大科學家愛因斯坦鮮爲人知的十件事情(下)

Mediated a Hostage Negotiation

5.他曾在人質談判中擔當調解人

Einstein was willing to put his pacifism and commitment to peace into action, even at the risk of his own hide. In 1914, he and three colleagues in Germany singled themselves out by daring to sign a statement protesting the then-empire's militarism and involvement in World War I. The four issued the declaration in reply to the "Manifesto to the Civilized World," a government-sponsored document that defended Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium and which nearly 100 eminent German intellectuals signed. While many of his colleagues offered the fruits of their genius to the war effort, Einstein refused.

愛因斯坦是一個和平主義者，爲了和平他甚至以身犯險。1914年，他和三位同事在德國大膽簽署反戰聲明，反對軍國主義，反對德國參與第一次世界大戰。他們四人簽署反戰聲明是爲了表明立場，反對由德國政府發起的“文明世界的宣言”——該聲明是德國爲了侵略中立國比利時而進行的自我辯護，將近100位傑出的德國知識分子在上面簽了字。雖然他的很多同事都將自己的科學研究成果貢獻給了戰爭，但是愛因斯坦拒絕參與其中。

The war left Germany devastated, deeply in debt and facing social upheaval. During the turmoil that followed, radical students at the University of Berlin took the rector and several professors hostage, and no one wanted to take their chances finding out how the police would resolve the standoff. Both students and professors respected Einstein, so he and Max Born, a German-born pioneer of quantum mechanics, found themselves in a position to defuse the situation, which they did. In later years, Einstein would recall with amused wonder how naïve they had been for never considering that the students might have turned on them.

戰爭讓德國變得滿目瘡痍，負債累累，社會動盪不安。在後來的一次動亂中，幾個思想激進的柏林大學學生把校長和幾位教授挾持爲人質，警察卻用一個出乎意料的辦法打破了僵局。由於愛因斯坦受到雙方尊敬，因此他與量子力學奠基人，德國物理學家馬克斯·玻恩一同出面平息了這次事件。多年之後，愛因斯坦仍然饒有興趣地回憶這件事，他們從沒想到會受到學生的攻擊，實在太天真了。

Didn't Win the Nobel Prize for Relativity

4.相對論沒有讓他獲得諾貝爾獎

As with most scientific revolutions, Einstein's breakthrough insights on special relativity in 1905 did not arise out of a vacuum. His genius lay in how he transformed previous work by scientists like Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz into a new, unified theory, one that removed the friction between Newtonian physics and James Clerk Maxwell's theory of light.

正如大多數科技革命一樣，愛因斯坦在1905年創立狹義相對論，儘管在物理學研究上取得突破性進展，卻並沒有停滯不前。他把亨利·龐加萊和亨得裏克·洛倫茲等前輩的研究成果發展成新的、統一的理論，這正是他的天才之處。他解決了牛頓力學與詹姆斯·克拉克·麥克斯韋提出的光學理論相沖突的問題。

Published in 1916, Einstein's theory of general relativity completed special relativity by bringing gravity and acceleration into the picture through the concept of warped space-time. Unfortunately, it took years to prove one of its key predictions, the lensing effect of gravity. When astronomers finally confirmed the bending of starlight during observations of a 1919 solar eclipse, it launched Einstein into overnight celebrity, but three more years would pass before the Nobel committee retroactively awarded him the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics in 1922. Einstein received the prize for "the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." The photoelectric effect refers to the release of electrically charged particles (ions or electrons) from (or within) a material that absorbs electromagnetic radiation (such as light). Einstein's crucial work in this area resolved perplexing questions regarding the particle-wave duality of light. Nevertheless, Einstein's acceptance speech focused on his work in general relativity, a problem that had occupied him for nearly a decade, and whose importance would not be fully appreciated for decades to come.

