Packet man

摘要

In 1941, US physicist John Wheeler visited Albert Einstein, the arch quantum sceptic, at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. Wheeler was hoping that the beauty of the new version of quantum theory developed by his brilliant student Richard Feynman would persuade Einstein to accept that the theory was simply a natural development of well-founded classical ideas. The sage of Princeton listened in silence as Wheeler set out his case, but afterwards was no more enthusiastic. "Of course, I may be wrong," he said, "but perhaps I have earned the right to make my mistakes." Einstein was by that time a semi-detached member of the physics community, admired much less for his current work than for his achievements. Many of his colleagues thought his views on quantum theory cranky - Robert Oppenheimer dismissed them as "cuckoo". That opinion is sometimes echoed today in popular books, many of which underestimate his contributions to the theory.