Abraham Pais

The author of an immensely popular biography of Einstein, Subtle Is the Lord, Pais writes engagingly for a general audience. His "tale" describes his period of hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland (although he ended the war in a Gestapo prison) and his life in America, particularly at the newly organized Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then directed by the brilliant and controversial physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Pais tells fascinating stories about Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr, Sakharov, Dirac, Heisenberg, and von Neumann, as well as about nonscientists like Chaim Weizmann, George Kennan, Erwin Panofsky, and Pablo Casals. His enthusiasm about science and life in general pervades a book that is partly a memoir, partly a travel commentary, and partly a history of science.

Few people have understood what Einstein has said, thought, and done, but many are hungry to know more about him. This companion volume to Abraham Pais's Subtle is the Lord... enlarges on the way Einstein was perceived by the world at large. His becoming the scientist of greatest renown ever is largely the result of attention by the media, as the author has documented by delving in newspaper and magazine archives, from 1902 to the present. We also learn of his views on religion and on philosophy, his marital problems, and his contacts with personalities ranging from John D. Rockefeller to Charlie Chaplin to Freud to Ghandi. Interviews with Einstein, as well as reports on brief comments and longer addresses by him, help to convey his vivid style of expression as well as his great talent at formulation. He wrote and spoke about pacifism, supranationalism, civil liberties, and the rights and obligation of Jews and Arabs to live together harmoniously in the Middle East. Subjects he was interested in ranged from capital punishment to vegetarianism. These essays were written from the author's special perspective: he is a physicist and he knew Einstein personally for several years. His style is accessible and nonmathematical. This book provides essential information about Einstein the human being which will fascinate and inform both the specialist and the layman.

A biography of Albert Einstein, told through various scientific and technical correspondences, including those with Michele Besso. Pais discusses the world of physics before Einstein, during Einstein's time and the impact on the scientific world after his death.