Walter Isaacson’s biography of Einstein

In 1905, when he was just 26 years old and working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern, he wrote four scientific papers that would forever change the way humanity comprehends some of the most fundamental laws of nature:

  • First, he demonstrated that light comes in specific quantities or packets, called quanta, later to be called photons, and this discovery helped explain the photoelectric effect, which is what happens when light bounces off an object. This disproved the long-held belief in “ether,” or a substance in space through which light waves were thought to travel.
  • He helped prove the existence of molecules and how they can be measured, and he showed how the existence of molecules explains Brownian motion, or the vibrations of particles suspended in liquid.
  • He then put forth his theory of Special Relativity, in which he disproved Isaac Newton’s concept of absolute time. According to Einstein, measurements of time, and also of space and distance, are relative to the motion of the observer. He said that there can be no absolute time or absolute space, but something he called spacetime.
  • Next, Einstein came up with the principle of mass-energy equivalence, as expressed in the most famous formula in all of science, e=mc2, in which e is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light. The equation means that energy can be converted to mass and vice versa. Decades later this formula would lay the foundation for the development of nuclear weapons. More on that in a moment.

Albert Einstein came up with all four of these scientific breakthroughs in a single year, known as his “annus mirabilis” or “miracle year,” in his spare time. That’s because his day job was that of patent clerk, a position he had settled for after being unable to get a job as a professor following his graduation from university in Zurich. Despite having set the scientific world on fire, he remained relatively unknown and even kept his patent clerk job for several more years.

Einstein book review
“Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson

 

This is according to “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson, a book that describes, in 551 pages, not only Einstein’s many theories but his entire life story as well. For me as a reader, I must admit I found much of the science in this book difficult to understand. Come to think of it, I was actually quite baffled. The chapters on his life and times were much more enjoyable.

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist. He was born in Germany in 1879. He was a Jew. When he was a boy he was given a compass, which fascinated him. When he was still in his teens he moved to Switzerland and renounced his German citizenship. This might have been to avoid compulsory military service. According to the book, Einstein did not like military parades, soldiers marching in the street or any such glorification of war. He also shunned blind deference to authority. He questioned everything.

He was “stateless” for five years after moving to Switzerland, at which time he became a Swiss citizen. He attended the Swiss federal polytechnic institute in Zurich. He married and would later divorce Mileva Maric, a fellow student who was from Serbia. She was a Christian. They had two sons, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard Einstein. According to the book, he and Mileva also had a daughter, who apparently either died at a very young age or was given up for adoption. His second wife was Elsa, who was his cousin. She had two daughters, one of whom would eventually live with Einstein. For many decades Einstein had a live-in secretary, Helen Dukas, who was with him constantly and served as his gatekeeper. Einstein also had several mistresses over the years, sometimes in plain view of his wife.

After leaving the job at the patent office, Einstein held several teaching positions and eventually landed at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, in Berlin, where many of the world’s brightest minds then held court. But to go there he had to become a German citizen again. It was from there that he put forth his theory of General Relativity, in which he said, among other things, that gravity happens when objects bend the fabric of spacetime. He also predicted that light from another star would be bent by the Sun’s gravity, and in May 1919, during an eclipse, this was tested and proven to be true. The results were published on the front pages of newspapers around the world, thus making Einstein an overnight global celebrity. From then on his name would be synonymous with the word “genius.”

In 1921 Einstein made his first trip to the United States, at the invitation of Chaim Weizmann, then president of the World Zionist Organization. Everywhere he went Einstein was greeted by large crowds and inquisitive reporters. Einstein played the part of the friendly professor and answered the reporters’ questions with quick, snappy lines delivered with a grin.

In subsequent visits to the United States, Einstein attended the opera, went to a Hollywood film premiere with Charlie Chaplin, was feted with statues, awards and keys to cities, and he spoke at universities. For a time, Einstein expressed pacifist views and even encouraged all who would listen to shun compulsory military service. But when the Nazis came to power in Germany, Einstein’s views on pacifism and conscientious objection to the draft changed. For the second time he renounced his German citizenship. In 1933 Einstein sought refuge, first in Great Britain and then in the United States, accepting a position at Princeton University in New Jersey. He had also been courted by the California Institute of Technology. Einstein spent the rest of his life in the United States. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940. He died in 1955.

