How Einstein Became the First Science Superstar

Some historical background is provided here, but it doesn’t come close to explaining the impact of Einstein’s mind and persona upon science.

Galileo, Newton, Darwin... Einstein has a number of science "superstar" predecessors. This is not in any way meant to downgrade Einstein, only to acknowledge hyperbole.

There may be other giants in science, but their contributions necessarily are dwarfed by Einstein's description of the fundamental nature of the universe. That's what people intuitively are getting and that is why Einstein towers above all others.

Thank you Ron Cowen for this gripping account of Einstein's genius. One of my favorite quote of his is, "Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." I accepted my limits but finding my way beyond them is still hidden to me.

Serious question here: After many years of wrangling, I finally understand Einstien's notion of time dialation, but not his notion of gravity as the bending of space-time. As a visual learner, I appreciate the analogy of a lead weight on a rubber sheet (or a bowling ball on a trampoline), but that image doesn't fully work for me because the universe is not a two-dimensional sheet. It's more like squishy rubber cube. So what is a more appropriate analogy? How do I visualize the effect of a bowling ball encased in a three-dimensional rubber sheet?

Perhaps, as a biomedical scientist I am biased, but my vote for first science superstar goes to Louis Pasteur.

I would offer that Einstein's physical appearance contributed to his achievement of legendary status among the general public. His kindly expression, that perpetual semi-smile, the pipe, the hair (or course), the rumpled sweaters, his beloved violin, his eccentricities (like eschewing socks)...they all coalesced into an image that really seemed to convey genius. Best of all, being such a genuine person, he didn't consciously cultivate his look. A true media star of the 20th century.

I do not know how you can argue Einstein was the FIRST international science rockstar. Louis Pasteur was a household name far beyond France and celebrated world-wide decades before.

Einstein is my personal hero. He was a double gift to the world. His science was revolutionary. But that he was a first-rate humanitarian was the greatest gift he lent to all other scientists who would follow in his footsteps. No longer would the Fabers and Lenards dominate science. Instead, the man who wrote, "We must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community," would be the exemplar.

As a lifelong admirer of Einstein, I thoroughly enjoyed this article and learned some new details as well. I would like to add that my admiration of the man is due not only to his "science superstar" status, but also to his philosophical thought and his endearing humility. My favorite quote from Einstein is his response to the suggestion that his work had called into question the existence of God or of a higher power in the universe. He said: "I prefer an attitude of humility, corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." We should all be so humble.

I wonder if Einstein will be the last "rockstar" of physics, or any field of science for that matter. It's not commonly known who invented the microchip, the cell phone (no it wasn't Steve Jobs), drugs that treat cancer, AIDS and heart disease, and techniques for mapping and editing the human genome, etc. Rockstars today are not those who discover, but those who turn technology into fortunes: Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg. Maybe it's because our priorities have changed. Or maybe its because there are no individual scientists making huge leaps; discovery today is perhaps the result of teams of scientists making incremental changes over many years.

We need to rekindle the joy, beauty and magic of Science. Nature is Infinitely complex, yet everything in nature follows strict laws, things just don’t happen. Why should there be laws and how it all came about is an enigma. Yet all of science we know today cannot explain the phenomenon of life. We know nothing about why and how life came about, and the infinite complexity of living systems. Religion is a simplistic attempt to explain all this just as we make up stories to explain complex things to a child. Only a widespread appreciation and dissemination of scientific thought can bring rationality and happiness to this world...which is not happening because science and nature is just too damn complex .

Einstein and Eddington’s major achievement was to fight off the the warring nationalists of Germany, England and the rest of the (un)civilized world at the time, and to continue to communicate and advance science under the fog of war. Human beings have discovered everything except peace. Eddington was a hero, as he convinced enough Brits to ignore the calls for blackballing science from Germany during WWI, and did the arduous expedition to prove Einstein’s theory was correct by proving light was bent by time-space (gravity), and light had “weight”. Asked about what it takes to be a genius, Einstein apparently replied, “everyone is a genius, just ask a fish to climb a tree, and he thinks he’s stupid”. Einstein also remarked that “gravity has nothing to do with two people being attracted to one another”.

