FRONTIERS IN SCIENCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 11 April 1922, Page 5

FRONTIERS IN SCIENCE

Tin: krenchaffront to

EINSTEIN

' A cable message from Paris Ihe other day stated that learning that a. certain number of members intended to protest by leaving when he I rofossor Einstein abandoned his intention to ata session of l!io I'jtmcli Academy of Science. In Berlin an attempt to give a popular explanation of the Einstein theory by means of the cinematograph .was made. A film, 3000 metres in length, illustrating various aspects of the physics of light, was exhibited.

Professor Albert Einstein, the famous author of the Theory of Relativity, was bora at Ulm. in Bavaria. He finished his education in Switzerland after a Geiman ground work, and for sonic time he was employed as an engineer in a Swiss Patent Office. His reception in Pans is' in striking contrast to the welcome that was accorded him in England las;t M.ay, when ho was the guest of Lord Haldane, and delivered lectures at Kings College, London, and in Manchester. A writer in a London paper thus referred to him at the time; “Whatever may bo said of the difficult and abstiu»o theories propounded by him, there can be no doubt as to the personal triumph of Professor Einstein. No one who saw and heard him in Manchester lasi week and London this week can fail to realise it. He has come, he has seen, and lie has conquered. Ho is a. German, aim j lectures only in his own tongue a tact which might be expected to prejudice him with English audiences. He is a Jew. He has come over here with novel, one might almost say fantastic, ideas, and the academic and scientific world " is notoriously conservative. He upsets preconceived and age-long beliefs. He controverts Euclid and disproves Newton, -v straight line is no longer necessarily the shortest distance between two points, as we were taught a tschool. Doubt is cast upon our cherished convictions of the laws of gravity. He is a revolutionary. And yet ho is received not only gladly but even enthusiastically Wdiy is it? Because Professor Einstein is a man of outstanding genius. And genius will tell. As Lord Haldane says, “Genius knows no frontier.” “To look at superficially. Professor Einstein is not imposing. He. is a man of medium height, thick-set, and solidly built. He appears older than Ids 43 years., His complexion is pale and sallow. Ids hair an unkempt mass of black and grey. His wide forehead is corrugated. and round ids eyes arc lines of weariness. Biit the eyes themselves are magnetic. They are the eyes of the seer, the visionary, the dreamer of dreams. Not cold, calculating academic eyes, but the eyes of the poet, the creator who sees things hidden from the ordinary vision, eyes with strange lights in them, eyes of a man who lives very much in his mind. And as soon as he rises to Ids feet you feel his power. It does not matter whether you understand Ids language or not. You know you arc in the presence of a force, a compelling personality. He speaks slowly, articulating each word and phrase distinctly as a man with weighty matter to imparl. But there is nothing of the poseur about him. Ho is modes, highly strung, and acutely sensitive. Only as lie warms to his subject does he use any gesture. Ho interlocks his hands, throws out. an arm to emphasise a point, or touches Ids lip with a finger-tip. But his body is under rigid control. He never moves a muscle. Now and then his eyes light up with a bewitching twinkle, so contagious that even if you do not know a word of German you .must laugh. “A strange and engaging personality. As unlike the dry-as-dust professor "as anyone it is possible to find. Ho looks like a musician, and —he is. He is as much a master of the violin as he is of mathematics, and plays Mozart, Schumann, and Bach with feeling and insight. Although ho juggles with speculations and lives in a world of four dimensions lib is neither self-centred nor remote. He is acutely alive. He has the supreme gift of creative imagination.”