EINSTEIN AND POINCARE

"I'm interested in bending the edges of the spectrum to make the abstract and the concrete hit one another more directly."

From Conversation:

A Talk with

Peter Galison

[6.22.03]

Topic:

UNIVERSE

EINSTEIN AND POINCARÉ [PETER CALISON:] When the Einstein centenary was celebrated in 1979 the speakers at all of these great events spoke about physics only as theory. It seemed odd to me that somebody like Einstein, who had begun as a patent officer and who had been profoundly interested in experiments, had left such a thoroughly abstract image of himself. My interest in Einstein began in that period, but beyond Einstein I was intrigued by the startling way that experiment and theory worked together, fascinated by the abutting of craft knowledge hard against the great abstractions of theoretical physics. For quite a number of years I have been guided in my work by the odd confrontation of abstract ideas and extremely concrete objects. Science history, sociology,... Go to conversation

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