Einstein: His Life and Universe

by Walter Isaacson

“Use for yourself little,” he said, “but give to others much.”

To the French secretary of the War Resisters’ International: “My views have not changed, but the European situation has… So long as Germany persists in rearming and systematically indoctrinating its citizens for a war of revenge, the nations of western Europe depend, unfortunately, on military defense. Indeed, I will go so far as to assert that if they are prudent, they will not wait, unarmed, to be attacked… I cannot shut my eyes to realities.”62 To Lord Ponsonby, his pacifist partner from England: “Can you possibly be unaware of the fact that Germany is feverishly rearming and that the whole population is being indoctrinated with nationalism and drilled for war?… What protection, other than organized power, would you suggest?”63 To the Belgian War Resisters’ Committee: “As long as no international police force exists, these countries must undertake the defense of culture. The situation in Europe has changed sharply within the past year; we should be playing into the hands of our bitterest enemies were we to close our eyes to this fact.”64 To an American professor: “To prevent the greater evil, it is necessary that the lesser evil—the hated military—be accepted for the time being.”65 And even a year later, to an upset rabbi from Rochester: “I am the same ardent pacifist I was before. But I believe that we can advocate refusing military service only when the military threat from aggressive dictatorships toward democratic countries has ceased to exist.”66

For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness.

“I have never favored communism and do not favor it now.” The essence of his political belief was to oppose any power that “enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under a Fascist or Communist flag.”

“Falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do,” Einstein scribbled on the letter, “but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”

“If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake,” he said. “Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister.” Freedom was a foundation for creativity.

“Strenuous intellectual work and looking at God’s nature are the reconciling, fortifying yet relentlessly strict angels that shall lead me through all of life’s troubles,” he had written to the mother of his first girlfriend. Then as now, he could escape the complexity of human emotions by delving into the mathematical elegance that could describe the cosmos. “My husband sticks fearsomely to his calculations,” Elsa wrote Watters. “I have never seen him so engrossed in his work.”

“Why do They Hate the Jews?” Einstein wrote in an article for the popular weekly Collier’s that year. He used the article not just to explore anti-Semitism but also to explain how the social creed inbred in most Jews, which he personally tried to live by, was part of a long and proud tradition. “The bond that has united the Jews for thousands of years and that unites them today is, above all, the democratic ideal of social justice coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men.”

“Physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky action at a distance.”

Einstein’s argument is based on what appears to be common sense. However, sometimes what seems to make sense turns out not to be a good description of nature. Einstein realized this when he developed his relativity theory; he defied the accepted common sense of the time and forced us to change the way we think about nature. Quantum mechanics does something similar. It asserts that particles do not have a definite state except when observed, and two particles can be in an entangled state so that the observation of one determines a property of the other instantly. As soon as any observation is made, the system goes into a fixed state.

Schrödinger asked in his thought experiment, when does the system stop being in a superposition incorporating both states and snap into being one reality? This question led to the precarious fate of an imaginary creature, which was destined to become immortal whether it was dead or alive, known as Schrödinger’s cat: One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out.23 Einstein was thrilled. “Your cat shows that we are in complete agreement concerning our assessment of the character of the current theory,” he wrote back. “A psi-function that contains the living as well as the dead cat just cannot be taken as a description of a real state of affairs.”

“Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”

“The history of this nation up through the Civil War shows how difficult the establishment of a federal authority can be when there are profound differences in the values of the societies it attempts to integrate.”3 Oppenheimer thus became the first of many postwar realists to disparage Einstein for being allegedly too idealistic.

Einstein was asked what the next war would look like. “I do not know how the Third World War will be fought,” he answered, “but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks.”

“Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny,”

“The Germans butchered millions of civilians according to a well-prepared plan,” he wrote. “They would do it again if only they were able to. Not a trace of guilt or remorse is to be found among them.”

“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

“No other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of 20th century knowledge,” President Eisenhower declared. “Yet no other man was more modest in the possession of the power that is knowledge, more sure that power without wisdom is deadly.”

“I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.”

“One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”