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By Root 637 0

the last 30 years of his life because of his criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation and his attempts to slay his quantum demon, Einstein has been vindicated, in part. Einstein versus Bohr had little to do with the equations and numbers generated by the mathematics of quantum mechanics. What does quantum mechanics mean? What does it say about the nature of reality? It was their answers to these types of questions that separated the two men. Einstein never put forward an interpretation of his own, because he was not trying to shape his philosophy to fit a physical theory. Instead he used his belief in an observer-independent reality to assess quantum mechanics and found the theory wanting.

In December 1900, classical physics had a place for everything and almost everything in its place. Then Max Planck stumbled across the quantum, and physicists are still struggling to come to terms with it. Fifty long years of 'conscious brooding', said Einstein, had not brought him any closer to understanding the quantum.39 He kept trying to the end, taking solace in the words of the German playwright and philosopher Gotthold Lessing: 'The aspiration to truth is more precious than its assured possession.'40

TIMELINE

1858

23 April: Max Planck is born in Kiel, Germany.

1871

30 August: Ernest Rutherford is born in Spring Grove, New Zealand.

1879

14 March: Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, Germany.

1882

11 December: Max Born is born in Breslau, Silesia, Germany.

1885

7 October: Niels Bohr is born in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1887

12 August: Erwin Schrödinger is born in Vienna, Austria.

1892

15 August: Louis de Broglie is born in Dieppe, France.

1893

February: Wilhelm Wien discovers the displacement law for blackbody radiation.

1895

November: Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays.

1896

March: Henri Becquerel discovers that uranium compounds emit previously unknown radiation that he calls 'uranic rays'.

June: Wien publishes a distribution law for blackbody radiation that is in agreement with the available data.

1897

April: J.J. Thomson announces the discovery of the electron.

1900

25 April: Wolfgang Pauli is born in Vienna, Austria.

July: Einstein graduates from the Federal Polytechnikum in Zurich.

September: The breakdown of Wien's distribution law is confirmed beyond any doubt in the far infrared part of the blackbody spectrum.

October: Planck announces his blackbody radiation law at a meeting in Berlin of the German Physical Society.

14 December: Planck presents the derivation of his blackbody radiation law in a lecture to the German Physical Society. The introduction of the quantum of energy is barely noticed. At best, it is deemed to be a theorist's sleight of hand to be eliminated later.

1901

5 December: Werner Heisenberg is born in Würzburg, Germany.

1902

June: Einstein begins work as an 'Expert Class III' at the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland.

8 August: Paul Dirac is born in Bristol, England.

1905

June: Einstein's paper on the existence of light-quanta and the photoelectric effect is published in Annalen der Physik.

July: Einstein's paper explaining Brownian motion is published in Annalen der Physik.

September: Einstein's paper 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies', outlining his special theory of relativity, is published in Annalen der Physik.

1906

January: Einstein receives his PhD from Zurich University at the third attempt with a thesis entitled 'A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions'.

April: Einstein is promoted to 'Expert Class II' at the Patent Office in Bern.

September: Ludwig Boltzmann commits suicide while on holiday near Trieste, Italy.

December: Einstein's paper on the quantum theory of specific heat is published in Annalen der Physik.

1907

May: Rutherford takes up the post of professor and head of physics at Manchester University.

1908

February: Einstein becomes privatdozent at Bern University.

1909

May: Einstein is appointed extraordinary professor of theoretical physics at Zurich University, effective