Making Einstein into something more than what he was is a disservice to him and the world's other notable scientists. Sir Isaac Newton was able to explain all that he could observe. Most authorities believe that is a unique contribution to science. Einstein could observe much more than Newton but he wasn't able to explain everything that was observable at the time. Being unable to explain everything does not diminish his contribution but also does not make him the first superstar of science. There are many great people in science. Many had profound impacts on humanity that could arguably have more impact on people that the theory of relativity. The first telescope, light bulb, vaccination all can be seen as having more impact than relatively. Again, Einstein's contributions are not diminished by the contributions of others but that doesn't make him the first superstar either.

A thoroughly enjoyable article except the title: scientific theories can't be proven. Einstein's general relativity may also need to be modified in the future, just like Newton's. The data gathered by Eddington's expedition fit the prediction of general relativity better than Newton's law. One can say that general relativity "won", but it will never be proven.

That Einstein was able to do his life's greatest work in the midst of great world catastrophe ( WW 1) and tremendous personal turmoil (divorced, separated from his sons and family) is perhaps the greatest inspiration to us common folk. But it was his 'superstar' status that enabled him to write to FDR to imagine and fund the building of the nuclear weapons which define our world to this day. The 21st century would have happened without Steve Jobs, but the 20th century would be not much different from the 19th without Albert Einstein

The time of the eclipse -- May 1919 -- was also a significant time in the life of Adolf Hitler. "At the end of May 1919, Hitler was recruited to work for the information office of the military administration commanded by Captain Karl Mayr. Among its tasks were gathering intelligence on political movements potentially hostile to the Bavarian authorities and tending to the “political education” of the troops to counter alleged Bolshevik (Communist) influences. Hitler excelled in a training course in early June, and in August 1919 became an instructor for a five-day course for Reichswehr (German Armed Forces) personnel at a base in Lechfeld near Augsburg. Hitler stood out as an effective communicator, and made his first virulent antisemitic speeches in Lechfeld." https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/adolf-hitler-1919-1924 Still to be determined is the question of who, in the end, will be judged to have had the more lasting impact on the world, Einstein or Hitler.

The great scientist adopting a "Diceman" ( Andrew Dice Clay) personna, advances to the podium. Surveying the crowd, he lights a cigarette. Focusing on an audience member in the first row, he announces; "I'm a regular Einstein. You got a problem with that?"

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity also helped inspire one of popular music’s greatest love songs – “As Times Goes By.” As Harvard physicist Lisa Randall reveals in her book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions” (Ecco, 2005), songwriter Herman Hupfeld included this vital setup: “This day and age we’re living in/ Give cause for apprehension,/ With speed and new invention,/ And things like fourth dimension,/ Yet we get a trifle weary/ With Mr. Einstein’s theory …” … before reassuring us that “A kiss is just a kiss/ A sigh is still a sigh,/ The fundamental things apply as time goes by.” Unfortunately, cultural memory of the original 1931 version of “As Time Goes By” has been bent (so to speak) by the greater gravitational field of the song’s best-known use in the 1942 movie Casablanca, which does not include Hupfeld’s original introductory lyric.

One could argue that being memorialized by a great poet confers superstar status: “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.” ― Alexander Pope Also, Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday drew standing room only crowds to their lectures in 19th century London.

Superstar is one thing... but it is only recognition in human society, itself ephemeral. Einstein was about finding eternal truths. It is fitting that the two greatest theories of physics -- general relativity on the one hand, covering gravity and space-time, and quantum mechanics, covering the three other forces of nature, and the root of the Standard Model -- which together provide a powerful, near complete picture of our universe -- are themselves incompatible. Einstein spent his last days trying to achieve what would be unified field theory (in his time), just as scientists of today struggle with this, without success so far. But as Ed Witten has shrewdly observed, since we live in one universe, where both of these theories seem to apply, there must be an underlying principle deeper than these theories, in which they are united. Our monumental task is to find it.

