Customer Reviews

Einstein: Visionary Scientist

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This delightful little book covers a lot of ground and does it very well indeed. It is a good substitute (or preparation for) reading Ronald Clark's "Einstein: The Life and Times," which it draws on from time to time.

What is most refreshing is that not only is it easy reading, dealing mostly with Einstein's big concepts and the important events in his life, but also it takes the reader on a few side trips with vignettes that further humanizes an already profound human being and Scientist. One would think that anyone who has read as many books on Einstein as I have, that there would be little new to discover, yet this author kept coming up with new tidbits on Einstein's life that I had never heard of. For instance:

For the first time I learned why Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect rather than for either of his relativity theories: No one on the Nobel prize committee could understand his relativity theories and thus feared that if they proved wrong, the committee would have egg on its face?

Also, for the first time I learned that Leo Szilard (who drafted a letter sent to Roosevelt warning about the dangers of a Nazi A-bomb) had been a graduate student of Einstein's, while Einstein was teaching at the University of Berlin. As well, that Lise Meitner (who explained to her German colleague (Otto Hahn) the meaning of the results of the first splitting of an atom of Uranium) had attended an Einstein lecture.

And that Einstein had turned down an offer to work on the Manhattan Project. Had he accepted, he would have been denied a security clearance anyway since Hoover thought he was a Communist and had him trailed for the rest of his life. But then there is also the simple explanation the author gives of Einstein's genius: Most of his spectacular work was done wholly within his head as a result of mind experiments that came about just when the world needed new explanations.

Einstein had the power of imagination to see possibilities beyond the clockwork world that Newton had created. When a New York Times reporter asked him to define relativity in a few sentences, Einstein responded: "It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, only time and space would be left. According to the relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with the [material] things." Three stars

john severance is a good nonfiction writer besides this book he has wroght books like gandhi:great soul,artist and thomas jeforson.Most people in the world know the name albert einstein and the famous E=MC2, but the theory of relativity and his life in general is on known of but with this book will help you under stand it a bit better,did you know he won the nobel prize well he did for physics.

I chose this book because one day I had nothing to do so I went to the library and saw this book. The book was about Albert Einstein. I thought about some things about him, but didn't really find something important about him so that made me want to read this book. I wanted to know how his life was and how did he become so smart. I learned many new things in the book about Albert Einstein. The book was really easy to understand and had some pictures of him doing things.
I recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn more about Albert Einstein. There are many surprising things in this book. One thing was that when Albert was taking his first violin lessons he flung a chair at his teacher. His parents quickly hired another teacher. When Albert was little his parents complained that he was too heavy and also that his head was too large and square shaped. They worried that their son was going to become retarded, but they were wrong. At the age of twelve Albert was really interested in math so he asked a medical student named Max Tameley to lend him some books on math. By the age of thirteen Albert was already past the level of Tameley's.
My favorite part of the story was when Albert Einstein was about at the age of six and taking his first violin lesson. He got mad and all of a sudden through a chair at the chair. I never knew that Albert had a really bad temper when he was a little kid. I always thought that he was a nice little young boy who liked to study and work. The book also says that whenever his sister, Maja, saw that Albert's face was pale she would run away and find cover because she knew that he would throw things. Once Albert almost hit her with a bowling ball and once he did hit her with the handle bar of a hose.