Einstein Lived Here: Essays for the Layman

by Abraham Pais (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $6.82

  Few people have understood what Einstein has said, thought, and done, but many are hungry to know more about him. This companion volume to Abraham Pais's acclaimed scientific biography Subtle is the Lord...(OUP 1982) enlarges on the way Einstein was perceived by the world at large. His becoming the modern scientist of greatest renown is largely the result of extensive and early attention from the media, as the author has documented by delving into newspaper and magazine archives from 1902 to the present. We learn of Einstein's views on religion and philosophy, his marital problems, and his contacts with personalities ranging from John D. Rockefeller to Charlie Chaplin, and from Freud to Gandhi. Interviews with Einstein, as well as reports on brief comments and longer addresses by him, help to convey his vivid, yet economical, expressive style as well as his great talent at formulation. He wrote and spoke about pacficism, supranationalism, civil liberties, and the rights and obligations of Jews and Arabs to live together harmoniously in the Middle East. Other subjects which, perhaps suprisingly, engaged him ranged from capital punishment to vegetarianism. This new book is written on the basis of the author's unique perspective: he is a physicist and knew Eingstein well for many years. With a style that is accessible and non-mathematical, Pais provides essential information about Einstein the human being which will fascinate and inform both the specialist and the layman alike. This book is intended for historians of science, Einsteinophiles, cultural historians/observers, avid readers of biographies, and the general reader.