Young Einstein and the beginnings of quantum mechanics

John Lekner
School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington

In 1905 Einstein wrote five history-making papers (on the particle Albert’s younger sister Maja (Maria) has written a charming
nature of light, Brownian motion, special relativity, energy and and perceptive biographical sketch of Albert’s early years [1].
inertia, and on molecular dimensions). He was 26, married to As a child he was quiet and would play by himself for hours.
Mileva Mari, with one-year-old child Hans Albert, and employed
He had ‘such difficulty with language that those around him
as Technical Expert (third class) by the Bern Patent Office. His
relativity theory captured the public imagination, but his quantum feared he would never learn to speak’. At 2½ he was told of the
ideas were even more revolutionary. His light quantum (now arrival of a little sister, with whom he could play. He must have
the ‘photon’) was rejected by Planck, who is often thought of imagined a kind of toy, because at the sight of the baby he asked,
as the originator of the concept, and by Millikan, whose 1916 with disappointment, ‘Yes, but where are its wheels?’
photoelectric data agreed beautifully with Einstein’s predictions
(‘a bold, not to say reckless, hypothesis of an electromagnetic As a child of four or five his father brought him a magnetic
light corpuscle … which flies in the face of thoroughly established compass (he was ill in bed). In his autobiography Einstein re-
facts of interference’). Compton’s 1923 paper on the scattering of called the sense of wonder at how the enclosed and apparently
X-rays and gamma rays uses the light quantum idea, but makes
isolated needle responded to an invisible magnetic field.
no mention of Einstein. There followed more than 20 papers on
various aspects of quantum theory, substantial enough to make Though quiet, young Albert had a temper. A lady violin
Einstein one of the founders of quantum mechanics, possibly the teacher was attacked with a chair, never to reappear. Maja herself
founder. This paper traces the beginnings of quantum mechan-
was subject to his violent tantrums, once having a large bowling
ics, giving an outline of Einstein’s contributions. It begins with a
sketch of his early life. ball thrown at her; another time she was hit in the head with a
child’s hoe. She remarks ruefully ‘... a sound skull is needed
to be the sister of a thinker’. The temper tantrums disappeared
during his early school years (he entered school at 7).
Young Einstein (1879 to 1904)
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Bavaria, on 14 March 1879. Persistence and tenacity were already part of his character
His parents were Hermann and Pauline (nee Koch), ‘of Israelite at this age. He would work on puzzles, erect complicated struc-
religion’ as stated on Albert’s birth certificate, actually non- tures with his building block set, and build houses of cards up
practising Jews. Hermann was a partner in his cousin’s mercan- to 14 stories high.
tile business in Ulm. Hermann’s younger brother Jakob was an On entering public school, religious instruction was ob-
engineer, and persuaded Hermann to join him in a plumbing ligatory. (He and Maja went to a nearby Catholic elementary
and electrical venture in Munich, when Albert was two. Jakob school.) He was taught at home by a distant relative, and ‘caught
had designed a dynamo, which he wanted to manufacture. The religion’. He ate no pork for years, and took it amiss that his
venture failed in Germany, but showed promise in Italy. The parents were lax in their Jewish observances.
plant was accordingly transferred to Pavia, the family moving to
Milan in 1894, later to Pavia, and then back to Milan. Eventually Young Albert was not happy at secondary school, the Luit-
this failed, and the family had little left. Most of the (initially pold Gymnasium (like a grammar school, where pupils receive
large) Koch family assets had been used up, but against Albert’s a classical education). He later wrote ‘As a pupil I was neither
wise advice (he was then 17), Hermann started up a third electri- particularly good nor bad. My principal weakness was a poor
cal factory, in Milan. This failed also. Hermann died of a heart memory ... especially for words and texts’. His teacher of Greek
condition in 1902, when Albert was 23. By then the family had told him ‘You will never amount to anything’. However, he was
experienced much mobility, and a sharp decline in wealth. captivated by mathematics: earlier, his uncle Jakob (the engi-

John Lekner was educated at Auckland Grammar, University of Auckland, and University of
Chicago. He has taught at Cambridge and at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written
one book, ‘Theory of reflection of electromagnetic and particle waves’ (1987), and more than 100
papers, mainly in the fields of quantum mechanics, statistical physics, and electromagnetism.
John may be contacted at [email protected]

