hai guys;
comment on
Do we have EINSTEIN in the modern age or if we have,why dont we see him so distinctly.....

 

hai guys;
comment on
Do we have EINSTEIN in the modern age or if we have,why dont we see him so distinctly.....

Because NASA took him

 

Do we have EINSTEIN in the modern age

Quite possibly - depends what field we are looking at.

if we have,why dont we see him so distinctly.....

Probably because these days we have come to accept more readily the huge steps made in scientific understanding. Einstein's most prominent work was at the start of the 20th Century where understanding (and acceptance) of science was less entrenched than it is now.

It is possible to argue that Einstein's work was so ground-breaking that there are not modern equivalents.

Dave

 

Probably because these days we have come to accept more readily the huge steps made in scientific understanding. Einstein's most prominent work was at the start of the 20th Century where understanding (and acceptance) of science was less entrenched than it is now.

I agree.

It is possible to argue that Einstein's work was so ground-breaking that there are not modern equivalents.

& if I'm correct many have not been completely proved. Like theory of relativity, I'd like to be corrected though.

 

& if I'm correct many have not been completely proved. Like theory of relativity, I'd like to be corrected though.

You can't prove any theory. You can test a theory and disprove it. In that regard, I thought the dragging of time by a large body was one of the last aspects that needed to be tested, and so far the results have been consistent with his predictions. John

 

Science has become very specialized, which is probably why you don't see many people being hailed as revolutionary geniuses.

 

You can't prove any theory. You can test a theory and disprove it. In that regard, I thought the dragging of time by a large body was one of the last aspects that needed to be tested, and so far the results have been consistent with his predictions. John

Thanks for the reply,
There is another thing to be tested, travel into past. Many theories are against this.

I hope we are not going off topic.

I think there is and was a good chance that a brilliant person never actually ever went for science. IIRC De Broglie wud never have proved Dual nature if he did not have brothers who were investigating the same.

 

I nominate Richard Hamilton and Grigori Perelman who together seem to have put the finishing touches on a proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. I'd say that makes them giants of 21st century mathematics. We'll see what happens to $1,000,000 prize from the Clay Mathematics institute.

It seems that Penny Smith of Lehigh University and her solution of the Navier Stokes Equations may be next.

 

Some might argue that people have gotten lazy and are not as interested in mathematics and the sciences as they once were. There was a time when people like Tesla, Einstein, Euler and many more where the pop-culture superstars and people devoted their lives to scientific progress. Now maybe people are more interested in watching tv and playing music.

Not saying that the human race isn't still doing amazing things, just maybe not as many people are interested in it.

 

I don't agree with that a bit. The real thing is it is hard to come up with something on your lonesome, as the man hours needed for the next step grow every time something new is figured out.

Edison was a good example, he hired a lot of help to build his ideas, and I'm sure a lot of inovations were incorporated in his stuff that came from one of his workers. Nowdays it is the corporations, if I ever came up with something new I'd probably have to fight my current employer for it.

We have a lot of cutting age math, but it is swamped by the noise. By the time it is confirmed or modified the ho hum factor kicks in. Welcome to the information age.

 

Edison was a good example, he hired a lot of help to build his ideas, and I'm sure a lot of inovations were incorporated in his stuff that came from one of his workers. Nowdays it is the corporations, if I ever came up with something new I'd probably have to fight my current employer for it.

Its a good point. More than likely you would have signed the rights to your employer when you signed your contract of employment - the same is now coming true for researchers in Universities who are increasingly being asked to sign over there IPR to the Departments they work under. Some still maintain moral-rights in some form or other.

Dave

 

I think we're getting away from the OP's question. As I see it he was asking if there are any intellectual giants left. I think the answer is decidedly yes, but the discoveries are coming fields that are more obscure than at the beinning of the 20th century. Are the people being awarded a Nobel or a MacArthur any less deserving than Einstein? I don't think so.

 

I think we're getting away from the OP's question. As I see it he was asking if there are any intellectual giants left. I think the answer is decidedly yes, but the discoveries are coming fields that are more obscure than at the beinning of the 20th century. Are the people being awarded a Nobel or a MacArthur any less deserving than Einstein? I don't think so.

Certainly not less deserving. The question could be interpreted one of two ways: Do we have EINSTEIN in the modern age?

a) An Einstein in the scientific sense, as someone who made a significant contribution to scientific knowledge?

b) An Einstein in the notoriety sense, as someone who was a world renowned scientist?

In both cases the answer would certainly be yes, I'm sure we could give many examples. As the case is, the people we name may or not be the same people. After all can anyone give a prominent name to a prominent scientist in the field of String Theory? (Maybe it is just me that can't!)

Dave

 

But you have to remember that Einstein's contributions were not only the whole relativity thing. He was the first scientist to popularize the idea of using math to predict phenomena that have yet to be observed. So Math -> Physical World.

Before this, scientists took observed experiments and tried to characterize the phenomena they were studying using math.
Physical World -> Math.

Almost all high-level physics today use Einstein's method, while the older method is still used predominantly by engineers and other applied scientists.

BTW, the reason that I say that Einstein popularized this method as opposed to invent it is that James Clerk Maxwell actually used math to predict that light was an electromagnetic wave by simulatneously solving his four equations in the late 1800s.

 

b) An Einstein in the notoriety sense, as someone who was a world renowned scientist?

Marylin Monroe described Einstein as the sexiest man she'd ever met. I submit that we can find the modern Einstein notoriety analog by first finding the modern Marylin Monroe analog. Then we just ask her.

 

Marylin Monroe described Einstein as the sexiest man she'd ever met. I submit that we can find the modern Einstein notoriety analog by first finding the modern Marylin Monroe analog. Then we just ask her.

Wow, Einstein really had it all didn't he!

Without getting away from the topic, I bet you that celebrities today of the Marilyn Monroe mould wouldn't be able to name a scientist, let alone pass judgement on issues such as sexuality. This comes back to the question of "an Einstein in the modern age" from the perspective of notoriety.

Dave

 

After watching an Einstein biography, it seems his first wife was a physicist, what if she actually was the source of the theory of relativity.

 

After watching an Einstein biography, it seems his first wife was a physicist, what if she actually was the source of the theory of relativity.

It has been questioned: https://webspace.utexas.edu/aam829/1/m/Maric_files/EvidenceMaric.pdf

Dave

 

Interesting. Thank you both.

Modern equivelents to Einstien, how about Stephen Hawking? His work isn't as far reaching in many ways, but is extremely significant. If some of his theories are proven wrong, so were Einstien's.

 

In that vein, there are many geniuses out there, however with capitalism as our driver, breakthroughs rarely are aligned solely with the originator, and if not deemed commercial, shelved until a more appropriate time. We think of scientific efforts, but we also have humanitarians, artists, and the like that are far beyond the norm, but the rest of us just don't get it.