Einstein: His Life and Universe

Title: Einstein: His Life and Universe

Author: Walter Isaacson

Pages: 19 discs

Genre: Biography

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Albert Einstein was born in the German Empire (in 1879), educated in Switzerland and died as an American (1955). This recent biography is one of the first to be released after his personal letters and correspondences were released to the public. Every aspect of his life is examined from his early childhood (he never failed math), his time at the Zurich Poytechnic, his difficulty landing a job as a professor, his outspoken political ideologies and his time in America. 1905 is known as a miracle year in physics when Einstein, working as a patent clerk published four papers where he discovered the photoelectric effect, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy (e=mc^2) as well as a paper exploring Brownian motion. Over time, Einstein truly became a superstar in the realm of physics. Eventually, the Jewish oppression in Germany was too much and he emigrated to America in the early 1930's where he had a position at Princeton University and continued to search for a unified theory of the physical world.

My Review: I imagine that a biography on Einstein would be fairly difficult to write and keep interesting for the majority of readers, but Isaacson has done just that. There is enough explanation of Einstein's thought experiments and breakthroughs that the non-physics reader is able to have an idea of what is being discussed, not understand it though - if was often joked that only 3 people understood relativity in the world (at the time of Einstein) and nobody knew who the other two were. I'm not sure that we have a comparable scientist living today. Einstein lived during the golden-age of physics when many of the physicists and scientists were known the world over. His popularity was fairly easy to accomplish with the new York Times virtually covering his every move. I was very impressed with Einstein, but every genius seems to have a dark side, and while Einstein's is pretty tame, it is still there. One complaint with the book (which others may appreciate) is that each chapter seemed to be written as a free-standing work, which means there was some minor duplication of material that had already been covered. One of the better biographies that I have read.