When Stevens Institute of Technology hired me a decade ago, it installed me for several months in the department of physics, which had a spare office. Down the hall from me, Albert Einstein's electric-haired visage beamed from a poster for the "World Year of Physics 2005." The poster celebrated the centennial of the "miraculous year" when a young patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, revolutionized physics with five papers on relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. "Help make 2005 another Miraculous Year!" the poster exclaimed.
As 2005 wound down with no miracles in sight, the poster took on an increasingly poignant cast. Passing the office of a physics professor who made the mistake of leaving his door open, I stopped and asked the question implicitly posed by the "Year of Physics" poster: Will there ever be another Einstein? The physicist scrunched up his face and replied, "I'm not sure what that question means."
Let me try to explain. Einstein is the most famous and beloved scientist of all time. We revere him not only as a scientific genius but also as a moral and even spiritual sage. Abraham Pais, Einstein's friend and biographer, called him "the divine man of the 20th century." To New York Times physics reporter Dennis Overbye, Einstein was an “icon" of "humanity in the face of the unknown." So to rephrase my question: Will science ever produce another figure who evokes such hyperbolic reverence?
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