I have been fortunate during my teaching career that has allowed me to teach and deliver seminars at many of the great universities around the world, including UCL, Oxford, Cambridge, the LSE, SOAS, Stanford, and UC Berkeley on many occasions, I have been allowed to discuss the lives and times of these two “Giants” of Science Marie Curie (1867-1934) and Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Starting with Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 not for his work on Relativity but for his elucidation of the photoelectric effect by resurrecting Newton’s (1743- 1727) then dormant corpuscular theory of light (Huygens’s (1629-1695), Fresnel’s (1788- 1827) and Young’s (1773-1829 a polymath) wave theory is allowed to take center stage temporarily.
Einstein Papers That Revolutionized Physics
In 1905, Einstein whilst working as a patent clerk third class, wrote four papers that would completely revolutionize the landscape of Physics and in so doing, elevate him to the dizzy heights of arguably the greatest Physicist of all time (perhaps only to be compared with Newton). Albert like Isaac before him also had a so-called miraculous year in 1666 during the plague years when he (Newton) retreated to Grantham and divulged his ideas that explained classical mechanics (that Aristotle (384-322BC)) had attempted to do and which Galileo (1564-1642) mastered and the theory of gravity by building on the three laws of Kepler (1571-1630) and the astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601, who died from a bladder infection due to his hedonistic lifestyle). Einstein’s four papers were on the Photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Special relativity, and his immortal Mass-Energy relation.
Marie Curie Acheivements
I could go on talking about Albert in this entire post introducing his General Theory of Relativity, space-time, time dilation, the twin paradox, etc.
But let’s discuss Marie Curie (1867-1934) too. Marie was a Polish scientist who won two Nobel prizes, one with her husband Pierre (1859-1906) and the other with her daughter Irene (in Chemistry), and she is the only woman to date to have achieved this. Linus Pauling (1901-1994) also won two such prizes and would have most certainly won another if he had won the “race” in tracing the identity of DNA, but fortunately for Crick (1916-2004), Watson (1928-) and Wilkins (1916- 2004) he made an error in the interpretation of his results which opened the door for others whilst slamming the door tightly on the work of Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) who once worked at Birkbeck College where I have been fortunate to teach.
Tragic End for Legend
Marie became the true alchemist, demonstrating how one element can be transformed into another with the discovery of radioactivity, thus fulfilling the quests of other alchemists, including Newton, Rutherford (1871-1937), and Avicena (980-1037AD). Regrettably, Marie’s life was cut short no doubt due to her exposure to radioactive materials. In fact, her notebooks are still radioactive and thus inaccessible to general viewing.
Alas, I have run out of space; perhaps I should write about each individually?
