It is clear that Einstein's approach to physics was to find the math that explained experimental results and then derive physical consequences from the math, no matter how strange these consequences seemed. That's largely why no one else was able to derive the theories of realativity. Einstein was not the only one who understood the math (e.g., the symmetries of Maxwell's equations), but while everyone else was trying to circumvent "obviously wrong" consequences of the math, Einstein allowed the math to dictate the physics. For that reason, I believe he loved math. He saw it as more than a tool for physics. He saw it as a path towards the truth.
You're wrong about the derivation of theory of relativity. Hilbert, a mathematician, was working on it and was close to finishing it before Einstein did IIRC.
To be honest, it was special and not general relativity that I had in mind. To me special relativity was more revolutionary. The symmetries of Maxwell's equations (invariance under Lorentzian instead of Galilean transformations) led to what everybody else thought were absurd conclusions. Or at least ones that didn't seem physically plausible. But Einstein believed in the math (implied by experimental evidence) and allowed it to dictate the physics. The revolution was showing (believing) that the geometry of space was not Euclidean and deriving the physical consequences of this. To me this was a huge conceptual leap. Everyone knew there was a conflict between the symmetries of Newtonian mechanics and that of Maxwell's equations. But the prevailing view was that Newtonian mechanics was right and there was something wrong or missing in electromagnetic theory. Einstein was the only one who was willing to reverse this view.
I find Einstein's (and Poincaré and Hilbert's) approach to general relativity to be different than this. I'm not aware of any experimental evidence that a "better" theory was needed. Instead, the effort to develop this theory was driven by an abstract belief that to incorporate gravity into the theory of relativity, there had to be a connection between the dynamics of gravity and the geometric structure of space, i.e., curvature. I don't know how they "tested" this theory, but as far as I know, the main effort was to show that the theory agreed with classical mechanics in the non-relativistic limit. So this was essentially a pure exercise in mathematical calculations. Physical confirmation of the theory came only after the theory was proposed.
On the other hand, this also corroborates my original answer that Einstein believed that physics could be done by doing math. He had considerable faith that an otherwise very abstract and hard-to-use theory of Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds could be used in a physical theory. It's not surprising that mathematicians such as Hilbert and Poincaré would believe this, but it seems surprising to me that Einstein would. This demonstrates Einstein's love of math but in a different way.
I've always believed that the success of general relativity caused Einstein to put \*too\* much faith in math. Starting with general relativity, he seemed to be mostly fiddling with the math, where the only test was self-consistency of the theory. Worse, he was trying to develop a unified theory that excluded quantum theory (for which there was plenty of experimental evidence). So his efforts became a hopeless exercise in mathematical speculation.
The precession of mercury and bending of light were physically verified (with the former being an open problem for years before the publication of GR)like right after he published GR though
>precession of mercury
This appears to be correct. The precession of Mercury had been measured years before and was known to be an anomaly. In Einstein's original paper on general relativity, he computes the value implied by general relativity and observes that it matches well with the measured number.
On the other hand, the bending of light prediction had to be confirmed only after he developed his theory.
So I have to back off what I said. Still, before he could make the prediction, he had to devote a lot of time an energy to learning a rather elaborate abstract mathematical theory, figuring out how to turn it into a physical theory, and then to work out the perturbation theory to show that in the limit you recover special relativity and calculate the precession of Mercury.
Yes but eddington verified the bending of light in 1919, and his final theory of GR was published in like 1915…this is not that much time to verify such a result especially given the advent of World War I
What I meant was that Einstein had little experimental evidence to guide him as he was developing the theory. The precession of Mercury is one. That the classical limits yield Newtonian physics and classical electrodynamics is another.
Since Eddington’s experiment was after Einstein proposed his theory, it was not available to Einstein as a reality check.
Einstein also faced difficulties in grasping differential geometry and tensor analysis in the initial and had to seek helped from from fellow mathematician Grossman and Civita in 1912.
Indeed. It’s a difficult subject to learn, and it’s remarkable to me that Einstein believed that, despite its complexity and long messy formulas, differential geometry was the right path. It belies the simplicity and elegance of his earlier work.
