The MANIAC

by Benjamín Labatut

“Do you know who I am?” And I said: “Yes! Long have you caused me pain and woe. You are my soul’s faculty of reason.”

the only thing that really sparked joy in Paul was giving himself to others, to the point that, as one of his many beloved students remarked, “Ehrenfest distributed all that was living and active in him,” such that sometimes it looked like “he gave away everything he had found or observed, without building up a reserve, a kind of stronghold, within himself.”

These friends of Paul’s admired not only his critical and intellectual capacities but something rather different, a virtue that is usually lacking among giants: ethics, character, as well as a deep, some would say overwhelming, desire to understand, to grasp the core of things.

Speak the truth, write with clarity, and defend it to your very end was Boltzmann’s personal motto, and Paul, his disciple, took it to heart.

Paul did not shy away from pointing out flaws in other people’s arguments with the same pitiless criticism with which he would chastise himself; that role of his was particularly important

If one were to believe the novel rules governing the inner realm of the atom, suddenly the entire world was no longer as solid and real as it once was.

letter: “I have completely lost contact with theoretical physics. I cannot read anything anymore and feel myself incompetent to have even the most modest grasp about what makes sense in the flood of articles and books. Perhaps I cannot at all be helped anymore. Every new issue of the Zeitschrift für Physik or the Physical Review immerses me in blind panic. I know absolutely nothing!”

like almost all modern developments, mathematics was hostile to life:

“I clearly feel I’ll destroy my life if I don’t succeed in pulling myself together. Every time I have a chance to review my affairs, I see some sort of chaos in front of me—a gambler or alcoholic has to see similar pictures when sober.”