They say an excellent scientist ought to know not just their field’s science but also its history. In a cynical move intended purely to improve our job prospects, Ashwin Singh and I decided to flaunt our copious knowledge of the history of physics by writing and performing an embarrassingly nerdy rap battle between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein at our 2021 departmental holiday party and posting it on the internet. Potential employers can find the recording below.

LYRICS

[BOHR]

Do you really want to reignite this debate? \ History’s already set the record straight

Why you chose to battle me I can only wonder \ It’ll go down as your greatest blunder

You started anti-quantum but then slowly changed your ways \ I guess that your denial was just a Berry phase

Your life was full of sexual activity but \ you married your cousin? That’s “special relativity”!

All you know is maths \ and if you built an Einstein Rosen bridge, I bet it would collapse.

And your famous shorthand is pure castration \ Cutting off sums? That’s Einstein dumb notation

To prove quantum, look at Einstein at his prime \ one man with two women at the same damn time!

But it only works theoretically \ A million extra qubits won’t correct that infidelity

You’ve many talents, especially misogyny \ People tend to like you, except for your progeny

I’m a better father and it isn’t hard to tell \ Your son you didn’t know well; my son won a Nobel!

I’m creative, made s p d and f \ and I’ve got *a dagger* but I’m boutta act left

Give up Einstein - you’re not a match for me \ or I’ll annihilate you in an ultraviolent catastrophe

[EINSTEIN]

Einstein’s my name, but “mc” will suffice \ watch out - this rap god does not play nice

You’re one great Dane, I have to admit \ but now I’m taking the stage, so roll over and sit

I’m General Relativity, the field’s commanding officer \ You? Eh, you’re more of a philosopher

I’m king of the cosmos; I fused space and time \ now watch me unify rhythm and rhyme

No modern man can match the breadth of things that I wrote on \ I'd still be above your level if I’d omitted the photon

I’m a hero of theory, stand a light-year tall \ Even in your rest frame, you’re relatively small

I solved mysteries from gravity to light \ You couldn’t even get hydrogen right

Here’s a new Bohr model (and this one won’t flop): \ physics has levels, and I’m on top.

I’m a star on both sides of the ocean \ Every time I speak I cause a Brownian commotion

Your lectures are dull, though I’d not known before \ that one could stretch time just by being a Bohr

In this deterministic world one can predict what comes to pass \ and I can prove my geodesic leads my foot into your [CENSORED]

Oh, and as for women, why don’t you just ask your wife \ if Einsteinium or Bohrium’s got the longer half-life?

[BOHR]

Those lines were so bad I’m nauseous \ Tell me did you learn them at the patent office?

I’m Bohr Dissing Einstein, got BDE \ You’re more degenerate than a BEC

In history you’re an eccentric defector \ who's easily perturbed like the Runge Lenz vector

Your math went missing on many occasions: \ you couldn’t even solve your own field equations

So much wrong about how things behave \ like “uh there’s no energy in gravitational waves”

Oh, and what do people think of EPR? \ Yeah, that theory’s gonna need some CPR

You also never understood Schrödinger’s cat \ Imagine tonight at the start of the act

they see you and me both behind and ahead \ but after my verse they realize that you’re dead

Oh my conjugate man \ you must be feeling uncertain cause I know where I stand

All eyes are on me, but you’re in superposition \ ‘cause to not observe you is a superb omission

I’m done, and there’s one clear conclusion \ I'm the only winner here by Pauli’s exclusion

Oh, and for Einsteinium, let’s use a bit of rigor: \ every chemist knows that Bohrium is bigger

[EINSTEIN]

When I walk around Princeton, the ladies all stare \ even black holes tell me “ah, I wish I had your hair!”

In attractiveness, I am the crest, you’re the trough \ there’s a name for the phenomenon: “the Bohr magnet-off”

Forget singularities, folks, we’ve found something denser \ scare me all you want, you can’t make Einstein tensor

I built my own fame, you relied on your betters; \ guess that explains why you published our letters

I'm unchallenged master of problems abstract \ I think so fast your thoughts Lorentz-contract

Yeah, you might as well call me “c” \ ‘cause you’ve got no chance of catching up with me

Socially, I’m a champion of simple coexistence \ resisting and assisting, consistently insisting

politically, your presence more or less is nonexistent \ you can’t spookily better the world from a distance.

Here’s a little lesson in relativity \ there’s a twin paradox here between you and me:

see, since I ran circles ‘round you all life long \ your work’s long dead, but mine’s still going strong

I’m generally special; my work’s especially general \ My greatness endures, Bohr, but yours was ephemeral

Your nanoscopic jabs at me are hardly worth refutin’ \ When all’s said and done, bud, you’re Leibniz, I’m Newton.