Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879: bio, video, and the post-mortem saga of his brain

The greatest aim of all science [is] to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms.

~ Albert Einstein (wiki) (quoted in Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein)

Einstein with an Einstein puppet

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.

~ Albert Einstein (What I Believe)

Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.

~ Einstein (New York Times Magazine, 2 August 1964)

If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am as a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare me a Jew.

~ Einstein (address at the Sorbonne, December 1929*)

Worshipped today, scorned or even crucified tomorrow, that is the fate of people whom—God knows why—the bored public has taken possession of.

~ Einstein (letter to Heinrich Zangger, 1922)

Even though without writing each other, we are in mental communication, for we respond to our dreadful times in the same way and tremble together for the future of mankind ... I like it that we have the same given name.

~ Albert Schweitzer (wiki) (1875-1965) (of Einstein, letter, February 1955)

Quintessential theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (wiki) (1879-1955) was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. After an unpromising start in school, Einstein took Swiss citizenship at the age of 15 and while working as a patent examiner in the Swiss patent office in 1905, produced three seminal papers - on the photoelectric effect and the quantum theory of light, Brownian motion, and his theory of special relativity - that forever changed modern physics. 

The general theory of relativity (see video below on recent discovery of gravitational waves) followed in 1916, by which time he was professor of physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where he continued his theoretical work until 1934, when he fled Germany for the United States to escape Nazi persecution. He was among the prominent physicists who warned President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 about the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, which led to the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. 

Awarded American citizenship in 1940, Einstein spent his last years at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where he sought to develop the so-called "unified field theory" which still eludes physicists today. He is now recognized as the greatest physicist of the 20th century, if not of all time.

Here's a brief biography:

And an explanation of the recent discovery of gravitational waves (based on Einstein's general theory):

After his death in 1955, Einstein's brain (wiki) was removed - without permission from his family - by Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the Princeton Hospital pathologist who conducted the autopsy. Harvey took the brain home and kept it in a jar. He was later fired from his job for refusing to relinquish the organ.

Many years later, Harvey, who by then had gotten permission from Einstein's son Hans Albert to study the brain, sent slices to various scientists throughout the world. There's more here on the postmortem travels and travails of the brain, plus this: the first formal study of Albert Einstein's brain, which describes some differences in structure and morphology.

* N.B. An earlier variant of the same idea (in November 1919):

"By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England, I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!"

** This photo was taken by Harry Burnett at Cal Tech in Pasadena where Albert Einstein was teaching. Einstein saw the puppet perform at the Teato Torito and was quite amused. He reached into his jacket’s breast pocket, pulled out a letter and crumpled it up. Speaking in German, he said, “The puppet wasn’t fat enough!” He laughed and stuffed the crumpled letter up under the smock to give the puppet a fatter belly.

Further reading:

Princeton's digital archive of Einstein's papers.

Prior to their divorce, Einstein had given to his first wife a rather stringent list of behaviors that he put into writing. He produced another set of criteria for their divorce, including a promise to give to her the proceeds of his not-yet-awarded Nobel Prize.

The plot to kill Einstein.

Parts of the text above is adapted from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email - leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list. Ed is the author of Hunters and Killers: Volume 1: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1776 to 1943 and Hunters and Killers: Volume 2: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1943.

How to walk (or run or dance) on water - the non-Newtonian pool

This commercial features a 2,100 gallon pool of the non-Newtonian fluid (wiki) mixture of cornstarch and water known as oobleck: it was filmed in Kuala Lumpur for a Malaysian bank. More information below the video, which you should watch full screen:

You can make your own oobleck using 1 cup water to 1 to 2 cups cornstarch - in my house we call this a slurry and use it to thicken sauces. Add food coloring if you want. More on oobleck at Scientific American, and this Wired article  explains:

British polymath and Enlightenment hero Isaac Newton studied lots of things: optics, gravity, waves, mathematics, astronomy, history, religion and alchemy and so on. Then in his spare time, he investigated how liquids flow and thus got a whole branch of fluid dynamics named for him. Newton observed how common liquids, such as water, flow the same regardless of how much stress you subject them to. Push a stirring stick into a cup of water and swish it around. The water’s viscosity – how smooth or sticky its consistency is – stays the same.

