{"product_id":"my-einstein-isbn-9781400079506","title":"My Einstein","description":"In this fascinating volume, today’s foremost scientists discuss their own versions and visions of Einstein: how he has influenced their worldviews, their ideas, their science, and their professional and personal lives. These twenty-four essays are a testament to the power of scientific legacy and are essential reading for scientist and layperson alike.Contributors include:• Roger Highfield on the Einstein myth• John Archibald Wheeler on his meetings with Einstein• Gino C. Segrè, Lee Smolin, and Anton Zeilinger on Einstein’s difficulties with quantum theory• Leon M. Lederman on the special theory of relativity• Frank J. Tipler on why Einstein should be seen as a scientific reactionary rather than a scientific revolutionary\u003ci\u003eIntroduction by John Brockman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eROGER HIGHFIELD\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEinstein When He’s at Home\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eGINO C. SEGRÉ\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Freest Man\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMentor and Sounding Board\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eGEORGE F. SMOOT\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMy Einstein Suspenders\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eLEON M. LEDERMAN\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEinstein, Moe, and Joe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eCHARLES SEIFE\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe True and the Absurd\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eFRANK J. TIPLER\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAlbert Einstein:  A Scientific Reactionary\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eGEORGE DYSON\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHelen Dukas:  Einstein’s Compass\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eCOREY S. POWELL\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMy Three Einsteins\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eLEE SMOLIN\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Search of Einstein\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eANTON ZEILINGER\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEinstein and Absolute Reality\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eSTEVEN STROGATZ\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Walk Down Mercer Street\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003ePETER GALISON\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThings and Thoughts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eJEREMY BERNSTEIN\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChilde Bernstein to Relativity Came\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eGEORGE JOHNSON\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Books in the Basement\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eLEONARD SUSSKIND\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow He Thought\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eJANNA LEVIN\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eToward a Moving Train\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eMARCELO GLEISER\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEinstein’s Tie\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eROCKY KOLB\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Greatest Discovery Einstein Didn’t Make\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eRICHARD A. MULLER\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Gift of Time\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003ePAUL C. W. DAVIES\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFlying Apart\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eLAWRENCE M. KRAUSS\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEinstein in the Twilight Zone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003ePAUL J. STEINHARDT\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNo Beginning and No End\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eMARIA SPIROPULU\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhere Is Einstein?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003ci\u003eMy Einstein\u003c\/i\u003e delivers even more than its lengthy title promises.” —\u003ci\u003eTheWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e“These essays are irresistible.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Buffalo News\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003ci\u003eMy Einstein\u003c\/i\u003e is a gem of a book that celebrates not only Einstein the scientist but also Einstein the man, even though it is a collection of essays written by scientific figures ... The result is a remarkably well-rounded figure.” —\u003ci\u003eDeseret Morning News\u003c\/i\u003e“Excellent.” —\u003ci\u003eTucson Citizen\u003c\/i\u003eJohn Brockman has edited nearly 20 books and is the author of three: \u003ci\u003eBy the Late John Brockman\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Third Culture\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eDigerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite.