Before reading Mr. Isaacson's biography, the only things I remembered about Albert Einstein were E=mc(squared), he was German, and the guy's Muppet hairdo. It was nice to see photos of him as a child. I thought maybe he was born already wearing a friggin' mustache. There is a lot to like about Mr. Einstein. He was widely noted throughout his life as generally kind, good-natured, gentle, and unpretentious. Despite these admirable qualities, Mr. Einstein made enemies because he was a pacifist, polite but stubborn, a nonconformist, and Jewish. Anti-Semitism especially reared its ugly head when his revolutionary theories about physics were accepted by many in the scientific community as well as when Nazi Germany was becoming popular. Mr. Isaacson's work shows how professional jealousies within academic circles broke out into assassinations of Mr. Einstein's character and intelligence.
Mr. Isaacson's Einstein biography addresses such things as the myth he was poor at math, who were the people who helped him on the road to his scientific discoveries, his two marriages and relationship with his sons and two step-daughters, Einstein's good fortune to be working at the Swiss Patent Office when he developed his theories, his slow ascension into eventually being accepted into academia, his revulsion of German nationalism during the first and second World Wars, his involvement in the development of the atom bomb, his belief in "God," the politics behind him eventually being awarded a Nobel Prize in physics, and Einstein's push back during the United States' Red Scare witch hunt. The biography jumps back-and-forth between personal episodes and his scientific breakthroughs. Thankfully, Mr. Isaacson gives a clear general overview of Einstein's mass-energy equivalency, the photoelectric effect, as well as his Special and General Theory of Relativity. Despite the author doing a good job of not wading into the deep end of the physics pool by not including mathematical equations, this numbskull reader still needed assistance of YouTube videos to better grasp Einstein's theories. It also explains why quantum mechanics unsettled him throughout his life. The author also highlights how serendipity occurred numerous times during Einstein's younger years which helped him to focus on his major breakthroughs. The book also includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos.
This is the second biography I have read by Mr. Isaacson. Both the Steven Jobs and Albert Einstein books overlooked that they were clearly on the high-functioning autism spectrum (also known as Asperger's). Because of my family's dynamics, there were oodles of red flags that appeared to me whenever the author discussed Einstein's and Job's eccentricities. I suggest the reader keep it in mind when reading either of Mr. Isaacson's excellent books.
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