Einstein×Curie

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You know, Marie, I have been thinking lately about Heisenberg. Werner. A brilliant mind, absolutely brilliant. But also—how do I say this—he had a way of making me feel quite old before my time.
2. 00:12
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Old? You were fifty when he published the uncertainty principle. Hardly ancient.
3. 00:17
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Old in spirit! Old in the sense that his quantum mechanics felt like a foreign language even though I had helped midwife the whole business. You must have felt something similar with Irène, no?
4. 00:29
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Irène is my daughter. That is different.
5. 00:32
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   But she won the Nobel Prize for work that extended yours. Surely there was a moment when you realized she had—what is the expression—taken the torch?
6. 00:41
   Marie Curieshare moment

   There was no torch. There was a laboratory and there was work. She did her work. I did mine. We published a paper together in 1923, but by the time she and Frédéric discovered artificial radioactivity in 1934, I was already quite ill. I read the paper from my bed.
7. 01:00
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   And what did you think?
8. 01:01
   Marie Curieshare moment

   I thought the methodology was sound. I thought the measurements were careful. I thought she had earned it.
9. 01:07
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   No pride? No... I don't know, a flutter in the chest?
10. 01:11
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Of course pride. But pride is not the same as surprise. I trained her myself. I knew what she was capable of.
11. 01:19
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Ah, but that is precisely the thing! With Heisenberg, I did not train him, exactly. Bohr did more of that. But I was there, in the background, with my relativity, my light quanta. And then he goes and builds this whole matrix mechanics—matrices, Marie, matrices!—and suddenly I am the one squinting at the equations like a student.
12. 01:40
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You disagreed with him.
13. 01:41
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I disagreed with the interpretation. The mathematics was... well, it worked. That was the problem. It worked too well. God does not play dice with the universe, and yet here was Werner, rolling them across the table and getting the right answer every time.
14. 01:58
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Did you tell him this?
15. 01:59
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Oh, many times! We had wonderful arguments. He was respectful, always respectful, but you could see it in his eyes—he thought I was clinging to the past. And maybe I was. Maybe I am.
16. 02:11
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I do not think you were clinging. I think you were insisting on clarity. That is not the same thing.
17. 02:17
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is generous. But tell me, when Irène surpassed you—and please, I do not mean this as provocation—did you ever feel that pang of... irrelevance?
18. 02:26
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No.
19. 02:27
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No?
20. 02:28
    Marie Curieshare moment

    She did not surpass me. She continued the work. There is a difference. If I discover radium and she discovers artificial radioactivity, we are both adding to the same structure. One brick does not surpass another.
21. 02:40
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But her brick won the Nobel Prize.
22. 02:42
    Marie Curieshare moment

    So did mine. Two of them, in fact.
23. 02:45
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Touché. Still, you see my point. There comes a moment when the pupil—or the successor, or the daughter—does something you could not have done. Or did not do. And you must reckon with that.
24. 02:58
    Marie Curieshare moment