New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007 11

Mileva Mari and Albert Einstein, wedding photograph,
1903.

neer) told him of the Pythagorean theorem; after considerable view concerning the production and transformation of light’ [4],
effort Albert found a proof. He later worked through a book on was submitted in March 1905. This, and related papers, will be
Euclidean geometry, the theorems in which had a ‘lucidity and discussed in Section 3.
certainty (that) made an indescribable impression on me’. The
exposure to mathematics and science now made the impres- First clues
sionable Einstein antireligious. The certainty of belief was to Spectral lines
be replaced by a profound suspicion of any authority. This must We live in a quantum universe, but its quantum nature is not
have been apparent in class: his teacher of Greek asked him to easily apparent. This section traces the first clues; all three
leave the school: ‘Your mere presence spoils the respect of the originated in nineteenth century observations and experiments,
class for me’. At this time his parents had moved to Italy, Albert and two were associated with light.
staying behind in Munich to finish his secondary education. He
William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828) noticed dark lines in
obtained a doctor’s certificate to enable him to leave the Luitpold
the solar spectrum in 1802; he interpreted these as gaps sepa-
Gymnasium (at 15), and rejoined his family in Milan. One of the
rating the colours of the Sun. Joseph Fraunhofer (1787–1826)
most joyous periods in his life followed, as he studied only the
rediscovered these lines (now known to be absorption lines) in
subjects he liked. ‘Museums, art treasures, churches, concerts,
the course of precision measurements of the refractive index
books and more books, family, friends, the warm Italian sun, the
free, warmhearted people – all merged into a heady adventure
of escape and wonderful self-discovery’ [3].
Albert resolved to change his citizenship: ‘The over-
emphasized military mentality in the German State was alien to
me even as a boy’. He applied for Swiss citizenship when he was
of age to do so (in October 1899); this was granted in February
1901. He completed his secondary schooling in Switzerland,
and was admitted to the Zurich Polytechnic (ETH) in October
1896. (There he met fellow physics student Mileva Marić, from
Serbia, whom he was later to marry. A daughter, called ‘Lieserl’
in their letters, was born out of wedlock early in 1902. It seems
she was adopted; nothing further is known.) He graduated with a
Diplom in July 1900, but was unable to obtain any work except
tutoring and substitute teaching jobs for two years. Finally he
secured a position as Technical Expert (third class) at the Swiss
Patent Office in Bern in June 1902. His father died in October
of that year, and he married Mileva in January 1903. Their son
Hans Albert was born in May 1904.
Einstein’s early publications (1901–1904) were on thermo-
dynamics. The first quantum paper, ‘On a heuristic point of Albert Einstein at Bern Patent Office.

12 New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007

of glass at various wavelengths. He made a catalogue of these Niels Bohr (1885–1962),
‘Fraunhofer lines’, to be used as calibration wavelengths. He Nobel 1922.
also noticed that some of these lines corresponded to certain
emission lines in sparks and flames.
However, it was not till about 1860 that the significance of
the spectral lines as signatures of elements (atomic or ionised)
was recognised, through the work of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
(1811–1899) and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824–1887). Bun-
sen used the colour that salts gave to the flame of his burner as
an analytical tool. His friend Kirchhoff suggested looking at
the flames through a spectroscope. It was soon clear that Fraun-
hofer’s lines were characteristic of chemical elements, and that
the dark (absorption) lines in the solar spectrum were at the same
wavelength as the bright (emission) lines of certain elements.
Ernest Rutherford
Thus spectral analysis was born. One could deduce from the (1871–1937), Nobel
solar spectrum the composition of the Sun’s surface layers! 1908.
(This discovery came rather soon after the French philosopher
August Compte (1798–1857), founder of positivism and social
philosophy, wrote in 1844 that ‘The stars are only accessible by
distant visual exploration. This inevitable restriction not only
prevents us from speculating about life on all these great bodies,
but also forbids the superior inorganic speculations relative to
their chemical or even their physical natures.’) New elements
were discovered by the method of spectral analysis: caesium
(‘blueish’ in Latin), rubidium (red), and others in flame spectra,
helium (from the Greek helios, the Sun) in the solar spectrum,
in 1868, long before the element was discovered on Earth.
Why should there be sharp spectral lines, different for each
element? Classical mechanics and electrodynamics dealt in
f 1 me 4 § 1 1 ·
continua. Yes, there can be resonances, but the spectral lines ¨  2 ¸¸
3 ¨ 2

