Walter Isaacson - Einstein - His Life and Universe

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**By the author of the acclaimed bestseller *Benjamin Franklin*, this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available.**
How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.
Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk -- a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate -- became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals.
These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.
### Amazon.com Review
As a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With *Einstein: His Life and Universe*, Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies *Benjamin Franklin* and *Kissinger*) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. *--Anne Bartholomew*
**Read "The Light-Beam Rider," the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's *Einstein: His Life and Universe*.**
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**Five Questions for Walter Isaacson**
**Amazon.com:** What kind of scientific education did you have to give yourself to be able to understand and explain Einstein's ideas?
**Isaacson:** I've always loved science, and I had a group of great physicists--such as Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and Murray Gell-Mann--who tutored me, helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions of my book. I also learned the tensor calculus underlying general relativity, but tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book. I wanted to capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientific leaps, but I hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the science will read Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, Jeremy Bernstein, Brian Greene, and others.
**Amazon.com:** That Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when he revolutionized our understanding of the physical world has often been treated as ironic or even absurd. But you argue that in many ways his time there fostered his discoveries. Could you explain?
**Isaacson:** I think he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving as an acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teach the conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize the physical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss who told him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galison shows in *Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps*, many of the patent applications involved synchronizing clocks using signals that traveled at the speed of light. So with his office-mate Michele Besso as a sounding board, he was primed to make the leap to special relativity.
**Amazon.com:** That time in the patent office makes him sound far more like a practical scientist and tinkerer than the usual image of the wild-haired professor, and more like your previous biographical subject, the multitalented but eminently earthly Benjamin Franklin. Did you see connections between them?
**Isaacson:** I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einstein shared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin was a more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was the opposite in that regard.
**Amazon.com:** Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what did you find to be least true? Most true?
**Isaacson:** The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He was actually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knew they were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example, he could look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be like to ride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's equations about radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that light was a particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how rebellious and defiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics, his personal life, and his science.
**Amazon.com:** At *Time* and CNN and the Aspen Institute, you've worked with many of the leading thinkers and leaders of the day. Now that you've had the chance to get to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone from our day who shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?
**Isaacson:** There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, who wrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was editor of *Time*. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the same creative imagination and ability to think differently that distinguished Einstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity. I wish I knew politicians who had the creativity and human instincts of Einstein, or for that matter the wise feel for our common values of Benjamin Franklin.
* * *
**More to Explore**
*Benjamin Franklin: An American Life*
*Kissinger: A Biography* **
**The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made* ***
* * *
### **From Publishers Weekly**
**Acclaimed biographer Isaacson examines the remarkable life of "science's preeminent poster boy" in this lucid account (after 2003's *Benjamin Franklin* and 1992's *Kissinger*). Contrary to popular myth, the German-Jewish schoolboy Albert Einstein not only excelled in math, he mastered calculus before he was 15. Young Albert's dislike for rote learning, however, led him to compare his teachers to "drill sergeants." That antipathy was symptomatic of Einstein's love of individual and intellectual freedom, beliefs the author revisits as he relates his subject's life and work in the context of world and political events that shaped both, from WWI and II and their aftermath through the Cold War. Isaacson presents Einstein's research—his efforts to understand space and time, resulting in four extraordinary papers in 1905 that introduced the world to special relativity, and his later work on unified field theory—without equations and for the general reader. Isaacson focuses more on Einstein the man: charismatic and passionate, often careless about personal affairs; outspoken and unapologetic about his belief that no one should have to give up personal freedoms to support a state. Fifty years after his death, Isaacson reminds us why Einstein (1879–1955) remains one of the most celebrated figures of the 20th century. *500,000 firsr printing, 20-city author tour, first serial to *Time*; confirmed appearance on *Good Morning America*. (Apr.)*
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. **

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Sylvester James Gates Jr., a physics professor at the University of Maryland, agreed to read my manuscript when he came out to Aspen for a conference on Einstein. He did a comprehensive edit filled with smart comments and rephrasing of certain scientific passages.

John D. Norton, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, has specialized in tracing Einstein’s thought process as he developed both special and then general relativity. He read these sections of my book, made edits, and offered useful comments. I am also grateful for guidance from two of his fellow scholars specializing in Einstein’s development of his theories: Jürgen Renn of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and Michel Janssen of the University of Minnesota.

George Stranahan, a founder of the Aspen Center for Physics, also agreed to read and review the manuscript. He was particularly helpful in editing the sections on the light quanta paper, Brownian motion, and the history and science of special relativity.

Robert Rynasiewicz, a philosopher of science at Johns Hopkins, read many of the science chapters and made useful suggestions about the quest for general relativity.

N. David Mermin, professor of theoretical physics at Cornell and author of It’s About Time: Understanding Einstein’s Relativity, edited and made corrections to the final version of the introductory chapter and chapters 5 and 6 on Einstein’s 1905 papers.

