Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41623 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-13
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

Review
"Walter Isaacson has captured the complete Einstein. With an effortless style that belies a sharp attention to detail and scientific accuracy, Isaacson takes us on a soaring journey through the life, mind, and science of the man who changed our view of the universe."-- Brian Greene, Professor of Physics at Columbia and author of The Fabric of the Cosmos

"This book does an amazing job getting the science right and the man revealed." -- Sylvester James Gates, Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland

"This book will be widely and deservedly admired. It is excellently readable and combines the personal and the scientific aspects of Einstein's life in a graceful way."-- Gerald Holton, Professor of Physics at Harvard and author of Einstein, History, and Other Passions

"Once again Walter Isaacson has produced a most valuable biography of a great man about whom much has already been written. It helps that he has had access to important new material. He met the challenge of dealing with his subject as a human being and describing profound ideas in physics. His biography is a pleasure to read and makes the great physicist come alive."-- Murray Gell-Mann, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics and author of The Quark and the Jaguar

"With unmatched narrative skill, Isaacson has managed the extraordinary feat of preserving Einstein's monumental stature while at the same time bringing him to such vivid life that we come to feel as if he could be walking in our midst. This is a terrific work."-- Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

"Isaacson's treatment of Einstein's scientific work is excellent: accurate, complete, and just the right level of detail for the general reader. Taking advantage of the wealth of recently uncovered historical material, he has produced the most readable biography of Einstein yet."-- A. Douglas Stone, Professor of Physics at Yale

"This is a brilliant intellectual tapestry -- and a great read. Skillfully weaving Einstein's revolutionary scientific achievements, his prolific political initiatives, his complex personal life, and his fascinating personality, Isaacson has transformed the transformer of the twentieth century into a beacon for the twenty-first century."-- Martin J. Sherwin, coauthor of American Prometheus:The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography

"I found so much to admire; there are many places where I just had to cheer what Isaacson had written."-- Dudley Herschbach, Professor of Science at Harvard

"Isaacson has written a crisp, engaging, and refreshing biography, one that beautifully masters the historical literature and offers many new insights into Einstein's work and life."-- Diana Kormos Buchwald, General Editor of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein

"Isaacson has admirably succeeded in weaving together the complex threads of Einstein's personal and scientific life to paint a superb portrait."-- Arthur I. Miller, author of Einstein, Picasso

About the Author
Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and of Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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CHAPTER ONE

THE LIGHT-BEAM RIDER

"I promise you four papers," the young patent examiner wrote his friend.The letter would turn out to bear some of the most significant tidingsin the history of science, but its momentous nature was masked by animpish tone that was typical of its author. He had, after all, justaddressed his friend as "you frozen whale" and apologized for writing aletter that was "inconsequential babble." Only when he got around todescribing the papers, which he had produced during his spare time, didhe give some indication that he sensed their significance.

"The first deals with radiation and the energy properties of light andis very revolutionary," he explained. Yes, it was indeed revolutionary.It argued that light could be regarded not just as a wave but also as astream of tiny particles called quanta. The implications that wouldeventually arise from this theory -- a cosmos without strict causalityor certainty -- would spook him for the rest of his life.

"The second paper is a determination of the true sizes of atoms." Eventhough the very existence of atoms was still in dispute, this was themost straightforward of the papers, which is why he chose it as thesafest bet for his latest attempt at a doctoral thesis. He was in theprocess of revolutionizing physics, but he had been repeatedly thwartedin his efforts to win an academic job or even get a doctoral degree,which he hoped might get him promoted from a third- to a second-classexaminer at the patent office.

The third paper explained the jittery motion of microscopic particles inliquid by using a statistical analysis of random collisions. In theprocess, it established that atoms and molecules actually exist.

"The fourth paper is only a rough draft at this point, and is anelectrodynamics of moving bodies which employs a modification of thetheory of space and time." Well, that was certainly more thaninconsequential babble. Based purely on thought experiments -- performedin his head rather than in a lab -- he had decided to discard Newton'sconcepts of absolute space and time. It would become known as theSpecial Theory of Relativity.

What he did not tell his friend, because it had not yet occurred to him,was that he would produce a fifth paper that year, a short addendum tothe fourth, which posited a relationship between energy and mass. Out ofit would arise the best-known equation in all of physics: E=mc².

Looking back at a century that will be remembered for its willingness tobreak classical bonds, and looking ahead to an era that seeks to nurturethe creativity needed for scientific innovation, one person stands outas a paramount icon of our age: the kindly refugee from oppression whosewild halo of hair, twinkling eyes, engaging humanity, and extraordinarybrilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius.Albert Einstein was a locksmith blessed with imagination and guided by afaith in the harmony of nature's handiwork. His fascinating story, atestament to the connection between creativity and freedom, reflects thetriumphs and tumults of the modern era.

