Einstein: His Life and Universe

by Walter Isaacson

Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.35

“The Germans are gambling on me as they would on a prize-winning hen,” he told a friend as they were leaving a party, “but I don’t know if I can still lay eggs.”

Even before Einstein moved to Berlin, he and Elsa began to correspond as if they were a couple. She worried about his exhaustion and sent him a long letter prescribing more exercise, rest, and a healthier diet. He responded by saying that he planned to “smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company.”

They also talked science, especially when the children ran ahead. At one point Einstein stopped suddenly and grabbed Curie’s arm. “You understand, what I need to know is exactly what happens to the passengers in an elevator when it falls into emptiness,” he said, referring to his ideas about the equivalence of gravity and acceleration. As

Conditions. A. You will make sure 1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; 2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; 3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only. B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, you will forego 1. my sitting at home with you; 2. my going out or traveling with you. C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me: 1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; 2. you will stop talking to me if I request it; 3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it. D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

He insisted that she should not feel ashamed or let people pity her for consorting with a man who would not marry her. They would take walks together and be there for each other. Should she choose to offer even more, he would be grateful. But by not marrying, they would be protecting themselves from lapsing into a “contented bourgeois” existence and preventing their relationship “from becoming banal and from growing pale.” To him, marriage was confining, which was a state he instinctively resisted. “I’m glad our delicate relationship does not have to founder on a provincial narrow-minded lifestyle.”

Riemann (1826–1866) was a child prodigy who invented a perpetual calendar at age 14 as a gift for his parents and went on to study in the great math center of Göttingen, Germany, under Carl Friedrich Gauss, who had been pioneering the geometry of curved surfaces.

His head-snapping insight was that gravity could be defined as the curvature of spacetime, and thus it could be represented by a metric tensor. For more than three years he would fitfully search for the right equations to accomplish his mission.15

Since the 1840s, scientists had been worrying about a small but unexplained shift in the orbit of Mercury. The perihelion is the spot in a planet’s elliptical orbit when it is closest to the sun, and over the years this spot in Mercury’s orbit had slipped a tiny amount more—about 43 seconds of an arc each century—than what was explained by Newton’s laws. At first it was assumed that some undiscovered planet was tugging at it, similar to the reasoning that had earlier led to the discovery of Neptune. The Frenchman who discovered Mercury’s anomaly even calculated where such a planet would be and named it Vulcan. But it was not there.

Haber reorganized his institute to develop chemical weapons for Germany. He had already found a way to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen, which permitted the Germans to mass-produce explosives. He then turned his attention to making deadly chlorine gas, which, heavier than air, would flow down into the trenches and painfully asphyxiate soldiers by burning through their throats and lungs. In April 1915, modern chemical warfare was inaugurated when some five thousand French and Belgians met that deadly fate at Ypres, with Haber personally supervising the attack. (In an irony that may have been lost on the inventor of dynamite, who endowed the prize, Haber won the 1918 Nobel in chemistry for his process of synthesizing ammonia.)

The petition, published in October 1914, was titled “Appeal to the Cultured World” and became known as the “Manifesto of the 93,” after the number of intellectuals who endorsed it. With scant regard for the truth, it denied that the German army had committed any attacks on civilians in Belgium and went on to proclaim that the war was necessary. “Were it not for German militarism, German culture would have been wiped off the face of the earth,” it asserted. “We shall wage

“Had you devoted as much care to understanding people as to understanding science, you would not have written me an insulting letter,” Hertz replied. It was a telling point, and true. Einstein was better at fathoming physical equations than personal ones, as his family knew, and he admitted so in his apology. “You must forgive me, particularly since—as you yourself rightly say—I have not bestowed the same care to understanding people as to understanding science,” he wrote.

