DC -- National Academy of Sciences Bldg -- Albert Einstein Memorial:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 52.14.8.34 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1]
 EIN_181213_001.JPG
|
[2]
EIN_181213_013.JPG
|
[3] EIN_181213_018.JPG
|
[4] EIN_181213_022.JPG
|
[5]
EIN_181213_028.JPG
|
[6]
EIN_181213_033.JPG
|
[7]
EIN_181213_046.JPG
|
[8] EIN_181213_072.JPG
|
[9] EIN_181213_078.JPG
|
[10] EIN_181213_083.JPG
|
[11] EIN_181213_089.JPG
|
[12] EIN_181213_094.JPG
|
[13] EIN_181213_102.JPG
|
[14] EIN_181213_119.JPG
|
[15] EIN_181213_129.JPG
|
- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- EIN_181213_001.JPG: National Academy of Sciences
#PhotosWithAlbert
Follow us @theNASciences
The National Academy of Sciences is open to the public. Visit to learn more about our mission and history and view exhibits inspired by the intersection of art and science.
- EIN_181213_013.JPG: The Celestial Map
" ...Joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion..."
-- Albert Einstein
We live on a planet that orbits a star, our Sun. The Sun is one of two hundred billion stars that make up our Galaxy, the Milky Way. When you look up at the sky at night, all the stars you see belong to our Galaxy; all are orbiting about a very distant center. The stars in the Galaxy are not distributed at random; most are located in a flattened dist. The Sun too is in the disk, far from the center. It takes the Sun, moving at 500,000 miles per hour, about 200 million years to orbit once around the center of the Galaxy.
Without a telescope, we can see in the night sky only the nearest and brightest stars of our Galaxy, numbering just a few thousand. During the day, blinded by the Sun, we fail to see the stars in the daytime sky.
The celestial map at Einstein's feet plots the position of the stars at noon, April 22, 1979, the time of the dedication of this statue. But the map includes more than stars visible to the "naked eye." It plots the position of the Sun (a one inch brass disk), and our planetary neighbors Mercury, Venus, and Mars -- in their appropriate phases, plus four asteroids or minor planets, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta.
Objects of particular interest in our Galaxy are added: variable stars, which vary in brightness; double stars, pairs that appear to be very close together; spectroscopic binaries, two stars orbiting one another so closely that they appear as a single star and can be differentiated only by study of their spectra; globular clusters, dense spheroids of hundreds of thousands of stars populating the halo of our Galaxy, each cluster orbiting the center on a plunging orbit; open clusters, irregular groups located in the dusty disk of the Galaxy, whose brightest stars have been newly formed from the surrounding gas and dust; and pulsars, aging, collapsed stars that emit beacons of radio pulses at regular intervals. Together, these objects comprise the celestial objects astronomers study at the end of the 20th Century.
Faintly etched across the map is the region we call the Milky Way -- actually the combined light of all the stars along the line-of-sight viewed through the disk of our Galaxy. You will have to search carefully to find it at Einstein's feet, as you must look hard, away from the city lights, to find it in the sky.
Astronomers have known for almost 100 years that our Galaxy is just one of billions and billions of galaxies in the universe, each containing vast numbers of stars. We see our closest large spiral galaxy neighbor in the constellation of Andromeda, thus we have named it the Andromeda galaxy (also M31). At a very dark site, away from city lights, you can see it as a faint "fuzz" in the Fall sky. Use this map to try to find it on the map at Einstein's feet, where it is also faint. five other galaxies are included in the map; one, M33, is near M31. Can you find the others?
Also indicated on the map are ten Quasars. These are enormously bright nuclei of very distant galaxies. Astronomers speculate they may be exotic massive nuclear black holes caught in the process of swallowing some of the stars in their galaxies.