At the outset of World War II, Einstein, with the help of another scientist, Leo Szilard, wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that it would be possible to use uranium in a chain reaction that would release an unimaginable amount of energy. The letter was hand delivered to FDR and was read aloud to him. After that and a follow-up letter from Einstein, the president established the top-secret Manhattan Project, which would result in the development of nuclear weapons. Einstein himself did not work on the bomb, Robert Oppenheimer and many other scientists led that effort. When Germany’s defeat in the war seemed imminent, Einstein wrote FDR yet another letter calling for caution in deploying the weapon, but FDR died before he received it and the letter instead went to President Harry S. Truman, who passed it to a subordinate.

Einstein had brought the possibility of a bomb to the attention of FDR because he thought the German scientists back in Berlin would certainly be working on one themselves, but when he learned that was not the case he regretted his decision for the rest of his life. After World War II Einstein spoke out in favor of arms control, and for the establishment of a world government. He wanted a body that would be stronger that the United Nations turned out to be, something with a military force, which he considered necessary to prevent future wars and human annihilation. Isaacson quotes Einstein, speaking to Newsweek magazine, “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I never would have lifted a finger.”

Here are some additional facts about Albert Einstein:

  • He thought visually, and he conceived of his theories largely in visual terms. He often used “thought experiments” to develop his ideas.
  • He was a creative thinker who was similar in many ways to those who revolutionized other fields, such as Sigmund Freud in psychology and Pablo Picasso in art.
  • According to the book, he was not an atheist.
  • Nor was he a communist. But he was investigated by J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, which kept a file on him.
  • He believed in social and economic justice, as well as personal freedom. He was skeptical of the socialist revolution when it began in Russia because he felt it would be repressive and authoritarian.
  • In general, he was good natured and friendly, although he could be emotionally distant and even a bit cruel to those close to him. According to the book, he was especially mean at times to his first wife.
  • He had wild, unruly hair. It was part of his image of a disheveled scientist. He could also be forgetful and often misplaced his keys or train tickets.
  • He played the violin.
  • He also enjoyed sailing.
  • He had many lifelong friends and scientific colleagues.
  • One of his friends was Queen Elisabeth (later the Queen Mother) of Belgium.
  • When his first wife originally refused to give him a divorce, Einstein was able to persuade her by promising to give her the money should he win the Nobel Prize at a future date.
  • Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1921, not for relativity but for his work on the photoelectric effect. Isaacson’s book explains all the drama and politics of how that happened.
  • Originally Einstein had written his famous formula as L=mv2, but he later changed it to E=mc2 to comply with more common symbols.
  • Before collaborating with Szilard on the letter to FDR, the two patented a refrigerator.
  • Both of his stepdaughters had husbands who wrote books about Einstein.
  • After the death of Weizmann, who had become the first president of Israel, Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel, but he politely and firmly declined.
  • After Einstein’s death, in a ghastly act, his brain was preserved in a jar and was later experimented on by various scientists, none of whom ever learned anything significant.
  • The theoretical physicist is portrayed in the musical “Einstein’s Dreams,” currently running Off-Broadway, which, in my opinion (I went to see it last weekend) was completely wrong scientifically and on many other levels. It is based on a book of the same name.
  • In the movies, Walter Matthau gives what I consider to be a much more enjoyable portrayal of Einstein is in the 1994 film “I.Q.,” also starring Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins.

Also during Einstein’s lifetime the field of quantum mechanics took shape. This is the study of atoms and subatomic particles. In his own mind Einstein was troubled by many of these discoveries, which were made by Niels Bohr and many other scientists. That’s because determining the location of an electron around the nucleus of an atom required the use of probabilities, which caused Einstein to utter his immortal words that God does not “play dice” with the universe!