Rμv– 1/2 gμv R = 8πTμv The left side of the equation starts with the term Rμv, which is the Ricci tensor he had embraced earlier. The term gμv is the all-important metric tensor, and the term R is the trace of the Ricci tensor called the Ricci scalar. Together, this left side of the equation—which is now known as the Einstein tensor and can be written simply as Gμv—compresses together all of the information about how the geometry of spacetime is warped and curved by objects. The right side describes the movement of matter in the gravitational field. The interplay between the two sides shows how objects curve spacetime and how, in turn, this curvature affects the motion of objects. As the physicist John Wheeler has put it, “Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved space tells matter how to move.”83

Thus is staged a cosmic tango, as captured by another physicist, Brian Greene: Space and time become players in the evolving cosmos. They come alive. Matter here causes space to warp there, which causes matter over here to move, which causes space way over there to warp even more, and so on. General relativity provides the choreography for an entwined cosmic dance of space, time, matter, and energy.

Newton had bequeathed to Einstein a universe in which time had an absolute existence that tick-tocked along independent of objects and observers, and in which space likewise had an absolute existence. Gravity was thought to be a force that masses exerted on one another rather mysteriously across empty space. Within this framework, objects obeyed mechanical laws that had proved remarkably accurate—almost perfect—in explaining everything from the orbits of the planets, to the diffusion of gases, to the jiggling of molecules, to the propagation of sound (though not light) waves. With his special theory of relativity, Einstein had shown that space and time did not have independent existences, but instead formed a fabric of spacetime. Now, with his general version of the theory, this fabric of spacetime became not merely a container for objects and events. Instead, it had its own dynamics that were determined by, and in turn helped to determine, the motion of objects within it—just as the fabric of a trampoline will curve and ripple as a bowling ball and some billiard balls roll across it, and in turn the dynamic curving and rippling of the trampoline fabric will determine the path of the rolling balls and cause the billiard balls to move toward the bowling ball. The curving and rippling fabric of spacetime explained gravity, its equivalence to acceleration, and, Einstein asserted, the general relativity of all forms of motion.92 In the opinion of Paul Dirac, the Nobel laureate...

“One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness,” Einstein said. “Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”

He brought along some light beach reading, Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena, spent “countless hours pondering the quantum problem,” and gloried in relaxing and recovering from his stomach ailments. “No telephones, no responsibilities, absolute tranquility,” he wrote to a friend. “I am lying on the shore like a crocodile, allowing myself to be roasted by the sun, never see a newspaper, and do not give a hoot about the so-called world.”

Nicolai was a doctor specializing in electrocardiograms who had occasionally treated Elsa. A brilliant egomaniac with a serious sexual appetite, he had been born in Germany and had lived in Paris and Russia. During one visit to Russia, he kept a list of the women he had sex with, totaling sixteen in all, including two mother-daughter pairs.

You are the only person to whom I can entrust the following and the only one who can give me advice… You remember that we recently spoke about Albert’s and Mama’s marriage and you told me that you thought a marriage between Albert and me would be more proper. I never thought seriously about it until yesterday. Yesterday, the question was suddenly raised about whether Albert wished to marry Mama or me. This question, initially posed half in jest, became within a few minutes a serious matter which must now be considered and discussed fully and completely. Albert himself is refusing to take any decision, he is prepared to marry either me or Mama. I know that Albert loves me very much, perhaps more than any other man ever will. He told me so himself yesterday. On the one hand, he might even prefer me as his wife, since I am young and he could have children with me, which naturally does not apply at all in Mama’s case; but he is far too decent and loves Mama too much ever to mention it. You know how I stand with Albert. I love him very much; I have the greatest respect for him as a person. If ever there was true friendship and camaraderie between two beings of different types, those are quite certainly my feelings for Albert. I have never wished nor felt the least desire to be close to him physically. This is otherwise in his case—recently at least. He admitted to me once how difficult it is for him to keep himself in check. But now I do believe that my feelings for him are not...

Understanding relativity, she later said, “is not necessary for my happiness.”

One thing made Schwarzschild’s work very difficult. He had volunteered for the German military during the war, and when he read Einstein’s papers he was stationed in Russia, projecting the trajectory of artillery shells. Nevertheless, he was also able to find time to calculate what the gravitational field would be, according to Einstein’s theory, around an object in space. It was the wartime counterpart to Einstein’s ability to come up with the special theory of relativity while examining patent applications for the synchronization of clocks.

