Albert Einstein and Amateur Science

The web edition of the Australian newspaper The Age has published an intriguing review by Michael White of four books about Albert Einstein. All four books are being published in 2005, the centennial of Einstein's greatest discoveries.

Readers of The Citizen Scientist will find White's reviews of special interest, for he points out that in 1905 Einstein worked at the Bern patent office and had yet to finish his doctoral dissertation. White writes, "In his spare time he talked physics over strong coffee in the local cafe with his close friends Marcel Grossman and Michelangelo Besso, who were also amateur scientists."

In that year Einstein wrote three seminal papers. The first paper applied Planck's quantum theory to light. The second paper proposed what became the special theory of relativity. The third was about statistical mechanics.

Another intriguing amateur science connection for Einstein was the theory of gravitational lensing. In "The Origin of Gravitational Lensing: A Postscript to Einstein's 1936 Science Paper," Jürgen Renn, Tilman Sauer, John Stachel pointed out that Einstein considered the idea of gravitational lensing three years before finalizing his theory of relativity (Science, vol. 275, 10 January 1997, pp. 184-186). They then concluded, "When he finally published the very same results 24 years later, it was only in response to prodding by an amateur scientist."

Readers who are aware of other connections between Einstein and amateur science are urged to send the details to the "Backscatter" column of The Citizen Scientist. Place "Backscatter" in the subject line. Be sure to provide the full citation of any publications that are cited (author, publication, publisher, date and page numbers).

Forrest M. Mims III