Friday, September 18, 2009

Einstein's Nobel Prize

This "news" article purported to be the "Evolution and relativity - a dummies' guide". I think it is more appropriate that it was written by a dummy. I can't believe people can make this type of mistake still, especially during an internet age where one can EASILY check a few facts.

Here's the offending passage, which is rather obvious for any physics student:

It was the Jewish German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) who was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics for his theories on relativity. He is regarded as the father of modern physics.


OK, for the last time, Einstein did NOT win the Nobel Prize for "his theories on relativity", even though it was implied in a rather oblique fashion. Here's the exact citation from the Nobel website:

for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect


One can find that within less than a minute of searching if one didn't know. How difficult can that be? I suppose it is a bit too much to ask that news editors actually would know to double check such "facts" before they are published.

Zz.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It wasn't even much of a guide, for dummies or otherwise.