Schwarzschild’s first calculations focused on the curvature of spacetime outside a spherical, nonspinning star. A few weeks later, he sent Einstein another paper on what it would be like inside such a star. In both cases, something unusual seemed possible, indeed inevitable. If all the mass of a star (or any object) was compressed into a tiny enough space—defined by what became known as the Schwarzschild radius—then all of the calculations seemed to break down. At the center, spacetime would infinitely curve in on itself. For our sun, that would happen if all of its mass were compressed into a radius of less than two miles. For the earth, it would happen if all the mass were compressed into a radius of about one-third of an inch. What would that mean? In such a situation, nothing within the Schwarzschild radius would be able to escape the gravitational pull, not even light or any other form of radiation. Time would also be part of the warpage as well, dilated to zero. In other words, a traveler nearing the Schwarzschild radius would appear, to someone on the outside, to freeze to a halt.

One method that Einstein employed to help people visualize this notion was to begin by imagining two-dimensional explorers on a two-dimensional universe, like a flat surface. These “flatlanders” can wander in any direction on this flat surface, but the concept of going up or down has no meaning to them. Now, imagine this variation: What if these flatlanders’ two dimensions were still on a surface, but this surface was (in a way very subtle to them) gently curved? What if they and their world were still confined to two dimensions, but their flat surface was like the surface of a globe? As Einstein put it, “Let us consider now a two-dimensional existence, but this time on a spherical surface instead of on a plane.” An arrow shot by these flatlanders would still seem to travel in a straight line, but eventually it would curve around and come back—just as a sailor on the surface of our planet heading straight off over the seas would eventually return from the other horizon.

In the current celebrity-soaked age, it is hard to recall the extent to which, a century ago, proper people recoiled from publicity and disdained those who garnered it. Especially in the realm of science, focusing on the personal seemed discordant. When Einstein’s friend Max Born published a book on relativity right after the eclipse observations, he included, in his first edition, a frontispiece picture of Einstein and a short biography of him. Max von Laue and other friends of both men were appalled. Such things did not belong in a scientific book, even a popular one, von Laue wrote Born. Chastened, Born left these elements out of the next edition.

“Make sure this is reported in the newspapers,” he said. “I shall send you the details of where to apply.” Like many of their friends, Born worried that Elsa was the one who was more susceptible to the lures of publicity. As he told Einstein, “In these matters you are a little child. We all love you, and you must obey judicious people (not your wife).”

The next morning, before he could depart, a young man tracked him down at Frank’s office and insisted on showing him a manuscript. On the basis of his E=mc2 equation, the man insisted, it would be possible “to use the energy contained within the atom for the production of frightening explosives.” Einstein brushed away the discussion, calling the concept foolish.

From Prague, Einstein took the train to Vienna, where three thousand scientists and excited onlookers were waiting to hear him speak. At the station, his host waited for him to disembark from the first-class car but didn’t find him. He looked to the second-class car down the platform, and could not find him there either. Finally, strolling from the third-class car at the far end of the platform was Einstein, carrying his violin case like an itinerant musician. “You know, I like traveling first, but my face is becoming too well known,” he told his host. “I am less bothered in third class.”

“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a ver...

This mix of coldness and warmth produced in Einstein a wry detachment as he floated through the human aspects of his world. “My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and communities,” he reflected. “I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.”

“I do not know anyone as lonely and detached as Einstein,” said his collaborator Leopold Infeld. “His heart never bleeds, and he moves through life with mild enjoyment and emotional indifference. His extreme kindness and decency are thoroughly impersonal and seem to come from another planet.”

“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being,”

As long as women did not make any claims on him and he felt free to approach them or not according to his own moods, he was able to sustain a romance. But the fear that he might have to surrender some of his independence led him to erect a shield.

Shortly after his remarriage, Einstein visited Zurich to see his sons. Hans Albert, then 15, announced that he had decided to become an engineer. “I think it’s a disgusting idea,” said Einstein, whose father and uncle had been engineers. “I’m still going to become an engineer,” replied the boy.

“Sometimes I am glad that you have chosen a practical field, where one does not have to look for a four-leaf clover.”