Gerald Holton, professor of physics at Harvard, has been one of the pioneers in the study of Einstein, and he is still a guiding light. I am deeply flattered that he was willing to read my book, make comments, and offer generous encouragement. His Harvard colleague Dudley Herschbach, who has done so much for science education, also was supportive. Both Holton and Herschbach made useful comments on my draft and spent an afternoon with me in Holton’s office going over suggestions and refining my descriptions of the historical players.

Ashton Carter, professor of science and international affairs at Harvard, kindly read and checked an early draft. Columbia University’s Fritz Stern, author of Einstein’s German World, provided encouragement and advice at the outset. Robert Schulmann, one of the original editors at the Einstein Papers Project, did likewise. And Jeremy Bernstein, who has written many fine books on Einstein, warned me how difficult the science would be. He was right, and I am grateful for that as well.

In addition, I asked two teachers of high school physics to give the book a careful reading to make sure the science was correct, and also comprehensible to those whose last physics course was in high school. Nancy Stravinsky Isaacson taught physics in New Orleans until, alas, Hurricane Katrina gave her more free time. David Derbes teaches physics at the University of Chicago Lab School. Their comments were very incisive and also aimed at the lay reader.

There is a corollary of the uncertainty principle that says that no matter how often a book is observed, some mistakes will remain. Those are my fault.

It also helped to have some nonscientific readers, who made very useful suggestions from a lay perspective on parts or all of the manuscript. These included William Mayer, Orville Wright, Daniel Okrent, Steve Weisman, and Strobe Talbott.

For twenty-five years, Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster has been my editor and Amanda Urban at ICM my agent. I can imagine no better partners, and they were again enthusiastic and helpful in their comments on the book. I also appreciate the help of Carolyn Reidy, David Rosenthal, Roger Labrie, Victoria Meyer, Elizabeth Hayes, Serena Jones, Mara Lurie, Judith Hoover, Jackie Seow, and Dana Sloan at Simon & Schuster. For their countless acts of support over the years, I am also grateful to Elliot Ravetz and Patricia Zindulka.

Natasha Hoffmeyer and James Hoppes translated for me Einstein’s German correspondence and writing, especially the new material that had not yet been translated, and I appreciate their diligence. Jay Colton, who was photo editor for Time ’s Person of the Century issue, also did a creative job tracking down pictures for this book.

I had two and a half other readers who were the most valuable of all. The first was my father, Irwin Isaacson, an engineer who instilled in me a love of science and is the smartest teacher I’ve ever had. I am grateful to him for the universe that he and my late mother created for me, and to my brilliant and wise stepmother, Julanne.

The other truly valuable reader was my wife, Cathy, who read every page with her usual wisdom, common sense, and curiosity. And the valuable half-a-reader was my daughter,Betsy, who as usual read selected portions of my book. The surety with which she made her pronouncements made up for the randomness of her reading. I love them both dearly.

MAIN CHARACTERS

M

ICHELE

A

NGELO

B

ESSO

(1873–1955). Einstein’s closest friend. An engaging but unfocused engineer, he met Einstein in Zurich, then followed him to work at the Bern patent office. Served as a sounding board for the 1905 special relativity paper. Married Anna Winteler, sister of Einstein’s first girlfriend.

N

IELS

B

OHR

(1885–1962). Danish pioneer of quantum theory. At Solvay conferences and subsequent intellectual trysts, he parried Einstein’s enthusiastic challenges to his Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

M

AX

B

ORN

(1882–1970). German physicist and mathematician. Engaged in a brilliant, intimate correspondence with Einstein for forty years. Tried to convince Einstein to be comfortable with quantum mechanics; his wife, Hedwig, challenged Einstein on personal issues.

H

ELEN

D

UKAS

(1896–1982). Einstein’s loyal secretary, Cerberus-like guard, and housemate from 1928 until his death, and after that protector of his legacy and papers.

A

RTHUR

S

TANLEY

E

DDINGTON

(1882–1944). British astrophysicist and champion of relativity whose 1919 eclipse observations dramatically confirmed Einstein’s prediction of how much gravity bends light.

P

AUL

E

HRENFEST

(1880–1933). Austrian-born physicist, intense and insecure, who bonded with Einstein on a visit to Prague in 1912 and became a professor in Leiden, where he frequently hosted Einstein.

E

DUARD

E

INSTEIN

(1910–1965). Second son of Mileva Mari

картинка 5

and Einstein. Smart and artistic, he obsessed about Freud and hoped to be a psychiatrist, but he succumbed to his own schizophrenic demons in his twenties and was institutionalized in Switzerland for much of the rest of his life.

E

LSA

E

INSTEIN

(1876–1936). Einstein’s first cousin, second wife. Mother of Margot and Ilse Einstein from her first marriage to textile merchant Max Löwenthal. She and her daughters reverted to her maiden name, Einstein, after her 1908 divorce. Married Einstein in 1919. Smarter than she pretended to be, she knew how to handle him.

H

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