While I was up in Truckee this weekend with some of my old college buddies, David said that his daughter had received an assignment which was to pick someone whose birthday we should make into a national holiday. Their rather excellent suggestion was that Albert Einstein would make an excellent choice. As it happens, Albert celebrated his birthday on March 14th, which has also been designated pi day (3.14 being the first three digits of pi, naturally). Albert Einstein was named as Time Magazine’s Person of the Century, and his name is indeed a household word, virtually synonymous with genius.
It truly would be terrific to have a national holiday which emphasized the role of science in the advancement of society. Einstein of course contributed a great deal to the understanding of the physical universe. In the glorious year of 1905, Einstein published papers which established the existance of atoms, explained the photoelectric effect, discovered special relativity and the equivalence between matter and energy. Not a bad year’s work.
In discussing this, I also thought that the birthday of Charles Darwin (February 12th) might also make a good holiday. Besides it’s close proximity to Valentine’s Day (a holiday carefully designed to perpetuate stereotypes of sexual roles), some of our housemates thought that Darwin would be “too controversial” to make a good candidate. Ironically, I think that Einstein’s political activism was certainly more pronounced than Darwin’s, and while Darwin is demonized for ills which he had nothing to do with, Einstein’s pacifism and support for a one world government are largely ignored. Such are the ironic judgements of history.
Oh well. These thoughts are too big for this tiny blog.
Tomorrow I’ll have some more links and information about Ï€.
[tags]Einstein’s Birthday,Pi Day[/tags]
Addendum: Here’s an image from an old posting.
