Valery Dunaevsky | The Coronavirus, Jack Welch, Schrödinger’s Cat, and Albert Einstein Walk into a Bar…

Recalling the big names from the recent past helps to cope with a pestilence of the present.

By throwing a glance out the window and watching TV broadcasts, one can see them filled with empty streets, empty museums, empty restaurants, empty beaches, empty airports and many other formerly non-empty places for normal public gatherings all around the world. The impression that the civilization underwent a neutron bomb attack overwhelms me, and I immediately recalled the recently deceased Jack Welch (the former boss of one of my former bosses) who was the famous CEO of General Electric Co. for many years. In the 1980s and 1990s, he expanded the industrial giant into financial services and produced a steadily rising profit. In GE, he was nicknamed “Neutron Jack” for his resolute restructuring, which was characterized by a drastic reduction of the workforce that painfully touched both blue and white collar employees. This happened to occur at the same time that real neutron bombs, low-yield thermonuclear weapons that wiped out a population but conveniently left their property undamaged (albeit a little “hot”) for use by the enemy, were a current topic in the Cold War.

Despite the horrible human toll of the coronavirus “neutron bomb”- type of attack of our day, I envision an eerie resemblance of the outcome of this attack with that of Jack Welch’s more strategic bombing. Namely, I am sure we will come out from the current ordeal economically and morally stronger. On the economy front, our victory is already becoming evident, considering that in a recent rally (even before the re-opening of the country), the stock market demonstrated the largest one-day rise in 60 years. Jack would have been elated to see that. In turn, the medical personnell who are working selflessly with COVID-19 patients and the many others who in one way or another help to support the normalcy of life in these trying times deserve the utmost respect and are a testament to the moral maturity of our countrymen.

Doctors tell us that even after the reopening of the country this new sneaky pathogen will still be with us for the near future. Hence, I suspect it will influence many walks of our life. I would dare to say that it could affect even such an esoteric field as quantum mechanics. In consideration of the 65th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s death on April 19 of 1955, I recall that the statistical and dualistic interpretation of the results of quantum physics (a field of which Einstein was essentially one of the fathers) tormented him. Erwin Schrödinger, the developer of the wave theory of the quantum world, shared the feeling. To express his disapproval of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics (according to which the state of the phenomena or object is essentially unknown before it is observed/measured), he invented a famous paradoxical thought experiment. Schrödinger argued that if quantum rules applied in the macroscopic world, a cat stuck inside a closed box could be both alive and dead at the same time–at least until you open the box. Schrödinger was probably unaware that by selecting a cat for his thought experiment, he was actually inventing an entire new line of scientific jokes and comic strip material.

The validity of the experiment could be increased by adjusting it to our epoch of the mighty coronavirus and having the cat infected with the bug. The merit of that approach is that the virus is, by definition, neither dead nor alive until it penetrates the host cell. The author believes that this analysis of the situation, the action of which he leaves to the whim of the reader, may bring startling revelations to the field of quantum mechanics.

Thinking more about Einstein’s legacy, in connection with the anniversary of his passing in the last century, our barely out of adolescence new century has taken a less polished approached. There has been more emphasis on the image of a disheveled person who sticks out a tongue to reporters, chases one of his female students with his trousers down (as reported in the 2017 TV series “Genius”), marries his philistine cousin Elsa, and yet somehow manages to write that over-commercialized expression E=mc². I do not think that Albert would have substantially objected to that image. What he would have objected to, I think, is the unwitting misinterpretations of his science and method by the various heedless popularizers and some unduly reverential proponents.

For example, in their striving to elevate the productivity level of their employees, some big corporations in the US encourage their engineers to “Think Like Einstein!” that in their minds and following a popular notion, means to be as imaginative as much as possible. Although there is nothing wrong in that approach, per se, it is often taken at the expense of a serious understanding of the problem at hand and its exploration using rigorous engineering calculations and proven methods. This attitude flies in the face of the real Einstein whose knowledge and proclivity in math, despite his self-deprecating jokes and the jokes about him, was applied hand in hand with his intuition.

Further, let us take the E=mc² equation, where m is the mass and c is the velocity of light. The ubiquitous image of this expression hides the fact that it is just the first member of a series representing the energy equation (that was obtained independently by various scientists prior to Einstein) and where the classical mv²/2 is the second member of the series. Meanwhile, Einstein, who received this equation from the general suppositions, quite sensibly emphasized that the first term mc² requires no consideration at all if we are only dealing with the question as to how the energy of a point–mass depends on its velocity v (Einstein, A., Relativity. The Special and General Theory. New York, Barnes & Noble, 2004 (originally published in 1920). If you have an “E=mc²” coffee mug or poster, the quarantine would be a good time to also get the book on which they were based and learn the theory. Your favorite online e-tailer is probably still delivering (and you probably could get it with a matching coffee cup to save on the shipping).

Finally, and most importantly, I believe that Prof. Einstein was a very pragmatic person (in terms that a good theory was the most practical theory, which was demonstrated in the various fields that he originated). For example, it is known that despite his pacifist inclinations, during WWI, he consulted with a German maker of submarine gyroscopes and also tried to design a military airplane.

However, what could then have justified Einstein’s pragmatism more than his marriage to his first cousin Elsa, which to my mind took place not because of some of her special qualities but mainly because in that marriage Albert saw the opportunity to be close to his vivacious and cerebral stepdaughter Ilse, who he was known to have been flirting with earlier! I hope I have not shocked the Einstein poster-buying fans. His scientific works and contributions are untarnished, and it is certainly more believable that his private life was like that of the celebrities of our time while he produced them than he was some sort of mathematical idiot who stumbled on them by luck or intuition.

The listed examples tend to confirm the image of Einstein as a common-sense and real person despite his various oddities as an absentminded and eccentric scientist. Common sense is an important quality that is often in short supply. It is hoped that there will be enough of it in our government to open the country soon and safely and thus end the stifling COVID-19 quarantine. Schrödinger’s cat can’t stay in the box forever whatever the outcome.

Valery Dunaevsky, Ph.D., is also the author of the biographical-historical memoir “A Daughter of the ‘Enemy of the People’” about life in the USSR in the mid-20^th century.