Happy Birthday Albert Einstein!

Posted by Tel Asiado Mar 14, 2008

Great Thinkers Datebook: March 14

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955), German-born American, is born in Ulm, Germany.

Einstein is known for his Theory of Relativity, with his formula insignia E=MC2. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, especially for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect.

Subtle is the Lord

There are two books authored by Abraham Pais, a theoretical physicist himself, that many people think as the best biography of Einstein. The first one is Subtle is the Lord, published in 1982. I haven't the chance to read this book except brief information about it, but as far as I know this is not for the layman.

Einstein Lived Here

In the second book, Einstein Lived Here (it's beside me now) by Pais, which is considered the companion volume of Subtle is the Lord, he brings Albert Einstein the man, to us, much in the layman's language, that is, accessible and non-mathematical.

In Einstein Lived Here, we learn not only about Einstein's views on religion and his philosophies, but his marital problems; his contacts with prominent personalities like John D. Rockefeller, Chaplin, Freud, and Gandhi, to name a few; his interest in capital punishment and vegetarianism; and more. The book was reliably written from the author's special perspective not only because he is a physicist himself but he also knew Einstein personally for several years.

What more can I say of this genius of the century who has been the subject of numerous books articles, journals, biographies, and factions.

You can visit my short biography of him ... Albert Einstein

Sources:

• Einstein Lived Here, by Abraham Pais, Oxford University Press (1994)
• Illustrated Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Clark, Chancellor Press (1994)