1916年，愛因斯坦把重力和加速度帶入彎曲時空中，創立並發表了廣義相對論。遺憾的是，重力透鏡效應，這一關鍵性假設在多年後才得以證實。1919年，天文學家通過一次日食觀察，終於證實星光會受重力影響而彎曲，該發現讓愛因斯坦一夜成名。然而，又過了三年多，在1922年，諾貝爾獎委員會才授予愛因斯坦1921年諾貝爾物理學獎。愛因斯坦因發現光電效應而獲得諾貝爾獎。光電效應是指在電磁波（例如光）照射下，某物質（或內部）會發射出帶電粒子（離子或電子）的物理效應。愛因斯坦在該領域的重大發現，解決了與光的波粒二象性有關的複雜問題。然而，愛因斯坦在發表獲獎感言時，始終在講有關廣義相對論的研究工作，他用了將近十年才解開這項難題，可是在今後的幾十年裏，人們可能都無法充分認識到它的重要性。

Co-invented a Refrigerator

3.他與別人合作發明了一種冰箱

Between gas in the pipes and arsenic in the paint and wallpaper, households in the 1920s packed more than their share of deadly substances. Thus it seems appropriate that the transition from the traditional icebox (literally, an insulated wooden box with ice in it) to electrical refrigerators added to the peril by occasionally leaking volatile chemical coolants like methyl chloride, ammonia or sulfur dioxide to poison hapless homeowners.

20世紀20年代，家家戶戶都存在很多安全隱患，比如各種管道里的氣體、油漆和壁紙中所含的有毒物質——砷。由於電冰箱代替了傳統冰箱（從字面可以看出，傳統冰箱是一個裏面放有冰塊的，能夠隔熱的箱子），因此發生危險的可能性也隨之增加。偶爾有製冷劑（氯甲烷、氨氣或二氧化硫）泄露這樣的意外發生，導致有人不幸中毒。

One such incident in 1926 inspired Einstein to enlist the help of Hungarian physicist Léo Szilàrd in designing a new kind of appliance called an absorption refrigerator that required only ammonia, butane and water, plus a heat source for the pump. Patented in 1930, their device relied on the principle that liquids boil at lower temperatures when exposed to lower atmospheric pressures. As pressure in the pipe above the butane reservoir dropped, the butane would boil off, drawing in heat from its surroundings and lowering temperatures in the fridge. Because it had no moving parts, the appliance would last as long as its casing. Einstein and Szilàrd's refrigerator lost out to more efficient competitors and to the introduction of chlorofluorocarbons, which replaced more hazardous coolants and rendered the compressor fridge safer for people, if not the ozone layer. But new technologies and growing environmental concerns have today sparked renewed interest in their approach, particularly as a means of providing refrigeration in remote and rugged areas.

1926年發生了一起製冷劑中毒事件，這件事促使愛因斯坦產生研製新型冰箱的想法。在匈牙利物理學家萊奧·西拉德的幫助下，愛因斯坦發明了一種吸收式冰箱，這種冰箱只需要氨、丁烷和水，外加一個熱源作爲動力就可以運行。他們在1930年申請了專利，它的工作原理是：液體在低氣壓環境下可以低溫沸騰。隨着管中壓力增加，丁烷容器中壓力迅速降低，丁烷在低壓環境下發生汽化，從而吸收周圍的熱量降低冰箱內溫度。由於該裝置沒有運動部件，因此它的使用壽命和外殼一樣長久。愛因斯坦和西拉德發明的冰箱很快被市場淘汰，一種新型冰箱——壓縮機冰箱問世，這種冰箱用氯氟烴代替舊的製冷劑，提高了冰箱的安全性，但是存在一個致命的缺點——氯氟烴會破壞臭氧層。然而隨着新技術不斷涌現，加上人們越來越重視環保，愛因斯坦發明的冰箱再次受到關注，這種冰箱特別適合偏遠地區。

Was Offered the Presidency of Israel

2.他差點成爲以色列總統

Although Einstein made his mark primarily as a physicist, his political views have grown nearly as famous as his scientific achievements. But they were also more complex than many realize.