Pretty simple, yeah? Many liquids that we interact with on a regular basis work this way: things like water, milk, oil, or juice. But there are also a lot of common fluids that don’t. These are non-Newtonian fluids; substances whose viscosity changes based on how much pressure you apply to them.

Friday links

100 years ago - Prohibition in the United States began in January 1920 and ended in December 1933. Related: here's Winston Churchill's doctor's note allowing him to drink "unlimited" alcohol in prohibition-era America.

For Al Capone's birthday, here's the story of that time he bought large blocks of stock in miniature golf construction companies.

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars.

January 17 is Ben Franklin's birthday - bio, quotes, videos, his 200+ synonyms for drunk, the bodies found in his basement, and more.

What could go wrong? Living ‘Franken-concrete’ which can heal its own cracks and even ‘give birth’ to new bricks, has been developed by scientists.

The Ten Most Important Weapons of the Middle Ages.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and celebrating the Feast of the Ass, the science behind why dark winter days bum people out, learning any subject with Richard Feynman's notebook technique, the folklore of gin, and a 1918 publication on remedial politics for newly-enfranchised women in the UK.

Tuesday links

Miscellaneous Thanksgiving stuff: Mark Twain, science, WKRP turkey drop episode, the best turkey fryer PSA ever, more

Why you shouldn't salt a leech that's sucking your blood.

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars.

Where to park your car, according to math.

We Used to Recycle Penicillin from Patients’ Urine. Related: A Moldy Cantaloupe and The Dawn of Penicillin.

How to Unclog a Toilet Like a Plumber.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include what happens when birds get drunk, the Japanese invasion of Alaska, the traditional drunken turkey recipe, and Evacuation Day, when the British left New York City at the end of the Revolutionary War.

Wednesday links

Dubious medical device du jour - the prostate warmer.

Scientists are investigating the secrets of smelly cat butts - apparently anal sacs can tell you a lot about an animal.

The physics of juggling.

The peculiar bathroom habits of Westerners. Related: Toilet Paper History: How America Convinced the World to Wipe. My favorite writing on the subject is the toilet paper advice from Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son.

The Origin of the Bar Foot Rail.

How Scientists Are Recreating Dinosaur Breath.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include 1960 instructions for building your own fallout shelter, the anniversary of Trafalgar Day, the 19th century practice of dining and dating in cemeteries, and why sodas in outdoor vending machines don't freeze in the winter.

Monday links

From 1960, here's how to build your own fallout shelter.

When Americans Dined (and Dated) in Cemeteries.

A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags. I Managed to Escape. Here's What Really Goes on Inside

October 21 is Trafalgar Day: history, videos, art and links. Trafalgar was the greatest British naval victory of the Napoleonic wars and essentially destroyed the sea power of France in a single engagement..

Air Force finally retires 8-inch floppies from missile launch control system.

How Do Sodas in Outdoor Vending Machines Not Freeze in Winter?

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include the 1814 London Beer Flood that killed 8 people, a detailed account of the Notre Dame restoration process, a map of the entire internet as of 1973 that fit on one sheet of paper, and, from 1865, Mark Twain's proposal for climate control.

Tuesday links

On July 16, 1945 the atomic age began with the Trinity nuclear test. Related, this 1954 PSA: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb and a rather naively optimistic 1957 Disney classroom film - Our Friend the Atom.

An experimental pneumatic subway secretly built in Manhattan in the late 19th century.

Why Red M&M's Disappeared for a Decade.

The Physics of How Lawn Mower Blades Cut Grass (at 50K frames per second).

The Torturous History of the Treadmill - it was originally designed to exploit prison labor.

Gallery: The serious side of historical games.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include poorly translated English language T-shirts spotted in Asia, that time America air-dropped pianos for troops in battlefields, the evolution of the Army helmet, and the eating habits of Medieval peasants.

Friday links

Today is Flag Day and the birthday of the U.S. Army.

Sunscreen Prevents Cancer, Right? Well, It’s Complicated.

When Foster Care Meant Farm Labor.

“Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.” - A selection of parenting advice from Homer Simpson:  Related: one of my favorite Father's Day stories (NSFW- language).

Physics: on the physical (im)possibility of lightsabers". Direct link to the PDF.

