| Einstein
Exhibit Opens in New York
14 Nov 2002, 14:26 UTC
The most comprehensive exhibition ever presented
on the life and theories of Albert Einstein opens this week at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. Many of the original manuscripts
and personal treasures on display have never been seen by the general
public.
The exhibition, simply titled Einstein, features
dazzling interactive exhibits that would, perhaps, even amaze the man
credited with helping bring about the Information Age.
There is a large video installation that distorts
the image of visitors, illustrating Einstein's assertion that the Sun's
gravity alters light traveling from distant stars. At another station,
a computer simulator allows visitors to increase or decrease the size
of an animated black hole - the small, celestial bodies believed to
be collapsed stars.
In still another exhibit, visitors can track
"muons". The Museum's Gretchen Walker explains. "What
we're looking at here is a fine mist in the bottom of a tank, and that
mist is acting like a cloud chamber," What happens is that, as
a cosmic ray goes through the mist, it heats the mist around it and
leaves a contrail, a jet contrail. And muons that were detecting the
particles we detect are traveling very very close to the speed of light,
so time is passing much more slowly for them. Their life-spans are actually
only about two microseconds, but since they are experiencing the time
much more slowly than we are, they last several hours by our time and
therefore we are able to detect them."
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity - E=mc2-
is a cornerstone of the exhibit and of modern science. Hanoch Gutfreund,
a professor of theoretical physics who served as an advisor to Museum
curators, says that the exhibition, which will travel internationally
beginning next year, brings the legendary equation to life. "E=mc2
appears on stamps and in commercials, but so few people understand what
it really means. I think that anybody who is willing to stand by the
panels that try to explain what it stands for will walk away with a
sense of understanding. They will not be able to derive it from first
principles, but they will understand what it means. "
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity laid
the foundation for the development of atomic energy. His work on the
photoelectric effect led to the advent of vacuum tubes and integrated
circuits, and ultimately to the computer revolution. His understanding
of the size and shape of molecules has helped unlock the mysteries of
DNA. All of these achievements are celebrated in this landmark collection.
But Michael Shara, curator of the exhibition, says the exhibit also
celebrates what Einstein left unachieved. "Einstein spent the last
30 years of his life trying to assemble a grand unified theory, to take
the world of the super-microscopic and the world of the macroscopic
- the entire universe - and join them into one beautiful theory. He
didn't succeed, and he considered the last 30 years of his life to be
a failure. Today, we regard it as a great success because he pushed
all of theoretical physics in the direction of a grand of unified theory.
Today, that's one of the hottest topics in physics, and it's because
of him."
In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics.
He fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1933, where
he began a long stint teaching at Princeton University. The writing
pad Einstein was using at the time of his death in 1955, containing
his final calculations in pursuit of the general unified theory, is
on view at the exhibit.
The exhibition also honors Albert Einstein's
life outside the world of science. On display are a secondary school
report card, a tea set, some of his pipes, and his magnetic compass.
Not far away are his 1939 letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning
him that the Nazis might be using uranium to build a nuclear bomb, and
a 1952 letter from Israel's ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban,
offering Einstein the presidency of Israel.
Physics professor Hanoch Gutfreund says these
elements are essential to the exhibition. "His fame comes from
his contributions to science, but he expressed his views on almost every
important issue on our cultural and political agenda. He talked about
war and peace, abouthuman rights, about religion, about nationalism,
and on all that, sometimes his opinions were expressed bluntly. He was
not compromising. Sometimes they were expressed naively, but people
paid attention, and listened to what he had to say."
The exhibition also includes a collection of
letters Einstein received from admirers all over the world.One, from
a young child in Bristol, Pennsylvania, captures the enormity of Albert
Einstein's lasting fame. It reads: "Dear Dr. Einstein, I want to
know what is beyond the sky. My mother said you could tell me. Yours
Truly, Frank Fellerman."
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