Now that his archives have been completely opened, it is possible toexplore how the private side of Einstein -- his nonconformistpersonality, his instincts as a rebel, his curiosity, his passions anddetachments -- intertwined with his political side and his scientificside. Knowing about the man helps us understand the wellsprings of hisscience, and vice versa. Character and imagination and creative geniuswere all related, as if part of some unified field.

Despite his reputation for being aloof, he was in fact passionate inboth his personal and scientific pursuits. At college he fell madly inlove with the only woman in his physics class, a dark and intenseSerbian named Mileva Maric´. They had an illegitimate daughter, thenmarried and had two sons. She served as a sounding board for hisscientific ideas and helped to check the math in his papers, buteventually their relationship disintegrated. Einstein offered her adeal. He would win the Nobel Prize someday, he said; if she gave him adivorce, he would give her the prize money. She thought for a week andaccepted. Because his theories were so radical, it was seventeen yearsafter his miraculous outpouring from the patent office before he wasawarded the prize and she collected.

Einstein's life and work reflected the disruption of societalcertainties and moral absolutes in the modernist atmosphere of the earlytwentieth century. Imaginative nonconformity was in the air: Picasso,Joyce, Freud, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others were breakingconventional bonds. Charging this atmosphere was a conception of theuniverse in which space and time and the properties of particles seemedbased on the vagaries of observations.

Einstein, however, was not truly a relativist, even though that is howhe was interpreted by many, including some whose disdain was tinged byanti-Semitism. Beneath all of his theories, including relativity, was aquest for invariants, certainties, and absolutes. There was a harmoniousreality underlying the laws of the universe, Einstein felt, and the goalof science was to discover it.

His quest began in 1895, when as a 16-year-old he imagined what it wouldbe like to ride alongside a light beam. A decade later came his miracleyear, described in the letter above, which laid the foundations for thetwo great advances of twentieth-century physics: relativity and quantumtheory.

A decade after that, in 1915, he wrested from nature his crowning glory,one of the most beautiful theories in all of science, the general theoryof relativity. As with the special theory, his thinking had evolvedthrough thought experiments. Imagine being in an enclosed elevatoraccelerating up through space, he conjectured in one of them. Theeffects you'd feel would be indistinguishable from the experience ofgravity.

Gravity, he figured, was a warping of space and time, and he came upwith the equations that describe how the dynamics of this curvatureresult from the interplay between matter, motion, and energy. It can bedescribed by using another thought experiment. Picture what it would belike to roll a bowling ball onto the two-dimensional surface of atrampoline. Then roll some billiard balls. They move toward the bowlingball not because it exerts some mysterious attraction but because of theway it curves the trampoline fabric. Now imagine this happening in thefour-dimensional fabric of space and time. Okay, it's not easy, butthat's why we're no Einstein and he was.

The exact midpoint of his career came a decade after that, in 1925, andit was a turning point. The quantum revolution he had helped to launchwas being transformed into a new mechanics that was based onuncertainties and probabilities. He made his last great contributions toquantum mechanics that year but, simultaneously, began to resist it. Hewould spend the next three decades, ending with some equations scribbledwhile on his deathbed in 1955, stubbornly criticizing what he regardedas the incompleteness of quantum mechanics while attempting to subsumeit into a unified field theory.

Both during his thirty years as a revolutionary and his subsequentthirty years as a resister, Einstein remained consistent in hiswillingness to be a serenely amused loner who was comfortable notconforming. Independent in his thinking, he was driven by an imaginationthat broke from the confines of conventional wisdom. He was that oddbreed, a reverential rebel, and he was guided by a faith, which he worelightly and with a twinkle in his eye, in a God who would not play diceby allowing things to happen by chance.

Einstein's nonconformist streak was evident in his personality andpolitics as well. Although he subscribed to socialist ideals, he was toomuch of an individualist to be comfortable with excessive state controlor centralized authority. His impudent instincts, which served him sowell as a young scientist, made him allergic to nationalism, militarism,and anything that smacked of a herd mentality. And until Hitler causedhim to revise his geopolitical equations, he was an instinctive pacifistwho celebrated resistance to war.

His tale encompasses the vast sweep of modern science, from theinfinitesimal to the infinite, from the emission of photons to theexpansion of the cosmos. A century after his great triumphs, we arestill living in Einstein's universe, one defined on the macro scale byhis theory of relativity and on the micro scale by a quantum mechanicsthat has proven durable even as it remains disconcerting.

