Making Einstein's Big Idea

    Like every NOVA, there’s a story behind the story and that’s true of Einstein’s Big Idea, our two-hour documentary drama that will be shown on PBS Tuesday, October 11th at 8 PM (check local listings). Back in 2001, Robert Krulwich, an ABC correspondent and now host of our magazine spin-off NOVA scienceNOW, was in my office. Robert was working with us on a NOVA special on the human genome project, and that night he was trying hard to convince me that a good way to explain genetics would be to use some little bride and groom figurines that he had picked up at his local bakery. Robert is an unbelievably smart and creative guy, but I wasn’t buying this particular idea. I took the little bride and groom and set them on a shelf in my bookcase, where they would live happily ever after. On that same shelf, there was a book that Robert pointed out to me, one he had read and loved. It was E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis. Struck by Robert’s enthusiasm, I took the book home with me. From the minute I opened it, I was completely absorbed; David’s book explains each term in the equation by looking at the innovative men and women who, over the course of 400 years, came up with the ideas that set the stage for Einstein’s great breakthrough in 1905. I spent the whole weekend alternately exhilarated and a nervous wreck, worrying that some other more on-the-ball producer had beaten us to the punch and optioned the book. But when I tracked David down the next week, I learned to my relief that the rights were still available and we snapped them up. Thus, Einstein’s Big Idea was born.

    Or, sort of. In public television the distance between cup and lip is very large. It took us four years to raise the money for this show, and one action-packed year to make it. The most amazing experience for me took place at Chateau Cirey in the Charlemont region of France. We had gone there to shoot the stories of Emilie du Chatelet, the beautiful and brilliant French mathematician, and Antoine Lavoisier, the French tax collector whose passion for chemistry led to a new understanding of mass. Chateau Cirey was actually the home of du Chatelet, who lived there with her lover and mentor Voltaire. Together, the two established at Cirey a scientific and cultural academy. The chateau is now owned and occupied by an elderly French couple, whose delightful Parisian daughter had come to stay for the duration of the shoot. She told us that Cirey—except for her parents’ small apartment—remains essentially the same at it was in Voltaire’s time, right down to the volumes in the bookcases. The landscape we looked out upon, the trees and the fields, were the same, she said, as that seen everyday by du Chatelet and Voltaire. That simply blew my mind. But it also meant no heat and no electricity…big challenges for the large and complicated HD (high definition) shoot that we were mounting.

   Gary Johnstone, the talented writer-director of Einstein's Big Idea, asked my colleague Melanie Wallace (NOVA’s senior series producer) and me to be extras in a dinner scene in which Lavoisier meets his future wife and helpmate, another brilliant and beautiful woman, the 13 year-old Marianne Paulze. Decked out in our dinner gowns, bejeweled and made up to the hilt, we also wore four-foot tall wigs as dictated by the fashion of the day. Melanie had a bird’s nest built into hers and mine had a fruit basket with a little bunch of bananas. Those wigs, as you can imagine, were heavy. It was also freezing cold in the room, except right before shooting the scene, they would blast some heat in so our lips wouldn’t chatter. The heavy wig, warm air, and my jet lagged state all conspired against me, and every time the camera wasn’t on me – which was most of the time – my eyes would close and my head would slowly incline downward for a little nap on the table. That’s in the outs for our next joke reel, but Melanie and I did make it into the film. If you want to see us, look for the guests in the Lavoisier dinner  scene. But don’t blink. Our moment in the sun doesn’t last too long.

    Many people have asked me how we managed to keep the needs of the drama from infringing on either scientific or historical truth. My answer: That’s what advisors are there to help us do. And we had many, scientists and historians, who gave unstintingly of their time, kept us on the straight and narrow, and also let us know when a bit of latitude would be okay. One example of a question we came up against concerned the equation E=mc2 itself. In his 1905 publication, Einstein wrote the equation in another form, far less familiar to the untutored eye. While we were working on this project, I had visited the excellent Einstein exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. Concerned about how we could depict Einstein writing E=mc2, when it might be anachronistic, I scrutinized Einstein’s papers at the exhibit, and saw to my delight E=mc2 written in Einstein’s own hand – but in a document written after 1905. Our question to our advisors was: Can we show Einstein writing E=mc2 in a scene that takes place in 1905? We all felt the drama needed to visually connect our main character to his iconic equation. So we were mighty relieved (and a little surprised) when the advisors stamped it kosher without even much of a fuss.

    There are a number of reasons why I think Einstein’s Big Idea belongs on NOVA, though it is somewhat different from what we usually do. We want, of course, to give our viewers insight into an equation that changed the world. But the program is also a reflection on the scientific process, showing that great innovations do not spring fully formed from the head of even such a genius as Einstein, but are built one idea at a time over the centuries. And there’s another conclusion we hope our viewers, especially young people, will draw from this drama. It’s not always obvious who will be great in the scientific game. Michael Faraday was a blacksmith’s son at a time when mainly gentlemen became scientists. Emilie du Chatelet was a woman at a time when a woman, especially one who was young and beautiful, barely had a chance in science. And Lise Meitner, a Jewish physicist in Nazi Germany, was lucky to escape with her life, let alone her life’s work.

   Did we succeed in telling this rich and wonderful story of E-mc2?  Please watch and let us know what you think, here or at pbs.org/nova/einstein. In the end, you get to be the judge. 

        --Paula Apsell, Senior Executive Producer, NOVA

Comments

[David]

Paula, thanks for the insight into the background of making the show. We saw a preview of the show at SLAC last week and many of us are looking forward to the full program tonight!

[Larry Strand]

Definitely will not miss Einstein's Big Idea tonight.

Is the Lavoisier story yet to air, or have I missed it? (Oh, I hope not!!)

[Celina]

I am a senior Biology major who should have been chemistry, soon to be in pharmacy school, and a new-comer to the wold of physics. I have always hesitated to take the calculus based physics class required by my degreee plan, but now I am ranked in the top four of my physics class. This NOVA production undoubtedly adds to my appreciation of physics. Thanks for the background lineage that leads up to "The Equation".