Talks

The most important scientist of the twentieth century, and its most important artist, went through their periods of greatest creativity almost simultaneously and in remarkably similar circumstances: Einstein\'s special theory of relativity and Picasso\'s Les Demoiselles d\'Avignon. It turns out they were both working on the same problem: the nature of space and time and, more particularly, simultaneity. When they produced these astonishing works, Einstein and Picasso were not the distinguished elderly figures that later became so familiar: they were in their twenties, unknown, feisty, dirt-poor, and prone to getting into trouble - their personal and creative beauty caused havoc. Arthur Miller, Einstein, Picasso, Les Demoisselle D\'Avignon, Arts, science, biography, special relativity, space, time, simultaneity,

Although Einstein emerged as a leading spokesman for pacifism in 1930, his political views already underwent a major shift even before Hitler came to power in January 1933. Disappointment with negotiations at the 1932 Disarmament Conference in Geneva led him to the conclusion that the only hope of averting a major war was the creation of a strong world government. Only after the Second World War did he have the opportunity to promote this political cause, however, partly by taking advantage of his event image as “grandfather of the bomb.” Though he in fact played no significant part in the events that led up to the Manhattan project, in the wake of Hiroshima he became an active spokesman calling for control of nuclear weapons through the creation of an international organization that would serve as a stepping stone to world government. David Rowe, politics, world government, pacifists, Hiroshima, Anatomy of Peace,

Two of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel, were colleagues in Princeton during the years 1940-55. This talk will explore the contrasting personalities, revolutionary results, consonant world views, and confluent interests in the nature of time that underlay their bond of friendship. John W Dawson, Einstein, genius, Godel, Institute for Advanced Study, friendship,

Before 1919 Einstein’s political and social interests lay fallow, their moral roots unarticulated. This talk argues that it was his search for Jewish identity as a forty-year old in the years after World War I, as well as his growing commitment to Zionism, that laid the foundation for his active political engagement. We will examine the trajectory of Einstein’s ambiguous relationship with Judaism and Jewish settlement in Palestine from 1919 until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Einstein’s views over this 30-year period will be set in the context of the tragic interweaving of Hitler’s absolute rule in Germany and the destruction of European Jews. Einstein, Robert Schulmann, Zionism, politics, history, biography, Judaism, Jewish, Germany

This talk will examine the critical period in European concert music in the years around 1900, when the first generation of modernists--including Schoenberg, Mahler, Bartok, Debussy, and Stravinsky--were forging new musical languages. These composers were not revolutionaries. All remained deeply attached to their musical pasts, to traditions of tonality, syntax, and form. But each was able to re-imagine in a unique fashion the legacies of the nineteenth century to create powerful music fully characteristic of the dawning century. Walter Frisch, Romanticism, modernism, music, music, Einstein, tone colours, Strauss, Godowsky, Schoenberg, Strauss, folk music, Puccini

Albert Einstein remains one of most famous scientists in world history. His image is instantly recognizable and for many people, Einstein personifies genius. But who was Einstein really? What was he like as a person? What did his science actually mean? From his years in Europe where he was known mainly for his scientific genius to his life in the United States where his scientific contributions declined as he aged as he became more involved in the political, humanitarian, and social concerns, Alice Calaprice, co author of Albert Einstein, a biography explores the man behind the genius. Alice Calaprice, Einstein, family, biography, early years, young,

In November 1919 the British scientific community announced the confirmation of Einstein\'s prediction for the bending of light by the sun’s gravitational field. This announcement made sensational headlines in British and American papers, and soon thereafter Einstein was thrust into the stratosphere of stardom. To appreciate this phenomenon requires taking a closer look at the role of leading image makers of the day, particularly in Weimar era Germany. The intense media coverage of Einstein and his theory did much to stimulate event fascination, producing results that were at times odd, occasionally ridiculous, and in some cases polarizing, like so many other phenomena of Weimar culture. To the extent that the relativity revolution reflected a new sensibility with deep psychological roots it could not have found more fertile soil than in Einstein’s Berlin. David Rowe, Einstein, fame, England, politics, relativity, space-time, Minkoski, Mach, inertia, Newton, Einstein tower, oberada,Moszkowski, Weimar culture, anti-relativity, Gehrcke, Anti-Semitism, newsprint

This talk deals with representative works of German and Hapsburg fiction ca. 1905—a literature produced by the genius of Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Robert Musil (1880-1942) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924), registering swiftly changing perceptions of human time and space owing to the frenetic pace of Central European modernization—of technical innovations in the manufacture of commodities; of the acquisition of wealth, producing changes in class-structure; of the growth of cities, creating centers of simultaneous but dissociated activity requiring new medial connection—processes greeted by some writers as matters of great intellectual interest, by others as signs of the pathological breakdown of older norms and values. Stanley Corngold, time, space, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, modernity, Georg Lukacs, symbolism, duality, fiction, german, perception modernization, norms, values, literature, early 20th century, 19th century, Goethe, prose

One of the most hotly debated topics of the late nineteenth century concerned the geometry of physical space, an issue that arose with the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Lobachevsky and Bolyai opened the way, but it was not until the 1860s that scientists began to take this revolutionary theory seriously. Assuming the free mobility of rigid bodies, Helmholtz concluded that the geometry of space was Euclidean or else of constant curvature (either positive of negative). In 1899 these cases were tested by the astronomer Karl Schwarzschild who used data on stellar parallax to estimate the minimum size of the universe. Many argued that the notion of a curved space was nonsensical, whereas Poincaré, the most prominent mathematician of the era, thought that the geometry of space could never be determined absolutely. These classical debates played a major role in the discussions spawned by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. David Rowe, geometry, space-mathematics, Euclid, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Gaussian curvature, Gaussian Theory, Einstein, differential geometry, playfair, spherical triangles, platonic solids, Netwon, non-Euclidean geometry, Riemann, Ricci, Poincare, Klein

What was happening in Philosophy in 1905? This lecture will seek to answer that question by picking out some of the most influential works of philosophy that were published in or shortly before that year, describing both those works themselves and their intellectual context. The works discussed will include Henri Poincare\'s Science and Hypothesis, Edmund Husserl\'s Logical Investigations, Gottlob Frege\'s Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic and Bertrand Russell\'s \'On Denoting\'. What I hope to bring out is how the seminal works of that period established the tone and content of twentieth century philosophy and drew the battlelines of the great philosophical disputes of the last hundred years: Intuitionism versus Logicism, Phenomenology versus Analytic Philosophy, etc. Ray Monk, Philosophy, Poincare, science, Bertrand Russell, intuitism, logicism, metaphysics, analytic, phenomenology, mathematics, Gottlob Frege, 20th century, arithmetic