"Albert Einstein, Analogizer Extraordinaire" (Albert Einstein, an incomparable analogiser) - this was the topic of a public lecture given by Prof. Dr. Douglas R. Hofstadter on 2 July 2010 as part of the Physics Colloquium at the University of Oldenburg.

In his lecture, Prof Hofstadter did not talk about new physical findings, but rather traced the process of creative thinking. According to Hofstadter, the great discoveries in physics are not the result of strict rationality based on mathematics. Einstein's revolutionisation of the physical world view was only made possible by analogies that contradicted logical thinking. Among other things, this involved photons, which Einstein - in contrast to Max Plank, who had only assumed a discrete exchange of energy between the light field and a material boundary - regarded as "quanta" of the field itself, in analogy to the particles of an ideal gas. This analogy also paved the way for Einstein's derivation of Plank's ray law.

The lecture met with great interest from the audience, which consisted not only of members of the Institute of Physics, but also numerous guests. Afterwards, there were a number of questions: the most important one centred on whether Einstein's achievements would not be undermined if they were only referred to as "analogy conclusions". Hofstadter disagreed without hesitation. For him, it was clear that something genuinely new had been created through these analogies.

A new book by Douglas R. Hofstadter on the subject will be published at the end of the year.

Hofstadter became known to the general public through his book "Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid", for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1980. Today he heads the "Centre for Research on Concepts and Cognition" at Indiana University, Bloomington (USA), where he was appointed "Distinguished Professor" of Cognitive Science and Computing Science in 1988.