Einstein×Curie

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Albert Einstein sits down with Marie Curie for STUDY HALL. The subject — On the pupil who surpassed them.
2. 00:08
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Marie, I wanted to talk with you about something that has been on my mind. You had students who went quite far, yes? Irène won the Nobel, like you.
3. 00:19
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Irène is my daughter, not merely a student. But yes, she and Frédéric did the work. They earned it.
4. 00:25
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Of course, of course. I did not mean to conflate. But still—there is something particular about watching someone you taught do what you could not, or go where you did not go. I am thinking of Heisenberg, Pauli, some others.
5. 00:40
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Did they surpass you?
6. 00:42
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   In quantum mechanics? Absolutely. I gave them tools, maybe some ways of thinking, but they built a whole edifice I could never accept. I spent decades arguing with them.
7. 00:53
   Marie Curieshare moment

   You gave them more than tools. You gave them permission to question the foundations. Then you became angry when they questioned yours.
8. 01:01
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   That is... well, that is fair. God does not play dice, but Heisenberg made a career of those dice. Still, Marie, you must know this feeling. Your daughter worked with artificial radioactivity, something you had not touched.
9. 01:17
   Marie Curieshare moment

   I isolated radium. I measured atomic weights that no one believed possible. Irène extended the work. That is how science proceeds.
10. 01:26
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But did it not sting a little? Watching her stand in Stockholm for discoveries that emerged from your methods but were not yours?
11. 01:34
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Why should it sting? I taught her to use the instruments. Pierre and I established the laboratory. She did exactly what we raised her to do.
12. 01:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You make it sound so simple.
13. 01:44
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It is not simple. It is correct. You are describing pride, Albert. Wounded pride.
14. 01:52
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Perhaps I am. When Pauli explained spin, when Heisenberg gave us uncertainty—these were young men, Marie. I was not yet fifty, and already they were making me feel like I belonged to the previous century.
15. 02:05
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Did you want them to fail? To wait for you to solve everything first?
16. 02:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No! No, of course not. I wanted them to succeed. I encouraged them. But there is a difference between wanting someone to succeed and watching them run past you while you are still catching your breath.
17. 02:22
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then your problem is not with them. It is with time.
18. 02:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Exactly yes. Time makes students of us all, eventually. Even Newton was surpassed.
19. 02:33
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Newton was wrong about many things. You corrected him. Did he surpass himself from the grave?
20. 02:39
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are being deliberately difficult now.
21. 02:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I am being precise. You taught them to think beyond your work. They did. You should be pleased.
22. 02:47
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I am pleased! Also, I am human. Both can be true. Did you never feel even a small... I do not know the word... a small shadow when Irène's name was called?
23. 03:00
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No.
24. 03:01
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Nothing?
25. 03:02
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I felt relief. She would have resources. Recognition. She would not have to fight as I fought for laboratory space, for funding, for the right to be heard in a room of men.
26. 03:11
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is a mother speaking, not a scientist.
27. 03:14
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I am both. You want me to confess jealousy I do not feel. Perhaps because you feel it, you think everyone must.
28. 03:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I do not think it is jealousy exactly. It is more like... like watching a train leave the station when you helped build the tracks but are no longer aboard.
29. 03:30
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then you built the tracks well. The train goes where it should.
30. 03:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But Marie, did you never wish to be on that train? To see where it goes?
31. 03:38
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I was on my own train. I went very far. When it stopped, I got off. Irène boarded a different one. This is not a tragedy, Albert. It is a timeline.
32. 03:47
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are more at peace with this than I am.
33. 03:50
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I had less choice. I was sick for years before I died. My hands were burned. My blood was failing. I could not hold the instruments steadily anymore. Irène could. Should I have resented her health?
34. 04:03
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No. Of course not. But that is different from what I mean.
35. 04:07
    Marie Curieshare moment

    How is it different?
36. 04:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You were forced to stop by your body. I was forced to stop by my mind—or rather, by my refusal to follow where the young ones were going. I could have joined them. I chose not to.
37. 04:20
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You chose to pursue unified field theory instead. You spent thirty years on it. That was also a choice.
38. 04:27
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A choice that led nowhere! At least your work, even if Irène extended it, was solid. Mine became a footnote. The world moved on to quantum mechanics and I became the old man shaking his fist.
39. 04:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You are asking me to pity you for choices you made freely. I will not.
40. 04:46
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I am not asking for pity. I am asking if you understand the feeling.
41. 04:49
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I understand that you do not like being wrong. I understand that you do not like being left behind. But Albert, every teacher is left behind. That is the entire purpose.
42. 05:00
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The purpose is to be surpassed?
43. 05:02
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. If your students do not go further than you, you have failed them.
44. 05:06
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Even if it means they prove you wrong?
45. 05:08
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Especially then. Wrong is not shameful. Wrong is how we find correct.
46. 05:13
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I spent so many years arguing with Bohr. With Heisenberg. I wrote papers, I gave lectures. God does not play dice. I said it over and over.
47. 05:22
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And they listened politely and continued their work. As they should have.
48. 05:26
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You make me sound stubborn.
49. 05:28
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You were stubborn. You are stubborn. This is not news, Albert.
50. 05:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But stubbornness gave us relativity. I did not give up when everyone said the ether must exist.
51. 05:39
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. And stubbornness also made you cling to determinism when the evidence pointed elsewhere. The same quality that saves us can trap us.
52. 05:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So you think I should have accepted quantum mechanics? Just surrendered?
53. 05:52
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I think you should have accepted that your students might see something you could not. That is not surrender. That is trust.
54. 05:59
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Trust. Yes. Perhaps that is what I lacked. Or perhaps I trusted myself too much.
55. 06:07
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps. But you are not alone in this. Every scientist who lives long enough faces it. Pierre did not live to see Irène's work. Sometimes I think that was easier for him.
56. 06:17
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Easier not to be surpassed?
57. 06:19
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Easier not to have to reconcile what you were with what you are becoming. He stayed whole in his own mind. I had to watch myself become obsolete.
58. 06:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So you did feel it.
59. 06:30
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I felt it. I did not resent it. There is a difference.
60. 06:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    How did you not resent it? That is what I cannot understand. You worked so hard, sacrificed so much. Your health, your hands. And then someone younger comes and takes the next step.
61. 06:46
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Because the work is larger than me. Larger than you. If I resent Irène for moving forward, I am saying the work should have stopped with me. That is vanity, not science.
62. 06:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I wish I had your clarity. I really do.
63. 07:00
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You have your own kind of clarity, Albert. You saw things no one else saw. But you wanted to see everything, and no one can do that.
64. 07:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No. I suppose not. Still, when I think of Heisenberg, of Pauli—they were so young. So brilliant. And they looked at me like I was already a monument.
65. 07:18
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then be a monument. Monuments are useful. They show people where the path began.
66. 07:22
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But monuments do not move. They stand still while the world goes by.
67. 07:27
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. And that is all right, Albert. You moved the world once. Let others move it now.
68. 07:32
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are right. I know you are right. It is just hard to watch from the side of the road.
69. 07:37
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then do not watch from the side. Walk slowly. Let them run ahead. You do not have to keep pace to still be walking.
70. 07:46
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is good advice. I should have spoken to you about this years ago.
71. 07:49
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You were too busy arguing with Bohr. Now you have time.