Wikipedia: Albert Einstein/Talk

Does anyone besides me think that Einsteins observation that the brownian motion of pollen in water, considered the first real proof of the molecular theory of matter, is worth mentioning? --BlackGriffen

What exactly did he observe? Wasn't the Brownian motion known already? --AxelBoldt

IIRC, it was Einstiens observation that the pollen in a glass of water underwent brownian motion that was consider the proof. I'll post more about it after I double check. --BlackGriffen

It is critically important. It was one of the most-often cited papers of Einstein's in the early part of his career. --RjLesch

Yes, I just checked my source today, and it says that Einstein observed the chaotic motion of pollen in water, and surmised that this was do to the chaotic motion of molecules that caused it. After lab experiments verified his observation, even the staunches detractors of the existance of molecules and atoms admitted their existance. Before then, atoms/molecules were regarded as a useful construct with no concrete evidence behind them. Einstein provided that evidence. --BlackGriffen

: D'oh! I just read RjLesch's additions to the main page. My explanation was just a few hours late. --BlackGriffen
: Wish I could claim credit, but that wasn't mine. --RjLesch

A few quick refs:

http://www.matse.psu.edu/matsc81/GLOSSARYold/people14.html

http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~suchii/einsteinBM.html

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_95/journal/vol4/ykl/report.html

Since we're adding Einstein's personal/political views, perhaps we should include this quote, "Marriage is nothing more than an attempt to make something lasting out of an incident." I don't know if those were his exact words, but it was very close to that. --BlackGriffen

THe first paragraph is bit dodgy. I think some Irish physicist was the first to propose Special Relativity before 1895. Possibly called Fitzgerald? Lorenz, Minkowski and others may also have been slightly before Einstein. As far as i know, Einstein was the first with a workable General Relativity, but that came later.

: While the particular Lorenz transformations were of course known, Einstein came up with an axiomatic approach to derive them and also with several re-interpretations of fundamental concepts, such as time and size, energy=mass etc.

I believe these parts of special relativity are exclusively his, and they are arguably more important than the transformation laws. --AxelBoldt

: Agreed. The Lorenz-FitzGerald? contractions were really an attempt to rehabilitate the ether theory; Eistein's conceptual framework was fundamentally different, though it ended up using the same formulae. Lorenz and FitzGerald? are nonetheless important figures, as was Minkowski (though the Minkowski spacetime relations were, I believe, published in 1908 as a response to Einstein). --RjLesch.

"His theoretical work suggested the possibility of creating an atomic bomb." I think even this is too strong. Einstein's only contribution to the atomic bomb was political.