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爱因斯坦和我们常人相同的5个方面

原文地址:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141205-einstein-archives-free-science/

文章来源:龙腾网 翻译:Bojan

一、正文翻译

5 Ways Einstein Was a Regular Guy

爱因斯坦和我们常人相同的5个方面

A new, free digital archive of his personal papers reveals what we all share with the 20th century's greatest mind.

一份最新披露的爱因斯坦的数字档案揭示了我们常人和这个20世纪伟人的共同之处。

A free archive of the famed physicist's writings released on Friday might help you find out. Transcribed, translated, and annotated with historical insight, the "Digital Einstein" project at the Princeton University Press dives deep into Einstein's early years. (See "Einstein and Beyond.")

"This is Einstein before he was famous," says California Institute of Technology historian Diana Kormos-Buchwald, director of the Einstein Papers Project that created the new archive, a collaboration of Princeton, Caltech, and Hebrew University. "This material has been carefully selected and annotated over the last 25 years."
The archived letters, lectures, and other papers take readers from Einstein's 1879 birth certificate to letters he wrote on his 44th birthday in 1923, fresh off the triumph of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. Perusing the documents reveals that the 20th century's greatest genius was, at least in some ways, a lot like the rest of us:

1. He was passed over for his dream job.
In 1902, Einstein was appointed to the Swiss Patent Office as an examiner with some help from a friend, after he was disappointed in his hopes for a gig as a university professor.

"Largely that was his own fault-he wasn't a great student," says historian Matt Stanley of New York University. "He was disrespectful to his professors and skipped classes because he knew he could pass anyway. So, when he asked for recommendations, he didn't get them."
Sound familiar? Take heart from this: A backwater job didn't stop Einstein from pursuing his dreams.

"Einstein's family was involved in electronics, and the patent office was a world very familiar to him," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology historian David Kaiser, author of How the Hippies Saved Physics.

Tasked with determining the soundness of principles behind new inventions, Einstein played to his talents and translated those skills to the scientific work that culminated in his 1905 "Miracle Year" that led to his Nobel Prize, alongside papers on light's speed, atomic behavior and the famous E = mc² equation.

2. He liked to kick back.

"Both of us, alas, dead drunk under the table," Einstein wrote, referring to himself and his wife Mileva Maric, in a 1915 postcard sent to his pal Conrad Habicht.

Habicht was a co-founder of the Olympia Academy in Bern, Switzerland, a drinking club where friends debated philosophy and science.

"The young Einstein was a Bohemian, not the sage we think of now," Stanley says. Much like a dorm-room bull session, "that's what young people did then; they hung out in beer halls and argued about the nature of space and time."

3. He had romantic troubles and a messy divorce.

Einstein married Maric, a fellow physicist, in 1903. She had already borne him a daughter named Lieserl the year before. Historians are unclear whether the couple gave up the child for adoption or if she died in infancy.

The couple was estranged starting around 1912 and divorced, finally, in 1919. As part of the divorce decree, which you can read in the archive, Einstein agreed that he would give his ex-wife most of the proceeds from a still un-awarded Nobel Prize, to care for the children and live off the interest.

"In the letters we see the young Einstein was a lot like the later one, uninterested in convention and set on having his own way, a bit of a rebel, irresistible to women," Stanley says. "He dove into a few relationships that turned sour, although I think he learned some lessons later in life."

Don't we all.

Einstein married his cousin, Elsa, in 1919, the same year as his divorce.

4. His kids were rascals.

That's what he calls them in a 1922 letter to his two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, asking them to write him in Spain when he was on the way back from a trip to Japan.

Einstein was obviously fond of his sons, writing to them from his travels and throughout their lives, inquiring about their schoolwork. Eduard's life famously took a tragic turn when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 20.

The scientist also enlisted his older son, Hans Albert, in looking after his finances, asking him in 1922 to inquire at a Zurich bank about an unexpected sum of money in his account there.

Kids and money-some problems never change.

5. Road trip!

Einstein skipped the Nobel Prize ceremonies to take a trip to the Far East.
"I have decided definitely not to ride around the world so much anymore; but am I going to be able to pull that off, too?" he wrote his sons after his 1922 trip to Japan.

Unlike most of us, for Einstein travel was more than an escape from the mundane: In other notes in the archive, the physicist acknowledges that the assassination that year of Germany's foreign minister Walther Rathenau by right-wing extremists helped persuade him to leave Germany for a while.

Those same dark forces led to his eventual emigration to the United States from Europe, to escape Hitler's spreading destruction of Germany's Jews.

Those adventures are covered in more volumes of archives that Kormos-Buchwald and her colleagues hope to release next year, ones which will mark the centennial of Einstein's seminal
1915 theory of gravity.

So just as for you, there are more adventures ahead for Einstein, ones waiting to be revealed. Even six decades after his death, more discoveries await for historians tracing the marks he left on our times.

"You might think scholars have already picked over all these volumes, but there is so much more," says Kormos-Buchwald.
The Digital Einstein team hopes to see more historians explore Einstein's world as the archives roll out, and for more everyday folks to see the human side of a man who forever wrestled with his world, despite genius, fortune, and fame.

