Assignment help.

[lizzie.jade]

This is similar to my question about Gay-Lussac.

 

I just need to know what Albert Einsteins specialization is physics was.

[DJBruce]

Relativity would be his field. Most of his time was spent studying and creating general and special relativity. Or you could just say he was a theoretical physicist but that is just a broad term.

[Mr Skeptic]

Unless you meant what degree he got.

[ecoli]

Einstein?? Wasn't he that german guy who worked the patent office?

[ajb]

This is similar to my question about Gay-Lussac.

 

I just need to know what Albert Einsteins specialization is physics was.

 

Do you mean what were his contributions to physics?

 

If so then I would say that his biggest contribution was on special and general relativity, though it must be stated that many people were right behind him.

 

However, his Noble prize (1921) was for "his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Not for his work on general relativity. This is probably due to the fact that the Nobel committee did not really consider theoretical physics as a branch of physics unless it is highly supported by experimental observations. General relativity was not really tested to any high degree of accuracy until the 1960's, after Einstein had died (1955).

 

A short biography can he found at the official Nobel prize website.

 

Relativity would be his field. Most of his time was spent studying and creating general and special relativity. Or you could just say he was a theoretical physicist but that is just a broad term.

 

Not quite DJBruce, Einstein finished his ground breaking work on general relativity in the 1920's. He spent the rest of his life looking at unification schemes. As he did not like quantum mechanics and he never embraced quantum field theory he never got anywhere with it. He made (as far as I know) no contributions to quantum field theory, which is now recognised as the correct language to describe matter and how it interacts with the possible exemption of gravity.

 

An interesting ponder, is what if Einstein did decide that quantum field theory was the way to go?

Edited July 9, 2008 by ajb
multiple post merged

[foodchain]

Do you mean what were his contributions to physics?

 

If so then I would say that his biggest contribution was on special and general relativity, though it must be stated that many people were right behind him.

 

However, his Noble prize (1921) was for "his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Not for his work on general relativity. This is probably due to the fact that the Nobel committee did not really consider theoretical physics as a branch of physics unless it is highly supported by experimental observations. General relativity was not really tested to any high degree of accuracy until the 1960's, after Einstein had died (1955).

 

A short biography can he found at the official Nobel prize website.

 

 

 

Not quite DJBruce, Einstein finished his ground breaking work on general relativity in the 1920's. He spent the rest of his life looking at unification schemes. As he did not like quantum mechanics and he never embraced quantum field theory he never got anywhere with it. He made (as far as I know) no contributions to quantum field theory, which is now recognised as the correct language to describe matter and how it interacts with the possible exemption of gravity.

 

An interesting ponder, is what if Einstein did decide that quantum field theory was the way to go?

 

Einstein did make contributions to QM he just disagreed with the product of the formalism, such as the use of statistics for instance or the probable nature of QM because he thought it lacked determinism, this was the brunt of personal gods don’t play dice remark I think.

 

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I still don’t understand really the whole Schrödinger cat bit, might as well put a box over my head so I can teleport or something

[Air]

This is similar to my question about Gay-Lussac.

 

I just need to know what Albert Einsteins specialization is physics was.

 

He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, [math]E = mc^2[/math]. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

 

 

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

[ajb]

Einstein did make contributions to QM he just disagreed with the product of the formalism, such as the use of statistics for instance or the probable nature of QM because he thought it lacked determinism, this was the brunt of personal gods don’t play dice remark I think.

 

Einstein did make contributions to quantum mechanics, the most notable I guess are Bose-Einstein statistics and the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) thought experiments.

 

I don't recall any "major" result in quantum field theory that is directly attributed to Einstein. Of course, may results do rely on Poincare invariance. For example, Poincare invariance is needed to give a particle interpretation to (pertubative) quantum field theory.

 

So, Einstein's greatest legacy is special (and general) relativity and not his work on quantum mechanics in my opinion.