Prize and Prejudice

While deliberating on the Nobel Prize winners of the early part of the twentieth century, I was puzzled many a time as to why the award was delayed in case of Einstein. He had published five seminal papers in 1905, two or three of which merited Nobel Prize. According to Frank Wilczak (1), a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who shared the 2004 Prize for physics, “Einstein’s work on Brownian motion would have merited a sound Nobel Prize, the photoelectric effect a strong Nobel Prize, but special relativity and E = mc^2 were worth a super-strong Nobel Prize.” And all three of them were published in 1905. This may be considered a hindsight now but these papers were worthy of serious consideration even at that time. They were considered but the prevailing prejudice against theoretical work blocked the award to Einstein.

Einstein received his Nobel for his work on the photoelectric effect in 1921. While the importance of his work on photoelectric effect can in no way be diminished, by 1921 Einstein had published his theory of general relativity (1915), which had been verified by Eddington in 1919 by his now historical measurement of bending of the light rays from a far off star in the vicinity of the Sun. It is strange that his monumental and revolutionary work was not even mentioned in the citation of Einstein’s award, which included some vague language pertaining to “his services in theoretical physics.”

According to Helge Kragh (2), “Until 1922, Einstein had been nominated no fewer than 62 times, and only one of the nominations mentioned the photoelectric effect specifically. The Swedish physicist who wrote the report on Einstein’s theory of relativity concluded that acceptance was a “matter of faith”; and another committee member asserted that “it is highly improbable that Nobel considered speculations such as these to be an object for his prizes.” Such shortsightedness was either due to committee members’ (5 in number) myopia or outright prejudice against theoretical physics.

Another revealing insight is provided by R.M. Friedman (3) who wrote, “In 1921 nominators depicted Einstein as a giant in the world of physics, the likes of which had not been seen since Newton. In 1921 Allvar Gullstrand, professor of physical and physiological optics at Uppsala University and one of the most distinguished members of the Academy, took it upon himself to report on Einstein’s contributions to relativity and gravitational theory. Gullstrand simply did not understand Einstein’s work. Nevertheless, he resolved that Einstein must not receive the prize….No member approved of relativity theory…Most committee members simply could not accept such work as being true physics. Einstein’s manner of revising fundamental assumptions and of seeking unifying theories seemed to them to be the work of a metaphysician rather than a member of their scientific tribe. …As the clock approached midnight on November 12, 1921, the Academy voted not to award that year a Nobel prize in physics.”

Another thing that baffled me was that two giants of the quantum physics, namely, Dirac and Schrodinger, were given a joint award and not the individual ones that they deserved for their distinguished work. The facts which I found later on and which gave me the inspiration to write this essay also, threw light on these issues. The award seemed to acquire an aura of holiness and many liked to believe that it was above and beyond the petty politics in which the ordinary humans indulge every now and then. I found that the Nobel committee members, who were distinguished in their own respective fields of work, were also human. They had their own likes and dislikes, personal prejudices and favors, and favoritism for their own fields of knowledge, etc. Such considerations affected their impartiality in matters of assessing the various nominations for the award.

These prejudices probably linger on. Friedman (3) reported, “Even in more recent times, of course, grumbling and questioning still arise. Dirac, among others, expressed dismay over the difficulties in rewarding achievements in theoretical particle physics in the late 1960s and 1970s. He learned that some members of the committee simply did not want to reward theory; others differed over what degree of empirical confirmation should be expected before allowing a prize for theory.”

Einstein Must Never Receive a Nobel Prize Even if the Entire World Demands it – Where is God in the Fourth Dimension?

Gullstrand was so much against recommending Einstein for a Nobel that he engaged himself to find any excuse, no matter how trivial, to block award to Einstein at all costs. Eddington’s verification of the general relativity in 1919 helped put Einstein on international scene. Einstein was now a scientist with worldwide repute. Immediately after Eddington’s verification, Germany responded positively and embraced Einstein as one of its notable scientists. But the climate changed soon. Scientists started criticizing relativity despite its verification. There were two notable physicists who denigrated relativity passionately; they were Philip Lenard and Johannes Stark both of whom were Nobel laureates. They called relativity a Jewish speculation and both of them would launch a severe campaign against Jewish science later in the Nazi Germany. Although the committee members were aware of these slanders and might have been influenced by them, they kept their feelings to themselves. They were not however going to change their stance on relativity.

The situation changed in 1922 when Carl Oseen became a member of the committee. He had greater appreciation for theoretical physics than any of the other members but he also was not enamored of relativity. Mindful of Einstein’s international status and his growing popularity, he wanted to honor Einstein but not for relativity. He found a clever way of giving a Nobel to Einstein and at the same time saving the face of the committee. He recommended that a Nobel should be given to Einstein for his work on photoelectric effect law which had been thoroughly verified experimentally. His motive was not completely unselfish because he wanted to award a Nobel to Niels Bohr also whose work was also theoretical. If Einstein were honored for photoelectric effect work then award to Bohr could also be justified because Bohr’s theory was deduced from Einstein’s work. Oseen persuaded other committee members to accept his recommendation and they did. Einstein was given the 1921 prize in 1922, which had been reserved and not awarded in 1921 and Bohr received the 1922 prize.

