Einstein, Schrödinger, Gibbs, and Newton

1:10:59>> Yes. >> So, now we are moving on to shelf number two after placing our first shelf of textbooks with an esoteric collection in this selection. >> Yep, we're going to start off our esoteric collection with relativity by the one and only Albert Einstein. This is a pretty short book. Um it's quite fancy if you look at the pages. Like it's like uh like ruffled pages, you know what I mean? >> Harry Potter book. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of cool. Um 2007 is is the is the date that I have here. Krishna Chandra, December 19th, 2007. I didn't understand anything about relativity. [laughter] 2007, I was in

1:11:39sophomore year of high school, okay? Um but the magic of relativity is you can like try and read it even in high school and kind of get it. Okay, it's not like quantum mechanics where I have I still have no idea what the what the hell they're talking about. Relativity is like one of these nice things about physics that just kind of makes sense the more and more you think about it. Um and Einstein, fair play to him, he's a really good explainer of relativity. Okay, it's not like Heisenberg where he wrote the 1925 Umdeutung paper and then and then people still read it today and it's like, "How did you come up with that?" Relativity, especially special relativity, kind of makes sense. And then when you graduate to general

1:12:20relativity, it still kind of makes sense. It's a beautiful textbook in his own words, the man himself, Albert Einstein. >> First in our esoteric collection. >> Next one. Arnold Sommerfeld. >> Yes. >> We've talked about Arnold Sommerfeld. Um he's the mentor to so many of the greats, including Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg. He was um Heisenberg's PhD advisor and kind of saved his PhD thesis because Heisenberg nearly [clears throat] failed and Arnold Sommerfeld had to go to bat for him and make sure that he passed and go on to greatness. Um Arnold Sommerfeld never won the Nobel

1:13:00Prize, but he mentored something like 10 Nobel Prize winners, including including Hans Bethe, um Wolfgang Pauli, uh just some of the greats of all time. He had the first collection of lectures on theoretical physics. Um nowadays a lot of times people use Landau- Lifshitz, which we covered um with the mechanics textbook that I had earlier. Landau-Lifshitz also has um a textbook on fluid mechanics, statistical physics, field theory, and all all all the works, right? And it's kind of become a gold standard for graduate textbooks, but before Landau-Lifshitz, there was Arnold Sommerfeld. Um

1:13:41this is volume six, partial differential equations in physics. You can imagine he had a mechanics, he has an optics, he has a statistical mechanics, one of the greats of all time. >> And one of our earliest episodes >> Yes. >> we covered uh that relationship in depth, which again, Mr. Shill here, >> Mhm. >> uh some of our library of previous episodes is just phenomenal around the history, >> Mhm. >> uh particularly in physics. And so if you're interested in the relationship between these people and how that relates to the growth of the field and our understanding, um some of that it's like our episode 2 3 4 5 >> Yeah. >> were very heavy uh in in that arena in

1:14:22some of these early developments of the >> Yeah, it's it's it's how we first got viral on Instagram. >> Yeah. >> Is with the Sommerfeld-Heisenberg episode. >> Yes. >> Where we covered the 1925 paper and the 100-year anniversary of it. >> Yes. >> Back in 2025, last year. >> Yes. >> A year later, >> A year later, look at look at us. Who do you Who would have thunk? Not me. >> Yeah, not [laughter] me. Um another one from our previous episode. >> Schrödinger's What is Life? >> Yes. >> We covered this in detail in our DNA episode where we covered James Watson and his work with DNA. What is Life? is a seminal textbook in biological physics. This is where a

1:15:02physicist tried to tackle the question what is life with biology. This is where he predicted that DNA would be a aperiodic crystal. Why? Because it has to store information, which means that it can't just be the same thing over and over again. It can't be something like starch or cellulose, which is just glucose glucose glucose glucose everywhere because there's no information. It's just all glucose. But if you have something like a aperiodic crystal, like something with bits, where it's a 01100110, then you can all of a sudden store all of the information that is needed for life. And he reasoned from first

