The Perfect Theory (14 page)

Gödel presented his results at a meeting to honor Einstein on his seventieth birthday, in 1949. His result was beautifully put together with a few simple statements and the final solution. But it was so outlandish that no one knew what to make of it. Chandra, who had spent the previous twenty years fending off Eddington's criticism and attacks, wrote a short note pointing out what he thought was a mistake in Gödel's derivation. But this time it was the meticulous and careful Chandra who had made a mathematical error. H. P. Robertson, an astronomer at Caltech who, along with Friedmann and Lemaître, had pioneered the expanding universe, reviewed the state of the field a year later and disparagingly dismissed Gödel's universe.

And Einstein? Einstein applied his fabled intuition, which had played such a crucial role in all his great discoveries, from special to general relativity. It was, of course, the same intuition that had made him dismiss Friedmann and Lemaître's solution and ignore Schwarzschild's. He responded to Gödel's work by saying Gödel's universe was
“an important contribution to the general theory of relativity,” but he reserved judgment on whether it should be “excluded on physical grounds.”

Gödel's solution of Einstein's field equations seemed too bizarre to have any real bearing on the natural world. Until he died in 1978, Gödel continued looking for evidence in astronomical data that might prove that his solution had real physical significance. But in some sense, Gödel's solution exemplified the problem that so many had with general relativity: it was a mathematical theory with bizarre mathematical solutions that had no bearing on the real universe.

 

When the Institute for Advanced Study first tried to hire Robert Oppenheimer in 1935, just as his vibrant Berkeley school was beginning to make a name for itself, he turned it down. After a short visit, he wrote to his brother saying, “Princeton is a madhouse: its solipsistic luminaries shining in separate and helpless desolation. Einstein is completely cuckoo.” He was never able to completely shake his misgivings about Einstein's later work.

In 1947, Oppenheimer finally accepted a position leading the institute. His appointment was not without opposition. Einstein and Hermann Weyl both campaigned for the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the man who had discovered the exclusion principle, a cornerstone of quantum physics. They lobbied the faculty, stating categorically that “Oppenheimer has made no contribution to physics of such fundamental nature as Pauli's exclusion principle.” But such was Oppenheimer's aura and brilliance as an organizer that he was offered the job and set about reinvigorating the atmosphere. He led with exuberance and panache. A
Time
magazine cover article in 1948 reported, “The guest list at Oppie's hotel this year will also include Historian Arnold Toynbee, Poet T. S. Eliot, Legal Philosopher Max Radin—and a literary critic, a bureaucrat and an airlines executive. There was no telling who might turn up next: maybe a psychologist, a Prime Minister, a composer or a painter.” Desolate it was not.

Oppenheimer had lost interest in the general theory of relativity after his brief incursion with his students at Berkeley. He and his student Hartland Snyder had been responsible for one of the most important papers in general relativity, the discovery of collapsing spacetime. Later he had grown disenchanted with what he believed was a stale, esoteric theory, and he discouraged the young cohorts of the institute from working on it. A young member of the institute, Freeman Dyson, wrote home during Oppenheimer's reign that
“the general theory of relativity is one of the least promising fields that one can think of for research at the present time.” Until a new experiment could reveal more of the strange nature of space and time or someone could incorporate the general theory of relativity into quantum theory, Einstein's theory was not of much further use.

Oppenheimer was not the only leading physicist to dismiss general relativity. The rise of quantum theory had eclipsed Einstein's theory to such an extent that it had become difficult to publish papers on general relativity. The editor of the
Physical Review
was Samuel Goudsmit, a German scientist living in America who had played an instrumental role in the early years of quantum theory. Goudsmit had immigrated to America and, on becoming the editor of the
Physical Review,
had endeavored to transform it into the premier journal of physics, in direct competition with journals in Europe. Goudsmit took a dim view of general relativity. Like Oppenheimer, he felt that not much had been done or could be done with such an esoteric theory with limited applicability and testability. He threatened to put out an editorial effectively banning the publication of papers on “gravitation and fundamental theory.” It was only the appeal of John Archibald Wheeler, a Princeton professor who had begun to see the charms of Einstein's theory, that held Goudsmit back from clamping down on general relativity.