c O 4Sc! © n1 n 2 ¹ (3)
were sharper than any resolution available then, and classical
resonances are typically broad. Regularities in the lines were Here m and e are the mass and charge of the electron, and c
noticed: Balmer (1825–1898) fitted the four visible lines in the is the speed of light. This formula not only includes as special
hydrogen atom spectrum, at 410, 434, 486 and 656 nm, to cases the Balmer, Lyman, Paschen, etc. series, but also gives a
theoretical value of the Rydberg constant in terms of the fun-
1  1 1  damental constants c,  , e and m.
= R 2 − 2 , n = 3, 4, 5, 6
λ 2
n  (1) Thermal radiation
The constant R (now known as the Rydberg constant) is When material bodies are heated they glow. The radiation emit-
R = 1.097  5 107 m–1. Likewise the Lyman series l–1 = R(1–2 – n–2), ted changes colour as the temperature is increased, from a dull
n = 2,3,... which lies in the ultraviolet, and the Paschen series red to orange to yellow. The light from our Sun (‘white’ light) has
l–1 = R(3–2 – n–2), n = 4,5,... in the infrared, were seemingly per- a mixture of wavelengths, from the infrared through the visible
fect fits to the spectral wavelengths of hydrogen. Rather neat, to the ultraviolet. The energy content is largest at around 500
but totally mysterious, and not even partially understood till nm, in the green part of the spectrum. We now know that the
1913, when Niels Bohr (1885–1962), building on the quantum temperature of the Sun’s surface is about 6000 K. A bar heater
concepts of Max Planck (1858–1947) and Einstein, and using can be at 1000 K to 1500 K, a tungsten filament in an incan-
the atomic picture of our own Rutherford (1871–1937), finally descent lamp radiates at about 2500 K. By 1859, James Clerk
produced a quantum model for the hydrogen atom. Maxwell (1831–1879) had discovered the law of distribution of
velocities (and thus also of energies) in a gas in thermal equilib-
Jumping ahead to 1913 [5], the assumptions of (i) quantisa-
rium. Is there a corresponding law that gives the distribution of
tion of the angular momentum of the electron orbit in integer
wavelengths (or frequencies) in thermal radiation?
multiples of  = h/2p (h is Planck’s constant, to be discussed
below), and (ii) that the frequency f of the emitted radiation is There is, if we idealise to an absorber/radiator that absorbs
given by Einstein’s hf = DE (2) all radiation incident on it (a ‘black body’). A good approxima-
tion to a black body is a small hole in an enclosure, the walls of
where DE is the difference in energy between two allowed
which are all at the same absolute temperature T. All radiation
energy levels of the atom, enabled Bohr to derive a formula for
into that small hole will be absorbed, because it bounces many
all possible transitions of the hydrogen atom:

New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007 13

Max Planck
(1858–1947),
Nobel 1918.

Cosmic background radiation, fitted to Planck’s formula.