1:15:44principles that if we wanted a molecular basis for information storage, we needed something like a crystal that had regular parts but different sequences to store all of the diversity. He predicted the structure of DNA before we even knew that it was DNA that we were looking for. It's absolutely incredible. Um Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? >> The Double Helix episode is a great way to dig into that concept that you just covered, which uh is fascinating to me. Um and also the history of the discovery of the double helix and kind of some of the non-scientific social drama uh

1:16:25of the real-world humanity that relates to these early discoveries is also quite interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's it's absolutely amazing. Okay, this one, S. Chandrasekhar. >> Chandrasekhar >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Um Chandrasekhar's Radiative Transfer. This is a seminal textbook in astrophysics. It's talking about um how radiative phenomenon goes through ionized atmospheres, stellar atmospheres. This thing is like a end-all be-all for that subject. It's absolutely incredible. He uses principles of symmetry to talk about radiative transfer in astrophysics, which is very different from how normal

1:17:06astrophysicist used to do it at the time. Normal astrophysicists used to make a phenomenological model. They'd make some kind of model that would be like, "Oh, okay, so this is happening and then this is happening." Here, he went through um like symmetry principles to be like, "This needs to happen because of the symmetry of the stellar atmosphere, because of the symmetry of the geometry and things like that." It's a very physics-y approach. Now, I'm going to be honest. I've only read very small parts of this, but um I asked my father, who's an astrophysicist and a big fan of Chandrasekhar, and he has like five or six textbooks. Um and this is on loan, by the way, from the um Chandrasekhar family

1:17:47uh exhibition. So, I he wants it back maybe in like >> It's on It's on permanent loan. >> on permanent [laughter] loan. Um so I asked him, you know, of all of the Chandrasekhar textbooks, which would you say is his most seminal work? And he said, "Radiative transfer." And I'm like, "Okay." >> Thank you. >> [laughter] >> That's going in the FFP pod library. Um absolutely legendary astrophysicist and physicist in general. So, I'm glad I'm glad that we have this thing here. All right. Next one, Gibbs. >> Yeah. >> Elementary principles in statistical mechanics. This is the graduation of

1:18:29statistical mechanics into a formal field where we go from Boltzmann Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, Rayleigh-Jeans law, all the way up to now. Gibbs talking about chemical potential, talking about the Gibbs ensemble. This is the book that put American theoretical physics on the map, okay? Now, he is from Yale University but we'll forgive him for that. He still deserves to be in our library. And I had to do a lot of soul searching >> Yeah, I plead the fifth. >> to to to to to really convince myself. But, you know, Willard Gibbs what we covered him in the 250-year America anniversary. This guy

1:19:10was definitely a legend, and he put American science, American theoretical physics on the map. He completed the Gibbs ensemble to create like all of the statistical mechanics that we know and love today. Um this is why chemists love statistical mechanics, it's because of Willard Gibbs. Or maybe they hate him, I don't know. But, in any case, you can't deny that it's hella useful. >> [laughter] >> And it describes chemistry, right? So, >> We've remained number one in theoretical sense, and that may not continue to be the case unless we continue to invest in the hard and fundamental sciences. >> That's right. All right, the next

1:19:51esoteric addition, Albert Einstein, philosopher scientist. This is actually a collection of essays about Albert Einstein by the preeminent physicists and mathematicians of his time. There are several biographies of Albert Einstein. I didn't want to include the biographies of Albert Einstein because they're they're written today based on stuff that people said. This is what people actually said, okay? There's an essay from Niels Bohr talking about how much of a legend Albert Einstein is. There's an essay from Kurt Gödel talking about how ridiculous Albert Einstein is.

1:20:32Wolfgang Pauli, Arnold Sommerfeld, like all of the who's who of people who could who could say stuff about the goat and this and this is it, right? It's like imagine interviewing the star NBA players >> Yep. >> in Jordan's time >> Yeah. >> and they're all talking about how ridiculous Jordan is. And how like Jordan is here >> Yeah. >> and like we're we're we're a step below. >> Yeah. >> Right? That's this book. >> The the football reference would be uh if you had today all the star footballers talking about Messi. >> Yeah. >> You listen to Beckham, you listen to Neymar, you listen to >> Henry. >> Thierry Henry, Vinnie, all these, you

