Einstein Lived Here

By Abraham Pais

Book Overview

Abraham Pais's 'Subtle is the Lord...' is the definitive biography of Albert Einstein. Timothy Ferris, in The New York Times Book Review, called it "the biography of Einstein he himself would have liked best," adding that "it is a work against which future scientific biographies will be measured." As a respected physicist himself, Pais was the first biographer to give Einstein's thinking its full due, and as a close friend and associate of Einstein, he could provide an intimate, first-hand account of the life of this great scientist. The result was a national bestseller. Indeed, it was one of The New York Times's Best Books of the Year, and the winner of the 1983 American Book Award for Science.
Now, Pais turns his attention to the great physicist's life outside of science, with an informal, almost kalaidoscopic portrait of Einstein--his personal life and his public persona ("my mythical namesake who has made my life so burdensome"), his scientific contributions, and his thoughts on religion, philosophy, and politics, on Israel and Zionism, on the rise of Nazism and McCarthyism, and on much more. Pais offers a candid look at Einstein's troubled personal life--his two failed marriages, his first child Lieserl, who was born out of wedlock (and of whom all trace has vanished), his estranged son Hans Albert, also a scientist, who felt his father had abandoned the family, and his son Eduard, who gradually descended into madness. Of course, any book on Einstein must touch upon science, and Pais includes several illuminating chapters, one of which offers general readers an accessible explanation of relativity, and another traces the long road to Einstein's Nobel Prize (after being nominated almost every year from 1909 to 1920, he finally won in 1921--not for relativity, but for his work on the photoelectric effect). On the lighter side, Pais includes samples from Einstein's "curiosity file," in which he kept crank letters, marriage proposals, hate mail (one began "You are the prince of idiocy, the count of imbecility, the duke of cretinism, the baron of morons"), and the like. But the heart of the book is the final section, where Pais traces Einstein's life as seen through the media. Here we not only meet Einstein the living legend--receiving the keys to New York City from flamboyant Mayor Jimmy Walker, attending the Hollywood premier of City Lights with Charlie Chaplin--but also witness his extensive involvement in the issues of his day. Much of his commentary is amazingly prescient. In 1933, he said of Nazism: "I cannot understand the passive response of the whole civilized world to this modern barbarism. Does the world not see that Hitler is aiming for war?"
"I can still see Einstein's smile before me," the great physicist Niels Bohr said several years after Einstein's death, "a very special smile...knowing, humane, and friendly." In Einstein Lived Here, this more than anything else is the Einstein we see--knowing, humane, friendly--a world figure on a par with the greats of his age who could still ask "Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198539940
• ISBN13: 9780198539940
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

An indispensable source for the educated layman

As it is known, Albert Einstein is the leading creator of the relativity theory, that's right? It's right, but this is not only a stereotyped image, it's also a very simplified image of the geniality and the psychological complexity of one of the major savant among all the savants. An excellent overview of the Einstein scientific work is presented in that many people consider the best biography of this genial scientist. I'm referring to the Abraham Pais book "Subtle is the Lord", published in 1982. Although an incontestable bibliographical source, "Subtle is the Lord" is not at all accessible to the layman. With the present book, "Einstein Lived Here", Pais help the general public, from the relativity theorist to the absolutely layman. While not discarding a rigorous historical approach, Pais priority is on Einstein human dimension, and gives us a fluent and very agreeable text in which he deals with polemic questions, as the supposed involvement of Einstein in the American atomic bomb fabrication. Among all those that have written about Einstein, Abraham Pais seems to be the most qualified. Theoretical physicist of recognized competence, emeritus professor at the Rockefeller University, New York, Pais have been acquainted with Einstein from 1946 to December 1954, when he visited him for the last time; at the Einstein death, in April 18, 1955, Pais was not in the USA.Even for the reader reasonably up to date with the pertinent literature, Pais discloses interesting facts. For example, in the first chapter there is an admirable description of the dramatic marital life of Albert and Mileva Maric, his first wife. Pais discusses the very controversial participation of Mileva on the Einstein's scientific work, particularly on the relativity theory. For the author, the only evidence for a possible role of Mileva in the creation of relativity is Einstein's remark in a letter of March 1901: "Together we shall conclude victoriously our work on relative motion". The followed discussion arrived at the author's suggestion that the remark was no more than a love declaration. These letters, published in "Albert Einstein-Mileva Maric, the love letters", by J. Renn and R. Schulmann, Princeton University Press, 1992, revealed an absolutely unknown fact until 1986: In April 1901, before the Einstein's marriage, Mileva was pregnant. The child, born in January 1902, was a girl, named Lieserl. But, what became of Lieserl? Nobody knows! Apparently Einstein ever even saw her. In the summer of 1903 Mileva went to visit her family. From Berna Einstein wrote to her expressing concern about Lierserl's attack of scarlet fever. This is the last known communication between the parents about their daughter. The Einstein's life was a great target of the public curiosity. As such he had to pay the price of receiving numerous messages from strangers. It is a safe bet that among scientists no one received more such letters than him. The true