Another facet of quantum mechanics is known as entanglement, which is an observed phenomenon in which two particles that have interacted with each other will have opposite properties even when far apart from each other. Einstein called this “Spooky Action at a Distance,” which is a term still in use today — google it or look it up on YouTube!

Einstein spent the final years of his life thinking and working on a theory that would reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics. It’s an effort that continues to this day.

For me, reading “Einstein: His Life and Universe” was a nice little peek into the world of theoretical physics. I think I might understand some of this stuff a little better now, but I am not sure. But it was still fun to read about, and I am glad I did. This was the second biography I have read by historian Walter Isaacson, who is the former managing editor of Time magazine. Earlier I also read his book on Benjamin Franklin, which was fantastic in my opinion. Isaacson also wrote a biography of Steve Jobs, which I do not plan to read, and another of Leonardo DaVinci, which I certainly will at a future date.

David M. Oshinsky’s book about polio

In “Polio: An American Story,” author David M. Oshinsky identifies four key heroes in the fight to eradicate the disease. They are Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the scientists who developed vaccines; Basil O’Connor, chairman of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the organization founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; and FDR himself, who was the world’s most famous polio survivor. My own mother was another.

book review Polio: An American Story David M. Oshinsky
“Polio: An American Story,” by David M. Oshinsky

 

FDR contracted the disease in 1921, after he had been governor of New York but before he became president. Like countless others, he was crippled for life by the virus. Many others died. During his convalescence he visited a property in Warm Springs, Georgia, which included a swimming pool and a hotel, and he purchased the property and turned it into a facility to help treat those with polio, mostly children. FDR brought in Basil O’Connor, his business partner, to run it. The fee was $42 per week, but patients who could not afford it were allowed to come anyway. FDR had used most of his life savings to purchase the property and later relied on private fund-raising.

Later, during his presidency, FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which still exists today as the March of Dimes. O’Connor ran the national foundation for decades. The purpose of the organization was twofold: First, to pay for medical care for those who were stricken by polio and, second, to fund research to develop a cure.

Over the decades the national foundation raised and distributed many millions of dollars. It was the first time such an organization had been formed to combat a disease, and it was groundbreaking in many ways. The fund-raising drives, which were clever and successful, involved local community involvement and later included having a “poster child.” Many of the initiatives also brought in celebrities, who hosted balls across the country each year on FDR’s birthday.

There had been an unsuccessful attempt at a vaccine in the 1930s, but it was not until many years later that Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, working separately, developed the vaccines that were ultimately successful. The Salk vaccine came first and was used to treat most children in the United States in the 1950s. The Sabin vaccine followed and was used to treat most children in the Soviet Union and in many other parts of the world. The Salk vaccine involves an injection or a series of injections of a killed virus, while the Sabin vaccine involves ingesting weakened live virus on a sugar cube.

Salk and Sabin were rivals, and their differing approaches on how a vaccine should be developed — and how quickly — led to bitter disputes in the scientific community.

A few more notes:

  • There are three types of the virus that causes polio, which is also called poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis. The term “infantile paralysis” is something of a misnomer, since most of those stricken by the disease are children.
  • Each type of the polio virus has various strains, some more aggressive than others.
  • Salk, whose work landed him on the cover of Time magazine, became a celebrity. He was criticized by fellow scientists as being a publicity hound. Salk was also criticized by many of the scientists who worked under him, who felt that he did not adequately credit their own contributions.
  • Eddie Cantor, the movie actor and radio personality, coined the term “march of dimes.” He was one of countless celebrities who helped raise funds for the cause. Others included Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Mary Pickford, Mary Martin, Joe DiMaggio and Lucille Ball, among many others.
  • In recent years some have speculated that FDR might not have had polio at all, but rather Guillain–Barré syndrome.
  • Today, the dime in your pocket features a portrait of FDR, in recognition of his founding of the March of Dimes!

I learned a great deal reading “Polio: An American Story” by David M. Oshinsky. I think the author did a good job of explaining the science without getting too complicated for a reader without much of a medical background. He also did a very good job of putting the disease into the context of the times. The book is also helpfully illustrated with many pictures, which help tell the story of this dreaded disease and how it was conquered.