    What is there to reckon with? Science is not a race. It is not a ladder with one person at the top.
25. 03:05
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    In theory, no. In practice, we all want to be the one who sees furthest.
26. 03:10
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then stand on the shoulders of giants, as your Newton said. That is how it works. Irène stood on my shoulders. I stood on Becquerel's. He stood on others. This is not tragedy. This is function.
27. 03:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But did it not sting, even a little, to realize that she had found something you missed? You worked with polonium and radium for decades. Artificial radioactivity was hiding there the entire time.
28. 03:37
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It was not hiding. The tools were not ready. The questions were not yet formed. You cannot blame a scientist for not answering a question that had not been asked.
29. 03:47
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I suppose that is true. But I cannot help feeling that Heisenberg asked a question I should have asked first. Or perhaps I did ask it, but I did not like the answer, so I pretended the question was malformed.
30. 04:00
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You are being too hard on yourself.
31. 04:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Perhaps. Or perhaps I am being honest. There is a special kind of loneliness in watching the world move past your ideas. Even when you know, intellectually, that this is how science progresses.
32. 04:14
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Did Heisenberg make you feel lonely?
33. 04:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Sometimes. Not because of anything he did. He was always kind. But there were moments in conversation when I could feel the gap between us. He lived in a probabilistic universe. I still lived in a deterministic one. We were speaking different languages.
34. 04:32
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And yet you continued to speak.
35. 04:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. What else could I do? Stop talking? Stop thinking? That would be worse than irrelevance. That would be death.
36. 04:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I worked until I could not hold a pipette steady. Even then, I read the papers. I asked Irène questions. I did not stop.
37. 04:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Because you needed to know.
38. 04:50
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Because I wanted to know. Need is different. Need is desperate. Want is alive.
39. 04:56
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is a good distinction. I wanted to understand quantum mechanics even as it frustrated me. I wanted to find the flaw in it, or the deeper layer beneath it. I never did.
40. 05:07
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps there is no flaw.
41. 05:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Perhaps. Or perhaps I simply was not clever enough to find it. That is the thought that wakes me at three in the morning.
42. 05:16
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You are one of the most intelligent men who has ever lived. This is not modesty. It is false modesty, which is worse.
43. 05:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Intelligence is not the same as vision. Heisenberg had vision. He could see into the atom in a way I could not. I helped build the telescope, but he was the one who looked through it and saw stars I insisted were not there.
44. 05:39
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And yet your work is the foundation. Without relativity, without the photoelectric effect, Heisenberg has no quantum mechanics. He knows this. Everyone knows this.
45. 05:50
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes, yes. The foundation. A lovely word for 'obsolete.'
46. 05:54
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Stop it.
47. 05:55
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I am joking. Mostly.
48. 05:57
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You are indulging in self-pity, which is unbecoming. You taught Heisenberg to ask bold questions. If he found an answer that unsettled you, that is not failure. That is success.
49. 06:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are right. Of course you are right. But it is still strange, is it not? To be the bridge and not the far shore.
50. 06:17
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I do not think of myself as a bridge. I think of myself as a brick. One brick in a very long wall.
51. 06:24
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A brick that glows in the dark, perhaps.
52. 06:26
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That is a bit too literal.
53. 06:28
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I could not resist. But tell me truly—did you never feel, even for a moment, that Irène had gone somewhere you could not follow?
54. 06:35
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I felt proud. I felt tired. I felt curious about where she would go next. But I did not feel left behind, no. She took my tools and sharpened them. That is what I hoped she would do.
55. 06:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think that is the difference between us, then. I hoped Heisenberg would use my tools and confirm my vision. Instead, he used them to dismantle it.
56. 06:57
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Did he dismantle it? Or did he complicate it?
57. 07:00
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Complicate. Yes. That is a better word. He did not prove me wrong so much as he proved me incomplete. Which is somehow worse.
58. 07:08
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Why worse?
59. 07:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Because incompleteness suggests there was more to see and I missed it. If he had proven me entirely wrong, at least I could say the terrain was unmapped. But to be incomplete means the map was there and I simply did not draw all the borders.
60. 07:24
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No one draws all the borders. That is the point. Each generation draws a little more.
61. 07:30
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I know. I know this in my bones. But knowing and feeling are not the same.
62. 07:35
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No. They are not.
63. 07:38
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Did you feel it? When Irène won the Nobel Prize? Did you feel anything other than pride?
64. 07:43
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I felt relief.
65. 07:44
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Relief?
66. 07:45
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That she would be taken seriously. That her work would not be dismissed because she was a woman, or because she was my daughter. The Nobel Prize is a shield as much as it is an honor. I was relieved she would have that shield.
67. 07:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I had not thought of it that way.
68. 08:00
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You would not need to. You are a man. And you are Einstein.
69. 08:04
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Fair enough. Though being Einstein comes with its own peculiar burdens.
70. 08:09
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I do not doubt it.
71. 08:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So. We have agreed, then, that our pupils surpassed us. Or complicated us. Or continued us. Depending on how generous we are feeling.
72. 08:19
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I have not agreed that Irène surpassed me. But yes, we can agree she moved the work forward.
73. 08:24
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And that is enough?
74. 08:26
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It is everything. What else could I possibly want?
75. 08:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    To be right. To have the final word. To see the face of God and not have Him be blurry.
76. 08:34
    Marie Curieshare moment

    God's face is always blurry. That is why we keep looking.
77. 08:41
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Yes, I suppose you are right. Though I still wish the picture were a bit clearer.
78. 08:46
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then keep working. That is all any of us can do.
79. 08:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I am trying. Even now, I am still trying.
80. 08:53
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Good. Then you have not been surpassed. You are still in the race.
81. 08:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A race with no finish line. How exhausting.
82. 09:00
    Marie Curieshare moment

    How exhilarating.