Einstein and the Working Class

Who would think a bookbinder, an accountant, a tomboy, a vengeful comedian, and geniuses like Newton, Marie Curie and Einstein would have anything in common, let alone the formulation of E=mc2?

Who would think a bookbinder, an accountant, a tomboy, a vengeful comedian, and geniuses like Newton, Marie Curie and Einstein would have anything in common, let alone the formulation of E=mc2?

In his book E=mc2: The Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation, David Bodanis retraces the family tree to explain who really gave birth to the concept of Energy, = (the equal sign), (m) mass, (c) the speed of light, and the formulation of the square (x2).

From the Middle Ages and the formation of Modern English script, to the construction of the Atomic Bomb and the development of advanced theories such as black holes and the space-time continuum, Bodanis maps these historic discoveries.
Ask anyone the meaning of E=mc2 and they’ll probably tell you that it has something to do with Einstein, relativity, or space travel. I thought it was the equation that made Einstein famous. In actuality, it’s what finally launched Einstein’s career as a physicist. If his professors hadn’t ignored Einstein, due to his inquisitive nature, he never would’ve questioned the prevailing wisdom of physics.

Thanks to previous developments, by working class men and women, Einstein was able to question the ‘already discovered’ concepts and proposed the improbable. In the 1900s, mass and energy were two separate concepts, with no possible relation to each other. Einstein took all the discoveries and combined them together, without knowing how to do the math, discovering that energy had mass, and vice versa.

The intellectual ancestors of E=mc2 were normal people who were social outcasts who thought differently. They all had the wrong class, sex, race and age to be recognized as founding fathers or mothers of such concepts, but their ideas stood the test of time. A few lucky ones got to be lab assistants to wealthy scientists, but most of them were just working class people who had extraordinary imagination and stamina. All of them took valuable steps in the realization of the world famous equation: E= mc2.

When it comes to great discoveries and theories, we tend to credit the rich and the famous, but throughout history the men and women who made a difference were people who had daytime jobs, just like you and me. Bodanis’ book E=mc2, like the equation, is readable and precise, and can relate to everyday life just as the people who were behind the ideas in developing it.