50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: Einstein Obituary, Artificial Life and Light from the Dead

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JUNE 1955
EINSTEIN--Niels Bohr: "With the death of Albert Einstein, a life in the service of science and humanity which was as rich and fruitful as any in the whole history of our culture has come to an end. Mankind will always be indebted to Einstein for the removal of the obstacles to our outlook which were involved in the primitive notions of absolute space and time." I. I. Rabi: "His real love was the theory of fields, which he pursued with unremitting vigor to the very end of his more than 50 years of active scientific life. This preoccupation is to a large degree the key to his scientific personality. The theory of general relativity was constructed on the basis of a physical observation of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass under certain simple circumstances. Beyond that, his guiding principles were his esthetic and philosophical urge for simplicity and symmetry."

LSD RESEARCH--"Since 1949 we have been studying the effects of LSD at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital. So far we have examined the responses of more than 100 healthy volunteers and a number of psychotic patients. The creation of experimental psychoses with lysergic acid opens the way to studying treatments and the nature of mental illness. We can see the various defenses a subject brings into use, one after another, to protect himself from stressful experiences. Most important, however, is the insight that lysergic acid gives into the mind and feelings of a person afflicted by mental illness. We can telescope a severe psychotic reaction into a period of six to 12 hours and follow the emotional disintegration step by step."

Scientific American Magazine Vol 292 Issue 6This article was published with the title “Einstein Obituary -- Artificial Life -- Light from the Dead” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 292 No. 6 ()
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican062005-3GnNQVIiq8hmfYMz43lu3p

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