Review - Einstein - His Life and Universe _ Walter Isaacson

Image Courtesy: www.goodreads.com

 

Who is the most celebrated scientist of the world? Whose picture that we immediately form in our mind when it comes to science and physics? Who has been regarded as the symbol of intelligence, excellence, and simplicity? There is no second guess – the answers to all these questions are Albert Einstein. Born in Germany, grown in Switzerland and then Germany again, and finally settled in USA, Einstein was a revered scientist whose Theory of Specific and General Relativity is the most famous physical theory of all; which lead to the equation which is more famous than the theory itself, and can be found on the cover of almost every science book around the world is:

Einstein himself used to say repeatedly that he was no more intelligent than any other man around him; what kept him ahead of them all is his ability to be curious, to ask questions, and to look for the simplicity in the nature and universe itself. If we can learn anything from his life is that we must live life of simplicity with childlike curiosity. However, we seem to forget that we were once a child, and forget who we are on the journey leading to adulthood.

His professional success might lead the people to believe that his personal life was success as well. However, he couldn’t help but get divorce from his first marriage with whom he had 3 children and only two of them survived and one of them went to the mental asylum. He married again to his cousin, and he had a history of entanglement with various other ladies (including a Soviet Spy); his charisma and magnetism, couldn’t help but attract women easily towards him. However, he found his love of his life in science and the mystery of the nature. Whenever he would found himself in painful situation due to personal relationships, he would devote himself in his scientific endeavors; the greater the pain, greater his concentration and vigor would be in developing theories.

Firstly a pacifist, then One-worlder, his political views were seen as naïve since coming from a man of such intelligence. He witnessed both the World Wars, and had pushed the idea by writing a letter to the US President on building an atomic bomb, which were dropped in Japan to end the WWII. After the dropping of bombs, he went silent and somehow neurotic for more than a month. Then he pushed the idea of World Government which would oversee the military operation all around the world, which would supersede the individual government. Due to the fact that WWII made him refugee, and caused millions of Jews to be slaughtered by the Nazi Germany, he denounced his pacifist view and supported the view that the military of the entire world should be controlled by the World Government only.

….imagination is more important than knowledge….

……. “From the very beginning he was inclined to separate himself from children his own age and to engage in daydreaming and meditative musing,” according to Philipp Frank, a longtime scientific colleague……

.….just as Newton had been born the year that Galileo died, so Einstein was born the year that Maxwell died, and he saw it as part of his mission to extend the work of the Scotsman….

…“His conviction that the universe loves simplification and beauty, and his willingness to be guided by this conviction, even if it meant destroying the foundations of Newtonian physics, led him, with a clarity of thought that others could not match, to his new description of space and time”…..

…..years later, when his younger son, Eduard, asked why he was so famous, Einstein replied by using a simple image to describe his great insight that gravity was the curving of the fabric of space-time.“When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved,” he said. “I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice.”……

….Einstein’s study at home featured a large wooden writing table that was cluttered with piles of papers and journals. Padding around this hermitage, eating and working at whatever hours suited him, sleeping when he had to, he waged his solitary struggle…….

...the answer, which he triumphantly announced in the third of his four November lectures, came out right: 43 arc-seconds per century. 78 “This discovery was, I believe, by far the strongest emotional experience in Einstein’s scientific life, perhaps in all his life,” Abraham Pais later said…..

……Einstein, at age 36, had produced one of history’s most imaginative and dramatic revisions of our concepts about the universe. The general theory of relativity was not merely the interpretation of some experimental data or the discovery of a more accurate set of laws. It was a whole new way of regarding reality…..

……for our sun that would happen if all of its mass were compressed into a radius of less than two miles. For the earth, it would happen if all the mass were compressed into a radius of about one-third of an inch….

….in all, more than six hundred books and articles on relativity were published in the first six years after the eclipse observations…..

……Einstein’s desire for detachment was reflected in his extramarital relationships. As long as women did not make any claims on him and he felt free to approach them or not according to his own moods, he was able to sustain a romance. But the fear that he might have to surrender some of his independence led him to erect a shield……

….the value of education is not the learning of many facts but training of the mind to think……

…..Einstein’s trip to America indelibly cast him as he wanted to be: a citizen of the world, an internationalist, not a German……….

….one evening at a dinner, Murray’s wife asked him why he remained so cheerful given the depravity of the world. “We must remember that this is a very small star,” he responded, “and probably some of the larger and more important stars may be very virtuous and happy…..

