When Einstein met Curie

doi:10.1126/science.abj1411

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.abj1411
	When Einstein met Curie
	Graham Farmelo
	2021-07-02
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	Toward the end of his life, when asked which physicist he most respected, Albert Einstein replied “Hendrik Lorentz and Marie Curie.” His choice of Dutch theoretical physicist Lorentz was predictable; less obvious was his selection of Polish-born Curie (born Maria Skłodowska). Although undoubtedly one of the great pioneers of radioactivity, she did not work on aspects of physics that usually drew Einstein to express special admiration. Besides, he had occasionally made uncomplimentary private remarks about her, once describing her as “very intelligent” but “as cold as a fish.” Many scholars have mulled over the relationship between Curie and Einstein, despite the paucity of evidence required to establish a rounded view of it. The latest attempt is The Soul of Genius by Jeffrey Orens—a former chemical engineer, a historical writer, and, evidently, a serial anecdotalist. The book aims to illuminate the relationship between the two scientists, which first flowered at the inaugural Solvay Conference in late October 1911. At this momentous gathering in Brussels, 18 of Europe's leading physical scientists pondered the failure of classical theories to account for several phenomena and the emergence of a new quantum theory. Einstein, the meeting's youngest participant, was dazzled by the “sparkling intelligence” of Curie, who was already an internationally famous scientist. She was impressed with him, too, and soon afterward gave him a glowing reference that helped to secure his first professorship in Prague. On the day after the conference ended, Curie found herself the focus of a scandal in the French press, which published evidence that she—a widow—was having an affair with her unhappily married colleague Paul Langevin. Leaked letters and disobliging reports led to a feeding frenzy in the French press. Even the award of Curie's second Nobel Prize a few weeks later could not lift her spirits. Einstein wrote her to offer his strong support as well as a piece of advice: “If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don't read that hogwash.” Previously unpublished documents in the archive of French physicist Léon Brillouin make Orens's description of Curie's torrid experience especially vivid and disturbing. However, the new material sheds less light on her relationship with Einstein than on the vicious treatment meted out in French society at that time to prominent women who did not follow the norms of polite society. Curie and Einstein did not become closely acquainted until 1922, when they began 9 years of collaboration on projects for League of Nations committees on which they served. Records of the committees make it plain that the two agreed on most matters and that they got along well, although few details remain of their interactions. This is a pity, given the potential conversational fodder offered by the newly discovered quantum mechanics. Curie and Einstein met for the final time at the Solvay meeting in October 1933, 9 months before she died in a sanatorium in southeast France at the age of 67. In January 1935, the Polish authorities organized a memorial event in her honor, held at the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City. Einstein's tribute to her life gives some of the most compelling evidence of the closeness of their friendship and the depth of his admiration for her: “It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever-growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment—all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual.” Orens devotes surprisingly little space to this testimony, especially as he spends dozens of pages on relatively peripheral matters. In chapter nine, for example, he begins with a lengthy account of the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, which serves as an introduction to the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, who turned out to be an influential member of the Nobel Prize committee. This and other detours often make it difficult to follow the development of the human relationship at the heart of Orens's book. Yet, despite its bloat, The Soul of Genius is a rewarding read about a relationship that I suspect was more complex than extant documentation suggests.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
URL	查看原文
引用统计
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/334171
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Graham Farmelo. When Einstein met Curie[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Graham Farmelo.(2021).When Einstein met Curie.Science.
MLA	Graham Farmelo."When Einstein met Curie".Science (2021).