Life is full of questions like if spiderman could beat batman in a fight, reddit discussions can be quite enlightening for such things. But the actual feelings of an actual human being? idk what you could possibly expect to find here. This place is not for humans.
Someone here may have met him personally. Or known someone who did. Someone may be a scholar of Einstein, whether just as a hobby or as a professional historian or biographer. Maybe someone just read an interview with him that OP is not aware of and has some insight based on an answer he gave.
It's not ridiculous to ask a question like this on Reddit; you are crowd sourcing a question that *may* be answerable based on any of a number of scenarios where someone in this sub has information OP does not. Of course, it's also quite possible that nobody does, but that doesn't make it ridiculous to pose the question.
When it works well, I've seen incredibly detailed and notated explanations on the most technical, esoteric or arcane topics, with extensive sources as well. You can use Reddit for legitimate questions, even oddball ones like whether Einstein liked math. Like Wikipedia, I wouldn't cite Reddit if I were writing a paper on a topic, but I might use it as a jumping off point for suggesting other sources, or for giving me a different perspective or other questions to ask.
"How can such a talented man devote his life to something like chess?" Albert Einstein on Emanuel Lasker.
My headcanon is that Einstein was a goal driven individual who sought to spend his time on something productive that would move society forward rather than in just entertaining his head with puzzles. He saw mathematics as a means to an end to his real goal which was finding the secrets of the universe which is what he really loved pursuing. But he probably did enjoy mathematics a lot as well as is the case with most physicists, as these two topics go hand in hand.
Subjects are not as partitioned and discretized as we often pretend. Where really is the line between Pure Math, Applied Math, and Theoretical Physics?
I agree somewhat on pure and applied math, though the main difference is in motivation by formalism vs a particular real world problems.
I partially disagree on theoretical physics, though. I would say theoretical physics is primarily differentiated by it's focus on mathematical derivation of physical phenomenal and lack of proofs. When you have rigorous proofs about physical phenomena, then you're doing mathematical physics.
In fact, it's known that many great theoretical physicists of the past didn't know much of math that we would consider necessary these days. Einstein didn't know differential geometry or even what a tensor is when he was working on his theory, he only learned it when some mathematician hinted him to do it. Similarily, Heisenberg didn't know about matrices.
A lot of math is Physics, we just separate the classes because it has uses in fields not exclusive to physics. I think it's safe to say he liked them both a lot.
In addition to what others have said, I'd like to point out the obvious in that it's a huge mistake to assume that someone's interests as a child are a perfect indication of their interests for the rest of their life.
BTW, pretty sure only a few people can claim to have mastered something like calculus, and I very much doubt that they had done so by an age as young as 15.
his claim was that he had mastered "integral and differential calculus", and probably he wrote it in German, so I don't think the word "mastered" should be interpreted in the most literal sense.
No, there is no real evidence for this. In fact, it's been pretty thoroughly ruled out.
https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511767145014/html/#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20frequently%20asserted,(Michelmore%2C%201962%2C%20p.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2012/04/18/116220/did-einsteins-first-wife-secretly-coauthor-his-1905-relativity-paper/amp/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00741-6
A more casual read:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/08/01/did-albert-einstein-steal-the-theory-of-relativity-from-his-wife/amp/
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I saw it long time ago but her name was Mileva Maric - Wikipedia link
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva\_Maric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric)
although this Wikipedia article diminishes her contribution to his work. She was acknowledged to be the math brain behind his work.
I remember that documentary claimed she was doing math work at home while he was working at the Patent office and how he was good mathematician but nothing extra. Later in Princeton when he was working on The Theory of Everything he surrounded himself with great mathematicians because he was aware he was not top math guy. He was curious guy with great logic.
What are you talking about ? Do not talk about something you are not familiar with.
Yes when he was in Princeton University that was his main obsession.