The Literal Translation Of Every Country's Name, Mapped.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include urban and wilderness survival hacks, eating out in Victorian England, the photos on which classic pin-up girl paintings were based, and how Dr. Seuss changed education in America.

Wednesday links

Today is V.E. Day: on May 8, 1945, World War 2 ended in Europe.

How the 1969 “Paul McCartney is Dead” Hoax Started at an American College Newspaper and Went Viral.

The physics of fizz.

The recent release of Avenger's: Engame brings to mind another Captain America movie - the 1973 Turkish version in which he teams up with a Mexican wrestler and fights evil Spiderman (who murders people with, among other things, shower nozzles and guinea pigs).

Why The Concorde Is Such a Badass Plane.

The Strange Tale of the Great 1911 Trans-Saharan Ostrich Heist.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include the dark origins of Snow White, plastic surgeons sculpting belly fat into chiseled six-packs, the history and invention of Jell-O, and, for Oliver Cromwell's birthday, his excellent (and evergreen) speech throwing out the corrupt Parliament (plus the posthumous travels of his head).

Monday links

The Physics of How Lawn Mower Blades Cut Grass (at 50K frames per second).

Photos That Prove Japan Is Not Like Any Other Country.

Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity.

On July 16, 1945 the atomic age began with the Trinity nuclear test. Related: 1954 film: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb

Kazakhstan tax dollars at work: this 40 foot tall squirrel statue is part of an art project commissioned by city authorities.

Man Spends 23 Years Carving Sprawling Underground Temple Under His House.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky, the history of trial by combat, Bastille Day, Mozart's less family-friendly works, and how local authorities are surveilling U. S. citizens.

The Physics of How Lawn Mower Blades Cut Grass (at 50K frames per second)

Interesting Engineering on Smarter Every Day's super slow motion video (below) of a lawnmower:

...an ordinary lawnmower sucks air up into the mower body causing the grass to stand vertically, which allows the blade to slice evenly at the bottom of the grass.

To demonstrate this in another way, a vacuum hair clipper does the same thing. It sucks hair into it before it is cut so that a really precise cut can be made. The lifting of the grass is actually caused by the tab on the back of the mower blade which causes air lift and raises the grass up.

By filming a lawn mower in action with a super fast camera, that in turn gives wonderful slow motion, you can see the blades of grass being lifted up just before being cut.

Tuesday links

It's V.E. Day: on May 8, 1945, World War 2 ended in Europe.

Coming clean: the physics of doing laundry.

How bacteria communicate in groups to avoid antibiotics.

Just so you know, there are Poop-Filled Mites On Your Face Right Now.

The Last Stagecoach Tavern of the Wild Wild West.

Not a plot summary for a SyFy movie: Army researchers are developing a self-aware squid-like robot you can 3D print in the field.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include how donuts are made, daggers made from human thigh bones, Neanderthals sea voyages, and illustrated manliness lessons: how to undress in 20 seconds or less (in case you need to rescue someone who's drowning) and the Tactical Order of Dressing (as taught to military and emergency personnel).

RIP Stephen Hawking: a brief bio and the Hawking vs Einstein rap battle

Stephen Hawking (wiki) died yesterday, which was also Einstein's birthday:

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us very special. 

~ Stephen Hawking (quoted in Der Spiegel, 1989) 

In effect, we have redefined the task of science to be the discovery of laws that will enable us to predict events up to the limits set by the uncertainty principle. 

~ Hawking (A Brief History of Time, Ch. 11) 

I think it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion. 

~ Hawking (interview in The Guardian, 27 September 2005) 

It's a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life, and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry and complaining. 

~ Ibid. 

On the whole, the public shows good taste in its choice of idols. Einstein and Hawking earned their status as superstars, not only by their scientific discoveries but by their outstanding human qualities. Both of them fit easily into the role of icon, responding to public adoration with modesty and good humor and with provocative statements calculated to command attention. Both of them devoted their lives to an compromising struggle to penetrate the deepest mysteries of nature, and both still had time left over to care about the practical worries of ordinary people. The public rightly judged them to be genuine heroes, friends of humanity as well as scientific wizards. 

