[Annus Mirabilis Papers Pdf
Tilo Chopin
In later years, Einstein came to regret some of the ramifications of his annus mirabilis work. Despite his quantum mechanical explanation for the photoelectric effect, he remained forever uncomfortable with quantum theory. He disliked the way people would confuse his concept of physical relativity with philosophical relativism. And of course he came to despise the atomic bombs that were the best-known manifestations of his mass-energy equivalence.
Albert Einstein, the mathematician and physicist. *
Photo: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS * 1905: The Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics) publishes Albert Einstein's paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" It is the last in a series known collectively as Einstein's "annus mirabilis," or "extraordinary year," papers. Taken as a whole, they represent his basic theory of relativity and help form the basis of modern physics.
An interesting pattern recurs across the careers of great scientists: an annus mirabilis (miracle year) in which they make multiple, seemingly independent breakthroughs in the span of a single year or two.
Einstein had his annus mirabilis in 1905. While he was still a patent clerk, he wrote four papers that revolutionized our understanding of the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity.
Miracle years happen outside of pure science too. In his memoir, Linus Torvalds talks about how he spent the summer before turning 21 reading an operating systems textbook cover to cover, how later that year he built a terminal emulation program just for fun, and how he spent all his time working on this program until pretty soon it morphed into a full operating system called Linux. That was his annus mirabilis.
Even writers have miracle years. Just recently, the popular fantasy author Brandon Sanderson announced that in the year or two since the pandemic began, he has secretly written five extra novels in addition to the ones his fans knew he was writing. The kickstarter to access these secret novels has already reached $40 million.
So across a range of creative professions, but especially in science, high achievers tend to experience a year of extraordinary, career-defining productivity. How can we this explain remarkable pattern?
If great discoveries are randomly distributed across the career of a scientist, then, with some non-negligible probability, they will fall within a year of each other. Which means that out of hundreds of great scientists, a few are bound to have a miracle year.
And then he got married and had a kid. Then World War II loomed over the corner, and the government had him doing research on ballistics and later on nuclear implosion devices - important applied work in a war, no doubt, but not the source of the kind of foundational ideas which make an Einstein or Newton2.
How terrifying would it be if that was true? Is it possible that Thompson was burdened by responsibilities his entire life, and then in a brief moment of freedom did some of the most important work anyone has ever done?
Given how many of the great scientific discoveries have come about during miracle years, we should do everything we can to help smart Twentysomethings have an annus mirabilis. We should free them from rote menial work, prevent them from being overexposed to the current paradigm, and give them the freedom to explore far-fetched ideas without arbitrary deadlines or time-draining obligations.
I've literally been trying to create a fund that can deploy relatively small amounts to allow people to get at least a whole year for their "miracle year" but in cost effective places to arbitrage those costs. This is relatively startup oriented but .maybe one day it doesn't have to be
Newton\u2019s annus mirabilis came to him between 1665 and 1666, when Cambridge responded to the Bubonic plague by sending its students home to quarantine. During that time, Newton, aged 22, developed the theory of gravity along with the language of calculus required to express it. He recalled of that year:
I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon & computed the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth \u2026 & found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665\u20131666. For in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks and Philosophy more than at any time since.
But Einstein, Newton, and Darwin are not just a random selection across the sample of important scientists - they are the Mount Rushmore of science. A pattern across the careers of these giants cannot be dismissed by saying, \u201COh, it had to happen to somebody.\u201D Even if they were the only scientists who have ever had an annus mirabilis, the phenomenon would still be among the most important in the history of science1.
In any case, it turns out that the miracle year goes far beyond this trinity of science. Yair and Goldstein (2020) show the existence of miracle years in the careers of Israeli \u2018star scientists\u2019, highly-cited physicists, and economists in an elite American departments. Their sample sizes are admittedly small, but so are the number of great scientists, and their results are consistent. They conclude:
On average, we find the annus mirabilis to be triple to four times higher than each scientist\u2019s typical annual productivity (3.76 for Israeli Prize Awardees, 2.91 for highly-cited physicists, 3.16 for economists).
If you\u2019re working on the right problem at the right time, you\u2019re going to come up with a lot of important solutions really quickly. This is especially true if these solutions line up behind each other like in a tech tree. You need calculus in order to express gravity, so it\u2019s no wonder that Newton was the first to discover both. Here they argue that Einstein\u2019s papers on Brownian motion and special relativity follow naturally from the theoretical arguments in his first paper on light quanta.
Perhaps there\u2019s a brief window in a person\u2019s life where he has the intelligence, curiosity, and freedom of youth but also the skills and knowledge of age. These conditions only coincide at some point in a person\u2019s twenties. It wouldn\u2019t be surprising if the combination of fluid intelligence (which declines steeply after your 20s) and crystalized intelligence (which accumulates slowly up till your 50s and 60s) is highest during this time. Stephan and Levine (1993) find that most Nobel laureates do their prize winning work in their late 20s or early 30s.
During his miracle year, Einstein was a patent clerk, Newton was a college student dismissed for quarantine, and Darwin was a trust fund kid who had just finished a long voyage aboard the HMS Beagle and still didn\u2019t know what to do with his life. They had no obligations to research some old professor\u2019s hobby horse using his particular technique or paradigm. They were Twentysomethings with a lot of time on their hands and nothing better to do.
Von Neumann showed remarkable productivity in his late twenties. Between 1927 and 1929, he published nearly one major paper a month. But after growing worried about the trend of politics in Germany, he left for Princeton\u2019s Institute for Advanced Studies. Feynman said of this place:
I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever \u2026 Still no ideas come. Nothing happens because there\u2019s not enough real activity and challenge: You\u2019re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don\u2019t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!
I can\u2019t disagree with any one of these uses of von Neumann\u2019s time individually. I can\u2019t say that he should not have had a family, that he should not have helped us win World War 2, or that he should not have helped advise government research and strategy regarding the Cold War. But I find it tragic that, collectively, these obligations sapped away decades out of the short life of the greatest known genius in history and prevented him from working on the basic theoretical research at which he was clearly gifted.
795a8134c1