Einstein: His Life and Universe

Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson, is an excellent biography of Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Einstein was the most famous physicist of the 20th century. He is best known for his Special Theory of Relativity (1905) and General Theory of Relativity (1915). The Special Theory led to the famous equation E = mc² and the atomic bomb. The General Theory led to our current understanding of the outer universe, from its origin in the Big Bang to quasars and black holes.

Einstein also made important contributions to the other revolutionary physics theory of the 20th century: quantum mechanics. In fact it was for his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, not his work on relativity, that he was awarded the 1921 Nobel prize. But Einstein never became comfortable with the implications of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics leads to the conclusion that at the atomic and subatomic level, our world is not deterministic. It is probabilistic. Einstein famously wrote in 1926: "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

Einstein and the second best known physicist of the 20th century, Niels Bohr, famously carried on a debate about the meaning of quantum mechanics for as long as they lived. For more about Bohr and quantum mechanics see my series of posts in 2008 about the play Copenhagen.

Einstein lived in Germany and Switzerland until he later emigrated to the United States. He earned what we would now call a bachelor's degree from Zurich Polytechnic in 1900, after which it took him two years to find a job! And then it was not a teaching job as he was hoping for, but a job as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1903 Einstein married. It was while working at the Swiss Patent Office, and before he earned his PhD, that Einstein wrote a series of revolutionary papers in 1905, two of which are noted above.

Einstein was married twice. He had three children with his first wife, a daughter before they were married and two sons after they were married. (Little is known about the daughter. She may have been given up for adoption and likely died as an infant.) He and his first wife separated in 1914 when Einstein moved to Berlin to accept a university professorship. (Just as World War I was starting!) The two boys remained with their mother in Zurich. Einstein remarried in 1919. His second wife tolerated his many affairs better than the first wife did.

Einstein was born Jewish but he did not think of himself as Jewish until the Nazi movement arose in Germany. Einstein was a professor in Berlin 1914-1933 but emigrated to the United States in 1933 when the German government passed a law barring Jews from teaching at universities. He was a supporter of the creation of Israel.

Although Albert Einstein signed the famous letter in 1939 to President Roosevelt that launched the Manhattan Project, Einstein was not himself directly involved in the development of the atomic bomb. In fact, he was excluded as a possible security risk because of his German background and political views. Einstein was a pacifist (he later regretted signing that letter) and he favored socialism. But he opposed communism and all forms of totalitarianism. He was a nonconformist in both science and politics, as well as his personal life.

Was Einstein religious? In 1929 he wrote: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." By "lawful harmony" Einstein meant the laws of science, which he spent his life trying to better understand.