kT >> hf, and the Wien (1893) law in the opposite limit. It leads
easily to the Stefan-Boltzmann law that the total radiation en-
times around the interior, with vanishing probability of being ergy is proportional to T 4. Further, the fit to the data also gave
reflected straight out. In such a cavity the radiation is in thermal Boltzmann’s constant k, and thus Avogadro’s number. More
equilibrium with the walls; each is at temperature T. information followed: the charge on the electron, for example,
from Avogadro’s number and electrochemical experiments. A
Classical (i.e. non-quantum) statistical mechanics shows that
triumph, but deeply unsettling. As Einstein was later to write
in thermal equilibrium each ‘degree of freedom’, such as motion
‘All attempts to adapt the theoretical foundations of physics to
in a given direction, or rotation about a given axis, has associ-
these new notions failed completely. It was as if the ground had
ated with it an average energy ½kT, where k is Boltzmann’s
been pulled out from under one with no firm foundation to be
constant, and T is the absolute temperature. For example, an
seen anywhere, upon which one could have built’.
atom in three dimensions would have average energy 3/2kT.
Rayleigh (1842–1919) applied this result, called ‘equipartition’, Heat capacities
to thermal radiation in 1900. It gives the energy density In a monatomic gas the average kinetic energy is 3/2 kT by the
equipartition law. The total energy for N atoms is E = 3/2 NkT.
8Sf 2 The heat capacity is defined as the rate of change of energy with
u( f , T ) kT
c3 (4) temperature, CV = (∂E / ∂T )V (it matters whether the change is at
This cannot be true for all frequencies: the energy per unit constant volume or constant pressure, hence the subscript V).
volume in the frequency range df is udf, and the total energy Thus for a monatomic gas Cv = 3/2 Nk. This was found to be in
∞
∫ 0
udf would be infinite. However, the Rayleigh-Jeans law,
as it is known (Jeans corrected the numerical multiplier in (4)),
agreement with experiment. But equipartition failed for molecu-
lar gases: a molecule has rotational and vibrational degrees of
agreed with experiment at low frequencies. freedom, as well as translational ones, and some of these were
apparently not excited. There was also a problem with solids:
Max Planck found, in October 1900, an ingenious inter-
each atom can vibrate about its equilibrium position, so it has
polation between (4) and a high-frequency form due to Wil-
six degrees of freedom associated with its kinetic and potential
helm Wien. Planck’s formula for the energy density of thermal
energies. A heat capacity of 3Nk is expected, and indeed found,
radiation is
at room temperatures for most solids, but not for some (such as
diamond), and not at low temperatures, where all heat capaci-
8Sh f3
u( f , T ) ties approach zero.
c 3 e hf / kT  1 (5)
Again a fundamental mystery, to be resolved later by quan-
The new constant h (now ‘Planck’s constant’) could be
tum mechanics. The explanation, first formulated by Einstein
found by fitting (5) to the latest experimental data. The fit was
as we shall see, lies in the discrete nature of the energy levels
within experimental error. By December 1900, ‘after some
of a quantum system. Some of the degrees of freedom are
of the most intense work in my life’, Planck had a theoretical
‘frozen’ because there is not enough thermal energy to excite
justification for his formula. In what he later described as ‘an
the system from its lowest energy level (the ‘ground state’) to
act of desperation’, he assumed that the oscillators forming
higher energy levels.
the walls of his idealised enclosure could only have energies
which were integral multiples of hf, where f was the frequency The light quantum
of the oscillator.
We now come to Einstein’s first quantum paper [4], written in
Planck’s formula gives the Rayleigh-Jeans law when March 1905. He begins: ‘A profound formal distinction exists
between the theoretical concepts which physicists have formed