1:21:14know, legends who in their own right have earned the right to be at their plateau. >> Yeah. >> Um not not quite the same. Kind of the same. >> Kind of the same. >> But Einstein to me feels like Messi is an alien. >> Yeah. >> He's absolutely an alien. >> Yeah. >> Uh but he's still you can still he's still he's still like, you know, in the same region. >> Yeah, yeah. >> There's there's there's distance. >> Yeah, there's distance. >> But like Cristiano Ronaldo is like people say people argue. >> Yeah. >> I think with Einstein no one argues. >> Yeah, no one argues. >> He's the one. >> He's the one. In the 1900s he's the one. >> He's the one. >> Yeah. >> And so, you know, >> Yeah.

1:21:54>> Um it's so word for word, bar for bar, what people actually said. >> Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like hear it from Niels Bohr himself about how ridiculous Einstein was. >> No rose-colored glasses, no postmodern interpretation. >> Yeah, yeah. It's just the guy's like, "No, this is this is insane. >> [laughter] >> How is this a single human being?" All right, speaking of ridiculous single human beings, >> Yes. >> the greatest work in scientific literature is Newton's Principia. And our library would not be complete without a copy of Newton's Principia. This is the beginning of the scientific revolution as we see

1:22:35it today where we think of the universe as understandable. We think of the universe as something that mathematics can tackle and describe in a way that is unprecedented before him. Okay? He said that the same laws that apply on Earth are the ones that apply in the cosmos, right? He said the same way that the apple falls from the tree is the same way that the moon falls towards the Earth. It's not that he noticed the apple. He was like sitting under the apple tree and he's like, "Oh, I got hit by an apple. Apples fall." Everyone knows apples fall, right? Galileo described how all apples and

1:23:16like, you know, balls of lead will fall at the same rate. That wasn't the key thing. The key thing was the way that the apple falls is also the same way that the moon is falling. And if I were to include the three laws that he came up with, the fact that the moon is moving and it's it's just falling in the direction of the force. There's a force that is centripetal that is 1 over r squared. Um all of those things He also invented calculus, by the way, on the way to to describe everything about the world. Calculus was the side hustle. It's like, "I need something to explain it. Let me just invent >> Yeah. >> And And what what I really love about

1:23:56this is like when he was describing, for example, Kepler's laws and um describing how the moon falls and how a comet goes around the sun, he didn't actually use any calculus. He just used geometric constructions. Like the stuff like the compass and needle stuff from way back in the Greek days, that's what he used to describe all of the mathematics because he knew the calculus was going to be this new thing and he didn't want to over index on this new thing that he had invented unless people say oh oh you you just you just made up some stuff to like just but here it's like no there it's just geometry and the few rules that I made. It's absolutely beautiful and like the

1:24:37work that he did you know he described Kepler's laws which were established like 50 years earlier with just pure geometry. He's like there's a triangle and the triangle has this much and that's why it's going to fall this much and the areas are going to be equal to when it's closer and when it's farther away. Absolutely incredible. The genius of this guy and he's another one of these Einsteins where all of his peers were like what is going on? How is this a real person? >> Alien. >> Yeah. Um Joseph Bernoulli the guy behind Bernoulli's principle he was like what what is this guy? >> [laughter] >> Which is like again crazy to even say. >> there's a guy who has a thing named after him and he's talking about Newton like I don't I don't know dude.

1:25:18>> I don't know. I don't know. >> I just came up with one thing he came up with everything >> Absolutely amazing. Yeah. Newton's Principia the greatest the greatest work in scientific literature and I will stand by that. >> Some some of the most legendary additions to the esoteric collection in the library our second shelf of three. Again the library is a living document and so we have three remaining books that we will go through as we place our esoteric collection onto the shelf. And if you wanted an excuse to migrate from being an audio listener to watching the podcast on video coming

1:25:59soon to Apple podcast but already available on YouTube and Spotify. Uh we're having a great time today and missing how amazing uh these look and Christian holding the book up so he makes sure it gets in the clip on Instagram. >> Yeah yeah yeah no I only did that for with [laughter] you on one. >> For long-time listeners of the podcast,