His fingerprints are all over today's technologies. Photoelectric cellsand lasers, nuclear power and fiber optics, space travel, and evensemiconductors all trace back to his theories. He signed the letter toFranklin Roosevelt warning that it may be possible to build an atombomb, and the letters of his famed equation relating energy to masshover in our minds when we picture the resulting mushroom cloud.

Einstein's launch into fame, which occurred when measurements madeduring a 1919 eclipse confirmed his prediction of how much gravity bendslight, coincided with, and contributed to, the birth of a new celebrityage. He became a scientific supernova and humanist icon, one of the mostfamous faces on the planet. The public earnestly puzzled over histheories, elevated him into a cult of genius, and canonized him as asecular saint.

If he did not have that electrified halo of hair and those piercingeyes, would he still have become science's preeminent poster boy?Suppose, as a thought experiment, that he had looked like a Max Planckor a Niels Bohr. Would he have remained in their reputational orbit,that of a mere scientific genius? Or would he still have made the leapinto the pantheon inhabited by Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton?

The latter, I believe, is the case. His work had a very personalcharacter, a stamp that made it recognizably his, the way a Picasso isrecognizably a Picasso. He made imaginative leaps and discerned greatprinciples through thought experiments rather than by methodicalinductions based on experimental data. The theories that resulted wereat tim...

Customer Reviews

well worth buying
excellent biography. cites little known facts; gives a basic analysis of his work; good inclusion of history, and its influence on his lifestyle decisions.

Einstein: His Life and Universe
Wonderfully informative and unbiased account. I didn't give it five stars because I thought the writing was a bit flat; but,nonetheless, I breezed through it and didn't get confused by the physics; in fact, Isaacson did a pretty good job of defining "it all".

Einstein His Life and Universe
Winner of Time Magazines person of the 20th Century, Albert Einstein was a legend in his own time and his scientific ideas continue to live on today. Walter Isaacson's recent biography, Einstein His Life and Universe, is an in depth look at this icon, his life, ideas and tribulations. Born in Germany, this boy genius was a rebel and not a very good student when he was young. Unhappy with authority and the Prussian mind set of strict discipline, he found a better life for free thinkers in neighboring Switzerland. A graduate of The Zurich Polytechnic and later an employee at the the Bern Patent Office, he had a hard time finding work. His desire to work at more respectable universities were often met with letters of rejection. With a chaotic marriage, coupled with child custody problems and a later divorce, it is a miracle that this man came up with such breakthroughs in theoretical physics. But he did and it changed the lives of humanity to this day.
Isaacson, does a good job in his book of not only covering Einstein's life but describes his theories of Special and General Relativity; with later introductions to Quantum Theory, that a "smart" layman can understand. I had to re-read the juicy scientific parts a few times to digest it, but it was worth the effort. Later in his life, Einstein wrestled with a unified field theory that would unite gravity and electromagnetism with the crazy unpredictable micro world of Quantum Mechanics. He did not have much success but did make some interesting observations and had many theories and opinions on this new and strange small atomic world. Being world famous and on the speakers circuit, Einstein was thrown into the political mix of the 1920's and 1930's and eventually made decisions that would later affect his life. An early believer in a Jewish state, he helped the Zionist movement and the creation of a Hebrew university in Israel. A staunch opponent to militant nationalism politics, he unknowingly endorsed anti war Communist front group causes and later was seen as a risk to national security during World War Two. But, there was no doubt that he was a proud American. Einstein would joke that he was not a Pacifist, but a militant pacifist. His utopia vision for the world was a one world benevolent government that ensured individual freedoms and encouraged free thought. As for the development of the A-Bomb, Einstein was not a active participant in its construction, but his famous equation of, e=mc2, was the building block that helped make it.
This book is an enjoyable read because it covers all parts of Einstein's life to include the lighter side of this deep thinker. His love of life, his love of people and his quick witted humor and absentmindedness is a trait that many people equate with this great man. One example is when he would take his hat off during a rainstorm saying that he knew that his hair could withstand the rain but he was unsure of how his hat would hold up. He would listen to his students ideas and theories and even help small children in his neighborhood with their math homework. I have read other books on Albert Einstein, but I would recommend that this one be put on the list of favorites. Some are not as complete, while others deal mainly with his science- but this one is a pleasant mixture of both. I enjoyed this book and found it informative, educational and interesting on the life of this human legend. This is a great biography of a most interesting man, with a good dose of science, and this makes this book the best of both worlds.
Robert Glasker