Wild and Einstein

Posted, November 1, 2024
Fritz Staudacher (who is also well known for his work on Jost Buergi), has recently written a nice comparative historical article about the Swiss engineer Heinrich Wild and Albert Einstein . Similarly as in "Measuring the world", where the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and the geographer Alexander von Humboldt were paired up, - see See here for some math related clips)) - Staudacher teams up the Swiss engineer Heinrich Wild (1877-1951) with contemporary Albert Einstein (1879-1955). It is amazing how many synoptic and chronological parallels there are (listed at the end of the article).

A comment: the story illustrates well the relation and interplay between Applied mathematics and Pure mathematics, between Experimental physics and Theoretical physics. The difference is not that big: Carl Friedrich Gauss was both a mathematician proving rather abstract theorems like the theorema egregium and did practical measurements in geodesics, Fritz Zwicky was a rocket engineer and astronomer suggesting gravitational lensing and dark matter (and much more), Jost Buergi was a clock maker and mathematician inventing the logarithms before Napier. Johannes Kepler was also a great data scientist. Gottfried Leibniz built a calculator. Galileo Galilei build a refracting telescope. Archimedes not only did pioneering mathematics like computing the volumes and surface areas of objects but engineered levers or pumps. The point is that practical "down to earth" work is not that remote from poetry that is written in mathematics.