On August 4, United States time, Li Zhengdao, a famous Chinese physicist, Nobel laureate in physics, and foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, passed away at the age of 98. Tsung-Dao Lee has been engaged in physics research for a long time, and has done a series of landmark work in the fields of particle physics theory, atomic nucleus theory and statistical physics. This article is a speech delivered by Tsung-Dao Lee at the World Physics Year Commemorative Conference, briefly reviewing Einstein's academic achievements and interactions with Einstein, and highly praising Einstein's historical contributions to the development of human society. This is an excerpt from an article published in Science and Technology Review in May 2005 to express the deep memory of Mr. Tsung-Dao Lee.
Albert ·Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, Chinese issued a stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's birth in 1979.
Fig.1 The stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's birth issued by the Chinese People's Post in 1979
In 1905, Albert Einstein published four academic papers:
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第一篇是A new method for determining the molecular size（测量分子大小的新方法），这是他的博士论文；
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第二篇是Light quantum(光量子)(Annals of Physics 17,132);
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第三篇是Brownian motion(布朗运动)(Annals of Physics 17,549);
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第四篇是Special theory of relativity（狭义相对论）（Annalender Physick 17，891）。
Fig.2 In honor of Albert Einstein, UNESCO designated 2005 as the World Year of Physics
In honor of Albert Einstein, UNESCO designated 2005 as the World Year of Physics. In order to commemorate these milestone academic articles listed above and in response to the decision of the United Nations, the China Association for Science and Technology and the Chinese Physical Society held a series of commemorative activities in 2005 to commemorate the World Year of Physics in China.
It is an honour for me to be with you today in my hometown of China, to commemorate Albert Einstein and to speak at the World Physical Year Commemorative Conference.
Einstein cared deeply about China throughout his life, and he visited Shanghai twice in 1922. Therefore, Chinese scholars and young people have a high interest and understanding of the theory of relativity, and the Chinese people also have high respect for Einstein. The "Republic of China Daily" once carried the news that Einstein was officially notified by Sweden of winning the Nobel Prize after he arrived in Shanghai. Mr. Dai Nianzu of the Department of Physics of Capital Normal University published an article "Shanghai, Einstein and His Nobel Prize" in the latest issue of the journal Physics, which has a detailed record of Einstein's two visits to Shanghai.
In 1931, Albert Einstein met Charles Chaplin in the United States. Chaplin usually has a mustache in photos, but the one with a mustache at the time of this meeting is not Chaplin. Chaplin said to Einstein: We are both celebrities, but we are famous for different reasons; I became famous because anybody knew what I was doing; But you became famous because no one knew what you were doing.
Figure 3 Einstein and Chaplin met in United States in 1931
This, of course, is Chaplin's humor. Einstein's success was due to his understanding of the laws of nature, and his theories were in line with the evolution of the natural world as a whole.
In 2004, the Macau S.A.R. Region of China issued a stamp: What kind of universe? From our astronomical observations, we already know that the energy of conventional matter that we humans can perceive (that is, the part of the universe that we already know) accounts for only 5% or less of the energy of the entire universe, and the other 95% of the energy is not composed of matter as we know it now.
The Earth, the Sun, and all the nebulae we see are made up of electrons, protons, neutrons, and a few of them, antimatter: positrons, antiprotons...... However, such substances as we know make up less than 5% of our universe. Most of the energy in our universe is dark matter and dark energy, which can neither be seen nor know what it is. Dark matter has no effect on all the light, electric fields, magnetic fields, and strong effects that we can measure, but dark matter has a gravitational field (gravity is the gravitational field). We know from the gravitational field that dark matter exists, and that the total energy of dark matter is 5 times or more than the total energy of our kind of matter. But we don't know anything about the other properties of dark matter!
The nature of dark energy is even stranger, it can produce a kind of negative pressure. Albert Einstein hypothesized the existence of negative stress in the early 20th century. Later, because there was no experimental support, Einstein abandoned this direction. In fission and fusion reactions, there is a small difference in the mass of the substance before and after the reaction. According to Einstein's famous mass-energy formula E=mc2, these small mass differences can be converted into huge amounts of energy. And dark energy can completely disappear the mass of matter and completely convert it into energy!
In recent years, through the Hubble Space Telescope, we have discovered that our universe is not only expanding, but expanding "at an accelerated pace." From the acceleration of its expansion, it can be deduced that it expands due to the presence of a negative pressure, that is, dark energy. And the total amount of this dark energy accounts for 70% of the energy of the whole universe. I've been doing some new theories about this direction recently.
Energy occupies such an important place in our universe that Einstein's influence on the development of science in the 21st century is likely to be greater than that of the 20th century!
In 1952, I co-authored two articles on statistical mechanics with Yang Zhenning. After Einstein saw it, he asked his assistant Bruria Kaufman to come to us and ask if we could discuss it with him. We immediately said, of course. We walked into his office. On his desk were our articles, which Einstein said he had read and found interesting. At the same time, I saw that there were very dense equations written on the paper in front of him, and he was repeating some of our calculations. Einstein first asked about the basis of the Grand Canonical Ensemble used in the article. Obviously, he was not familiar with the concept. It came as a surprise to me. Because I thought the giant canonical system was created for his work on the Bose-Einstein Condensation in 1925. Einstein asked us about the details of Lattice Gas. His questions all focus on the basic concepts of physics. He was satisfied with my answer. He spoke English with a rather heavy German accent, and he spoke slowly. We had a very broad discussion and we talked for a long time, about an hour. Finally, he stood up, shook my hand and said, "Wish you future success in physics." I remember his hands were large, thick and warm. It was truly one of the most memorable experiences for me. I was deeply touched by his blessings. Our discussion is right in front of this chair. Three years later, Albert Einstein passed away, and this picture was taken a day or two after his death.
Figure 4 It was at this table that Lee Tsung-dao and Yang Chen-ning discussed with Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955, and today is April 15, three days before the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death.
We commemorate Einstein's contribution to physics 100 years ago, 1905, and we also commemorate Einstein's lifelong contribution to mankind and his dedication to science. Our Earth is a small planet in the solar system, and our Sun does not seem to be a surprising star among the 400 billion stars in the entire galaxy of galactic nebulae, and our entire galaxy of galactic nebulae is also very small in the entire universe. However, because Einstein lived on our little earth, our blue earth is more distinctive, intelligent, and morally than other parts of the universe.
About author:Tsung-Dao LEE, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of United States, Academician of the Third World Academy of Sciences, mainly engaged in the research of high-energy physics and particle physics, Professor of the Department of Physics of United States Colombia University, Director of China Advanced Science and Technology Center.
The original article was published in the 5th issue of Science and Technology Review in 2005.
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