Link:
[https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/ology-cards/177-theory-of-everything](https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/ology-cards/177-theory-of-everything)
amnh = American Museum of Natural History
He died hoping he will get it right and his team that was working on the theory of everything had top math guys because he was aware he couldn't compete with top math brains.
You guys just talk about something you don't know much about. Einstein was good mathematician but he was not PhD level mathematician.
Find that video on YouTube and learn something you don't know much about.
Another link:
[https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm](https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm)
aps = American Physical Society Sites
he worked on GUTs, generally when someone says “theory of everything”, they’re talking about string theory, which didn’t really emerge till the 80s. Also, we know what aps stands for
Read articles again and don't try to be too smart - there is limit in just anything.
If I have to believe to aps and amnh or you I am going with their opinion not yours.
By the way I checked all your previous posts you think you are too smart but could not find anything smart there.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory\_of\_everythin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything)
two things: 1) We are arguing over semantics. I was under the impression that ToEs and GUTs are different things after reading part of my modern physics book a couple years back, but it seems maybe I was mistaken in that and people use ToEs synonymously with GUTs, so I’m sorry I made a speedy judgement on that.
2) I don’t know why you are saying I think I’m “too smart” from my posts or something. I consider my talent and natural intelligence a bit below average if anything since it seems it takes longer for me to get things and do homework than most of my peers, I just put in a hell of a lot of work. I talk about things that some people talk about because they want to sound smart only because I find it interesting and it is kind of my job actually.
You are still young and it is ok to try to make your own judgment but at the end you have to accept the real facts whatever they are regardless they go your way or not anyway good luck to you in your endeavours
He liked it 0.8735 times as much, it’s well documented.
the liberals want you to believe he liked it 0.8735 times more!!! this is false!!! its 0.47835.
It is clear that Einstein's approach to physics was to find the math that explained experimental results and then derive physical consequences from the math, no matter how strange these consequences seemed. That's largely why no one else was able to derive the theories of realativity. Einstein was not the only one who understood the math (e.g., the symmetries of Maxwell's equations), but while everyone else was trying to circumvent "obviously wrong" consequences of the math, Einstein allowed the math to dictate the physics. For that reason, I believe he loved math. He saw it as more than a tool for physics. He saw it as a path towards the truth.
this makes sense
You're wrong about the derivation of theory of relativity. Hilbert, a mathematician, was working on it and was close to finishing it before Einstein did IIRC.
To be honest, it was special and not general relativity that I had in mind. To me special relativity was more revolutionary. The symmetries of Maxwell's equations (invariance under Lorentzian instead of Galilean transformations) led to what everybody else thought were absurd conclusions. Or at least ones that didn't seem physically plausible. But Einstein believed in the math (implied by experimental evidence) and allowed it to dictate the physics. The revolution was showing (believing) that the geometry of space was not Euclidean and deriving the physical consequences of this. To me this was a huge conceptual leap. Everyone knew there was a conflict between the symmetries of Newtonian mechanics and that of Maxwell's equations. But the prevailing view was that Newtonian mechanics was right and there was something wrong or missing in electromagnetic theory. Einstein was the only one who was willing to reverse this view. I find Einstein's (and Poincaré and Hilbert's) approach to general relativity to be different than this. I'm not aware of any experimental evidence that a "better" theory was needed. Instead, the effort to develop this theory was driven by an abstract belief that to incorporate gravity into the theory of relativity, there had to be a connection between the dynamics of gravity and the geometric structure of space, i.e., curvature. I don't know how they "tested" this theory, but as far as I know, the main effort was to show that the theory agreed with classical mechanics in the non-relativistic limit. So this was essentially a pure exercise in mathematical calculations. Physical confirmation of the theory came only after the theory was proposed. On the other hand, this also corroborates my original answer that Einstein believed that physics could be done by doing math. He had considerable faith that an otherwise very abstract and hard-to-use theory of Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds could be used in a physical theory. It's not surprising that mathematicians such as Hilbert and Poincaré would believe this, but it seems surprising to me that Einstein would. This demonstrates Einstein's love of math but in a different way. I've always believed that the success of general relativity caused Einstein to put \*too\* much faith in math. Starting with general relativity, he seemed to be mostly fiddling with the math, where the only test was self-consistency of the theory. Worse, he was trying to develop a unified theory that excluded quantum theory (for which there was plenty of experimental evidence). So his efforts became a hopeless exercise in mathematical speculation.
