評論
打印
With his pipe, genially self-effacing manner, and electrified hair, Einstein was too splendid a figure to remain permanently obscure,
愛因斯坦常手拿煙斗，和藹可親，不愛露面，一頭亂發，真是個非凡人物。這樣的人物不可能永遠默默無聞。
and in 1919, the war over, the world suddenly discovered him.
1919年，戰爭結束了，世界突然發現了他。
Almost at once his theories of relativity developed a reputation for being impossible for an ordinary person to grasp.
幾乎同時，他的相對論以普通人無法搞懂出了名。
Matters were not helped, as David Bodanis points out in his superb book E=mc^2,
結果正如戴維·博丹尼斯在他出色的《E=mc^2》一書中指出的，根本不解決問題，
when the New York Times decided to do a story, and,
《紐約時報》決定寫一篇報道，
for reasons that can never fail to excite wonder—sent the paper's golfing correspondent, one Henry Crouch, to conduct the interview.
由于永遠令人想不通的原因派了該報一個名叫亨利·克勞奇的高爾夫運動記者去負責這次采訪。
Crouch was hopelessly out of his depth, and got nearly everything wrong.
這次采訪令克勞奇力不從心，他差不多把什么都搞錯了。
Among the more lasting errors in his report was the assertion that Einstein had found a publisher daring enough to publish a book that only twelve men "in all the world could comprehend."
他的報道里有許多令人難忘的錯誤，其中之一，他斷言，愛因斯坦找了個膽子很大的出版商，敢于出版一本全世界只有12個人看得懂的書。
There was no such book, no such publisher, no such circle of learned men, but the notion stuck anyway.
當然，根本不存在這樣的書，根本不存在這樣的出版商，也根本不存在這么狹小的學術界，但這種看法已深入了人心。
Soon the number of people who could grasp relativity had been reduced even further in the popular imagination,
過不多久，在人們的想像中，搞得懂相對論的人數又少了許多，
and the scientific establishment, it must be said, did little to disturb the myth.
應當指出，科學界對這種神話沒有去加以澄清。