儘管愛因斯坦是一位著名的物理學家，但是他的政治觀點和他取得的科學成就一樣出名，甚至比我們想象中的更爲複雜。

Einstein was a lifelong pacifist, except when it came to taking up defensive arms against the Nazis, who singled him out for persecution. Moreover, when he realized that scientists in Nazi Germany might be working on nuclear chain reactions with bomb potential, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt urging that the U.S. government coordinate its own research in the area. The letter may have contributed to the formation of the Manhattan Project, to which Einstein -- much to his relief -- was not invited; the government considered him a security risk due to his many associations with peace causes and memberships in social advocacy groups like the NAACP. Nevertheless, his E = mc2 equation was essential to their successful efforts in making the first atomic bombs. Einstein also helped fund the war effort by auctioning his manuscripts, and worked after the war to oppose the development of the hydrogen bomb and to control nuclear proliferation. In 1952, Israeli premier David Ben-Gurion offered Einstein the presidency of the newly established state of Israel. Einstein politely turned him down, citing advancing age and stating that his lifelong focus on objective matters had left him unsuited to politics.

愛因斯坦一生堅持和平主義的立場，只有在遭到納粹迫害時，纔拿起武器捍衛自己的權力。愛因斯坦發現納粹德國的科學家可能在研製核武器，他立即給美國總統羅斯福寫信，說服美國政府進行相關領域的研究。這封信成爲曼哈頓計劃形成的助推劑，不過，因爲政府考慮到他與“全國有色人種協進會”這種主張和平的社會團體有着密切聯繫,所以愛因斯坦並沒有受到該計劃邀請，這一點讓他十分欣慰。儘管愛因斯坦沒有參加，但是在第一顆原子彈研製成功的過程中，他推導出來的方程式：E=mc²起到了關鍵作用。愛因斯坦還通過拍賣手稿來資助抗戰，等戰爭結束後，他依然堅持和平主義立場，反對研發氫彈，支持控制核擴散。1952年，以色列總理戴維·本-古裏安正式提請愛因斯坦爲以色列共和國總統候選人。愛因斯坦婉拒了他的請求，稱自己年事已高，一生從事科學研究早已無心從政。

Brain and Eyes Were Stolen

1.有人偷走了他的大腦和眼睛

Einstein intended that his body be cremated and his ashes scattered secretly, so as to avoid the possibility of admirers making a shrine of his grave. But when pathologist Dr. Thomas Harvey walked into the Princeton morgue on April 18, 1955, all of that went out the window. Presented with the opportunity to study the brain of one of the great geniuses of the age, and without permission, authority or experience as a neuroscientist, he absconded with 2.7 pounds (1.2 kilograms) of Einstein's gray matter. He also removed the deceased physicist's eyeballs and gave them to Einstein's eye doctor, Henry Adams. They remain in a New York City safe deposit box to this day.

愛因斯坦打算死後火化，並將骨灰灑在祕密的地方，以避免仰慕者到他的墓地朝拜。但是，1955年4月18日，病理學家托馬斯·哈維走進普林斯頓大學醫院的停屍間，愛因斯坦的這一願望便落空了。爲了研究這位偉大天才的大腦，他擅自偷走了愛因斯坦重達2.7磅（1.2公斤）的腦灰質。他還拿走了愛因斯坦的眼球，把它們交給愛因斯坦的眼科醫生——亨利·亞當斯。直到今天，這雙眼球仍然保存在紐約市一家銀行的保險箱裏。

A tragicomic series of road trips ensued, with Harvey storing slices and chunks of the brain in jars, first in his basement, then in a cider box squirreled away beneath a beer cooler as he relocated after losing his medical license, then in the backseat of a reporter's car. He apparently intended to study the brain and determine what made it so smart, but in 43 years he never got around to it, perhaps because he moved around so much or because lacked the expertise and funding. Ultimately, he returned most of the brain to Princeton, bringing the physicist's postmortem peregrination full circle.

接下來發生了一連串的事，真是讓人哭笑不得。最初，哈維把大腦切開，裝進廣口瓶中，放在他的地下室；被吊銷行醫執照後，他又把大腦裝進蘋果酒盒裏，放在啤酒冷藏器的下面；再後來又藏在汽車後座。很顯然，他想找出愛因斯坦聰明過人的原因，可是在43年裏，他一直沒能實現這個願望。也許因爲他居無定所，也許因爲他缺乏專業知識和資金。最終，他帶着愛因斯坦的大腦進行了一次橫貫美國之旅。然後，他把大腦還給了普林斯頓大學醫院。

翻譯：劉安琪 審閱：煙囪 來源：前十網