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*.**
* * *
**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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That possibility had been discussed a year earlier. Before he left for Prague, Einstein had made a deal with officials in Zurich. “I promised in private that I would advise them before accepting another offer from somewhere else, so that the administration of the Polytechnic could also make me an offer if they find it fit to do so,” he told a Dutch professor who was trying to recruit him to Utrecht. 45

By November 1911, Einstein had received such an offer from Zurich, or at least so he thought, and as a result he declined the offer to go to Utrecht. But the matter was not completely settled, because some of Zurich’s education officials objected. They argued that a professor in theoretical physics was a “luxury,” that there was not enough lab space to accommodate one, and that Einstein personally was not a good teacher.

Heinrich Zangger, a longtime friend who was a medical researcher in Zurich, intervened on Einstein’s behalf. “A proper theoretical physicist is a necessity these days,” he wrote in a letter to one of the top Swiss councilors. He also pointed out that in such a role Einstein “needs no laboratory.” As for Einstein’s teaching talents, Zangger provided a wonderfully nuanced and revealing description:

He is not a good teacher for mentally lazy gentlemen who merely want to fill a notebook and then learn it by heart for an exam; he is not a

smooth talker, but anyone wishing to learn honestly how to develop his ideas in physics in an honest way, from deep within, and how to examine all premises carefully and see the pitfalls and the problems in his reflections, will find Einstein a first-class teacher, because all of this is expressed in his lectures, which force the audience to think along.

46

Zangger wrote Einstein to express his outrage at the dithering in Zurich, and Einstein replied, “The dear Zurich folks can kiss my . . . [und die lieben Züricher können mich auch . . . (ellipses are in original letter)].” He told Zangger not to push the matter further. “Leave the Polytechnic* to God’s inscrutable ways.” 47

Einstein, however, decided not to drop the matter but instead to push the Polytechnic through a light ruse. Officials at the university in Utrecht were just about to offer their open post to someone else, Peter Debye, when Einstein asked them to hold off. “I am turning to you with a strange request,” he wrote. The Zurich Polytechnic had initially seemed very eager to recruit him, he said, and it had been proceeding with haste out of fear that he would go to Utrecht. “But if they were to learn in the near future that Debye is going to Utrecht, they would lose their fervor at once and keep me forever in suspense. I ask you therefore to wait a little longer with the official offer to Debye.” 48

Rather oddly, Einstein found himself needing letters of recommendation to secure a post at his own alma mater. Marie Curie wrote one. “In Brussels, where I attended a scientific conference in which Mr. Einstein also participated, I was able to admire the clarity of his intellect, the breadth of his information, and the profundity of his knowledge,” she noted. 49

Adding to the irony was that his other main letter of recommendation came from Henri Poincaré, the man who had almost come up with the special theory of relativity but still had not embraced it. Einstein was “one of the most original minds I have ever come across,” he said. Particularly poignant was his description of Einstein’s willingness, which Poincaré himself lacked, to make radical conceptual leaps: “What I admire in him in particular is the facility with which he adapts himself to new concepts. He does not remain attached to classical principles, and, when presented with a problem in physics, is prompt to envision all the possibilities.” Poincaré, however, could not resist asserting, perhaps with relativity in mind, that Einstein might not be right in all his theories: “Since he seeks in all directions one must expect the majority of the paths on which he embarks to be blind alleys.” 50

Soon it all worked out. Einstein would move back to Zurich in July 1912. He thanked Zangger for helping him to prevail “against all odds,” and exulted, “I am enormously happy that we will be together again.” Mari картинка 194was thrilled as well. She thought that the return could help save both her sanity and their marriage. Even the children seemed happy to be out of Prague and back to the city of their birth. As Einstein put it in a postcard to another friend,“Great joy about it among us old folks and the two bear cubs.” 51

His departure caused a minor controversy in Prague. Newspaper articles noted that anti-Semitism at the university may have played a role. Einstein felt compelled to issue a public statement. “Despite all presumptions,” he said,“I did not feel and did not notice any religious prejudice.” The appointment of Philipp Frank, a Jew, as his successor, he added, confirmed that “such considerations”were not a major problem. 52

Life in Zurich should have been glorious. The Einsteins were able to afford a modern six-room apartment with grand views. They were reunited with friends such as Zangger and Grossmann, and there was even one fewer adversary. “The fierce Weber has died, so it will be very pleasant from a personal point of view,” Einstein wrote of their undergraduate physics professor and nemesis, Heinrich Weber. 53

Once again there were musical gatherings at the home of math professor Adolf Hurwitz. The programs included not only Mozart, Einstein’s favorite, but also Schumann, who was Mari картинка 195’s. On Sunday afternoons, Einstein would arrive with his wife and two little boys at the doorstep and announce, “Here comes the whole Einstein hen house.”

Despite being back with such friends and diversions, Mari картинка 196’s depression continued to deepen, and her health to decline. She developed rheumatism, which made it hard for her to go out, especially when the streets became icy in winter. She attended the Hurwitz recitals less frequently, and when she did show up her gloom was increasingly evident. In February 1913, to entice her out, the Hurwitz family planned an all-Schumann recital. She came, but seemed paralyzed by pain, both mental and physical. 54

Thus the atmosphere was ripe for a catalyst that would disrupt this unstable family situation. It came in the form of a letter. After almost a year of silence, Elsa Einstein wrote to her cousin.

The previous May, when he had declared that he was writing her “for the last time,” Einstein had nonetheless given her the address of what would be his new office in Zurich. Now Elsa decided to send him a greeting for his thirty-fourth birthday, and she added a request for a picture of him and a recommendation of a good book she could read on relativity. She knew how to flatter. 55

“There is no book on relativity that is comprehensible to the layman,” he replied. “But what do you have a relativity cousin for? If you ever happen to be in Zurich, then we (without my wife, who is unfortunately very jealous) will take a nice walk, and I will tell you about all of those curious things that I discovered.” Then he went a bit further. Instead of sending a picture, wouldn’t it be better to see each other in person? “If you wish to make me truly happy, then arrange to spend a few days here sometime.” 56

A few days later, he wrote again, with word that he had instructed a photographer to send her a picture. He had been working on generalizing his theory of relativity, he reported, and it was exhausting. As he had a year earlier, he complained about being married to Mari картинка 197: “What I wouldn’t give to be able to spend a few days with you, but without my cross!” He asked Elsa if she would be in Berlin later that summer. “I would like to come for a short visit.” 57

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