E = MC²
C comes from Celeritas, latin for swift, speedy .
Speedy indeed, 670 616 629 mph.
It started with Lavoisier, Faraday had the idea that light was electromagnetic, Maxwell had the math to prove him right.
Emilie, Marquise Du Chatelet 1706-1749 . an extremely curious and intelligent woman who would not suffer or
accept the gender discrimination of her time. She translated ‘Principia Mathematica’ of Isaac Newton and disagreed
with him about E = M X V. She was very bold indeed. She turned out to be right by siding with Gotfried Leibniz that it
was E = M X V² , which was at the basis of Einstein squaring the speed of light in his well known formula.
Einstein was obsessed with the idea of finding out the nature of light. After he advanced his theory, he was lucky to
find the great Max Planck on his side.
That E =M was an amazing discovery and E = MC² implied a tremendous amount of E in a very small amount of
matter.
(In the sun four million tons of matter a second is turned into energy, light)
Another amazing woman who was not given her due during her life time was Lise Meitner who worked many years
with Otto Hahn.
She discovered that bombarding the nucleus of the Uranium atom with neutron, split the nucleus. A theory she
explained to Otto Hahn over the phone, because she had to leave Germany due to her being Jewish. Otto Hahn who
was finishing the experiment they had both worked on, told everybody that the explanation of the experiment’s
result was his, when in fact it was entirely Lise Witner’s.
History was corrected, but much, much later.
[ An aside ]
Which reminds me that we would not think of blaming science for the discrimination due to the cultural milieu at
that particular time and place. So why are we so quick to blame religion for war caused by the cultural milieu at a
particular time and place.]
Then there is Lisa Randall , a leading theoretical physicist and expert on particle physics,
string theory and cosmology.
After reading “Warped Passages”, Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Universe’s Hidden Dimensions. I became a fervent
admirer. Her theories that lead to the fact that our 3D universe might be a boundary of a much bigger multi-dimension
universe,. will be tested in coming experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.
Her work has attracted enormous interest and was the most quoted (cited) in all of science a few years ago.
