Einstein, History, and Other Passions (Masters of Modern Physics)

"One can do no better than reading Gerald Holton for exploring the scientific mind. These essays are rich with a deep understanding of the scientific enterprise, the personalities of its practitioners, and a passion for communicating the history and culture of science." Alan Lightman, MIT

From the opening pages this book presents an authoritative and accessible guide to the place of science in our culture today. Gerald Holton shows how the work of Einstein and his followers not only transformed science but also changed the non-scientific world, from literature and visual arts to philosophy and psychology. The recently found love letters between Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric, are used as a keyhole for studying sympathetically how the young couple tried to fashion for themselves a life based both on their tumultuous passion for each other and their love for science. This provocative volume concludes with a gallery of finely drawn profiles of notable physicists including Robert Oppenheimer, P.W. Bridgman, I.I. Rabi, Richard Feynman, and the philosopher-scientist Michael Polanyi. Library of Science Book Club Selection

In Einstein, History, and Other Passions, Gerald Holton, a professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard University, dispels the idea that science is creatively inferior to the arts. By focusing on the life and work of Albert Einstein, Holton illustrates that the practical nature of science flows from the creative pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake. Holton reminds us that some of Einstein's greatest work was conducted at a time when he was madly in love and argues that scientists, like artists, are driven by a passion to explore and create. They do science, he says, not for prestige, but simply because they find it impossible not to.