Re: OOL III - Connecting the Blocks

From: Perplexed in Peoria (jimmenegay_at_sbcglobal.net)
Date: 03/06/05 

Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 00:37:36 -0500 (EST)

"Anthony Cerrato" <tcerrato@optonline.net> wrote in message news:d0dhp4$310i$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
> Sometimes it is the braver thinkers
> who have less baggage to carry come up with the greatest
> seminal ideas (e.g., ... patent officer, Einstein)...
> A little knowledge is not always a dangerous thing!

People tend to portray Einstein as an outsider, and use his job
as a patent clerk as evidence. Actually, Einstein was a very
promising grad student in physics and he only took the job so he
would have some income while he finished his dissertation.

His dissertation took longer than expected because he got interested
in some other topics. But in 1905, he completed his Brownian
motion paper, his photoelectric effect paper, and special relativity.
Plus he finally finished his dissertation, and soon got a teaching job.

Amusingly, the dissertation is the most often cited today of all his
publications. It dealt with the properties of colloidal suspensions,
and paint chemists love to cite it just to show that they read Einstein
too.
(Source: Pais's biography "Subtle is the Lord")

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OOL III - Connecting the Blocks
    ... > People tend to portray Einstein as an outsider, ... > promising grad student in physics and he only took the job ... > would have some income while he finished his dissertation. ... relativity further mark his place as one of the greatest ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Where do mathematical ideas come from?
    ... > dissertation was filed away and forgotten ... ... Why did no-one including Batchelier harvest it? ... > 2) einstein "discovered" general relativity, ... > years prior, ...
    (sci.math)