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Proof of entanglement
The most famous blackboard in the world resides in Oxford’s History of Science Museum. It was salvaged from the cleaners after Albert Einstein gave an Oxford lecture in 1931, and I confess to being one of the many visitors to gaze upon it with awe. It is a talisman, its continuing existence a cultural recognition of the thrall, and importance, of genius.
Andrew Robinson, an Oxford chemistry graduate and a prolific author, opens Einstein in Oxford with the blackboard story. Then he shatters our illusions with Einstein’s own view on the matter, for the great physicist took a dim view of ‘personality cults’. As he told his diary, ‘One could easily see the jealousy of distinguished English scholars. So I protested; but this was perceived as false modesty.’
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Einstein and the Quantum Revolutions
by Alain Aspect translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan
University of Chicago Press, US$15.99 hb, 94 pp
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