Quantum Mechanics of Heisenberg and Schrodinger – Their Ordeal for Nobel Prize

Ever since the foundational work of Max Planck in 1900, quantum mechanics slowly and gradually continued emerging from the initial foggy mists. Many physicists, both experimentalists and theorists, didn’t like the way it was coming into being and most of them remained indifferent and didn’t care less. So much so, Planck himself was not very enthusiastic about it.

The first fundamental theory of quantum mechanics was proposed by Werner Heisenberg. His analysis and the method of computation were so strange and unfamiliar at that time that many didn’t see much of future for it. According to Kragh (4), “Heisenberg’s new reinterpretation of mechanics was highly abstract and not easily understood, not even by Heisenberg himself.”

His method involved the matrix quantities and needed matrix calculus. He himself was not familiar with it. For example, he was baffled to find the product of two matrix quantities, p and q, different when he multiplied p with q from when he multiplied q with p. Max Born put sense into it by using matrix calculus. This was generalized by 23-year-old Paul Dirac by using non-commutative algebra for operators. Both Schrodinger’s and Heisenberg’s solutions were recovered as special cases from Dirac’s solution.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was another pain in the neck; it ticked off many of the big wigs of contemporary physics including Einstein. Einstein had undying faith in ‘causality’ and determinism while the emerging quantum mechanics seemed to be probabilistic in character. These developments occurred in mid-1920s.

Then Erwin Schrodinger entered the arena. He didn’t like the complicated method, supported causality and didn’t like the uncertainty principle. He used classical mechanics to develop his wave theory. He was 39 years old when he published his work compared to Heisenberg who was not even thirty yet. Schrodinger was influenced by De Broglie’s dualism of the particulate and wave characteristics of matter at the subatomic level.

Einstein liked his work better than Heisenberg’s. Heisenberg and Schrodinger started receiving nominations in the closing years of 1920s and by 1930 their presence could not be ignored.

The committee was still resistant to recognize quantum mechanics and their (Heisnberg’s and Schrodinger’s) nominations didn’t reach anywhere near fruition. Oseen, the most influential member of the committee could not be swayed. He did not support individual or joint awards to them. So much so that the 1930 award for which both of them were under consideration was given to C. Raman for his experimental work. He appeared on the scene rather abruptly as if he was brought forward to block Heisenberg and Schrodinger.

Heisnberg was finally honored in 1932. The 1931 award was not given and many were surprised at the omission of Schrodniger individually or jointly with Heisenberg. He shared his prize with Dirac in 1933.

Paul Dirac and His Prize

Dirac’s natural talent and scientific acumen were such that many put him at par with Einstein. Some others considered him even bigger. For instance, Antonino Zichichi argued in his paper (Dirac, Einstein and physics, physicsweb, March 2000), “.. that the discoveries made by Paul Dirac had a much bigger impact on the science of the 20th century than those of Albert Einstein.” Professor Salam had said the same thing basing his argument that Einstein had his assistants to help him with his mathematics but Dirac invented his own.

Dirac’s most outstanding contribution to quantum mechanics is his equation, Dirac’s Equation. He published it in the Proceedings of Royal Society in 1928. It predicted the existence of anti-electron, an electron with positive charge, which was later christened as positron. This was experimentally detected in a couple of years.

Dirac’s equation is such a natural formulation that it is stunning. When someone asked him, “How did you find the Dirac Equation?” he said, “I found it beautiful.” Before the formulation of Dirac’s equation, it was known that the electron spins. According to Sir Michael Berry (5), “This spin was a property of the electron like its mass and its electric charge, whose existence simply had to be assumed before quantum mechanics could be applied. In Dirac’s equation, spin did not have to be imported; it emerged along with the magnetism of the electron – as an inevitable property of an electron that was both quantum particle and a relativistic one.”

The ‘prize climate’ in early 1930s continued to be anti-quantum mechanics. “The highly critical, but brilliant, theorist Wolfgang Pauli commented at the time that there were no theoretical physicists in Sweden; he scornfully dismissed Oseen,” (3).

Oseen’s intransigence finally gave way when in the committee meeting “he urged dealing Dirac into the Nobel spoils. Dirac’s odd prediction of the existence of a positively charged electron had been confirmed by two independent experiments. To Oseen’s satisfaction, here was a significant ‘actual fact’ that had been discovered as a result of quantum mechanics – a discovery that has ‘transformed one of the most difficult reservations’ against the new atomic theory to a support for this theory, (3).

In 1933, Dirac shared the Nobel Prize with Schrodinger “for the rather subdued rationale of having made important contributions to atomic physics’.”

Note: The title of this paper is taken from a picture caption in Ref. (3).

Appendix: Nobel’s Legacy

An extract from Nobel’s testament is given in the following (6).

The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way:

The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for literature by the academy in Stockholm; and that for champion of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament). It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.

References

1.Matthew Chalmers, “Five Papers that Shook the World,” physicsweb, January, 2005.
2.Helge Kragh, “Quantum Generations,” Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999, p. 433.
3.Robert Marc Friedman, “Quantum Theory and Nobel Prize,” physicsweb, August, 2002.
4.Ref. 2, p.162.
5.Sir Michael Berry, “Paul Dirac: the Purest Soul in Physics,” physicsweb, February 1998.
6.Robert Marc Friedman, “The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science,” A.W.H. Freeman Book, Times-Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2001, pp. 13-14.