The Einstein map identifies more than 2,700 stars, marked by stainless steel studs, which range in size from 1/4 to 5/8 of an inch, from faintest to brightest. Each stud is beveled so that its is visible from any angle. Lines of right ascension similar to lines of longitude on earth maps, radiate from the North Pole at 15 degree intervals. Concentric circles of declination, similar to parallels of latitude on earth, ring the pole at 30-degree intervals. These lines form a grid on which can be fixed the sky position of celestial objects.
The map, 28 feet in diameter, depicts 55 percent of the entire sky. It was prepared with the assistance of P. Kenneth Seidelmann and Richard E. Schmidt, astronomers at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.
- EIN_181213_028.JPG: National Academy of Sciences
More Than a Century of Public Service as Advisors to the nation
"... the Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art ..." from the Charter of the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, March 3, 1863.
Are pesticide residues in food harmful to children? How can we make sure that plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons is kept out of the hands of terrorists? What is the best way to measure poverty in the United States? What should children be learning about science in school?
The nation's leaders grapple with a multitude of questions every day that are -- at their core -- issues of science, technology, and medicine. In most cases, there are no easy answers. in fact, as society increasingly depends upon advances in science and technology, the questions become ever more complex.
Since it was created by Congress as a private, non-profit organization in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences has provided independent, objective scientific advice to the nation. In this century, the Academy established the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, whose executive offices share the building on these grounds.
The Academies and the Institute are honorary societies that elect new members to their ranks each year. The National Academies of Sciences and Engineering jointly manage the National Research Council, which was established in 1916 to conduct most of the institution's science-policy and technical work. The Institute of Medicine conducts policy studies that focus on health.
Each year, some 200 studies are conducted on a wide range of topics that span the spectrum of science, technology, and health -- studies that help improve public policy, understanding, and education by using knowledge in the natural and social sciences, mathematics, and engineering to benefit the public welfare.
The Academy and its sister organizations provide a public service by working outside the framework of government to ensure independent advice. They enlist the nation's most knowledgeable scientists and engineers, as well as experts in other fields, all of whom volunteer their time to work on study committees that address specific concerns. The results of their deliberations have improved the lives of many individuals and the vitality of the nation.
- EIN_181213_033.JPG: "As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail."
-- Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein, March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955.
Albert Einstein, probably best known for his theory of relativity, revolutionized scientific thought with new concepts of space, time, mass, motion, and gravitation. His statement that energy and matter are interchangeable was the key to the development of atomic energy.
Born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879, Einstein grew up in Munich. Unable to find a teaching job after graduating from a technical institute in Zurich, Switzerland, he accepted a post as examiner in the Swiss patent office. He worked there from 1902 in 1909, devoting only his spare time to his own scientific interests.
The year 1905 was a turning point in Einstein's life. He received a doctorate in physics from the University of Zurich and published three scientific papers, each of which became the basis for a new branch of physics.
The first paper described light as a stream of energy particles called "quanta." It explained the already observed photo-electric effect--that beams of light cause metals to release electrons that can be converted into electric current. It was for this work that, in 1921, Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in physics.
The second paper, on the electrodynamics of moving bodies, contained Einstein's special theory of relativity. The famous equation E=mc2 related mass directly to energy. (A manuscript copy of the paper is housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.) The third paper explained Brownian motion--the irregular movement of particles suspended in a liquid or a gas--and showed that such motion is the consequence of fundamental nature of matter.
These papers earned for Einstein a series of professorships in Switzerland and Prague. Then, in 1914, he moved to Berlin as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and director of the Kaiser Wihelm Physical Institute. He was free to teach at the University of Berlin. Despite anti-Semitism which grew steadily after World War I, Einstein held these positions until Hitler came into power.
In 1933, Einstein came to the United States and joined the newly formed Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey. He became a citizen of the United States in 1940, was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1942, and remained affiliated with the Institute at Princeton until his death in 1955.
In his later years, Einstein worked actively on behalf of world government and world peace. But he kept his allegiance to science. In a discussion of his political activities, he once said, "... politics is for the present, but an equation ... is ... for eternity."
