Einstein Lived Here - Hardcover

Pais, Abraham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198539940 ISBN 13: 9780198539940

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Abraham Pais's 'Subtle is the Lord...' is the definitive biography of Albert Einstein. Timothy Ferris, in The New York Times Book Review, called it "the biography of Einstein he himself would have liked best," adding that "it is a work against which future scientific biographies will be measured." As a respected physicist himself, Pais was the first biographer to give Einstein's thinking its full due, and as a close friend and associate of Einstein, he could provide an intimate, first-hand account of the life of this great scientist. The result was a national bestseller. Indeed, it was one of The New York Times's Best Books of the Year, and the winner of the 1983 American Book Award for Science.
Now, Pais turns his attention to the great physicist's life outside of science, with an informal, almost kalaidoscopic portrait of Einstein--his personal life and his public persona ("my mythical namesake who has made my life so burdensome"), his scientific contributions, and his thoughts on religion, philosophy, and politics, on Israel and Zionism, on the rise of Nazism and McCarthyism, and on much more. Pais offers a candid look at Einstein's troubled personal life--his two failed marriages, his first child Lieserl, who was born out of wedlock (and of whom all trace has vanished), his estranged son Hans Albert, also a scientist, who felt his father had abandoned the family, and his son Eduard, who gradually descended into madness. Of course, any book on Einstein must touch upon science, and Pais includes several illuminating chapters, one of which offers general readers an accessible explanation of relativity, and another traces the long road to Einstein's Nobel Prize (after being nominated almost every year from 1909 to 1920, he finally won in 1921--not for relativity, but for his work on the photoelectric effect). On the lighter side, Pais includes samples from Einstein's "curiosity file," in which he kept crank letters, marriage proposals, hate mail (one began "You are the prince of idiocy, the count of imbecility, the duke of cretinism, the baron of morons"), and the like. But the heart of the book is the final section, where Pais traces Einstein's life as seen through the media. Here we not only meet Einstein the living legend--receiving the keys to New York City from flamboyant Mayor Jimmy Walker, attending the Hollywood premier of City Lights with Charlie Chaplin--but also witness his extensive involvement in the issues of his day. Much of his commentary is amazingly prescient. In 1933, he said of Nazism: "I cannot understand the passive response of the whole civilized world to this modern barbarism. Does the world not see that Hitler is aiming for war?"
"I can still see Einstein's smile before me," the great physicist Niels Bohr said several years after Einstein's death, "a very special smile...knowing, humane, and friendly." In Einstein Lived Here, this more than anything else is the Einstein we see--knowing, humane, friendly--a world figure on a par with the greats of his age who could still ask "Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me."

About this title

About the Author:

About the Author:
Abraham Pais is Detlev W. Bronk Professor of Physics Emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York. He is also the author of 'Subtle is the Lord...' (for which he won the American Book Award), Inward Bound, and Niels Bohr's Times.

From Kirkus Reviews:

``Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me?'' Albert Einstein reportedly asked the New York Times in 1944. In this new collection of 11 essays on Einstein's life, physicist Pais responds, ``It is neither true that no one understands Einstein nor that everyone likes him.'' Pais speaks from a position of authority: He was a friend of Einstein's and wrote the highly acclaimed 1982 Einstein biography Subtle Is the Lord.... Whereas that volume focused on Einstein's scientific achievements and contained a plethora of equations incomprehensible to the layperson, this companion volume primarily illuminates Einstein's relationship with people both inside and outside the scientific community. For example, the reader catches several of Einstein's high-powered conversations with the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr about the implications of quantum mechanics, and a fleeting yet fascinating debate concerning the nature of truth with Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. In the concluding essays Pais generally allows Einstein to recount in his own words (through excerpts from his writings, speeches, and interviews) his views on religion, philosophy, and politics. We learn how Einstein used his worldwide fame to disseminate his views on pacifism and supranationalism through the media (views that provoked anti-Semitic reactions and charges of Communist leanings from right-wingers). Along the way, Pais sheds new light on some of the controversies surrounding this intellectual giant. For instance, Pais lays to rest the claim that Einstein's first wife, Mileva Mari, played a significant creative role in the development of special relativity. Pais also explains how Einstein's scientific mind-set prevented him from accepting the indeterminate nature of quantum mechanics--even though he called it ``the most successful physical theory of our period.'' There is considerable repetition from essay to essay and despite the author's best intentions, much of the scientific discussion will lie beyond the grasp of the lay reader. Those seeking a broad overview of Einstein's life will be better served elsewhere. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0198539940
• ISBN 13: 9780198539940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304