Book 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.
Five Questions for Walter Isaacson
 Amazon.com: What kind of scientific education did you have to give yourself to be able to understand and explain Einstein's ideas?
Isaacson:
I've always loved science, and I had a group of great physicists--such
as Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and Murray Gell-Mann--who tutored me,
helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions of my book. I
also learned the tensor calculus underlying general relativity, but
tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book. I wanted to
capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientific leaps, but I
hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the science will read
Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, Jeremy Bernstein,
Brian Greene, and others.
Amazon.com: That Einstein was
a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when he revolutionized our
understanding of the physical world has often been treated as ironic or
even absurd. But you argue that in many ways his time there fostered
his discoveries. Could you explain?
Isaacson: I think
he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving as an
acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teach the
conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize the
physical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss who
told him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galison
shows in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps,
many of the patent applications involved synchronizing clocks using
signals that traveled at the speed of light. So with his office-mate
Michele Besso as a sounding board, he was primed to make the leap to
special relativity.
Amazon.com: That time in the patent
office makes him sound far more like a practical scientist and tinkerer
than the usual image of the wild-haired professor, and more like your
previous biographical subject, the multitalented but eminently earthly
Benjamin Franklin. Did you see connections between them?
Isaacson:
I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einstein
shared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin was
a more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was the
opposite in that regard.
Amazon.com: Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what did you find to be least true? Most true?
Isaacson:
The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He was
actually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knew
they were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example,
he could look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be
like to ride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's
equations about radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that
light was a particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how
rebellious and defiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics,
his personal life, and his science.
Amazon.com: At Time
and CNN and the Aspen Institute, you've worked with many of the leading
thinkers and leaders of the day. Now that you've had the chance to get
to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone from our day who
shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?
Isaacson:
There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, who
wrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was
editor of Time. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the
same creative imagination and ability to think differently that
distinguished Einstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual
intensity. I wish I knew politicians who had the creativity and human
instincts of Einstein, or for that matter the wise feel for our common
values of Benjamin Franklin.
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