The conference that brought together Marie Curie and Albert Einstein Borneo Bulletin Online – Borneo Bulletin Online

Jen Malia

The rarefied world of high-level physics conferences is usually inaccessible to scientific laypeople. Meetings are by invitation and conducted in jargon that few nonexperts understand. We learn in Jeffrey Orens book The Soul of Genius: Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and the Meeting That Changed the Course of Science that such gatherings can be disappointing, no matter how brilliant the invitees are. The First Solvay Conference in Physics, in Brussels in October 1911, accomplished far less than its organisers envisioned, making Orenss subtitle something of a mystery.

The conference was called in the hope of making significant progress toward settling an argument that was raging in the physics world: the debate between the classic Newtonian physics and the new quantum physics, a view of the subatomic world in which light could be thought of as travelling either in waves or as particles called quanta. At many scientific meetings, paper presentations follow one another with only brief intervals between for comments and questions. This conference, by contrast, provided ample time for discussion. It was a remarkable opportunity for the most influential people in physics and chemistry to meet in person, but they made little headway in resolving the debate. According to one attendee, Albert Einstein, Nothing positive has come out of it.

But on a personal level for Einstein, the occasion was not without consequence, for the First Solvay Conference allowed the elite of physics and chemistry to make his acquaintance. Orens called it Einsteins debutante ball. A second positive outcome was the friendship that began there for Einstein and Marie Curie. Sadly, near the close of the meeting, the press in France published reports of Curies affair with a younger married physicist, Paul Langevin, her late husbands assistant. The news caused an onslaught of condemnation, severely damaged her personal and professional reputation, and threatened her second Nobel Prize. The issue is familiar today: Should a failure to live up to current standards of morality diminish appreciation for professional achievements?

Orens is not an academic scientist, but a former chemical engineer and business executive with the chemical company Solvay. Curious about wall-size photographs of Solvay conferences in the reception areas and hallways of many Solvay offices, Orens became particularly interested in the first of these meetings. The names of some who gathered in 1911 in the Grand Hotel Metropole in Brussels are familiar for their groundbreaking work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not only Einstein and Curie, but also Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, JH Jeans and Henri Poincar were there. Nine participants had won or would win Nobel Prizes. Orens approach to the lives and work of the attendees, through the story of this conference, is unusual and well conceived. His account revisits what is certainly one of the most exciting, turbulent periods in the history of science and better acquaints us with people who played significant roles in this drama.

Curie was the only woman among the participants. Her story, beginning in Poland in a century when scientific education for women there could be had only clandestinely, is a harsh reminder of the obstacles facing women in science in her era. Her husband, Pierre Curie, refused the 1903 Nobel Prize for research on radiation until his wife was included in the honour. It was assumed that a woman could have assisted a man but surely not worked as an equal or leader. In America, Curie would become more famous for overcoming such prejudices than for her science. Touring the States in 1921, she was disappointed that only one of the planned celebratory events included meeting another scientist.

In his treatment of Einstein, Orens discusses a claim that science historians have almost unanimously dismissed that it was Einsteins first wife, Mileva, who developed the theory of special relativity. In a book much concerned with lack of recognition for women, Orens careful assessment of her minor contribution is appropriate. The cold correspondence that ended Einsteins marriage to Mileva reveals a less-attractive person than we prefer to think him. Otherwise, Orens describes a kind man who defended Curie when few did, an astonishing mind and a fervent advocate for internationalism in science.

Less known than the attendees at the First Solvay Conference is Ernest Solvay himself, the Belgian businessman and self-taught scientist who paid for the meeting. Solvay had been thinking since 1858 about matter and energy, speculating that one of these elements is only a transformation of the other. Lacking formal training in theoretical physics, Solvay was not equipped to argue decisively, as Einstein would, that this idea is correct. Instead, he devoted his scientific acumen to developing an improved method of producing industrial soda. He amassed a fortune.

It was German physicist Walther Nernst who in 1910 suggested that Solvay fund a gathering where the worlds top physicists could discuss Solvays ideas. Nernst knew that they would discuss much more than what Solvay would offer in his opening talk and material sent out ahead of time. He anticipated a productive albeit argumentative discussion of the classic physics vs quantum physics problem. Argumentative it was. Conclusive it was not.

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The conference that brought together Marie Curie and Albert Einstein Borneo Bulletin Online - Borneo Bulletin Online