Oppenheimer and Einstein eventually developed a tenuous friendship, cordial but not intimate, punctuated by acts of loyalty and affection. One time Oppenheimer surprised the old man for his birthday by having a radio mast installed in Einstein's house on Mercer Street so Einstein could hear his beloved music in the evening. Oppenheimer found in Einstein an ally who supported him through what would be his darkest days. Oppenheimer had gone through a meteoric rise during his Berkeley years and had shown spectacular stewardship during the Manhattan bomb project. He had become a firm member of the establishment as a member of the seven-man board of the Atomic Energy Commission, overseeing the development of postwar atomic projects and uses of atomic energy. He ruffled a fair number of feathers by being reluctant to endorse some of the more outlandish nuclear projects, such as a nuclear airplane that could fly continuously or the construction of the “superbomb,” or H-bomb, that would have dwarfed the power and might of the atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In doing so, Oppenheimer made enemies. And these enemies struck back during the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s McCarthy era.

In a 1953 article in
Fortune
magazine, Oppenheimer was severely criticized for his
“persistent campaign to reverse US Military Policy” and accused of masterminding a plot to hold back the development of the H-bomb. That year, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance and deemed a threat to US security. He appealed for a hearing in 1954 and his reputation was partially cleared, but he was unsuccessful at reinstating his security clearance. As the report for the hearing clearly stated, “We find that Dr. Oppenheimer's continuing conduct and associations have reflected a serious disregard for the requirements of the security system.” Oppenheimer was jettisoned from his position as a member of the Washington elite.

Einstein never understood Oppenheimer's fascination with power. Why was Oppenheimer so interested in being what amounted to a senior civil servant? As a standard-bearer for world pacifism, Einstein could not fathom why Oppenheimer, who was sympathetic to his cause, would not want to be more vocal, more public about his disapproval of the arms race. Einstein did not hold back, appearing on television to address the nation, railing against the evils of the “superbomb,” which led to newspaper headlines such as “Einstein Warns World: Outlaw H-Bomb or Perish.”

In his last and loneliest days, Einstein was famous yet again. Seen from afar, the situation was ironic. On one floor of the institute, Einstein would be helping to draft pacifist screeds against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. On another floor, Oppenheimer would be poring over the plans for the H-bomb. Yet Einstein could afford to be vocal. He was too famous to be touched by the anti-Communist hysteria. So, while Oppenheimer, the key figure behind America's nuclear hegemony, was dethroned and humiliated by the security hearing, and remained cautious about not appearing to be aligned with the Communist threat, Einstein threw all caution to the wind. He publicly vilified the hearings, writing in a letter to the
New York Times:
“What ought the minority of intellectuals do against this evil? Frankly, I can only see the revolutionary way of non-cooperation in the sense of Gandhi.” He proceeded to publicly advise those who were being subpoenaed by the hearings to refuse to participate by invoking the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, the right to not answer questions.

 

Einstein's last years were shadowed by illness. In 1948 he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal aneurysm of the abdominal aorta. The aneurysm grew slowly over the years, and Einstein prepared himself for the inevitable. When he reached his seventy-sixth birthday in 1955, Einstein realized he was too ill to travel to Bern for a conference celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his special theory of relativity. In mid-April, his aneurysm finally burst, and after a few days in the hospital, Einstein died.

The funeral was brisk and unceremonious. A smattering of people attended his cremation, and his ashes were scattered privately. A few photographs remain of his funeral, revealing it to be a quiet, practical affair. His brain was saved for posterity in the hope that it might hold a clue to the source of his brilliance. The Bern conference went ahead, now a eulogy as well as a celebration of Einstein's work.

