Norbert Haupt

There are countless biographies written about Einstein. I picked Isaacson’s without hesitation after reading Steve Jobs by Isaacson last year. It was a very rewarding read.

Einstein did his most significant and crowning work early in his life. Being a non-conformist, he had trouble making friends in school and alliances in college. As a result, when he graduated he really didn’t have any professors that would vouch for him or help him get a job at a university. Things were tough, and he finally took on a position at the Swiss patent office. While working there, he struggled to finish his Ph.D. and it took several tries before he succeeded.

This book tells the story of a modest, quirky, blockheaded and fiercely dedicated young scientist who, while working as a patent clerk during the day, wrote papers in Physics in his spare time and turned the world of Physics upside down, all by age 25.

The Theory of Relativity made Einstein’s name and eventually resulted in him  being one of the most recognized people in the world. Unlike any scientist, with the possible exception of Isaac Newton 200 years before him, he attained the popular status of a universal celebrity. Einstein was a rock star scientist.

I didn’t know how much difficulty he had with his two marriages, his children, and his countless romances and affairs. I didn’t know how much of a pacifist and non-conformist he was. I didn’t know how much celebrity status he gained over the years. Reading this biography, I found out all that and so much more, told in simple language by Isaacson for every kind of reader. There are, of course, long passages describing the behavior of particles in atoms, light waves, planet orbits and thousands of other physics phenomena. Therefore it helps if the reader has at least an interest in physics. It would otherwise be a difficult and tedious book.

The world is a better place because Einstein was in it. Being Jewish in Germany was challenging all by itself. When Hitler took the reins in Germany in 1933, there were only 60 theoretical physicists practicing in Germany, 26 of them were Jewish, and Einstein was one of them. Many physicists and other professionals, scientists and intellectuals took the opportunity to leave before the Nazis grabbed hold of power, but of course we know that millions were not so fortunate. The Germans, in obtuse idiocy, decided that Jewish science was inferior and pushed all scientists out or eventually killed them. They raided their own country of their best minds, and we all know the outcome. Had it gone otherwise, Einstein and many of his contemporaries might have remained in Germany – and the world would all be speaking German now and serve the German Übermensch.

After Einstein left Germany in 1933, he ended up never returning. He completely disowned the country.

“The Germans butchered millions of civilians according to a well-prepared plan,” he wrote. “They would do it again if only they were able to. Not a trace of guilt or remorse is to be found among them.” Einstein would not even permit his books to be sold in Germany again, nor would he allow his name to be placed back on the rolls of any German scientific society. “The crimes of the Germans are really the most abominable ever to be recorded in the history of the so-called civilized nations,” he wrote the physicist Otto Hahn. “The conduct of the German intellectuals— viewed as a class— was no better than that of the mob.”

— Isaacson, Walter (2007-04-10). Einstein: His Life and Universe (p. 506). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

The terms “Einstein” and “genius” are now synonymous. Isaacson’s Einstein is a powerful book about a phenomenal and utterly unique personality. I am enriched by reading it.

But their work on unified field theory never quite gelled. At times, the situation seemed so hopeless that Infeld and Hoffmann became despondent. “But Einstein’s courage never faltered, nor did his inventiveness fail him,” Hoffmann recalled. “When excited discussion failed to break the deadlock, Einstein would quietly say in his quaint English, ‘I will a little tink.’” The room would become silent, and Einstein would pace slowly up and down or walk around in circles, twirling a lock of his hair around his forefinger. “There was a dreamy, far-away, yet inward look on his face. No sign of stress. No outward indication of intense concentration.” After a few minutes, he would suddenly return to the world, “a smile on his face and an answer to the problem on his lips.”

— Isaacson, Walter (2007-04-10). Einstein: His Life and Universe (p. 464). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I will a little tink, now, too.