生命维艰,即使对于天才也是如此。除此之外,我们和爱因斯坦还有什么共同点呢?本周五,爱因斯坦的一份免费档案被公布于众,这也许能帮我们窥得一二。转录,翻译,用历史的眼光去注解,深入研究他的早期的生活,这就是普林斯顿大学出版社开展的"数字爱因斯坦"项目的主要内容。(参考"爱因斯坦本人和他的早期生活")"这就是成名前的爱因斯坦," Diana Kormos-Buchwald说,她是加州理工学院历史学家,同时是由普林斯顿大学,加州理工和希伯来大学共同参与的"爱因斯坦全集计划"的负责人,而最新公布的档案便出自这个计划。她同时补充:"25年来,这份材料经过了仔细筛选和注解。"
纳入收藏的资料包括信件,演讲稿和其它文件,涵盖了爱因斯坦1879年的出生证明到1923年他44岁生日时写的信,信中他讲述了他1921年拿到诺贝尔物理学奖的情形。研读这些资料,我们可以看到这个20世纪最伟大的天才其和我们有太多相似之处,至少在以下几个方面是共同的:

1. 没能从事他理想的工作

1902年,当他想在大学成为一名教授的希望破碎之后,爱因斯坦在朋友的帮助下在瑞士专利局找到了一个检验员的工作。"大部分原因是他自己造成的-他并不是一个出色的学生。"纽约大学历史学家Matt Stanley说:"他知道自己能通过考试,就不尊敬他的教授,还翘课,所以爱因斯坦最终没能得到教授的推荐信。"这是不是很熟悉的桥段?尽管如此,爱因斯坦那平淡无奇的工作也没阻挡他追求梦想的心。

"爱因斯坦家涉足电子领域,所以专利局对他来说很是熟悉,"麻省理工学院历史学家,"嬉皮士如何拯救物理界"一书的作者David Kaiser说。在专利局他的工作是检验新发明背后所应用的原理是否完整,期间,爱因斯坦把他的天赋和所有才能全都投入到科学工作中,他的成就在1905年到达了顶点,而这一年也成了他的奇迹之年,成功发表了关于光速,原子表现的论文以及著名的质能方程,为他以后获得诺贝尔奖奠定了基础。

2.喜欢让自己放松一下

"老天啊,我们俩全都醉倒在了桌子下。"1915年爱因斯坦给他朋友Conrad Habicht的明信片中写道他和妻子的轶事Mileva Maric。Habicht是瑞士伯恩奥林匹亚学院的共同创世人,其实只是几个朋友讨论哲学和科学的一起喝酒的俱乐部。"年轻时候的爱因斯坦放荡不羁,还不是现在人们眼中的圣人," Stanley说。而所谓的俱乐部就像是宿舍里神侃似的场所,"那是他们这些年轻人常做的事,出入酒屋,讨论时间和空间的本质。
爱因斯坦后来说这个俱乐部对他的职业生涯有很大的影响。

3.感情纠纷和离婚

爱因斯坦和同为科学家的Maric在1903年结婚。那时Maric已经在一年前给爱因斯坦生了女儿Lieserl。历史学家现在也没弄清究竟是这对夫妻把孩子送人了还是孩子夭折了。在大约1912年左右,他们就开始感情不和,最终在1919年离了婚。在爱因斯坦的档案中,可以看到部分离婚协议,爱因斯坦同意把他大部分诺贝尔奖金(还未发放)收入划给前妻用来抚养孩子和补贴生活所需。
在这些信里,我们不难看出年轻时的爱因斯坦更像是这样,不服约束,率性而为,叛逆,纵情于男女关系。Stanley说,他有过不少感情纠葛不过最后都无疾而终,但是我任然认为他在生活中得到了教训,人们不都是这样的么。在1919年,离婚的那一年,爱因斯坦娶了他的表姐Elsa。

4.不让人省心的孩子

无赖,这是1922年爱因斯坦给两个儿子Hans Albert 和Eduard的信中这么称呼的,他要他的两个在西班牙的儿子给他回信,当时爱因斯坦正在从日本旅行回来。爱因斯坦非常喜欢他的儿子们,他不仅在旅途中给他们写信,而且在儿子们成长过程中一直写信询问他们的功课。他的小儿子Eduard在20岁时被诊断出患有精神分裂症的,状态急转直下。
他的大儿子Hans Albert也像爱因斯坦那样成了科学家。为了监督他的经济状况,曾在1922年让他向开户的苏黎世银行查询一笔意外的资金。
孩子和钱总是没完没了的事儿。

5. 公路旅行

爱因斯坦竟放了诺贝尔颁奖仪式的鸽子,跑到远东去旅游去了。"周游世界是万万做不到了,但是我还不可以努力尝试一下么?"爱因斯坦在92年从日本旅行回来后给他的儿子的信里写道。他不跟我们一样,他的旅行更像是对世俗的逃避。档案中的一些笔记还显示,他承认右翼极端主义分子对德国外交部长的刺杀促让他暂时离开德国。

同样的这群黑暗势力让他最终从欧洲移民到了美国,以躲避希特勒对德国犹太人的残害。Kormos-Buchwald 和她的同事希望,把包含爱因斯坦的这部分经历的档案在明年爱因斯坦发表相对论100周年时发布。

就像每个人的一生一样,在这之前爱因斯坦还有许多经历,即使在他死去六十年后,爱因斯坦仍然在我们的时代留下印记,还有许多发现等待历史学家去挖掘。你可能认为学者们已经发现了所有的有关资料,其实不止于此,Kormos-Buchwald说。

数字爱因斯坦小组希望随着更多档案的公布,会有更多的历史学家去探索爱因斯坦的世界,让更多的普通人看到,尽管身披天才,财富和名誉的光环,爱因斯坦在他常人的那一面中,扔与生活做着不懈的斗争。

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