The symmetry that shaped physics: Frank Wilczek on Einstein’s legacy

Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek reflects on Einstein’s greatest contribution.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek is considered by many to be Albert Einstein’s successor. He studied Einstein’s discoveries, expanded upon Einstein’s ideas, and, for several years, even lived in the same house Einstein used to. Wilczek’s dedication led to even more advancements in humanity’s understanding of our world, particularly his work on symmetry in the laws of physics.

Thanks to Einstein, scientists were introduced to the concept of symmetry amid theories of general relativity and the fundamental laws of physics. Though he hadn’t explicitly articulated the role of symmetry in our universe, he did set up a framework that future scientists could expand upon.

Here, Wilczek explains the steps taken to understand symmetry as a key component to physics, and how these steps ultimately contributed to his own career as a physicist.

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[feynmanschwingere_mc]

Albert Einstein is, by far, the greatest scientist of all time.

He created an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem at the age of 10; read and understand Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Kant's Critique of Practical Reason by the age of 11, taught himself integral and differential calculus by the age of 14, wrote his first scientific paper (that was published) by the age of 16. He had perfect scores on the math and physics sections of the Entry Exam to the Zurich Polytechnic in Switzerland (named the ETH), but due to poor scores on French and history he wasn't accepted that year into the ETH. However, it's important to note that the youngest the ETH accepted any student was 18 and Einstein took the exam at 16 years old.

Before the age of 23 Einstein had received the entire foundations of Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics from first principles, a Herculean feat of genius and diligence. Unfortunately, Einstein isn't more famous for this work (a trilogy of papers between 1901 and 1904) because J.W. Gibbs had already done it but Gibbs work hadn't yet been widely translated into German so the Germam physics community didn't know.

From 1905 to his death I'm 1955 Einstein revolutionized science in a way that hadn't been seen in the history of knowledge. The closest historical analog is Isaac Newton in 1666 but the mathematics in Newton is child's play compared to Einstein.

Einstein started the quantum revolution in 1905 with his earth-shattering paper on light quanta and then shattered physics again in the same year with his mind-bending paper on Special Relativity which gave us spacetime and relativistic kinematics. Einstein then quantized the radiation field, proved the duloung-petit law, discovered wave-particle duality in 1909, Spontaneous and Stimulated Emission (the LASER), gave us Bose-Einstein Condensates and Bose-Einstein Statistics, Quantum Entanglement, Wormholes, and several other amazing discoveries.

Most science historians believe Albert Einstein should have won at least 10 Nobel Prizes. Let that sink in.

When polled in the year 2000 by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) which physicist was the greatest in history, the top living physicists in 2000 voted Albert Einstein number one. Without Einstein, we wouldn't have modern technology, including the GPS! Heck, Einstein even managed to solve the Tea Leaf Paradox in his spare time before he died, and this was a mystery that eluded many of the greatest minds of the past several centuries.

For any history buff, he is the GOAT scientist and well deserving of being synonymous with genius 👑🐐.

[subhanusaxena]

Does Frank think that Einstein's application of symmetries opened the door for physicists to fully appreciate Emmy Noether's Theeorems on symmetry and conservation laws, or was Einstein not aware of her work till later?

[EnGmA]

This guy took a big load on his back 😲with that statement

[MeyouNus-ljde]

It's too bad Einstein didn't know the difference between 0D (non-natural) and non-zero dimensions (natural).