14 New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007

regarding gases and other ponderable bodies and the Maxwellian such electrons is given by hf – W.’ [Again, the notation has been
theory of electromagnetic processes in so-called empty space’. changed to use h.] This is Einstein’s photoelectric equation:
That is, we talk of particles in mechanics, and of fields in electro-
K = hf – W (6)
magnetism, and these concepts are very different. He goes on
to propose that light has a particle-like aspect: ‘... the energy Einstein continues ‘If the body is charged to a positive po-
of a light ray spreading out from a point source is not continu- tential V and is surrounded by conductors at zero potential, and
ously distributed over an increasing space but consists of a finite V is just large enough to prevent loss of electricity by the body,
number of energy quanta which are localized at points in space, it follows that eV = hf – W, where e denotes the electronic charge
which move without dividing, and which can only be produced ... If the derived formula is correct, then V, when represented
and absorbed as complete units’. [my italics] in Cartesian coordinates as a function of the frequency of the
incident light, must be a straight line whose slope is independ-
This is a revolutionary statement, quite different from
ent of the nature of the emitting substance.’ He goes on ‘If each
Planck’s assertion about the energies of his hypothetical oscil-
energy quantum of the incident light ... delivers its energy to
lators. Planck had left the radiation as a field, unquantised. He
electrons, then the velocity distribution of the ejected electrons
and others were reluctant, to say the least, to accept the light
will be independent of the intensity of the incident light; on the
quantum. As late as 1913, proposing Einstein for member-
other hand, the number of electrons will ... be proportional to
ship in the Prussian Academy, Planck, Nernst, Rubens and
the intensity of the incident light.’
Warburg give the highest praise, concluding [6] ‘That he may
have sometimes missed the target in his speculations, as, for These predictions were to be completely verified by a series
example, in his hypothesis of light quanta, cannot really be held of experiments, notably Robert Millikan’s [7] in 1916. But hav-
too much against him, for it is not possible to introduce really ing vindicated Einstein’s photoelectric theory, and extracted
new ideas even in the most exact sciences without sometimes Planck’s constant h as the slope of the eV versus frequency plot
taking a risk’. (see above), Millikan goes on to damn Einstein’s idea of a light
corpuscle, not with faint praise, but as follows: ‘This hypothesis
Einstein’s paper begins by discussing black-body radiation.
may well be called reckless first because an electromagnetic
In particular, he reveals the similar form taken by the entropy
disturbance which remains localized in space seems a violation
of radiation and the entropy of an ideal gas (up to this point
of the very conception of an electromagnetic disturbance, and
seen as waves and particles, respectively). Then he says ‘If
second because it flies in the face of thoroughly established facts
the entropy of monochromatic ratiation depends on volume as
of interference’. However, it was Millikan’s experiments which
though the radiation were a discontinuous medium consisting
finally made Einstein’s work acceptable to the Nobel Com-
of energy quanta of magnitude hf, the next obvious step is to
mittee: he got the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 ‘for services
investigate whether the laws of emission and transformation
to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the
of light are also of such a nature that they can be interpreted or
law of the photoelectric effect”. (Wilhelm Ostwald and others
explained by considering light to consist of such energy quanta’.
had three times nominated Einstein for the Nobel, starting in
[I have changed Einstein’s notation for h to the modern form: in
1909, but the nomination failed because the topic (relativity)
this paper Einstein did not use Planck’s constant h explicitly.]
was too controversial.) Millikan himself got a Nobel in 1923,
He goes on to show that Stoke’s Rule, which says that mono-
‘for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the
chromatic light is transformed through photoluminescence
photoelectric effect’.
to light of a lower frequency, follows immediately from the
assumption of light coming in and going out as quanta with Further striking confirmation of the light-quantum idea was
energies hf1 and hf2, energy conservation implying f1 > f2. He provided in 1923 by Compton’s paper on ‘A quantum theory
notes that amount of fluorescent light should be proportional of the scattering of X-rays by light elements’ [8]. Compton
worked out the kinematics of the scattering of X-ray quanta
to the amount of incident light, and that ‘there will be no lower
by electrons. The electrons were given relativistic energy and
limit for the intensity of incident light necessary to excite the
momentum, the X-ray quanta had energy hf and momentum hf /c,
fluorescent effect’. as per Einstein’s 1905 [4] and 1917 [9] papers, respectively.
The next section, titled ‘Concerning the emission of cathode Conservation of energy and momentum gives the change in the
rays through the illumination of solid bodies’, is on what is now wavelength of the X-ray:
known as the photoelectric effect. His picture of the process is h
as follows: ‘Energy quanta penetrate into the surface layer of the
OT O0 
(1  cosT )

mc (7)
body, and their energy is transformed, at least in part, into kinetic
(l0 is the wavelength of the incident X-ray, lq that of an X-
energy of electrons. The simplest way to imagine this is that a
ray scattered through an angle q; m is the electron mass).
light quantum delivers its entire energy to a single electron; we
shall assume that this is what happens ... Furthermore, we shall Compton’s paper contains both theory and experiment,
assume that in leaving the body each electron must perform an in ‘very satisfactory agreement’, altogether a vindication of
amount of work W characteristic of the substance. The ejected Einstein’s relativity as well as of his light quantum concept.
It is remarkable that, of the 26 references (11 of which are to
electrons leaving the body with the largest normal velocity will
Compton’s own works), not one is to Einstein. Nor is Einstein
be those that were directly at the surface. The kinetic energy of
mentioned by name, in the text or in the footnotes! Whether

