


Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people like me who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring a giant detector in the bowels of a particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality.

''Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate,'' said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Could it happen again? ''Who or where is the next Einstein?''

No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for some young researcher to be tagged ''the new Einstein,'' so don't expect to hear any names here.

''It's probably always a stupid question,'' said Dr. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein.

Dr. Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author, who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes.

A Rare Confluence

To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask, as well, about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame.

Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated.

Dr. David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics last year, said, ''Of course there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special.''

Physics, many scientists like Dr. Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the miles of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors.

''Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems,'' said Dr. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. ''It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked.''

But you never know.

''One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise,'' said Dr. Witten, chuckling.

''Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?''

In fact, physicists admit, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings.

''We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key,'' said Dr. Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He likes to think, he added, that it will be solved by ''a Brazilian kid in a dirt floor village.''

Dr. Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on.

By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it.

''Einstein has lasted 100 years,'' he said. ''The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years.''

Looking the Part

Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by ''Einstein.''