Murray Gell-Mann - Einstein (33/200)

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8 жыл бұрын

To listen to more of Murray Gell-Mann’s stories, go to the playlist: • Murray Gell-Mann (Scie...
New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was a theoretical physicist. His considerable contributions to physics include the theory of quantum chromodynamics. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. [Listener: Geoffrey West; date recorded: 1997]
TRANSCRIPT: Einstein was around. We saw him most days, he would come in. He would walk in sometimes with Gödel, but they looked like Mutt and Jeff, tall Einstein and little tiny Gödel. They were deep in conversation about something or other, I don't know what. I never spoke with Einstein except to say hello, and you know, 'Good morning', or something. And I suppose he would answer, 'Guten morning' or whatever.
[GW] He was not involved, or interested, I should say, with... I know he wasn't involved He showed no great interest in sort of what was called particle physics at the time...
No, no. He didn't believe in any of it. And that's why I didn't interact with him. I thought it would be pretentious and artificial to cultivate a relationship with Einstein when he didn't believe anything that we were doing, because he didn't believe quantum mechanics, and he didn't think that all these elementary particles were of any importance. He thought they would all be derived some day from a theory of electromagnetism and gravity. So I knew that there wouldn't be any real overlap in our work, and this idea of... of striking up a friendship or a relationship with this distinguished old man for the sake of historical associations struck me as the kind of thing that people I didn't like did. Today I would feel completely different. Today I wouldn't have those ideas. I would want to know this important, interesting figure.
[GW] He died not so long after that.
He died in ’55 when I was there on my second visit. And if I remember correctly, the newspaper people were taking pictures of Fuld Hall with the flag at half-staff in connection with reporting his death. And they wanted some human figure in the picture, preferably a pretty young lady, and so my fiancé Margaret was the one they asked to pose, with her legs crossed in front of the Institute for Advanced Study, so that... so that they could have a... they could have a human figure in the... in the picture of Fuld Hall with the... with the flag at half-staff.
[GW] You didn't interact with him on your second visit?
No, I didn't... He was probably... ...I didn't ever... well, then he was quite ill, by then he was quite ill. In ’51 he wasn't that ill. I had missed his last seminar. His last seminar was given about a month before I arrived and everybody was still talking about it. If I had not delayed so long in writing up my dissertation I would have been there and seen and heard his last seminar at the institute. He talked, of course, about his attempts to construct a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism. It was an entirely unsuitable theory and of course one knows that it should have been a theory including a lot of other particles and a lot of other forces, and it should have been quantum mechanical and so on and so on. We know that and we even suspected it then of course. And the theory just wasn't... didn't make a lot of sense. It didn't have very sensible interactions between gravity and electromagnetism. But it had nice formal properties which appealed to Einstein. And by the way Schrödinger, at just about the same time, came up with just about the same theory except for using i equals the square root of minus one in his equation, so in other words instead of an unsymmetrical metric he had... or connection... he had a... a complex one, a Hermitian one.
[GW] Did you interact with Oppenheimer much?
Oh yes, oh yes, a great deal, but... no, but I was about to say something... oh, about Einstein's last seminar. What they were talking about was not the content; what they were talking about was that they weren't able to concentrate on the content because of the presentation. He was dressed in the costume that he conventionally wore after his second wife died, and he neglected himself very much after she died. He had on a pair of baggy trousers unpressed, and shoes with no socks... just to have more time for work I guess, and... and a sweatshirt, an old, grubby, grey sweatshirt. But the particular additional feature when he gave the seminar was that the fly of the trousers was open and the sweatshirt protruded obscenely through the fly, and they were all looking at that and concentrating on that feature, and they were unable to follow what he was saying about the mathematics. Anyway, I didn't know him, and now, of course, I regret it. It would have been very nice to get to know him in 1951.

Пікірлер: 75

@BloobleBonker 2 жыл бұрын

Pomposity. Hard to listen

@moc5541 4 жыл бұрын

This is a bit hilarious for me... in a bittersweet way. I am too young, at 75, to have encountered Einstein at some institute, but I did meet Gell-Mann! He came to our department to give a talk in about 1970--- Geoffrey West, the interviewer here, a splendid fellow, was then a member--- and the chairman arranged an impromptu "coffee" with Gell-Mann for theory students such as me. But the notice was late and so only I and a few others got to attend. So did I try to engage him on some profoundly important topic? Noooo. We exchanged some kind of polite chitchat that I don't recall. I knew damned well that I didn't know much, and was very appreciative of his eminence. And like Einstein, I didn't care much about elementary particles (I went on to study general relativity).

@andrewrobinson6147 7 жыл бұрын

Murray really has a way of humanizing (for a better way to put it) the great physicists of his day. We've heard about Feynman in the other clip. Now this final (obituorial) picture of Einstein. A good laugh.

@chrisofnottingham 4 жыл бұрын

The more you learn about the history of QM the more you realise that Einstein was totally in thrall to how he thought nature / physics should be. And after his all great successes he spent his later years on something of a fool's errand.

@SalesforceUSA 3 жыл бұрын

Einstein wasted half of life by trying to disprove Quantum Mechanics. He was a mad scientist in the end.......

@Doppelkeks243 6 жыл бұрын

Nice that he spell Einstein like we do it in Germany

@FlopFlap1 Жыл бұрын

I like Gellm-Ann better than Feynma-Nn. Much Bett-Er!

@Q.Mechanic 3 жыл бұрын

It's almost heretical of him to have avoided meeting one if not the greatest physicists

@chem7553

I think Einstein was just trolling by that point😅😅

@real1213 3 жыл бұрын

Its funny. he has struggles of a smart man that we will never understand. usually people do linger around famous people and later in life regret that "wasted time". but hes too smart for that and does the opposite. doesnt fallow leaders and than regrets that he didnt get to know them :D

@Bootmahoy88 3 жыл бұрын

In the 70s while working on my degree in physics at The U of Minnesota, a group of students from Cal Tech came over to work with some students at The U of M on theoretical concepts of elementary particles. Murray Gell-Mann led the group. He was just brilliant, amazingly so! I learned so much from him. I'd never seen such a quick mind. He was also the biggest self-righteous, egotistical and judgmental prick I'd ever met before or since.