-fifth of his monthly allowance to pay for his eventual Swiss naturalization. But now the electrical factory owned by his father and uncle Jakob went bankrupt, taking much of the family fortune with it. Jakob took a regular job with a big company, but Hermann was determined to start yet another business. He ignored Albert's advice to the contrary, started again in Milan, and lasted only two years before
that enterprise, too, failed. Albert once more became depressed by his family's misfortunes, until his father followed Jakob's lead and took a job installing power stations.

Albert spent much of his time at ETH in the physics laboratory, performing experiments. His professor, Heinrich Friedrich Weber, was unimpressed. “You are a smart boy, Einstein, a very smart boy,” he told the young man. “But you have one great fault: you do not let yourself be told anything.” He stopped Albert from carrying out an experiment to find out whether the Earth was moving relative to the aether—the hypothetical all-pervading fluid that was supposed to transmit electromagnetic waves.

Nor was Einstein greatly impressed by Weber, whose courses he found old-fashioned. He was especially disappointed not to be told more about Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and taught it to himself, using a German text of 1894. He took lecture courses from two famous mathematicians, Hurwitz and Hermann Minkowski. Minkowski, a brilliantly original thinker, had introduced fundamental new methods into the theory of numbers, and was later to make important mathematical contributions to relativity. Albert also read some of Charles Darwin's works on evolution.

In order to proceed at ETH, he now needed to land an assistantship—what we would now call a teaching assistant position—so that he could finance his further studies while remaining at ETH. Weber hinted that he might offer Albert such a post, but failed to follow through, and Albert never entirely forgave him. He wrote a letter to Hurwitz inquiring whether such a post might be available, and apparently received a positive reply, but again nothing happened. By the end of 1900 he was unemployed. He did, however, publish his first research paper, on the forces acting between molecules. Soon thereafter, he attained Swiss citizenship, which he kept for the rest of his life, even after moving to the United States.

Throughout 1901, Albert kept trying to obtain a university position, writing letters, sending out copies of his paper, applying for any position that was open. No luck. In desperation he took a job as a temporary high-school teacher. To his surprise, he discovered that he enjoyed teaching; in addition, it left him ample spare time to continue his research into physics. He told his friend Marcel Grossmann that he was working on the theory of gases, and—once again—the motion of matter through the aether. He moved to another temporary teaching post in another school.

Now Grossmann came to Albert's rescue: Marcel's father was persuaded to recommend Albert to the director of the Federal Patent Office in Bern. When the job was officially advertised, Einstein applied. He resigned from school teaching and moved to Bern early in 1902, although he had not yet been told officially that he had secured the post. Perhaps he had been assured of this informally, or perhaps he was just very confident. The appointment was made official in June 1902. It was not the academic position that he coveted, but it earned enough money—3500 Swiss francs a year—to provide food, clothes, and lodging. And it left enough time for physics.

At ETH he had encountered a young student named Mileva Maric, who had a strong interest in science—and in Albert. They fell in love. Unfortunately, Pauline Einstein disliked her prospective daughter-in-law, and this caused ill feeling. Then Hermann developed terminal heart disease. On his deathbed the father finally agreed to allow Albert and Mileva to marry, but then he asked everyone in the family to leave him, so that he could die alone. Albert felt guilty for the rest of his life. He and Mileva were married in January 1903; their only son, Hans Albert, was born in May 1904.

The patent office job suited Einstein, and he carried out his duties so effectively that toward the end of 1904 his job was made permanent—but his boss warned that further promotion would depend on Einstein coming to grips with machine technology. His physics advanced too, with work on statistical mechanics.