The Century’s Greatest Minds

Albert Einstein

本世纪最伟大的智者

阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦

The scientific touchstones of the modern age——the Bomb, space travel, electronics, Quantum physics——all bear his imprint¹.

原子弹、太空旅行、电子学、量子物理这些现代科学的代表都有赖于他的影响。

Einstein had conjured² the whole business, it seemed. He did not invent the “thought experiment”, but he raised it to high art. Imagine twins , wearing identical watches; one stays home, while the other rides in a spaceship near the speed of light … little wonder that from 1919, Einstein was——and remains³ today——the world’s most famous scientist.

爱因斯坦好象改变了所有的事情。他没发明什么“思维的实验”，但他将其提升到新高度：试想一对双胞胎，带着相同的手表；一个呆在家里，同时另一个在飞船中以近光速运动… …毫无疑问，自从1919年至今，爱因斯坦一直是世界最知名的科学家。

In his native Germany he became a target for hatred⁴ . As a Jew, a liberal, a humanist, an internationalist, he attracted the enmity of rationalist and anti-semites. His was now a powerful voice, widely heard, always attended to , especially after he moved to the U.S. He used it to promote zionism, pacifism, in his secret 1939 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the construction of a uranium bomb.

在他出生的德国，他成为了仇恨的对象。作为一个犹太人，一个自由主义者，一个人道主义者，一个国际主义者，他招致了民族主义者和反犹太者的敌意。他的声音当时是有影响力的，广泛传播且被重视的，尤其在他到了美国之后。他用它去提倡以色列的犹太人复国主义，和平主义和建造原子弹（在他39年给罗斯福的密信中）。

Meanwhile, like any demigod, he made bits of legend: that he failed math in school (not true). That he opened a book and found an uncashed $1,500 check he had left as a bookmark (maybe---he was absentminded about everyday affairs).That he was careless about socks, collars, slippers⁵ … that he couldn’t even remember his address: 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, where he finally settled.

同时，像每个名人一样，他制造了一些传闻；在学校中数学不及格（八成不是真的）。他翻开书却发现一张没兑现的$1500的支票被当成书签扔在里面（或许他对日常的事务心不在焉）。他不在意自己的袜子，领口和拖鞋… …甚至他想不起自己最后定居的住址：普林斯顿莫色尔大街112号。

He died there in 1955 And after the rest of Einstein had been cremated⁶, his brain remained, soaking for decades in a jar of formaldehyde belonging to Dr. Thomas Harvey. No one had bothered to dissect⁷ the brain of Freud, Stravinsky or Joyce, but in the 1980s, bits of Einsteinian gray matter were making the rounds of certain neurobiologists, who thus learned … absolutely nothing. It was just a brain——the brain that dreamed a plastic fourth dimension, that banished⁸ the ether, that released the pins binding⁹ us to absolute space and time, that refused to believe God played dice¹⁰.

1955年他死在那里。当他身体其余部分被火化后，他的大脑被保存起来，在一瓶甲醛中侵了几十年，现属于托马斯博士。没人费心去解剖弗洛伊德、斯特拉文斯基或乔伊斯的大脑，但在80年代，一些神经生物学家为搞清爱因斯坦的一些灰质大费周折，但最后一无所获。那只不过是一个大脑，它想象了一个可伸缩的第四维度，它推翻了以太学说，它使我们从绝对时空的束缚中解脱出来，它拒绝相信上帝在抛骰子。

In embracing Einstein, our century took leave of a prior universe and an erstwhile God. The new versions were not so rigid¹¹ and deterministic as the Newtonian world. Einstein’s. God was no clockmaker, but the embodiment of reason in nature. This God did not control our actions or even sit in judgment¹² on them. (“Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Niels Bohr Finally retorted.) This God seemed rather kindly¹³ and absentminded, as a matter of fact . Physics was free, and we too are free, in the Einstein universe which is where we live.

因为信奉了爱因斯坦，我们的世纪告别了原有的宇宙和上帝。新的宇宙和上帝不再那么刻板、僵硬，象牛顿的世界那样。爱因斯坦的上帝不是钟表匠而是自然定律的化身。这个上帝不控制我们的行动，更不对其加以判决。（“爱因斯坦，别再管上帝该干什么。”玻尔最终反驳道）这个上帝实际上似乎有些和善，心不在焉。在这个爱因斯坦的宇宙中，在这个我们生息繁衍的宇宙中，物理学没有了束缚，我们也没有了束缚。

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

爱因斯坦的相对论

Special Relativity

狭义相对论

Relativity says that light always moves in a straight line through empty space, and always at the same speed in a vacuum, no matter what your observation point. From these simple claims follow bizarre consequence that challenge common sense and our perception of reality.

它指出光在真空中走直线，且在真空中光速恒定，不论你的观测点如何。由这简单的结论得出一些奇怪的推论，它们挑战了我们对现实的日常感知。

* A moving clock runs slower than a stationary¹⁴ one from the perspective of a stationary observer.

* 从固定的观察者来看运动中的表比静止的慢。

* A moving object appears to shrink in the direction of motion, as seen by a stationary observer

* 固定的观察者来看运动的物体，它在运动方向上似乎会缩小。

General Relativity

广义相对论

In general relativity, time is considered a dimension like height, width and depth, creating a four dimensional universe called space-time. Einstein argued that gravity is really a warping¹⁵ of space-time,with the greatest distortions near the most massive objects. Because light travels in a straight line through the contours of space-time, a light beam will curve where space-time curves, this curving was first measured in 1919

在广义相对论中，时间被看作和长宽高一样的维度，并与它们构成了一个四维宇宙—被称作时空。爱因斯坦提出万有引力是一种时空变形，在巨大的物体附近有严重的变形。因为光沿时空走直线，所以光线在时空弯曲的地方会弯曲。这现象在1919年首次被观测到。