\u003c\/i\u003e He is the founder and CEO of Brockman Inc., an International literary and software agency, president of Edge Foundation, Inc., and publisher and editor of Edge, a website presenting the third culture in action. A well-known computer and Internet entrepreneur and visionary, his work is frequently featured in the media.Einstein When He's at Home\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    ROGER HIGHFIELD is the science editor of the Daily Telegraph in   London. He has carried out research at Oxford University and the   Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, where he became the first to   bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. He is the author of Can Reindeer   Fly?: The Science of Christmas; The Science of Harry Potter: How   Magic Really Works; and coauthor (with Paul Carter) of The Private   Lives of Albert Einstein and (with Peter Coveney) of Frontiers of   Complexity and The Arrow of Time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Here is the canonical Einstein: He begins life as a dullard and a   dyslexic, yet he overcomes these obstacles to help lay the   foundations of quantum theory, to change our view of space, and to   transform time. Despite his towering achievements, he shows great   humility. He pokes his tongue out for the cameras. He is disheveled.   He hates socks. He is an eccentric genius with a warm heart. He is a   pacifist (except when it comes to the Nazis). His face is wise and   lined, his hair is white and wild; some call it a mane or even a   halo. When describing the universe, Einstein resorts to religious   terms. He has the aura of a saint. But he also has a dark secret: he   invented the atomic bomb.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The popular image of Einstein as archetypal eccentric boffin dates to   half a century after the first flowering of his astonishing creative   genius. The tangle-haired sage whose image has graced thousands of   posters, coffee mugs, and\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    T-shirts is an Einstein well past his scientific best, a faded   version of the original. We should bury the sockless dustball who   rolled around Princeton and restore the creative Einstein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This is the young Einstein, whom Paul Carter and I attempted to   portray in our 1993 book The Private Lives of Albert Einstein, after   conversations with relatives and with scholars such as Jurgen Renn,   John Stachel, and Robert Schulmann. This is the passionate Einstein.   This Einstein had a muscular and powerful build despite his   indifference to most forms of exercise. He had regular features, warm   brown eyes, a mass of curly black hair, and a raffish mustache. He   was good-looking and enjoyed the company of women. They enjoyed his   company, too. And, of course, he was a genius. That much was obvious   early.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Einstein was not stupid as a child. He did repeat himself, but he was   not dyslexic, as is often asserted. Classmates at his primary school   taunted him with the nickname \"Biedermeier\" (\"Honest John\"), most   likely because of his blunt manner. But his mother, Pauline, wrote in   August 1886 that the seven-year-old was at the top of his class \"once   again\" and had received a \"splendid\" report card. He was brought up   in a family that made its living from electrical engineering, an   advanced technology of the day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Despite his love of a religious turn of phrase, Einstein found it   impossible to conceive of a personal deity and had no belief in an   afterlife. He has said that his reading of popular science ended his   \"religiosity\" abruptly, at the age of twelve. He decided that the   stories of the Bible could not be true and became a fanatical   freethinker, convinced he had been fed lies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He did not invent the atom bomb. He did transform our view of space   and time. His great scientific works began with a creative outpouring   in 1905, when he was just twenty-six years old. Like almost every   other scientist and mathematician, he was at his most productive in   his early years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    No one knew the real Einstein better than his first wife, Mileva   Maric. Their marriage, from 1903 to 1919, spanned the most important   years of his life, yet Mileva is a shadowy figure in many Einstein   biographies. Because of a lack of letters from that period and their   uneasiness about his first marriage and its many failings, the   traditional biographers tended to focus on Einstein's later years. In   these hagiographies, in which the assumption is made that a great   scientist must have an unwrinkled private life, the old Einstein   prevails.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A chance to see Einstein afresh came when his son Hans Albert died in   July 1973. In a shoebox in a drawer at his home in Berkeley,   California, was family correspondence, including love letters from   Einstein to Mileva. The collection was so sensitive that the   executors of Einstein's estate had gone to court to stop Hans Albert   from publishing it; they argued that not even Einstein's son, to whom   many of the letters were addressed, should be allowed to reveal such   intimate material. Only in recent years have the letters been   published, and only now can we see Einstein in his prime, warts and   all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The young Einstein would moan to Mileva that his mother and sister   were crass, petty, and philistine. He complained about the \"mindless   prattle\" of his mother's friends and relatives. His Aunt Julie was a   \"veritable monster of arrogance.\" His relatives and their   \"hangers-on\" were \"people gone soft,\" turned \"moldy,\" whose lives   were empty and whose minds had atrophied.