I think superstar is more among the general public, anyone with more than a bit of science training knows of the giants, the Plancks and Rutherfords and Bohr's and Fermis and Shroedingers and Watson and Crick, Shockley/Bardeen, etc. Einstein was interesting because few people probably understood his work, but for some reason the mass media of the time was fascinated, perhaps trying to find hope in a devastated post war world. In later years Stephen Hawking (much of whose work was popularized, but not really understood) and of course the miracle of self promotion, Carl Sagan (who despite his outsize ego, was a scientist and a mentor to scientists) became superstars with books and tv series and the like, but none of them became synonymous with genius like Einstein did, you don't call someone bright Sagan or Hawking, you call them an Einstein. Funny part is the more self depreciating and retiring Einstein was, the more his fame seemed to spread. I think his story had something to do with it, the great mind who envisioned relativity working as a patent clerk watching trolley cars, spurned by the 'science community' of the time, called feeble minded by teachers in the glorious prussian education system, the genius who would spend time playing with a yo yo, fascinated and absorbed, it touched a chord in people of the 'natural genius', whether truth or myth doesn't matter.

The equation 'looks' so simple, yet 'impenetrable' to me: Ruv - Rguv/2 = kTuv I made it a bucket list item in my retirement to master (if possible for me) tensor calculus and Riemannian geometry, and plow through MTW's tome Gravitation. My formal education ends with high school and a Navy ET tech school. Years later, although mastering this, I can report that this was one of the most challenging, enlightening, and sublime effort, well worth the 'trouble'. I'm in absolute awe of what this guy Einstein and the many before whose shoulders he stood upon achieved. Perhaps John Bell should have been a Rockstar in the 60's when he published "On the Eistein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox). There is no quantum computing if entanglement is not a fact in the universe. One would think this would elevate a physicist to stardom.

My personal favorite quote of Einstein's is, "If my theory of relativity is proved true, then the Germans will say I am German, the Swiss will claim that I'm a Swiss citizen and the French will say I'm a great scientist. If relativity is found to be false, the Swiss will say that I'm German, the French will say that I'm Swiss, and the Germans will call me a Jew."

What an informative and uplifting article about what, in essence, is the continuous Ascent of Man, as Bronowski termed it, and a giant leap in that ascent as well. I’m not a terribly religious person but I do believe that something greater than mere Nature started reality as we know it. What or who is the question. Somehow Einstein began to decipher the code of existence and his findings have been built on by succeeding generations of brilliant individuals. Thank you Albert! “Would to God that all the Lord’s people were Prophets.” William Blake “Jerusalem”

Isaac Newton was the first superstar scientist.

Does one see the utter recklessness of throwing Arthur Eddington into the trenches of war? What was the British military thinking? Did they not understand that any 35-year old could be trained to hold a gun, but a genius like Eddington was once in a century? This gives the (hopefully false) impression that the military top brass was all muscle and no brains...

Einstein wasn't much of a husband nor a father. Einstein was a theoretical physicist and mathematician. Einstein didn't do experiments. Einstein missed the reality behind black holes, dark energy, dark matter and quantum mechanics. Because he didn't believe in nor trust that God aka Mother Nature would allow for such things to exist in the way that Einstein thought that the universe should be. Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt talking about e=mc2 possibility of an atomic nuclear bomb which led to the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Einstein is our modern science superstar for sure, but hardly the FIRST science superstar. Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton come to mind, for sure. It is a bit of inappropriate journalistic hype to call Einstein the FIRST science superstar. Einstein would not approve. The headline starts the article out on a false note, a faux pas.

Science superstars come and ago and only the ones that make the most impact are remembered. Einstein cannot be considered the only super star for generations. There have been many who will be considered. In my field of Microbiology and Immunology, I consider Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur as super stars who were more than just stars.