……….it seemed obvious that Einstein would someday win the Nobel Prize for Physics. He had, in fact, already agreed to transfer the money to his first wife, Mileva Maric, when that occurred…

……..more specifically, Einstein’s scientific successes had come in part from his rebelliousness. There was a link between his creativity and his willingness to defy authority. He had no sentimental attachment to the old order, thus was energized by upending it. His stubbornness had worked to his advantage……..

……a good joke should be repeated too often……

………nature is pleased with simplicity……

……it was a sunny day, and Einstein merrily played with the telescope’s dials and instruments. Elsa came along as well and it was explained to her that the equipment was used to determine the scope and shape of the universe. She reportedly replied, “Well, my husband does that on the back of an old envelope”…..

……..so he wrote a letter, tinged with amusement, declining the gift. “Life is very short,” he told the mayor, “while the authorities work slowly. My birthday is already past, and I decline the gift.” The headline the next day in the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper read, “Public Disgrace Complete / Einstein Declines.”…….

…..his magnetic appeal and soulful manner repeatedly attracted women……..

…..…. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Einstein said to his younger son Eduard….

……Charlie Chaplin noted, “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you”……

……. “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind”…..

……. “I must tell you honestly that in the long term I would prefer to be in Holland rather than in America,” Einstein replied. “Apart from the handful of really fine scholars, it is a boring and barren society that would soon make you shiver.”…….

Like a good scientist, Einstein could change his attitudes when confronted with new evidence. Among his deepest personal principles was his pacifism. But in early 1933, with Hitler’s ascension, the facts had changed

…….when Einstein left Zurich for Oxford, he was still assuming that he would be spending half of each ensuing year in Europe. What he did not know was that, as things would turn out, this would be the last time he would see his first wife and their younger son…..

…….. “The dog is very smart,” Einstein explained. “He feels sorry for me because I receive so much mail. That’s why he tries to bite the mailman…

…….. “Entanglement of predictions arises from the fact that the two bodies at some earlier time formed in a true sense one system, that were interacting, and have left behind traces on each other,” Schrödinger wrote. “If two separated bodies enter a situation in which they influence each other, and separate again, then there occurs what I have just called entanglement of our knowledge of the two bodies.”…..

….but just as he felt awe when first pondering a compass as a child, Einstein was able to feel awe that there are rules ordering our perceptions, rather than pure randomness…..

……… “His tenacity in sticking to a problem for years, in returning to the problem again and again—this is the characteristic feature of Einstein’s genius,”…..

…..the world’s most famous scientist was about to tell the president of the United States that he should begin contemplating a weapon of almost unimaginable impact that could unleash the power of the atom…….

…….for the remaining ten years of his life, his passion for advocating a unified governing structure for the globe would rival that for finding a unified field theory that could govern all the forces of nature….

…..at a Manhattan dinner given by the Nobel Prize committee in December, he noted that Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, had created the award “to atone for having invented the most powerful explosives ever known up to his time.” He was in a similar situation. “Today, the physicists who participated in forging the most formidable and dangerous weapon of all times are harassed by an equal feeling of responsibility, not to say guilt,” he said……

…… “I do not know how the Third World War will be fought,” he answered, “but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks….

……by the time he died, the Bureau would amass 1,427 pages stored in fourteen boxes, all stamped Confidential but containing nothing incriminating….

……..Einstein was wearing his usual attire: a baggy sweatshirt and corduroy trousers…..

….even slightly frivolous remarks made by Einstein carried a lot of momentum…..

…… “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially,” he told Dukas. “I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”…..

…..the last thing Einstein wrote was:

Always a non – conformist and a rebel type personality; this trait, he never lost until the last day of his life as he was scribbling to form his incomplete Unified Field Theory, and mumbled some word in German before drawing on the last breath. We can take valuable lessons from him, which can help us living a purposeful and meaningful life on our own. His view on bourgeoisie living was right, we must think over ourselves and for the greater good of the humanity. It was a great and amazing journey to have read the wonderful and detailed biography of one of the greatest scientist of all time by the most revered biographer currently living. Of course, science and mathematics explained by the writer are not easy to grasp, nevertheless, we will enjoy the imagination it puts forth in the readers mind. I feel privileged to have read this wonderful and detailed biography, and if you are interested in the life of Einstein, it is the right book to stumble upon.

Rating: 5/5