Albert Einstein: A Biography

by Albrecht Folsing and Albrecht Fölsing

Book Overview

Folsing uses previously unknown sources and letters to put Einstein's work in the context of the state of research at the turn of the century. Einstein's surroundings are revealed and his genius is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670855456
• ISBN13: 9780670855452
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 882 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

very indepth

Folsing is a sceintist himself, but he manages to write a readable biography as well. at over 900 pages, you can expect every thought and action of Einstein to be covered in detail. i would caution however, that one who is new to Einstein's ideas would need to study those ideas in another book before reading this one (i.e. the theory of relativity for dummies). That being said, this is an excellent researched book, and even reads like a novel at times. i would recommend this book to anyone studying Einstein in depth. Herr docktor Einstein was a genius surpassing Newton in physics, and he often had to wait for his theories to be proven.

Breathtaking Imagination

At the height of Einstein's career it was joked that only about a dozen people in the entire world actually understood the master's theory of relativity, which leads to the question of whether we mere mortals should even attempt this 882-page tome. The answer is a resounding yes. Albrecht Holsing never forgets that he is writing a biography, not a physics text. The result is a colorful biography of a learning disabled civil servant with perhaps the most fertile imagination in the history of science. Holsing's Einstein is a man without a country, an unabashed lover, an avowed pacifist, a born-again Zionist, bon vivant and alleged subversive. And yes, smart and eccentric as hell.Between 1905 and 1920 Einstein, a patent claims inspector, produced a series of papers on the subject of physics so outlandish that the world collectively gasped. Put simply, Einstein postulated connections between dimensions that had been considered unbridgeable until his day. He was not a scientist in the way we traditionally think of the discipline. He was in reality a science fiction writer who challenged the white coats to prove he was wrong. Most of the time they could not, to their own amazement. And when they did, he seemed to delight even more. God, he remarked, may be mysterious, but never malevolent. For Einstein the universe was a playground.Einstein enjoyed wonderful timing. By 1900 the telescope and the microscope had been perfected to the point that the bigness and the smallness of the natural world began crashing into the complacency of Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry. Einstein, whose own spacial-temporal development was delayed until early adulthood, began to play with possibilities. Is the universe so big that the traditional absolute theorems of geometry might be disproved? Consider the classic geometric postulate that two parallel lines will stretch into infinity without ever touching. Einstein dared to question such a basic law in several ways: if the universe itself is not linear but perhaps curved, the lines would eventually meet. And second, what influence would gravitation play upon these two lines? It was these daring interplays of factors that set Einstein apart and led to his famous speculations about relationships between mass, time, and energy.It is a credit to Holsing that he is able to describe Einstein's mental journeys as lucidly as he does. This is not to say there is no hard work required. Einstein had a hand in nearly all branches of physics, including optics, electricity, and radiation, and he was in constant dialogue with other noted thinkers of his age, including Niels Bohr and Max Planck. For an older reader unfamiliar with quantum physics, the scientific debates over the nature of light may as well be written in Vulcan. Be that as it may, the faithful reader will probably take away enough science to be dazzled and deeply impressed when Einstein's most audacious speculation-that light is bent by gravitational pull-is dramati

Excellent book to begin with for understanding Einstein

Though some of the German-to-English translation is a little stiff, this book provides an excellent overview of the man and his science.

Only interessant

It's one of the most interessant books I have ever read. A walk into Einstein's genius from his childhood till the late years. Well written.