New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007 15

this is because of personal antipathy, or careful positioning for momentum. It deserves more discussion, since in it Einstein
the Nobel, I do not know. (The paper begins ‘The hypothesis shows that stimulated as well as spontaneous emission must
is suggested that when an X-ray is scattered it spends all of its exist, for radiation to be in stable equilibrium with a quantum
energy and momentum upon some particular electron’. Hardly system, e.g. a gas of molecules, which has discrete energy lev-
a new hypothesis, given Einstein’s 1905 and 1917 papers [4] els. He introduces the now famous A and B coefficients giving
and [9].) In 1927 Compton was awarded the Nobel Prize ‘for spontaneous and induced (or stimulated) transition probabilities:
his discovery of the effect named after him’; it was shared with for energy levels 1 and 2, with E2 – E1 = hf, bathed in thermal
C.T.R. Wilson, of cloud-chamber fame. radiation of energy density u, the rates for the transitions are
postulated to be
Einstein’s other quantum papers
1 6 2 : BuN1 ; 2 6 1 : AN2 + BuN2 (10)
Einstein made more than 20 further contributions to quantum
theory. Only some will be discussed here. I give the titles in Eng- where N1 and N2 are the numbers of molecules in states 1
lish; the journal and pages refer to the original paper. Lanczos and 2, respectively. Note that the stimulated (induced) rate is
[10] gives a summary of all of Einstein’s papers in the period proportional to the radiation energy density at the frequency f.
1905 to 1915, and translations may be found in [2]. In thermal equilibrium

We mentioned, in Section 3(c), the specific heat mystery. Just

N 2 / N 1 e  E2 / kT e  E1 / kT e  hf / kT (11)
two years after his light quantum, Einstein extends the quantum and also the transition rates given in (10) must be equal.
idea to vibrations in solids [12]. He assumes that atoms, held in Together these give Planck’s law,
place by interactions with their neighbours in the solid, vibrate A/ B
at a single frequency f. Then Planck’s assumption that the pos- u
e hf / kT  1
(12)
sible energies are integral multiples of e = hf gives the average
energy of the oscillator (at temperature T): Thus entered stimulated emission, the existence of which
f none had suspected to this point; the application to masers
¦ nH e  nH / kT

H (1954) and lasers (1961) came much later. (The term LASER
H n 1
f H / kT comes from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of
e 1
¦ e  nH / kT

n 0 (8) Radiation.)

For N atoms vibrating in 3 directions the average energy is In the same 1917 paper, Einstein considers the momentum
–
3Ne , and the heat capacity is interchange between the gas and the radiation field. He shows
2
that light quanta of energy e have to carry momentum e /c for
wH § H · e H / kT the velocity distribution in the gas to be Maxwellian. He writes
C 3N 3 Nk ¨ ¸ H / kT
wT © kT ¹ (e  1) 2 (9) ‘... we arrive at a consistent theory only if each elementary proc-
ess is completely directional’, meaning that the photons do not
(If there are many vibration frequencies, one sums over terms
radiate as spherical waves from each molecule, as was thought
like (9).) Einstein notes that C goes to zero for kT << e, and to
to be the case. (Such spherical waves have zero net momentum.)
the high-temperature value 3Nk in the opposite limit. Not only
Further, ‘If a ray of light causes a molecule hit by it to absorb
these limits, but also the qualitative behaviour, are in agreement
or emit ... an amount of energy hf in the form of radiation ...
with experiment, as Einstein shows by comparing theory with
the momentum is always transferred to the molecule’. This is
the data for diamond. Einstein’s note about sums over many
exactly the modern photon view of emission and absorption.
frequencies was prescient: in fact one needs to consider the
And Einstein was pleased with the work: in a letter to his friend
collective vibrations (now called phonons), as was done by
Michele Besso in September 1916 he writes ‘With this, the
Born and Karman and by Debye, in 1912.
existence of light quanta is practically assured’.
The next two quantum papers of Einstein are reviews of the
Let us summarise Einstein’s achievements in quantum
structure of radiation [13, 14]. In [13] he evaluates the energy
physics up to this point: (i) the light quantum, a kind of fusion
fluctuations in thermal light, and finds the sum of two terms, one
of the wave and particle concepts, and its application to the
following from the corpuscular, the other from the wave nature
photoelectric effect and other phenomena; (ii) the first quantum
of light. One can interpret the first as arising from the localised
theory of specific heat; (iii) the fundamentals of the thermal
nature of the light quanta, the other from their interference as
equilibrium between matter and radiation, with the new concept
waves. Einstein also remarks (in [13]) on the fact that h and
of stimulated emission. Any one of these was substantial enough
e2 /c have the same dimension, and thus their ratio may possibly
to warrant a Nobel Prize, and the first one did. (The special
be explained on the basis of pure numbers. We wish! The ratio
theory of relativity, and the explanation of Brownian motion,
e
2
/ c ≈ 1 / 137.036 , now known as the fine structure constant,
are also of Nobel standard!)
and experimentally determined to parts per billion (namely
0.00729735253, with an uncertainty of ±2 in the last place) is But Einstein had another mission: from 1911 he worked to
still eluding theoretical evaluation nearly a hundred years on. generalise his relativity theory to include accelerated frames
We have already mentioned Einstein’s 1917 paper ‘On and gravitation. The General Theory was probably his greatest
the quantum theory of radiation’ [9], in relation to the photon achievement, and its success in the prediction of the advance of

