Quote from howellpar:
Subject: Einstein's birthday (a few days late):
This month is the anniversary of Albert Einstein's birthday. He was born March 14, 1879. Few remember that the Nobel Prize winner married his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal, after his first marriage dissolved in 1919.
He stated that he was attracted to Elsa because she was well endowed.
He postulated that if you are attracted to women with large breasts, the attraction is stronger if there is a DNA connection.
It was called Einstein's Theory of Relative Titty
Nice... brings to mind this [genuine] article:
Einstein, Feynman and other famous swingers.
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/getting_physical.php
Late last year, researchers in England published a study purporting to establish a link between creative output and number of sexual partners. As the lead author (under)stated, âCreative people are often considered to be very attractive and get lots of attention as a result.â
The theoretical physicists of the 20th century were no exception. Promiscuous chasers by profession, physicists ever-pursue objects that lie partially hidden to the immediate senses, but are evidently there behind natureâs many layers. The best physicists are able to tease a peek beneath all that partially-covered exterior, as any pickup artist would: with a mix of cleverness and straightforward arrogance. This is hardly just simple metaphor; for many of the greatest physicists, this libertine modus operandi also fueled their private lives.
Schrödinger, Curie, Einstein, Feynman, Oppenheimerâ¦the finest names of pre-Cold War 20th-century physics, some of whom gave us the most concise theories ever posited, form a roster of lamentable philanderers. Albert Einstein was completely âgiven to flirtationâ and had legions of affairs. Caltech professor and bestselling raconteur Richard Feynman was probably the only Nobel Prize winner to befriend porn stars, claim a foolproof manner for bedding women and do his calculations on napkins in strip clubs. And it wasnât just the guys: Marie Curie was relentlessly hounded by the press for seducing away her late-husbandâs former student from his wife and kids.
âLibertines, both male and female, have always been around in math and physics,â says Jennifer Ouellette, who writes on physics history and is associate editor of the American Physical Societyâs newsletter. Yet today, while physicists still spend day and night chasing nature, the era of chasing skirts â or knickersâseems to have passed. Where have all the physics playbâer, sociable persons gone?
Between the world wars, physicists hunted the big ideas and had the big personalitiesâand sex drivesâto match. They worked and played under a unique confluence of circumstance. The sexual norms of the time, their status, the sexiness of their projects and achievements all conspired to make the top physicists supremely desirable.
The most shameless cad of the group was Richard Feynman. When he once nearly crashed his car while eyeing a passing beauty, his only excuse was, âI only see the women, the rest is all a blur.â He even kept a picture in his office of one acquaintance, buxom adult film star Candi Samples, signed, âTo Big Dick, Love from Candi.â
Remarkably, some physicistsâ trysts seem to have actually led to physical insight: While once floundering on a problem, Erwin Schrödinger shacked up in an alpine villa for an extended holiday with âan old girlfriendâ and, in the âlate erotic outburstâ that followed, produced the eponymous equation that would net him the Nobel.
At the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos, the assembled brain trust was as hard-partying as a troop of college kids on spring break. Weekends with the physicists were âbig and brassy,â replete with poker and booze. They played so hard that the program tried to quarantine the womenâs dorms; as one boss euphemized, âThe girls had been doing a flourishing business of requiting the needs of our young men.â So many babies resulted that Robert Oppenheimer (or his boss, nobodyâs really sure), himself having tried to run off with the wife of Linus Pauling and bed the wife of another colleague, was told to halt the extracurricular activities. (Oppenheimer didnât.)
So whatâs happened since? Not to bemoan the loss of machismo, but todayâs physicists seem to lack that same rat-pack panache that old-school physicists brought to the blackboard. Considering the unparalleled prestige that the Atomic Era physicists enjoyed, itâs hardly astonishing that sexual power plays âlike those that often transpire between an executive and assistant, or even a president and an intern âcould have resulted. And though modern theoreticians still pursue big ideas, their intellectual forebears revealed so many of natureâs broad physical features that, now, only the finer areas are left to explore.
Ouellette points to another possible explanation: âThis stuff still goes on, we just donât hear about it. The history books on the great physics personalities of the late 20th century have yet to be written.â She points to a famous professor whom âeveryone knows ditchedâ one woman for another: âitâs gossiped about, but you never read about it [because] the science is what really matters.â Thereâs also Stephen Hawking, whose affair was detailed in the British tabloid. Perhaps there are others.
And perhaps, with the new Large Hadron Collider ready to go online next yearâif physics is now âjust another discipline,â as Nature recently editorializedâits time will come again. In the meantime, it might help to remember Richard Feynmanâs truth-laden maxim, âPhysics is like sex: Sure, it may give some practical results but thatâs not why we do it.â