The Other Einstein(56)
“I had a scientific epiphany, Johnnie,” I said as I sat up.
“You did?” His flat eyes began to glimmer in the glow of the streetlights streaming in the window.
“Yes, in the Novi Sad train station. You know how we have been struggling to reconcile Newton’s physical laws with Maxwell’s new theories on electromagnetism and light waves? How we’ve been trying to bridge the divide between Newton with his matter and Maxwell with his light waves?”
“Yes, yes,” he exclaimed. “It’s been confounding. Not just to us but physicists everywhere. What did you discover, Dollie?”
“I think that the notion of relativity—the one we’ve read about in Mach and Poincaré—might hold the answer. Relativity might bridge the gap between the theories of Newton and Maxwell, the new and the old. But only if we shift our understanding of space and time.”
I explained to him the thought experiment I’d had in the Novi Sad train station. “The logical outcome is that the measurements of certain quantities—such as time—are relative to the velocity or speed of the observer, particularly if we assume that the speed of light is fixed for all observers. Space and time should be considered together and in relation to each other. In this way, Newton’s classic laws of mechanical physics remain accurate but only in situations of uniform motion.”
He gasped. “That’s brilliant, Dollie. Brilliant.”
Had he really just called me brilliant? It was a word Albert reserved for the great masters of physics—Galileo, Newton, and periodically a couple of the modern thinkers. And now me?
Rising from the bed, he started pacing around the bedroom. “It seems you’ve grieved for Lieserl thoughtfully, such that something extremely important has come out of it.” Pride shone in his eyes, and I couldn’t help but be pleased with myself, despite all my self-loathing over Lieserl.
“Shall we write a paper on your theory?” he asked, his eyes sparkling. “Together, we could change the world, Dollie. Will you do this with me?”
A spark of excitement ignited within me, but guilt immediately dampened it. How dare I be pleased with Albert’s reaction? How dare I long to research and write this theory? It was my daughter’s death that inspired the insight and allowed me to see God’s patterns in science. Yet, another voice argued, couldn’t I write this theory in her memory so that her death was not in vain? Maybe this was the “glory” I was meant to uncover.
What was the right course?
I allowed my lips to form the words that my heart yearned to say. “Yes, Albert. I will.”
Chapter 27
May 26, 1905
Bern, Switzerland
The papers and books were heaped high on the large rectangular table in our living room. This table, once burnished and scrubbed and ready for meals, had become the battered hub of our research, the place from which the spark of our creativity emanated, not unlike the spark of life between Adam and God depicted in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, we joked to ourselves. These papers were to be our own miracles.
Peering between the stacks, I made eye contact with Albert. Whispering to ensure that one-year-old Hans Albert stayed asleep, I said, “Johnnie, tell me what you think of this.” Holding my paper close to the oil lamp, I read aloud to him from my paper on relativity: “Two events that appear concurrent when observed from one spot can no longer be considered concurrent when observed from another spot that is moving relative to it.”
Albert puffed on his pipe, squinting at me through the haze of its smoke. A long pause ensued before he answered. “It’s very good, Dollie.”
I glanced down at my paper, pleased with Albert’s reaction and the sound of the words read aloud. “It captures well the notion of relativity, doesn’t it? I wanted at least one sound sentence in the paper, separate from the thought experiment and the bolstering calculations, that would be understandable and quotable to a larger audience.”
“That’s wise, Dollie. This notion will reach wide, I think.”
“You do? You’re certain the wording isn’t a mistake, Johnnie?” I asked. Although my theories on relativity were indeed simple at their core, the notion itself was hard to grasp—it completely contradicted prior learning—and the math was beyond the average person. I needed to be certain I’d boiled it down to its essence.
“We may need to play with the verbiage a bit, but when we’re trying something new, there will be some mistakes along the way,” he muttered distractedly. These days, Albert repeated this phrase fairly often. With my paper and the other two we were working on together, we were generating many new theories. Between us, we jested that not only were the papers a miracle, but it would take a miracle for people to accept their revolutionary notions.
“True enough.” I slid two papers between a stack toward him. “Please take a final look at my calculations on the velocity of light and empty space.”
“Dollie, we’ve gone over and over your calculations. They’re magnificent. Anyway, you’re the mathematician in the family, not me. It’s you who I rely upon to correct my own numbers!” he cried out in mock exasperation.
“Shh,” I said with a giggle. “You’ll wake the baby.” Albert was right. For the past eighteen months, we’d been working on three papers, although the relativity paper was largely my own. The others—an article on the quantum of light and the photoelectric effect, and another article on Brownian motion and atomic theory—were coauthored by both of us. On those two, Albert primarily drafted the theory while I handled the mathematics, although I was intimately familiar with every word and idea.