The relativity proposition, of course, was not directly responsible for any of this. Instead, its relationship with modernism was more mysteriously interactive. There are historical moments when an alignment of forces causes a shift in human outlook. It happened to art and philosophy and science at the beginning of the Renaissance, and again at the beginning of the Enlightenment. Now, in the early twentieth century, modernism was born by the breaking of the old strictures and verities. A spontaneous combustion occurred that included the works of Einstein, Picasso, Matisse, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Joyce, Eliot, Proust, Diaghilev, Freud, Wittgenstein, and dozens of other path-breakers who seemed to break the bonds of classical thinking.

Poincaré.

Proust

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

Privately declining the invitation was not enough. Einstein also felt compelled to write a public attack on those who tried to fit in by talking “about religious faith instead of tribal affiliation.”* In particular, he scorned what he called “the assimilatory” approach that sought “to overcome anti-Semitism by dropping nearly everything Jewish.” This never worked; indeed, it “appears somewhat comical to a non-Jew,” because the Jews are a people set apart from others. “The psychological root of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that the Jews are a group of people unto themselves,” he wrote. “Their Jewishness is visible in their physical appearance, and one notices their Jewish heritage in their intellectual work.”

Although Einstein was German Jewish, he was appalled by those from his background who would “draw a sharp dividing line between eastern European Jews and western European Jews.” The approach was doomed to backfire against all Jews, he argued, and it was not based on any true distinction. “Eastern European Jewry contains a rich potential of human talents and productive forces that can well stand the comparison to the higher civilization of western European Jews.”

In addition, the loss of the war had been humiliating. Germany had lost 6 million men and then was forced into surrendering land containing half of its natural resources, plus all of its overseas colonies. Many proud Germans believed it must have been the result of betrayal. The Weimar Republic that had emerged after the war, though supported by liberals and pacifists and Jews such as Einstein, was disdained by much of the old order and even the middle class.

There was one group that could be easily cast as the alien and dark force most responsible for the humiliation facing a proud culture. “People need a scapegoat and make the Jews responsible,” Einstein noted. “They are a target of instinctive resentment because they are of a different tribe.”7

The explosion of great art and ideas in Germany at the time, as Amos Elon wrote in his book The Pity of It All, was largely due to Jewish patrons and pioneers in a variety of fields. This was particularly true in science. As Sigmund Freud pointed out, part of the success of Jewish scientists was their “creative skepticism,” which arose from their essential nature as outsiders.

Winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize, Lenard had been a pioneer experimenter who described the photoelectric effect.

Not surprisingly, Lenard was outraged by Einstein’s article. He insisted on an apology, as he had not even been part of the antirelativity rally. Arnold Sommerfeld, chairman of the German Physical Society, tried to mediate, and he urged Einstein “to write some conciliatory words to Lenard.”21 It was not to be. Einstein refused to back down, and Lenard ended up edging ever closer to being an outright anti-Semite and later a Nazi.

During the weeklong gathering in Bad Nauheim, Einstein stayed with Max Born in Frankfurt, twenty miles away, and the two men commuted to the resort town by train each day. The big showdown over relativity, at which both Einstein and Lenard were expected to participate, was on the afternoon of September 23.

Weizmann was a brilliant biochemist who had emigrated from Russia to England, where he helped his adopted nation in the First World War by coming up with a bacterial method for more efficiently manufacturing the explosive cordite. During that war he worked under former prime minister Arthur Balfour, who was then first lord of the Admiralty. He subsequently helped to persuade Balfour, after he became foreign secretary, to issue the famous 1917 declaration in which Britain pledged to support “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

It was, by all accounts, a pleasant Atlantic crossing, during which Einstein tried to explain relativity to Weizmann. Asked upon their arrival whether he understood the theory, Weizmann gave a delightful reply: “During the crossing, Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and by the time we arrived I was fully convinced that he really understands it.”

As they were leaving, Elsa was asked if she understood relativity. “Oh, no, although he has explained it to me many times,” she replied. “But it is not necessary to my happiness.”

At a reception in the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue (which now boasts the world’s most interesting statue of Einstein, a twelve-foot-high full-length bronze figure of him reclining),43 he listened to long speeches from various honorees, including Prince Albert I of Monaco, who was an avid oceanographer, a North Carolina scholar of hookworms, and a man who had invented a solar stove. As the evening droned on, Einstein turned to a Dutch diplomat seated next to him and said, “I’ve just developed a new theory of eternity.”