16 New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007

the perihelion of Mercury and the bending of light by a gravita- problems, and divergences in quantum electrodynamics, proved
tional field made him world-famous. The General Theory (surely decidedly non-trivial.)
yet another Nobel) and then the unification of gravitation and
As we mentioned, Einstein had other preoccupations. But he
electromagnetism, occupied him to the end of his life.
kept a sceptical interest in quantum physics, and in fact made
In the meantime the quantum revolution was continuing: one more fundamental extension of quantum theory, which
we have already noted Bohr’s model of the atom [5]. In 1924, led to a striking (and apparently crazy) prediction. In 1924 an
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) reasoned that if light had a parti- Indian physicist, Satiendranath Bose (1894–1974), sent Ein-
cle nature, as Einstein had postulated, matter may have a wave stein a manuscript for his opinion. Bose had derived the Planck
nature. He assigned the ‘de Broglie wavelength’ formula by treating identical light quanta (i.e. those with the
same energy, momentum and angular momentum) as indistin-
l = h /p (13)
guishable. This implies new statistics (Bose statistics). Einstein
to all particles (p is the momentum of the particle, l the cor- translated the paper into German, and endorsed its publication
responding wavelength). Peter Debye (1884–1966) suggested [15], adding ‘Bose’s derivation of Planck’s formula appears
to Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) that ‘a wave needs a wave to me to be an important step forward. The method used here
equation’, and so the Schrödinger equation gives also the quantum theory of an ideal gas, as I shall show
∂ψ elsewhere’. Which he did [16], extending Bose’s idea of indis-
Hψ = i
(14)
∂t tinguishability to particles. Up to this time, identical particles,
was born. At the same time (1925) Heisenberg, Born and for example two helium atoms, were regarded as distinguish-
Jordan were developing matrix mechanics, in which observables able, in principle at least. Their interchange was taken to give
such as position x and the corresponding momentum component a new configuration; this plausible assumption led to wrong
px became non-commuting operators, with results in statistical mechanics (the Gibbs paradox, concerning
xp x  p x x i!
(15) the change in entropy when gases are allowed to mix, was one
striking mismatch between theory and experiment). Einstein
Schrödinger later showed that wave mechanics and matrix
made the same assumption for particles as Bose had made for
mechanics were equivalent, and Paul Dirac (1902–1984) gave
light quanta: interchange of two non-distinguishable particles
a relativistic generalisation, for electrons, of the Schrödinger
has no effect. The Gibbs paradox disappeared, and quantum
equation. In two years, quantum theory had progressed to the
statistical mechanics was born. But there was more: Einstein
point that most atomic and chemical properties of matter could
realised that the new statistics implied that an ideal gas would
be calculated, in principle. (In practice, the quantum many-body
form one enormous coherent quantum state at low enough

Max Born (1882–1970),

Louis de Broglie (1892–
Nobel 1954.
1987), Nobel 1929.

Erwin Schrödinger (1887– Werner Heisenberg (1901–

1961), Nobel 1933. 1976), Nobel 1932.

New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007 17

temperatures. These ‘Bose-Einstein condensates’ were finally Einstein at Santa
observed in 1995, seventy years after Einstein’s prediction, in Barbara, 1933.
a triumph of sophisticated experimental techniques.
‘Bose statistics’, as they are now known, apply to particles
with zero or integer spin, but not to spin ½ (i.e. intrinsic angu-
lar momentum  / 2 ), or 3/2, 5/2, etc. Enrico Fermi (1901–1954)
and Paul Dirac saw independently in 1926 that half-integer
spin particles are indistinguishable in a different way: when
identical fermions are interchanged, the wavefunction y
changes sign. (The probability density | y | 2 is unchanged, as
it is when identical bosons are interchanged, when y remains
y.) The elucidation of quantum statistics, and the prediction of
what should be known as Einstein condensation (Bose did not
consider particles at all, let alone predict their condensation at
low temperatures) were Einstein’s last great contributions to
quantum theory, at the age of 45.

