Related papers: On the first Solvay Congress in 1911
From an astronomical and relativistic point of view, the Great War began with the August, 1914 capture and imprisonment of the members of a German eclipse expedition that had gone to the Crimea to look, at the request of Einstein, for…
In 1905 the well-known physicist Max Planck was coeditor of the Annalen der Physik, and he accepted Einstein's paper on light quanta for publication, even though he disliked the idea of "light quanta". Einstein's relativity paper was…
Modern atomic and nuclear physics took its start in the early part of the twentieth century, to a large extent based upon experimental investigations of radioactive phenomena. Foremost among the pioneers of the new kind of physics was…
Albert Einstein accepted a 'special' visiting professorship at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in February 1920. Although his appointment should have been a mere formality, it took until October of that year before Einstein…
This is the text of my report presented at the 29th Solvay Conference on Physics on `The Structure and Dynamics of Disordered Systems' held in Bruxelles from October 19 to 21, 2023. I consider the problem of minimizing a random energy…
We go through Bohr's talk about complementary features of quantum theory at the Volta Conference in September 1927, by collating a manuscript that Bohr wrote in Como with the unpublished stenographic report of his talk. We conclude - also…
The Milanese period in Albert Einstein's life is a key one for the understanding of the development of his scientific questioning. While being a student in Z\"urich from 1896, Einstein returned regularly to Milan to meet his family for the…
Einstein is considered by many as the father of quantum physics in some sense. Yet there is an unshakable view that he was wrong on quantum physics. Although it may be a subject of considerable debate, the core of his allegedly wrong…
In 1905, Einstein formulated his special relativity for point particles. For those particles, his Lorentz covariance and energy-momentum relation are by now firmly established. How about the hydrogen atom? It is possible to perform Lorentz…
We examine the English translation of Albert Einstein's groundbreaking 1925 paper on Bose-Einstein condensation. We guide readers to execute the calculations Einstein outlined for the specific heat above the condensation temperature,…
The purpose of the conference (the fourth in the series of Vaxjo conferences) was to bring together scientists (physicists, mathematicians and philosophers) who are interested in foundations of quantum physics. An emphasis was made on both…
Stochastic diffusion equation, which attained prominence with Einstein's work on Brownian motion at the beginning of the twentieth century, was first formulated by Laplace a century earlier as part of his work on Central Limit Theorem.…
Einstein was in many ways like a detective on a mystery trail, though in his case he was on the trail of nature's mysteries and not some murder mystery! And like all good detectives he had a style. It consisted of taking facts that he knew…
The idea that the universe is filled with the thermal radiation now termed the Cosmic Microwave Background was first discussed in eleven publications in the year 1948. These papers offer a detailed example of the process of development of a…
A physically real wave associated with any moving particle and travelling in a surrounding material medium was introduced by Louis de Broglie in a series of short notes in 1923 and in a more complete form in his thesis defended in Paris on…
Based on comments made at the 23rd Solvay Conference, December 2005, Brussels.
The first ``Convegno Informale su Quantum Groups'' was held in Florence from February 3 to 6, 1993. This Convegno was conceived as an informal meeting to bring together all the italian people working in the field of quantum groups and…
The Dulong-Petit limiting law for the specific heats of solids, one of the first general results in thermodynamics, has provided Mendeleev with a powerful tool for devising the periodic table and gave an important support to Boltzmann's…
The radical changes in the concepts and approach in Physics at the turn of the Nineteenth century were so deep, that is acknowledged as a revolution. However, in 1970 Thomas Kuhn's careful reconstruction of the researches on the black body…
The present form of quantum mechanics is based on the Copenhagen school of interpretation. Einstein did not belong to the Copenhagen school, because he did not believe in probabilistic interpretation of fundamental physical laws. This is…