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The young Einstein was no respecter of scientific reputations,   either--not least because he had been shunned by the establishment   after he graduated from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (now   called the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, or ETH) in 1900. The   work of Paul Drude, one of the leading theorists of the day, was   \"stimulating and informative\" but lacked clarity and precision.   Einstein sent Drude a series of objections to his electron theory of   metals (in which various properties are explained in terms of an   electron gas). Having come up with a similar theory, he felt it quite   proper to approach Drude as an equal and point out his \"mistakes.\" He   threatened to \"make it hot\" for Drude by publishing an attack on   Drude's theory. \"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest   enemy of truth,\" he declared.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Einstein's comments on his instructors at the Polytechnic School were   equally biting. One taught clearly but too superficially; another was   brilliant and profound but an impenetrable pedant. When Einstein   struggled to find a job, he accused his old physics lecturer of   thwarting his career by spreading bad opinions of him. He went out of   his way to annoy the head of a boarding school where he worked for a   short time, and he told Mileva, \"Long live impudence. It's my   guardian angel in this world.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      These vivid letters do much to undermine the image of the genial   sage. He could be sweet, funny, and charming, but he could be   acerbic, too. Einstein exuded charisma and a relaxed charm. He was a   flirt. Far from the shaggy-haired figure of later years, he possessed   what a friend of Elsa, his second wife, would describe as \"masculine   good looks of the type that played havoc at the turn of the century.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He met Mileva in 1896, when she switched to Section VI-A of the   Polytechnic School, reading, like Einstein, for a diploma that would   qualify her to teach mathematics and physics at secondary schools.   Mileva, almost twenty-one, was three and a half years older than   Einstein and the only woman to join Section VI-A that year (and only   the fifth altogether). A romance developed (not Einstein's first).   This is not a love story about Albert and Mileva but about \"Johonesl\"   (\"Johnnie\") and \"Little Doll\" (\"Dollie,\" as well as his tiny witch,   his itty-bitty frog, his dear kitten, his little street urchin, his   dear little angel, his little right hand, his dearest little child,   his tiny black girl). On August 20, 1900, Johnnie wrote his Dollie a   daft and endearing dialect poem, which includes the verse:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Oh my! That Johnnie boy!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    So crazy with desire,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    While thinking of his Dollie,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His pillow catches fire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The popular image of an elderly Einstein does not even suggest the   possibility of a fling, let alone this engaging bit of lovestruck   silliness. Two years later, the relationship became serious. Johnnie   and Dollie conceived a love child during a trip to the Splugen Pass,   near Como. Mileva gave birth sometime around the end of January 1902,   yet there is no evidence that Einstein and Lieserl, his daughter,   ever set eyes on each other. Einstein was never to talk of Lieserl   publicly. She might have been erased from history had it not been for   the discovery of the cache of love letters. Her fate is not known for   certain. Perhaps Lieserl's birth posed a threat to Einstein's new   start as a patent examiner in Bern. He had gained Swiss citizenship   only a year earlier, and the stigma of an illegitimate child would   have harmed his prospects. She was probably surrendered for adoption.   Though understandable, this is hardly behavior one might have   ascribed to the latter-day saint.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In Bern, Einstein engaged in high jinks and schoolboy pranks. He   offered private tutoring in mathematics and physics, and among his   pupils was Maurice Solovine, an ebullient Romanian studying at Bern   University. Later the two were joined by Conrad Habicht, the uptight   scion of a bank director. They constituted themselves, with mock   formality, as the Olympia Academy and discussed philosophical issues,   Einstein taking the lead. The door of his and Mileva's apartment was   adorned with a tin plaque reading \"Albert Ritter von Steissbein,   President of the Olympia Academy.\" \"Ritter von Steissbein\" might   loosely be translated as \"Knight of the Backside.\" On one occasion,   Solovine skipped a meeting at his own lodgings, and Einstein and   Habicht took revenge by smoking furiously (Solovine hated tobacco)   and piling all his belongings, from furniture to crockery, on his bed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Each paper that Einstein produced in his annus mirabilis is the final   consequence of a long chain of work by masters of classical   physics--Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Planck, Hendrik Lorentz. However,   Einstein had sufficient distance from their way of thinking to   interpret their research from a new perspective--with revolutionary   results. Far from earning him instant acclaim, the papers were at   first largely ignored. According to his sister, Maja, Einstein had   expected immediate criticism of his relativity theory; instead there   was silence, and he was disappointed. The exception was the highly   influential Planck, who began lecturing on the theory, firing the   imagination of his assistant Max von Laue, one of the first   scientists to pay a call on the unknown author in Bern. Von Laue was   confronted not with a sage but with a garrulous young man. He found   Einstein's appearance so unprepossessing when he first arrived at the   patent office that he let the young man walk past him (\"I could not   believe he could be the father of the relativity theory\"). He was   equally unimpressed by the cheap cigar Einstein gave him, and as they   crossed a bridge over the Aare he surreptitiously threw it into the   river.