DAY 209 - BERNE TO SOLOTHURN: 23 MILES (46,000 STEPS)

17November, 2011

23 miles (Total: 2043.8 miles) –46,000 steps (Total: 4,398,201 steps)

Before leaving Berne I had the opportunity to visit the Einstein Museum and I am so glad I took it. What a remarkable man. To call him a genius seems almost to understate his mind and achievements.  I hadn’t appreciated that Einstein had lived in Berne and that he actually developed his special theory of relativity E = mc²  and there was so much else I hadn’t appreciated about his life and times either. For instance:

The young Einstein was a late developer and his parents consulted experts because they were worried that he couldn’t speak by the age of three. As I consider my own grandson pronouncing “car” at the age of eighteen months I became quite smug. He rebelled at school against the regimented teaching method and failed to secure even his basic School Leaving Certificate.  He then failed the entrance exam for Zurich Polytechnic, now I am beginning to think that my clutch of CSE Grade 2s’ were not bad, not bad at all. Eventually he did manage to go to Poly, but graduated with mediocre marks, which meant that he was unable to go on to teach or to find a job for two years. He was eventually accepted on a doctoral degree programme and dropped out after two years—I take comfort through having lasted just over two years on mine.

Why is life such a ridiculous game of game of compare and contrast, as we constantly measure ourselves against others. Whilst rejoicing a little too loudly that my grandson is saying ‘car’ I was told by another friend that his two year old granddaughter had just started learning to play the violin. We seem to spend so much time observing others that we fail to fully discover ourselves. The secret of all happiness, all contentment and all success is to know yourself and to accept yourself.  If you can’t accept and even like yourself then you will lack the inner security to allow you to like, accept and love others.

Meanwhile young Albert’s personal life was causing his parents some concern too: he renounced his German citizenship in order to avoid military service becoming a Swiss citizen and had a child out of wedlock with Mileva Maric, which in 1902 was very much a social taboo. In 1903, through the intervention of a friend he managed eventually to secure a clerical job in the Swiss Patent Office in Berne, which he used to support Mileva and their son.

Now, stop the clock: Give me your assessment of Albert Einstein at the age of twenty-four. What would you say? Scientifically, based on the available evidence the report card might say something like: Albert has not made the best use of the limited talents available to him. He finds it difficult to apply himself to study and to complete courses upon which he has embarked. His personal life raises some moral questions marks about his self-discipline and his career choice displays a considerable lack of ambition.  At best, it would seem, he can aspire only to mediocrity and a life of disappointment and underachievement.

Fortunately for mankind the clock didn’t stop there, why? Because young Albert had a dream that he wanted to become a ‘Professor of Physics’ and even though all the evidence would point to this being a flight of fancy; he never gave up on his dream and his dream never gave up on him.

During his time in the Patent Office he contemplated a simple question which had confounded all physicists for centuries namely: Our everyday common sense tells us that if while standing on a moving barge we hit a golf ball off the front, the speed of the barge adds to the speed of the golf ball. If we were to shine a flashlight in the same direction as we had hit the ball we would find that the speed of the barge does not add to the speed of the light beam. Its speed would be the same as if the barge were not moving at all. Because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

His simple and yet utterly profound equation stunned the scientific world, as much for its radical suggestion that the speed of light is relative to each of us and not constant, as it was for its source—a Patent Office Clerk from Berne.

Immediately a vigorous debate broke out amongst the ‘great’ physicists of the time as they tried desperately to disprove Einstein’s equation. Really what was at the heart of it was pride—that with all their stellar academic qualifications, publications and pedigree that this simple truth should have been revealed to a clerk, of no standing, and no qualifications.

It must have been analogous to Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, telling the Pharisees and Scribes in Jerusalem that the beautiful equation for life is simply to ‘love God and love each other’.  They hated it for its simplicity and its source, for it mocked their complex and convoluted laws which tied the people up in knots and it mocked their credentials.

But the equation and the dream stood the test of time and within two years Einstein had been appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Zurich and was courted by universities around the globe to come and undertake further research and hold tenured posts in the most prestigious academic institutions.  He went on to apply his theory to explain the movement of light through space and time which literally unlocked the secrets of the universe and opened up an entirely new field of science called quantum mechanics. He became a prodigious academic publishing 300 scientific articles and 150 non-scientific articles.

In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1999 Time Magazine named Albert Einstein ‘Person of the Century’. In 1952, despite at that time being a citizen of the United States, he was asked to become President of the State of Israel because, as the prime minister of Israel put it, Einstein “embodies the deepest respect which the Jewish people can repose in any of its sons.”—he declined the offer due to poor health.

At the end of his life Einstein reflected: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Even over fifty years since his death Einstein is still willing to teach those who are willing to listen.

More wisdom from Albert Einstein:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

 ”I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

“He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”