~ Freeman Dyson (b. 1923) ( "The 'Dramatic Picture' of Richard Feynman," The New York Review of Books, 14 July 2011)

British theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen William Hawking, was born  on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, where his mother had moved from London to escape the Blitz. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, Hawking became the Lucasian professor of mathematics at the latter institution in 1979, following pioneering work in the quantum and relativistic mechanics that underlie the "big bang" theory of the origin of the universe and the creation of "black holes" in space. 

Since 1962, he suffered from amytrophic lateral sclerosis ("ALS" (wiki), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) which had confined him to a wheel-chair and left him physically unable to speak clearly or to write. Nonetheless, his popular exposition of cosmography, A Brief History of Time (1988), become a best-seller, and he remained one of the world's best known scientists. 

Further reading on the disease: How did Stephen Hawking live so long with ALS?

Here's a brief biography:

And here's the Einstein vs Stephen Hawking Epic Rap Battle of History:

Monday links

February 5th is World Nutella Day - here's a canonical list of Nutella recipes.

The Physics of Sunsets.

NatGeo visits the coldest city on earth. 

This Feb. 5, 1865 photo of President Abraham Lincoln in Washington is the last one taken of him.

How did Robert E. Lee die? His earlobe may have the answer to that.

You Can (Probably) Still Drink the World’s Oldest Bottle of Wine.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and are all Groundhog Day and Super Bowl related: Groundhog Day, Candlemas and weather predictions, Punxsutawney Phil has been correct 39% of the time since 1887, how long Bill Murray was stuck in Groundhog Day (8 years? 34 years? hundreds of years?), Life magazine archive of photos from Super Bowl 1, football during WWII, when almost all able-bodied men joined the military (this led to a combined Steelers/Eagles team called the Steagles), and whether or not footballs were ever actually made of pigskin.

Cartoon: Folsom Prism Blues

A bit of physics humor, via Analytical Grammar:

Friday links

Uninspirational Quotes for People Who Hate Inspirational Quotes.

Flying Water Taxis are coming to Paris this Summer.

Found: A Colossal Statue of Ramses II Hiding Under a Cairo Street.

Dead Men’s Teeth: A History of Dentures.

Humanure: The Next Frontier In Composting.

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death, William Shatner's birthday, why we don't (generally) eat horses, the science of facial hair, and how far back in time you could go and still understand English.

Excellent cartoon: "The Talk", because if you don't explain quantum computing to your kids, someone else will

Scott Aaronson and Zach Weinersmith at SMBC (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal):

h/t GeekPress

Friday links

Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Why is Friday the 13th Considered Unlucky?

Mount Doom might be about to erupt: New Zealand warns hikers away from Mordor. Kind of related: Bikes were invented because a volcano killed all the horses. 

Why old statues have tiny penises.

A Supercut of Birds in Movies.

The physics of traffic flow: How a Single Car, Inadvertently Braking, Causes a Traffic Jam.

Railway Paradise, circa 1880: How a Fine-Dining Empire Made the Southwest Palatable to Outsiders.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include the Smithsonian whale warehouse, horse and buggy parking at the Costco in Lancaster, PA, baby naming laws in European countries, and, for his birthday, clips of some of Fred Astaire's best dance scenes.

Friday links

Video: The Hand-Cranked Wintergatan Marble Machine Uses 2,000 Marbles to Make Music.

March Forth: Today is National Grammar Day.

Army Candidates Take Exam in Their Underpants to Prevent Cheating.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech.

The Gruesome And Mysterious Case Of Exploding Teeth.

A Complete History of the Millennium Falcon

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include Dr. Seuss' book of nudes The Seven Lady Godivas, why we say 'eleven, twelve' instead of 'oneteen, twoteen', bicycles as a moral threat (in the 1890s), and a 1970s-era Air Force rescue beacon disguised as dog poop (plus lipstick guns and shoe transmitters).

The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

Van Gogh's Starry Night:

A TED-Ed video - this is the description:

Physicist Werner Heisenberg* (wiki) said, “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.” As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks. Natalya St. Clair illustrates how Van Gogh captured this deep mystery of movement, fluid and light in his work.

*My favorite (and only) Heisenberg joke:

Heisenberg is driving down the road (possibly in New Jersey) when he gets pulled over by a cop.

Cop: "Excuse me, Sir, but do you know how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg: "Why, no, Officer. But I know where I am."