Decrepit Old Fool

Right now I’m watching the NOVA special, Einstein’s Idea, which traces the history of E=MC² from Faraday to Einstein, and beyond Einstein as it filtered into the world the rest of us know.  A fascinating and frightening chapter emerges in the rise of Nazi Germany, repeating a theme where politics undermined the scientific idea in the execution of Lavoisier in the French revolution.

Narrated by John Lithgow, the show features interviews with physicists and historians, and shows influence of the television series, CSI in its special effects. 

The story is one thread of the Enlightenment held aloft, shining in contrast to the pride of ignorance.  Is there any way to arrange for every high school student in America to see it?  How could we make that happen?

Notes:

• An hour later, after a shower and snack, I imagine the story as portraying the lens of scientific history focusing Enlightenment physics down to a single point of white-hot energy in the 1905 brain of Albert Einstein, whereupon it again diverges out into the scientific and political reality that is the 20th century.

• One of the show’s strengths is the way it showed how the development of scientific ideas is throttled by politics, (including scientific politics), helped by Faraday’s unusual religious outlook, and even propelled forward (and then tragically cut short) by the rather racy love life of Emilie du Châtelet.  Also we’re accustomed to thinking of Einstein as a comical but kindly genius – he was actually sort of a jerk.
• Not sure whether to wish the concluding five minutes (where the narrator ties the story together in a monologue about human inquiry) were less schmaltzy; I found the story exciting enough without that verbage but maybe not everyone would.
• The show’s explanation of why trans-uranic elements tend toward instability (by imagining the nucleus as a drop of water) and how that insight led to the first confirmation that atoms can split is a wonder of clear exposition.
• The associated website has a pretty keen educational edge of its own (just click the picture)