Jürgen Renn and Hanoch Gutfreund

Physicist Professor Hanoch Gutfreund and science historian Jürgen Renn argue that Einstein was far from a lone genius and the revolution he sparked in physics was the culmination of a long-term evolution in science.

Gutfreund and Renn say you can only understand the birth of modern physics if you also understand that long evolution in knowledge. They look at Einstein’s discoveries from 1905 onward and describe how new concepts arose and the basis of modern physics emerged. These transformations eventually culminated in quantum physics and general relativity as the two major conceptual frameworks of modern physics. They say Einstein was dissatisfied with these two unreconciled approaches and spent the rest of his life searching for a unified understanding of physics.

Gutfreund is professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and academic director of its Albert Einstein Archives. Renn is director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena. The two are co-authors of previous books Einstein on Einstein and The Formative Years of Relativity.

Part of the festival’s programme of Jewish and Hebrew literature and culture.

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