Einstein: The Life of a Genius
by Walter Isaacson
List Price:
Our Price: $14.25
You Save: $25.75 (64%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Walter IsaacsonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-11-03
ISBN: 0061893897
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Harper Design
Summary of Einstein: The Life of a Genius
Albert Einstein is synonymous with genius. From his remarkable theory of relativity and the famous equation E=mc2 to his concept of a unified field theory, no one has contributed as much to science in the last century.
As well as showing how Einstein developed his theories, Einstein reveals the man behind the science, from his early years and experiments in Germany and his struggle to find work at the Swiss patent office to his marriages and children, his role in the development of the atomic bomb, and his work for civil rights groups in the United States.
Drawing on new research and personal documents belonging to Einstein only recently made available, this book also includes items of rare facsimile memorabilia, to show you more than this scientist's groundbreaking theories.
As a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. --Anne Bartholomew
Read "The Light-Beam Rider," the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe.
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.
More to Explore
|
|  Kissinger: A Biography |  The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made |
Scientists Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Scientists Books
Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Scienceby Thomas Levenson
Oxford Univ Pr (Txt); Published: 1997-10; Hardcover; Book
The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plantsby Jane S. Smith
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2010-02-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.46
Price in other shops:
Don't You Have Time to Thinkby Richard P Feynman
Penguin; Published: 2006; Paperback; Book
Science at the Extreme: Scientists on the Cutting Edge of Discoveryby Peter Lane Taylor
McGraw-Hill Companies; Published: 2000-08-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.15
Price in other shops:
Enigmas of Chance: An Autobiography (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation series)by Mark Kac
Harpercollins; Published: 1985-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $125.00
Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earthby Andrew Smith
Harper Perennial; Published: 2006-08-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.60
Price in other shops:
Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic (Cambridge Concise Histories)by Anita Burdman Feferman, Solomon Feferman
Cambridge University Press; Published: 2008-04-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.97
Price in other shops:
The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynmanby Jagdish Mehra
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1994-03-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $157.74
For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronautby Scott Carpenter, Kris Stoever
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2003-01-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.18
Price in other shops:
Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mirby Jerry M. Linenger
McGraw-Hill; Published: 2000-12-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.50
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of GreatnessW. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2010-10-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
Einstein: His Life and Universeby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2007-04-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.49
Price in other shops:
Kissinger: A Biographyby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1992-09-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $26.87
Price in other shops:
American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricaneby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2009-11-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.36
Price in other shops:
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Madeby Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1997-06-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.91
Price in other shops:
Benjamin Franklin: An American Lifeby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2003-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops:
Kissinger: A Biographyby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2005-09-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.27
Price in other shops:
Steve Jobsby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2011-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.49
Price in other shops:
Benjamin Franklin: An American Lifeby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.92
Price in other shops:
Einstein: His Life and Universeby Walter Isaacson
Baker and Taylor; Simon & Schuster; Published: 2008-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops: