EINSTEIN AND
BROWNIAN MOTION
PRE-REQUISITE : A fundamental understanding of Brownian
motion.
“No one before or since has widened the horizons of physics
in so short a time as Einstein did in 1905”
--Abraham
Pais in his biography of Einstein.
How has the analysis of Brownian motion & of its
subsequent generalizations contributed to human knowledge?
Even a
minute part of the remarkably diverse list of applications that have emerged
over the past 100 years is astonishing. The Brownian motion is relevant to
varied fields of study like
n
Polymers in solution
n
Chemically reacting molecules
n
Neutrons in a nuclear reactor
n
Clouds
n
Sand piles
n
Quantum mechanics and quantum field theory
n
Fluctuations of the stock market
n
Avalanches
n
Fundamental issues in the theory of probability
n
Star clusters
n
Animal herds
n
Insect swarms
n
Techniques of computation
and so on. In 1900 Louis Bachelier had worked out the
mathematical part that underlies the concept of Brownain motion in his doctoral
thesis, in connection with an attempt to model the changing prices of shares in
the stockmarket. Mathematicians such as A.N.Kolmogorov and Norbert Wiener has
used his thesis as progenitor for many deep results in the theory of
probability.
CONCLUSION:
Can we identify the most intense and sustained mental effort
by a single person leading to the most profound results?
A
unique answer cannot be given. Newton , Darwin and Einstein, when
they scaled their respective heights, changed something forever. Their
discoveries separate distinct eras in humankind’s understanding of the
universe.
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