- EIN_181213_046.JPG: "The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true."
-- Albert Einstein
The Einstein Memorial.
No more appropriate memorial could stand on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences than one honoring Albert Einstein. It commemorates the centennial of the birth of a scientist whose work led to a new understanding of this world and the universe and a man who believed that the worldwide fame which came from his work was "a solemn trust to be used for the common good."
The memorial depicts Einstein resting on a semicircular three-step bench of white granite from Mount Airy, North Carolina. At his feet, much of the visible universe--Einstein's laboratory--is portrayed in a circular sky map. This 28-foot field of emerald pearl granite from Larvik, Norway, is embedded with more than 2,700 small metal studs.
These represent the planets, sun, moon, stars (to the sixth magnitude), and other celestial objects positioned as they were at noon on April 22, 1979, when the memorial was unveiled and dedicated at an Academy Convocation. At that dedication, Professor John Archibald Wheeler eulogized the status as "a monument to the man who united space and time into spacetime...a remembrance of the man who taught us...that the universe does not go on from everlasting to everlasting, but begins with a bang."
The figure of Einstein holds in its left hand a paper on which are shown the mathematical equations that summarize three of his most important scientific contributions: the photoelectric effect, the theory of general relativity, and the equivalence of energy and matter. Behind the status, at the back of the bench, are three quotations that reflect not only Einstein's integrity as a scientist but also his never-ending sense of wonder at the world and his passionate concern for social justice and ethical responsibility.
The memorial is situated in a grove of elm and holly trees on the southwest corner of the Academy grounds. It was financed by more than 5,000 contributions.
The sculptor was Robert Berks, who has created more than 300 portraits of individuals in public and private life. His works include statues of Enrico Fermi, Pablo Casals, Martin Luther King, Ernest Hemingway, Mary McLeod Bethune, and four presidents of the United States--Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
From the top of its head to the tip of its feet, the Einstein figure measures 21 feet; it weighs 7,000 pounds. The statue was cast in bronze in 19 sections and then welded into its final form. Ten months and the assistance of a crew of 25 were needed for its completion. The monument is supported by a subbase consisting of 3 concrete caissons sunk to bedrock at a depth of 23 to 25 feet.
- Wikipedia Description: Albert Einstein Memorial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Albert Einstein Memorial is a monumental bronze statue depicting Albert Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. It is located in central Washington, D.C., United States, in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue, near to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Statue:
The statue was sculpted by Robert Berks in 19 sections and then welded together. It weighs 7,000 pounds (3.2 metric tons) and would stand 21 feet (6.4 m) high. The statue sits on a bench that is white granite from Mount Airy, North Carolina.
Platform:
The statue and bench are at one side of a circular dais, 28 feet (8.5 m) in diameter, made from emerald-pearl granite from Larvik, Norway. Embedded in the dais are more than 2,700 metal studs representing the location of astronomical objects (Sun, Moon, planets, 4 asteroids, 5 galaxies, 10 quasars, and many stars) at noon on April 22, 1979 when the memorial was dedicated. The studs are different sizes to denote the apparent magnitude of the relevant object, and different studs denote binary stars, spectroscopic binaries, pulsars, globular clusters, open clusters, and quasars. To a visitor standing at the epicenter of the dais, Einstein appears to be making direct eye contact, and any spoken words are notably amplified.
Quotes:
Engraved as though written on the papers held in the statue's left hand are three equations, summarising three of Einstein's important scientific advances:
* eV=h\nu-A\, (the photoelectric effect)
* R_{\mu\nu} - {1 \over 2} g_{\mu\nu}R = \kappa T_{\mu\nu} (the theory of general relativity)
* E=mc[NOT]{2}\, (the equivalence of energy and matter)
Three quotes from Einstein are printed on nearby informational panels, and inscribed on the back of the granite bench:
* As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.
* Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion ...
* The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