Epilogue
example, the ‘EPR paradox’, designed to show that the quan-
Albert and Mileva Marić parted in 1914, Mileva returning to tum position is absurd. The decay of a neutral pi meson into
Zurich with Hans Albert and Eduard. Einstein continued to an electron and a positron, p0 6 e– + e+, illustrates the point. In
support her and the boys during the war and after. They were the rest frame of the pion, the electron and positron fly off in
divorced in February 1919, and he married his widowed cousin opposite directions. The pion has zero spin, so the conservation
Elsa Löwenthal (née Einstein) in June of that year. Part of the of angular momentum requires zero spin for the electron-posi-
divorce settlement was the assignment the money from a fu- tron pair. If the electron has spin up, the positron must have
ture Nobel Prize to Mileva! (The Nobel was finally awarded to spin down, and vice versa. This is not a problem for the realist
Einstein in 1921.) stance: the electron had spin up, we just did not know it (i.e. y
During and after the war Einstein made clear his pacifist does not contain the complete information, the EPR assertion).
views, and this, together with his Jewish background, and high The orthodox position leads to a situation which is weird, but
visibility following the 1919 confirmation of his prediction entirely confirmed by modern experiments: measurement of
of the bending of light, made him a target, well before Hitler the electron spin instantaneously fixes the positron spin, no
took control of Germany. As Emilio Segrè (Nobel Prize 1959) matter how large the distance between the particle-antiparticle
writes in the second volume of his excellent history of physics pair! The measurements are perfectly correlated, by means of
[17] ‘There was even an anti-Einstein scientific society where some ‘spooky action-at-a-distance’ (Einstein’s words), called
once respected and respectable names became mixed with ‘entanglement of the wavefunction’ in modern quantum me-
demagogues, madmen, and future Nazi recruits ... The situa- chanics. The experiments verify perfect up/down correlation,
tion took an ugly turn, especially since the extremists would at all distances. For Einstein, this meant propagation of some
not hesitate to assassinate their enemies. The murder of W. influence at infinite speed, contrary to relativity theory. But
Rathenau, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Weimar Republic, perfect correlation does not imply that information is being
was a warning of what could happen’. (Rathenau was a personal transmitted faster than light: the measurer of the electron spin
friend of Einstein.) With the arrival of Nazism, Einstein finally has no influence on which result is obtained, and so cannot send
left Germany in December 1932, never to return. a binary signal with elements ‘up’ and ‘down’.
He settled in Princeton, where he worked on the unification The EPR view led to the ‘hidden variable’ idea: if y gives
of electromagnetism and gravitation. Einstein maintained an in- an incomplete description of reality, there must be another
terest in quantum mechanics, but believed it to be an incomplete variable, which, if we could calculate it, would give a complete
description of reality. In his final quantum paper, with Podolsky description. Einstein died in 1955, at the age of 76. It was not
and Rosen [18], the foundations of quantum mechanics are till 1964 that J.S. Bell proved that any local hidden variable
questioned. The authors assert that ‘A sufficient condition for theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics. Thus non-
the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predict- locality (spooky action-at-a-distance, or entanglement) seems
ing it with certainty, without disturbing the system’. This is to be with us, like it or not: experiment is king in science,
the so-called realist viewpoint, that a quantum state actually and experiment has completely verified the orthodox view of
has a certain property (spin along a certain axis, for example) quantum mechanics. Einstein is turning in his grave, or perhaps
prior to measurement. The orthodox quantum position is that his soul is protesting strongly to the Maker of the Universe.
the wavefunction y does not uniquely determine the outcome No-one claims to understand quantum physics; we just know
of a measurement: it provides (through | y | 2) only the statisti- how to use it to calculate physical properties of radiation and
cal distribution of the possible results. The paper provides an matter. It works.

18 New Zealand Science Review Vol 64 (1) 2007

References Author’s note
[1] Winteler-Einstein, Maja. 1987. Albert Einstein – a biographical Einstein’s light quanta have energy e and momentum p = e/c.
sketch. Pp. xv to xxii of the English translation of [2]. They cannot be Lorentz-transformed to a rest frame; only par-
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