Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study [Paperback]

Ed Regis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 1988

It was home to Einstein in decline, the place where Kurt Göedel starved himself in paranoid delusion, and where J. Robert Oppenheimer rode out his political persecution in the Director’s mansion. It is the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; at one time or another, home to fourteen Nobel laureates, most of the great physicists and mathematicians of the modern era, and two of the most exciting developments in twentieth-century science—cellular automata and superstrings.Who Got Einstein’s Office? tells for the first time the story of this secretive institution and of its fascinating personalities.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Regis "presents an absorbing, often amusing and scientifically demanding" study of the institute that housed 14 Nobel laureates et al. PW asserted that "this is a bravo biography of a fabulous home, sanctuary and study-hall for geniuses working at the extremes of thought." Illustrated.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Institutions, their personnel, and the projects of these individual are a fascinating subject. Regis has chosen to examine the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, defty following it and its faculty from germination to the present. He focuses on two of the four Institute schools, Mathematics and Natural Science, with little mention of the less famous schools of Historical Studies and Social Science. The scientific lives he narrates include revealing bits of personal information while concentrating on succinct and very readable explanations of their work and its relation to the larger scientific community. Topics range from transcendental numbers to cellular automata. Highly recommended. Michael D. Cramer, Virgina Polytechnica Inst. & State Univ. Lib., Blacksburg
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 22, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201122782
• ISBN-13: 978-0201122787
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting book, but the author's crassness shows..., August 6, 2000

By 

Mayer Goldberg (Beer Sheva, Negev Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study (Paperback)

Who Got Einstein's Office offers an interesting look at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study, the famous people that work(ed) there, as well as their work. The book seems to suggest that the tenured researchers at the Institute of Advanced Study have done their best work before they joined; That somehow at the Institute, they were isolated from a vibrant academic life, from contact with other researchers and students in their field, etc. As such, the book is definitely worth reading.

Having said that much, I feel that I should voice my indignation at the way the author depicted and presented one of the greatest lights of this century, the logician Kurt Goedel.

It's almost embarrassing to me to mention this, since Goedel's work -- profound and deep and beautiful, is what most people that remember Goedel at all remember him for. But Goedel apparently had some difficulties of an emotional and mental nature that effected his life -- from adolescence to adulthood, difficulties that the author, Ed Regis, finds the generousity to mock. In describing Goedel's relationship with his mother and the influence it had on his romantic life, Regis refers to Goedel as "Kurtele" -- a diminutive of Goedel's first name -- like turning a "Richard" into "little Dicky"... This is but an example. Regis goes to greater length to belittle Goedel and the appreciation of his work. This is beneath contempt. However bizzare and eccentric and troubled Goedel's life was, Goedel himself was its only victim. Goedel left the world precious gems of thought and changed the world of logic and mathematics forever. I think he deserves quite a bit more respect and compassion than Ed Regis afforded him.

It certainly doesn't have to be the case that if you don't respect someone you also don't understand his work. It's just ironic that the author, who refers to Goedel mockingly as "The Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler", fails to understand even the most basic things about Goedel's work: The incompleteness result is described as "... the mathematical equivalent of the assertion that 'This statement is unprovable.'" What could be simpler? Add to this Goedel's own self-doubts, and the author now begins to wonder whether the incompleteness theorem isn't in fact a rather obvious and straightforward result.

But as the saying goes, "God is in the detail", and the author doesn't even begin to see the subtleties involved: Mathematics "talking about itself" -- Goedel numbering as a mechanism for mathematics to encode sentences about methematics, a mathematical proposition "refering to itself" -- indexicals, expessing "this" in thematics... As a consequence of "mathematics talking about itself" -- the effective computability of the provability predicate -- What Goedel did in fact is write a scanner, parser and interpreter in type theory -- all in 1931 -- twenty-something years before there were computers around, and people could write canners, parsers and interpreters for programming languages. And Goedel got them all right -- scanner, parser and interpreter -- written maticulously as recursive and primitive recursive functions. Merely envisioning these back in 1931 is a tramendous intellectual achievement.

Not having appreciated the depth of Goedel's contributions to logic, it's no wonder Regis doesn't appreciate Goedel's admirers: In describing a meeting between Rudolf Rucker and Kurt Goedel, Regis qoutes Rucker's words of appreciation of Goedel's understanding and insight into the problems he raised during their meeting: "perfect understanding", "informative laghter", ... to which Regis has to contribute: "Of course! Why not? We're not talking about talking about a man, after all, a mere mortal. We're talking about the Emperor of the Forms, the Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler."

Well, shame on you Ed Regis!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful history of a rare group, April 30, 2002

By 

Former Rater (Nowhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study (Paperback)

A fine history of The Institute For Advanced Study, endowed as a place that would "permit a haven where scholars and scientists may regard the world and its phenomena as their laboratory without being carried off in the maelstrom of the immediate. . ."

A memorable series of oral histories / stories about the interaction of some of the 20th century's most famous theoretical physicists: Niels Bohr, Einstein, Max Planck, Lorentz, de Broglie and so many others who passed through the Institute. A fascinating look into the every day lives of some of the brightest stars in physics.

You don't need to know a thing about math or physics to enjoy this fine portrait of a fascinating group of minds at work and play.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful whirlwind tour of Intellectual Disneyland., February 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study (Paperback)

I borrowed this book out of curiosity, got immediately engrossed, and it has been one of the few books I've read to completion recently. I then decided that I had to own my own copy.

Ed Regis manages to present a cross section of ground breaking 20th-century thinking in mathematics, physics and astrophysics via a series of mini biographies of the Institute for Advanced Study's most illustrious characters. Given the complexity of the subjects, the author did a splendid job of providing deep technical detail in a manner the uninitiated can grasp (oh sure, there are sections that might make ones eyes glaze over, but this makes the book more interesting for more advanced readers).

A great result of this book is that it whets the appetite to learn more about certain subjects, which will benefit new and used book sellers.

Lastly, the author strikes a balance between reverence for the Institute and its members, and candor in assessing their shortcomings.

Roger Benton