Podcast: Einstein, Relativity, and Modern Physics Part 2

We had a bit of technical difficulty requiring some post production editing, but I’m delighted to be able to share Part II of my discussion with William Ramsey. We spoke on June 25 about Einstein’s 1921 trip to America, about “Jewish physics,” and about the broader social and political trends influencing modern science. You’ll find the material we discussed you’ll find in two of my posts:

This meticulously researched post reveals how Einstein’s 1921 American tour, ostensibly a Zionist fundraising mission, transformed him into a cultural icon through a perfect storm of factors: a possible Edward Bernays publicity campaign, a fortunate misunderstanding where crowds gathering for Weizmann were assumed to be Einstein fans, tensions between assimilated and radical American Jews that led establishment media to promote Einstein while downplaying the Zionist cause, and Einstein’s natural charisma with reporters. The visit raised $750,000 for Hebrew University while cementing Einstein’s celebrity status, contributing to a broader 1920s cultural shift where science replaced religion as the ultimate authority: creating the paradox of scientific truth being used to argue that no absolute truth exists, with Einstein embodying this contradiction as a figure whose fame transcended his actual scientific contributions and who would later dismiss critics as antisemitic while holding views that might today be considered antisemitic himself.

This similarly extensively researched Substack post examines the historical concept of “Jewish physics,” beginning with Einstein’s own observations about distinctive Jewish intellectual traits and investigating whether relativity and quantum mechanics can truly be characterized as “Jewish science.” I demonstrate that both theories emerged from multicultural collaborations involving Jewish scientists like Einstein, Born, and Bohr alongside non-Jewish contributors like Heisenberg, Dirac, and Fermi, making ethnic categorization problematic. The post traces how legitimate scientific criticism of relativity became entangled with antisemitism through figures like Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, who initially had cordial relationships with Einstein but later became opponents due to professional rivalries, personal tragedies, and political polarization during the Weimar Republic. I argue that what critics dismissed as “Jewish physics” - abstract, mathematical, removed from concrete models - was actually more influenced by German idealist philosophy and Austrian positivism, and I suggest that Einstein’s tendency to dismiss all critics as “ignorant or antisemitic” may have been counterproductive, contributing to the polarization that ultimately led to the Nazi “Deutsche Physik” movement and the devastating persecution of Jewish scientists.

Here are a couple of podcast versions:

And you’ll find Part I of our discussion, here:

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