by Jerome du Bois
Speaking of cats, I finally caught up with Faster Than The Speed Of Light, by João Magueijo, published in 2003. In the first part of this account of his variable-speed-of-light theory, he includes a short anecdote about Einstein that I don't want to forget, so I'm transcribing it here in my diary. Magueijo is such a smark-aleck the story may be aprocryphal, but I doubt it. Scientists can be strange. Page 71:
While Einstein lived in Berlin, working as a patent office clerk, he did his research work in a small study away from his home. In this study he kept a large number of cats, of which he was very fond. However the cats at times could be rather burdensome, scratching persistently at closed doors, demanding to roam freely throughout the house. He could not leave all the doors open, so he decided to cut holes in the bottom of the doors, producing cute little cat doors.
In that year he had roughly equal numbers of large and small cats. Therefore, quite logically, he cut out two holes in each door: a large one for the large cats, and a small one for the small cats. It made perfect sense.
It's a sweet story.
[Next book in my study of the physics of time, which I've already begun: Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, by Peter Galison. It's about simultaneity and electrosynchronization, the coordination of clocks. As Julian Barbour might say, you can talk abstract time all day long, but in the real world it comes down to clocks and rods, rods and clocks.]
Posted by Jerome at November 8, 2006 06:25 AM | TrackBack