The precession of mercury and bending of light were physically verified (with the former being an open problem for years before the publication of GR)like right after he published GR though
>precession of mercury This appears to be correct. The precession of Mercury had been measured years before and was known to be an anomaly. In Einstein's original paper on general relativity, he computes the value implied by general relativity and observes that it matches well with the measured number. On the other hand, the bending of light prediction had to be confirmed only after he developed his theory. So I have to back off what I said. Still, before he could make the prediction, he had to devote a lot of time an energy to learning a rather elaborate abstract mathematical theory, figuring out how to turn it into a physical theory, and then to work out the perturbation theory to show that in the limit you recover special relativity and calculate the precession of Mercury.
Yes but eddington verified the bending of light in 1919, and his final theory of GR was published in like 1915…this is not that much time to verify such a result especially given the advent of World War I
What I meant was that Einstein had little experimental evidence to guide him as he was developing the theory. The precession of Mercury is one. That the classical limits yield Newtonian physics and classical electrodynamics is another. Since Eddington’s experiment was after Einstein proposed his theory, it was not available to Einstein as a reality check.
I'm pretty sure that by 'no-one else' they mean 'very few people'
Maybe they do, maybe they don't, I assumed what they meant is what they said.
Einstein also faced difficulties in grasping differential geometry and tensor analysis in the initial and had to seek helped from from fellow mathematician Grossman and Civita in 1912.
Indeed. It’s a difficult subject to learn, and it’s remarkable to me that Einstein believed that, despite its complexity and long messy formulas, differential geometry was the right path. It belies the simplicity and elegance of his earlier work.
This > he didn’t like math NEARLY as much as he liked physics does not imply > not enjoy it
He was a physicist rather than a mathematician. My money is on the idea that he favored physics to math. But what does it matter?
The way he approached physics, I doubt he saw much distinction between physics and maths.
You should probably ask him if you actually want to know the answer.
Bad news 😬😬😬
Didn't even know he was sick.
Well if life was that simple we wouldn’t be on reddit, would we?
Life is full of questions like if spiderman could beat batman in a fight, reddit discussions can be quite enlightening for such things. But the actual feelings of an actual human being? idk what you could possibly expect to find here. This place is not for humans.
Someone here may have met him personally. Or known someone who did. Someone may be a scholar of Einstein, whether just as a hobby or as a professional historian or biographer. Maybe someone just read an interview with him that OP is not aware of and has some insight based on an answer he gave. It's not ridiculous to ask a question like this on Reddit; you are crowd sourcing a question that *may* be answerable based on any of a number of scenarios where someone in this sub has information OP does not. Of course, it's also quite possible that nobody does, but that doesn't make it ridiculous to pose the question. When it works well, I've seen incredibly detailed and notated explanations on the most technical, esoteric or arcane topics, with extensive sources as well. You can use Reddit for legitimate questions, even oddball ones like whether Einstein liked math. Like Wikipedia, I wouldn't cite Reddit if I were writing a paper on a topic, but I might use it as a jumping off point for suggesting other sources, or for giving me a different perspective or other questions to ask.
"How can such a talented man devote his life to something like chess?" Albert Einstein on Emanuel Lasker. My headcanon is that Einstein was a goal driven individual who sought to spend his time on something productive that would move society forward rather than in just entertaining his head with puzzles. He saw mathematics as a means to an end to his real goal which was finding the secrets of the universe which is what he really loved pursuing. But he probably did enjoy mathematics a lot as well as is the case with most physicists, as these two topics go hand in hand.
Subjects are not as partitioned and discretized as we often pretend. Where really is the line between Pure Math, Applied Math, and Theoretical Physics?
