Will there Ever be another Einstein?

Will there ever be another Einstein? This is the undercurrent of conversation at Einstein memorial meetings throughout the year. A new Einstein will emerge, scientists say. But it may take a long time. After all, more than 200 years separated Einstein from his nearest rival, Isaac Newton.

Many physicists say the next Einstein hasn't been born yet, or is a baby now. That's because the quest for a unified theory that would account for all the forces of nature has pushed current mathematics to its limits. New math must be created before the problem can be solved.

But researchers say there are many other factors working against another Einstein emerging anytime soon.

For one thing, physics is a much different field today. In Einstein's day, there were a few thousand physicists worldwide, and the theoreticians who could intellectually spar with Einstein probably would fit into a streetcar with seats to spare.

Education is different, too. One crucial aspect of Einstein's training that is overlooked, says Notre Dame science historian Don Howard, is the years of philosophy he read as a teenager -- Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza, among others. It taught him to how to think independently and abstractly about space and time, Howard says, and it wasn't long before he became a philosopher himself.

Originally posted by Dulcimer
yes definately. there are people on this earth now that are the calibre of einstein. I think there are many people out there with great ideas that are afraid to get them out there. More and more people are staying away from science and only living day to day, not thinking about the future.

i think it was einstein that said imagination is more important than knowledge.

Originally posted by Byrd
I agree that the article is mostly a bit of fluff in search of a hard topic. The writer ignores a lot of very worthy people who are alive today (or recently passed) who were of Einstein's caliber.

Take, for instance, Richard Feynman (the polymath.) Einstein was good in just one area... Feynman was a polymath. As for current living equals/surpassors, my vote's on Stephen Hawking.

Originally posted by Indy
I'm not trying to be an Einstein basher. I just want to raise a point. First look at where he worked as a clerk. Did he really come up with all those ideas? And how many of his ideas are actually law? How many have been REALLY proven versus how many just can't be proven wrong instead of right. There is no doubt he was smart. But was he really the greatest ever or just smart and a good BS artist?