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Einstein's private life was not nearly as successful as his science,   though one would not gather this from his early biographers. He could   be harsh. When, in late 1932, his son Eduard was admitted for the   first of many stays at the Burgholzli mental institution in Zurich to   be treated for schizophrenia, Einstein is said to have remarked, \"Who   knows if it would not have been better if he had left the world   before he had really known this life.\" Einstein also had a streak of   misogyny. Of a woman who he felt was tormenting \"a great artist\" of   his acquaintance he declared: \"You know, that is a creature I could   kill in cold blood. I'd like to put a rope around her neck and   tighten it until her tongue lolled out.\" This dramatic statement was   accompanied by the appropriate gestures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Einstein had misgivings about matrimony. It must have been invented   \"by an unimaginative pig\" and was \"slavery in a cultural garment.\" He   argued from firsthand experience that marriage was incompatible with   human nature, claiming that 95 percent of all men, and probably as   many women, were not monogamous by nature. He once joked that he   preferred \"silent vice to ostentatious virtue.\" Marriage reduced free   human beings to mere articles of property and was \"the unsuccessful   attempt to make something lasting out of an incident.\" Asked on one   occasion whether it was permissible for Jews to marry non-Jews, he   replied with a laugh, \"It's dangerous--but then all marriages are   dangerous.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He told his lover--his cousin Elsa--that Mileva was \"an unfriendly,   humorless creature who herself has nothing from life and who   undermines others' joy of living through her mere presence.\" She was   \"the sourest sourpot there has ever been,\" a plagued individual who   gave their home the atmosphere of a cemetery. Her jealousy was a   pathological flaw typical in a woman of such \"uncommon ugliness.\"   Then again, Mileva had good reason to be unhappy. When in 1916   Einstein demanded a divorce, she suffered a physical and mental   breakdown. The divorce was finally issued in February of 1919 and   Einstein and Elsa were married the following June.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Within a few months, he had become celebrated across the planet:   \"revolution in science \/ new theory of the universe \/ newtonian ideas   overthrown\" thundered the Times of London on November 7, 1919.   \"lights all askew in the heavens \/ men of science more-or-less agog \/   einstein theory triumphs,\" announced the New York Times two days   later. The accompanying reports revealed the findings of two British   expeditions to observe a solar eclipse. Scientists in northern Brazil   and on the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa had   witnessed the bending of starlight predicted by his general theory of   relativity. The results caused a sensation at the Royal Society,   whose president hailed relativity as perhaps the most momentous   product of human thought. Biographer Abraham Pais has called this   \"the birth of the Einstein legend.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The architect of Einstein's summer house in Caputh, near Berlin,   where the now world-famous professor spent much time from 1929   through 1932, noted that women were drawn to him like iron filings to   a magnet and that Einstein responded eagerly. Various liaisons   developed, some of them casual, a few intimate, all wounding to Elsa,   whom he provoked into the same jealous furies that he had complained   of in Mileva.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Reporters scrambled to interview the man behind the theory and were   enchanted to find a wild-haired eccentric of rumpled charm and   displaying a mocking sense of humor. He became a media sage, courted   the world over. During a trip to Geneva he was mobbed by young girls,   one of whom tried to snip off a lock of his hair. Babies were named   after him, as were a telescope and a brand of cigars, and a torrent   of letters began to arrive. They continued for the rest of his life:   letters from well-wishers, religious nuts, spongers begging for   money, pressure groups seeking endorsements, children wanting help   with their homework--even one from a little girl asking, \"Do you   exist?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The young Einstein who had achieved so much and whose efforts   climaxed with his general theory in 1915 no longer did exist, of   course.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301906927845,"sku":"NP9781400079506","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400079506.jpg?v=1767733254","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/my-einstein-isbn-9781400079506","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}