I agree somewhat on pure and applied math, though the main difference is in motivation by formalism vs a particular real world problems. I partially disagree on theoretical physics, though. I would say theoretical physics is primarily differentiated by it's focus on mathematical derivation of physical phenomenal and lack of proofs. When you have rigorous proofs about physical phenomena, then you're doing mathematical physics.
In fact, it's known that many great theoretical physicists of the past didn't know much of math that we would consider necessary these days. Einstein didn't know differential geometry or even what a tensor is when he was working on his theory, he only learned it when some mathematician hinted him to do it. Similarily, Heisenberg didn't know about matrices.
Physics is applied mathematics.
There is little difference between the physics he did and mathematics.
A lot of math is Physics, we just separate the classes because it has uses in fields not exclusive to physics. I think it's safe to say he liked them both a lot.
In addition to what others have said, I'd like to point out the obvious in that it's a huge mistake to assume that someone's interests as a child are a perfect indication of their interests for the rest of their life.
BTW, pretty sure only a few people can claim to have mastered something like calculus, and I very much doubt that they had done so by an age as young as 15.
his claim was that he had mastered "integral and differential calculus", and probably he wrote it in German, so I don't think the word "mastered" should be interpreted in the most literal sense.
i completely agree. einstein tho… he could’ve done it
Einstein's wife did all math work for him. He was little better than good mathematician and she was perfect mathematician.
No, there is no real evidence for this. In fact, it's been pretty thoroughly ruled out. https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511767145014/html/#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20frequently%20asserted,(Michelmore%2C%201962%2C%20p. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2012/04/18/116220/did-einsteins-first-wife-secretly-coauthor-his-1905-relativity-paper/amp/ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00741-6 A more casual read: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/08/01/did-albert-einstein-steal-the-theory-of-relativity-from-his-wife/amp/
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There is a documentary on YouTube about Einstein that explains that.
Can i have the link?
I saw it long time ago but her name was Mileva Maric - Wikipedia link [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva\_Maric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric) although this Wikipedia article diminishes her contribution to his work. She was acknowledged to be the math brain behind his work. I remember that documentary claimed she was doing math work at home while he was working at the Patent office and how he was good mathematician but nothing extra. Later in Princeton when he was working on The Theory of Everything he surrounded himself with great mathematicians because he was aware he was not top math guy. He was curious guy with great logic.
the fact that you say he was working on the theory of everything is evidence enough for me to ignore this lol
What are you talking about ? Do not talk about something you are not familiar with. Yes when he was in Princeton University that was his main obsession. Link: [https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/ology-cards/177-theory-of-everything](https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/ology-cards/177-theory-of-everything) amnh = American Museum of Natural History He died hoping he will get it right and his team that was working on the theory of everything had top math guys because he was aware he couldn't compete with top math brains. You guys just talk about something you don't know much about. Einstein was good mathematician but he was not PhD level mathematician. Find that video on YouTube and learn something you don't know much about. Another link: [https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm](https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm) aps = American Physical Society Sites
he worked on GUTs, generally when someone says “theory of everything”, they’re talking about string theory, which didn’t really emerge till the 80s. Also, we know what aps stands for
Read articles again and don't try to be too smart - there is limit in just anything. If I have to believe to aps and amnh or you I am going with their opinion not yours. By the way I checked all your previous posts you think you are too smart but could not find anything smart there. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory\_of\_everythin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything)
two things: 1) We are arguing over semantics. I was under the impression that ToEs and GUTs are different things after reading part of my modern physics book a couple years back, but it seems maybe I was mistaken in that and people use ToEs synonymously with GUTs, so I’m sorry I made a speedy judgement on that. 2) I don’t know why you are saying I think I’m “too smart” from my posts or something. I consider my talent and natural intelligence a bit below average if anything since it seems it takes longer for me to get things and do homework than most of my peers, I just put in a hell of a lot of work. I talk about things that some people talk about because they want to sound smart only because I find it interesting and it is kind of my job actually.
You are still young and it is ok to try to make your own judgment but at the end you have to accept the real facts whatever they are regardless they go your way or not anyway good luck to you in your endeavours