Oppenheimer, as head of the institute, was repeatedly asked to comment on Einstein's life and work. And he did so, praising Einstein's achievements. When pushed, he found himself unable to hide his slight disapproval of Einstein during his final years. While he had no problem in saying that “Einstein was a physicist, a natural philosopher, the greatest truly of our time,” in a 1948 article for
Time
magazine on the institute, he had also been responsible for feeding the journalist a less glowing tribute: “in the close-knit fraternity of physicists, it is sadly recognized that Einstein is a landmark, not a beacon; in the quick progress of physics, he has been left some leagues behind.” In an interview with
L'Express,
almost a decade after Einstein's death, Oppenheimer went further, saying,
“During the end of his life, Einstein did no good.”

When Einstein passed away, he left his general theory of relativity in the doldrums. Eclipsed by quantum theory, disdained by some of the leading physicists of the time, it would need new blood and new discoveries to reenergize it.

Chapter 6

BBC
RADIO LISTENERS IN
1949 were duly impressed by Fred Hoyle's lectures, broadcast as a series called
The Nature of the Universe.
Here was an articulate young Cambridge don reaching out to millions of people, teaching them about the history and evolution of the universe. Like Einstein, Lemaître, and many others before him, he was bringing relativity to the masses, and the masses were enjoying it. Not yet forty years old, Hoyle could have been the new poster boy for general relativity, someone to succeed Einstein, Eddington, and Lemaître.

But Hoyle was saying that Lemaître was wrong. According to Hoyle, a universe that expanded from nothing was nonsense, and the grand old men of general relativity should have fixed the theory to get more sensible results. He claimed it was ridiculous to assume that the universe started all of a sudden. As he put it,
“These theories were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one Big Bang at a particular time in the remote past.” He used the expression “Big Bang” disparagingly; he thought there was a much better solution: an endless universe that kept regenerating itself in a steady state of matter creation.

Hoyle was going into battle with the relativists, and with so many listeners, he was doing it from a position of strength. To the BBC's general audience, his steady-state theory sounded like the standard lore of cosmology, and the expanding universe that had come out of the successes of the 1920s seemed a renegade theory. This simply wasn't true. Hoyle and his two collaborators, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, were a group of mavericks distorting the public's perception of what was really going on in theoretical physics, which deeply angered their colleagues. As one astronomer said about the response to Hoyle's lectures, there was
“a feeling that he had gone far beyond the limits of decent presentations of astronomy, and a fear that his immodesty and one-sidedness had harmed the profession.”

Despite Hoyle's media appeal, his steady-state theory would never be more than a cottage industry, a cult centered at Cambridge. Yet the questions that the steady-state theory raised, the young scientists that it inspired, and the new observational window onto the universe it offered would be key in the regeneration of the general theory of relativity in the decades that followed.

 

It is not that surprising that such a maverick as Fred Hoyle would emerge in Cambridge, the land of Arthur Eddington. Somewhat like Einstein, Eddington had also lost his way later in life and found himself obsessed with his own very esoteric theory of the universe. In the decades leading up to his death, Eddington had tried to come up with a fundamental theory that would bring everything together: gravity, relativity, electricity, magnetism, and the quantum. To an outsider, his world of numbers, symbols, and magical connections seemed more like numerology and arbitrary coincidences than the elegant mathematics at the heart of general relativity. More so than Einstein, Eddington had been shunned, spending the last few years before his death in 1944 in relative isolation. He left behind an incomplete manuscript, published posthumously in 1947 with the grand title
The Fundamental Theory.
It is an obscure book, unreadable and completely forgotten, a sad legacy from the man who had helped bring relativity to the fore. As one astronomer said at the time, “Whether or not it will survive as a great scientific work, it is certainly a notable work of art.” Wolfgang Pauli, the inventor of the exclusion principle that had been so important for understanding white dwarfs, looked at Eddington's work with disdain. To Pauli, Eddington's fundamental theory was
“complete nonsense: more precisely, as romantic poetry, not as physics.”