Einstein Lived Here [Hardcover]

Abraham Pais (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 1994

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."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These 11 essays, articles and pastiches of interviews are assembled by a physicist who is arguably Einstein's best interpreter; his biography of Einstein (1879-1955), Subtle Is the Lord , won the American Book Award in 1983. Pais's rigidly organized approach in that book served Einstein's science well but constricted the various, random views of "Einstein the man" collected here. Several of the essays have an unedited, dictated quality; many of the articles appeared in American Scientist in the late 1980s; two sections are reprinted from Subtle Is the Lord . A charming three-page selection, "Dear Dr. Einstein," contains letters addressing the scientist as though he were Ann Landers. The great figure in 20th century science that Pais depicts here seems more his own personal icon than Einstein the man. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Both these books deal with aspects of Einstein's personal life. Pais does so in a series of thoughtful essays, including one on Einstein's illegitimate daughter and first marriage to a woman to whom he gives some credit for contributing to Einstein's relativity theory. Other topics include Einstein's interactions with various colleagues, a lay reader's interpretation of relativity theory, and, in the longest essay, an analysis of the press coverage from 1902 to 1955 that created our image of Einstein. (Two of the 11 essays appeared earlier in Pais's Subtle Is the Lord, LJ 8/82.) Highfield and Carter employ a more traditional chronological structure, but their treatment is far from traditional. Using much the same data found in Pais's work and in Michael White and John Gribben's Einstein: A Life in Science (LJ 3/1/94), they suggest that Einstein "was a man whose combination of intellectual vision and emotional myopia left behind him a series of damaged lives." At a minimum, these included his first wife, his illegitimate daughter, his two sons, and their offspring. The suggestions and innuendoes throughout the book are more typical of the tabloids than credible nonfiction. And, indeed, the two authors are newspaper editors-with the British Daily Telegraph and Daily Express, respectively. Because their account is not balanced, The Private Lives of Albert Einstein is an optional purchase. If acquired, it should be balanced by other available treatments like that of Pais.
Hilary D. Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Livermore, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1St Edition edition (May 12, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198539940
• ISBN-13: 978-0198539940
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,063,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( E ) > Einstein, Albert

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An indispensable source for the educated layman, May 10, 2000

By 

C. A. dos Santos (Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Einstein Lived Here (Hardcover)

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 amount it is not known, but over 600 is now in the Einstein Archive at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Einstein referred to this collection as "die komische Mappe". In chapter 8, Pais presents a lot of strange, funny, sometimes pathetic envelopes and letters.

Chapter 11, almost a half of the whole book's content, is concerned with the press interest on Einstein's work and life. This kind of approach is the first in the vast Einstein bibliography. For Pais, "Einstein, creator of some of the best science of all time, is himself a creation of the media in so far as he is and remains a public figure". The beginning of Einstein's mythical role dates from November 1919, after a joint session of the Royal and Astronomical Societies, in London, in which the results obtained by British observers of the total solar eclipse of May 29 were discussed. The observations were decisive in the verifying of the prediction of Einstein on the bending of light when it approaches a large body, like the sun. By the way, the Einstein's work was so ample and full in geniality that its perception depends strongly on the observer cultural profile. For the layman the Einstein's Nobel Prize is associated to the relativity theory, but in Chapter 6, Pais discusses how the photoelectric effect, and not the relativity theory, enables Einstein to get the Nobel Prize. Pais explains why Einstein did not win the Nobel Prize because of the relativity theory. Besides these fabulous works, Einstein published in the same annus mirabilis of 1905 three other marvelous works. For Pais, any single one of "these theoretical discoveries would have sufficed to guarantee Einstein a prominent and lasting position in the history of science". However, none of these contributions caused even modest mention in the press before 1919.

In conclusion, "Einstein lived here" is a highly recommendable book for any educated layman and indispensable for any scientist, by the complex personality of this renowned savant and by his splendid scientific contribution.