Commenters persist (and yet they persist!) in speaking about "laws of nature" as if they were objective realities. Wittgenstein said that the idea that laws of nature "explain" anything is perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings of science. Some 26 years after receiving the Nobel Prize in physics, Steven Weinberg came to the same conclusion. I should add also, in case someone objects regarding Weinberg's 2003 NY Review of Books article where he describes how he reaches this conclusion - he retracts it at the end and says basically, "Who cares how the word "explanation" has been defined for several thousand years - we scientists can use it any way we want." Well, no. So finally, two more observations about laws: 1. Some physicists have concluded that in fact, laws of nature are NOT immutable - and that there may be times as well as regions of space where they are different and/or changing. 2. Cosmologists tell us that for at least 1 trillionth of a second after the "Big Bang," there was pure chaos - no "laws." - How did these laws come into being? We don't know - Why have they remained mostly the same? We don't know - Why don't they change more dramatically? We don't know What is matter, really? We don't know What is "energy" According to Richard Feynman, we don't know. Einstein was the rarest of the rare among scientists - genuinely humble, and accepting of the idea of intelligence underlying these "laws." www.remember-to-breathe.org

How do you know that? It could have been Copernicus or Archimedes.

It was not that Einstein "overthrew" (in the terminology of The Times of London) Newton's ideas, a case of Einstein versus Newton, but rather, in Alfred North Whitehead's words (quoted in this article), a "modification," or extension, of Newton's theories, albeit an inherently dramatic one.

Perhaps the irony of Cowen's penultimate paragraph would not be lost on Einstein. Surely Einstein encountered such presumptuous certainty when he averred there was more to time and space (space-time) than the prevailing zeitgeist allowed. Additionally, as has been acknowledged elsewhere, while Einstein was indeed a global superstar the majority of those who celebrated the presence of this most famous man had no idea what he was talking about. He was, as the saying goes, famous for being famous. Those concerned with appreciating the ever-evolving continuum of physics might do well to explore the avenue of inquiry referred to as scientific metaphysics as well as issues concerning measurement and under-determination. Cassandra's contribution (see below) is insightful.

There was a 1925 Broadway play "The Cocoanuts" starring the Marx brothers, made into a movie in 1929. There's a scene in the movie where Groucho is trying, unsuccessfully, to explain something to Chico, and says something like "Let me explain it to you again Einstein." So, depending on how faithful the movie was to the play, it took less than 6 or 10 years after Eddington's announcement before calling someone "Einstein" was already being used ironically.

Newton's laws were not overthrown, but were shown to be limited in that they apply only to conditions to which we are normally accustomed. Relativity, and quantum theory apply to extreme conditions. Einstein extended Maxwell's ideas and published his Special Relativity Theory in 1900. All of this , however, does not diminish Einstein's achievements but does show that science progresses incrementally.

Einstein’s place in the history of thought seems secure. Indeed, he was not an experimenter so much as a theorist, a *thinker*, and we should do well to reflect on the role played by mind - an open mind - and by imagination in the ideas he bestowed to us. He allowed no orthodoxy to stifle his study of the universe and I am confident he would be the first welcome challenges to the one he established. He would see no threat in questioning our agreed upon concepts of reality. One hopes that his open-mindedness, his spirit of inquiry, his quest for the truth, can guide us still as we confront climate change and the other crises which will surely arise as the post-Einstein century unfolds.

Mr. Cowen has apparently never heard of Isaac Newton, who was as much a "superstar" in his own day as Einstein in ours. Newton was appointed to high office (Master of the Mint), set the agenda for physics and astronomy for the next century, and was celebrated as the most important English cultural figure since Shakespeare. Perhaps we should abandon the idea of stardom, and consider each achievement on its merits. For Einstein they were considerable, but in fact general relativity was not proved until the 1960's. The 1919 observations have since been shown to have been so uncertain that they hardly amounted to a proof; they were taken as definitive only because of Eddington's own "stardom".