Physical Trio

U. S. physicists had much to talk about last week. They learned that six weeks hence three of the world's most famed physicists, all Nobel prize winners, were to meet in the U. S. at California Institute of Technology ("Caltech") in Pasadena for a scientific chat. One of the three, Dr. Albert Einstein, has a long way to travel. On Dec. 2, he, his wife Frau Elsa Einstein and his research assistant Dr. Walter Mayer (TIME, Oct. 27) will go aboard the Belgenland, have a month's boat ride to California via Panama. Frau Einstein will act as guard to keep the public from annoying her husband, will not permit him to go ashore in New York. The other two distinguished gentlemen are already in California. One is Dr. Albert Abraham Michelson, on leave of absence from the University of Chicago to repeat his measurement of the speed of light. For measuring a metre in terms of light he received the Nobel prize in 1907. The third gentleman will be the host -Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, head of Caltech, prizewinner in 1923 for his work on electrons.

Dr. Einstein has been considering another trip to U. S. for three years. (He visited in 1921.) He will arrive just in time to see Dr. Michelson perform his light experiments. Since he was a young physics instructor at Annapolis, Dr. Michelson has repeated his measurements from time to time, refining his technique with each performance. In 1926, he shot a beam of light from Mt. Wilson to San Antonio Peak, 22 mi. away, determined that light travels 186,284 mi. per sec. Later he was convinced that he might have made an error of 18.62 mi. per sec. because of earth movements. This time he has prepared a mile-long vacuum tube which will more nearly approach the conditions through which light travels.

Dr. Einstein is interested in getting an exact measure of light's speed because it bears on his theories of the curvature and limitation of space. He will be able to put his eye to Dr. Michelson's eyepiece, watch the light flash in a 32-faced revolving mirror placed at one end of the tube. The mirror is adjusted so that by the time the light beam has raced away from it, down the mile tube and back again, another one of its 32 faces has turned to catch the light. By measuring the time it takes the revolving mirror to turn Dr. Michelson reckons the speed. This performance is different from the classic Michelson-Morley experiment on which Dr. Einstein based his theory of Relativity. The Michelson-Morley work, performed in 1887 in a basement room at Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, was carried on to test the presence of an "ether-drift," required two beams of light traveling perpendicular to one another.

Last week Dr. Einstein found time to lecture in Humboldt Hall, Berlin, to a group of eager young students from the Marxist Worker's School. Beginning with animistic conceptions of primitive people, he traced the theory of causality to scientific determinism. He said he knew of no evidence to prove that everything in the universe happens of necessity. Physicists can no longer believe in the comfortable cause-&-effect sequence of nature's laws. Said he: "Before God, we are relatively all equally wise-or equally foolish. . . . The further we proceed, the more formidable are the riddles facing us. ... Yet I'm no pessimist. Let us always remember that Beauty is also Truth."

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