# What made Albert Einstein so great (or a genius)?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-albert-einstein-so-great-or-a-genius/214865>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 23, 2003, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-albert-einstein-so-great-or-a-genius/214865 "2003-11-23T17:58:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![SlowMindThinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@SlowMindThinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlowMindThinking)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2003, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-albert-einstein-so-great-or-a-genius/214865/41 "2003-12-02T00:59:25Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jackelope \*  
> \*\*What language would they be translated from? Newton was English, and didn’t Einstein publish in English-language journals? Or did Newton write in Latin and Einstein in German?
> 
> (I have a suspicion I’m gonna feel really, really stupid when I find out the answer to this question.) \*\*

Yes, you are.  
Latin.

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**Author:** ![SlowMindThinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@SlowMindThinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlowMindThinking)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-albert-einstein-so-great-or-a-genius/214865/42 "2003-12-02T01:08:53Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Xavier \*  
> \*\*Why then did he disagree with the fundemental principles of QM? There’s this fine quote that is almost always attributed to him,
> 
> “God does not play dice”
> 
> To my understanding, this had to do with the unpredictability and uncertainty of the Q world, which he deeply resisted. He felt that all events should be predictable, even though time and again experimental evidence was showing that QM was correct. His problems with unification arose from trying to bridge the Q world with that of the rest of classical physics. So why the fuzzinesss if he had a helping hand in developing it? \*\*

Not quite. There is a great quote of Einstein talking to Bohr that goes like this “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking?” Einstein may have objected to QM absolute randomness; I’ll admit I don’t know. I do know he was bothered by the fact that quantum objects are not in some given state until that is measured. For example, position is a state. If a photon leaves a Quasar somewhere in the deep reaches of space, and there is a “simple” gravitational lens between there and here so that the photon can travel either of two paths, the QM says that the photon is “in a superposition of having traveled both paths”. If you perform an experiment that can determine which path the photon took, instantaneously, the photon “picks” a path, and is in a state of having travelled that path. Bizarre, and Einstein never accepted it.

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