Ron Wood pays tribute to Chuck Berry

On a sizzling new live album, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood pays tribute to Chuck Berry. It’s called “Mad Lad: A Live Tribute to Chuck Berry.” Ronnie Wood plays guitar on all the songs, and he sings on most of them. I’m not the biggest fan of Ronnie Wood on lead vocals, because his singing voice reminds me more of Bob Dylan than Mick Jagger. But his guitar playing is fantastic, and his band is really tight. They are billed as Ronnie Wood With His Wild Five. The album was recorded at a small theater in Dorset, England.

Ron Wood CD review Fred Michmershuizen

The CD opens with “Tribute to Chuck Berry,” a song by Wood, followed by the Chuck Berry covers. Many of the songs are instantly recognizable, while others are lesser known. Some of them, including “Talking About You” and “Little Queenie,” have been recorded by the Stones. “Wee Wee Hours” features Imelda May on vocals with Ronnie Wood and is the CD’s best song. Other standouts include “Almost Grown,” which is Ronnie’s best vocal of the evening, “Blue Feeling,” “Rock and Roll Music” and “Mad Lad,” the album’s title track, which is an instrumental. But all the songs are fantastic. If you’re a Stones diehard like me, this album is a must for your collection!

 

Eleanor Roosevelt

During the approximately 12 years that Franklin D. Roosevelt, our nation’s 32nd president, served in the White House, his wife kept a high profile. Eleanor Roosevelt held press conferences and gave speeches in public. She published newspaper and magazine columns and hosted a weekly radio show. During the depression years she traveled all across the country, visiting children in poor neighborhoods and workers in coal mines, advocating for better living and working conditions. During the war years she traveled extensively overseas, visiting troops to help raise morale. She was also outspoken on civil rights and women’s rights.

It should be noted that the job of first lady is not really a job at all. There are no required duties. According to the Associated Press Stylebook, “first lady” is not even a formal title and should not be capitalized in news articles.

Eleanor Roosevelt biographyreedman
“Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery” by Russell Freedman

 

Both before and after the White House years, Eleanor Roosevelt had a thriving public career. In the years before FDR’s presidency, Eleanor was active in charitable and philanthropic organizations, in Democratic Party politics, and in various women’s groups. She taught at Todhunter School for Girls in New York City. She also helped run a furniture factory with some of her female companions, with whom she shared a house at Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, New York.

After FDR’s death, President Harry S. Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt a delegate to the United Nations, where she worked in various capacities for many years. She chaired a commission on human rights and was instrumental in drafting the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Here are some additional notes about Eleanor Roosevelt’s life:

  • She was niece of Theodore Roosevelt and was fifth cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Theodore attended the wedding of Eleanor and Franklin in New York City when he was president and gave the bride away. It was St. Patrick’s Day 1905.
  • She was born to wealthy parents in 1884 in New York City. She was orphaned at and early age and was raised mostly by her grandmother.
  • She was sent to a private all-girls school in England that was taught entirely in French, where she thrived. But her grandmother made her come back to New York a year early to make her social debut as a debutante.
  • After Eleanor and Franklin married, they had six children, one of whom died in infancy.
  • Franklin had an affair with another woman, and Eleanor found out about it in 1918. The other woman, Lucy Mercer, turned out to be Eleanor’s social secretary! Franklin promised to end the affair, and he and Eleanor stayed married. But from then on they lived separate lives in many respects.
  • When Franklin died in 1945 at his home for polio survivors in Warm Springs, Georgia, Eleanor learned that Lucy Mercer (who was now Mrs. Rutherfurd) had been with him. Not only that, Eleanor also learned that the other woman had been visiting FDR in the White House, and everyone including her daughter, Anna, knew about it.
  • After FDR’s death Eleanor moved to New York City, first living in an apartment on Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Later she bought a house with her physician and his wife, where the three of them lived together and became companions.
  • She wrote more than two dozen books.
  • Throughout her life Eleanor Roosevelt had close relationships with several other women, as well as with men, the nature and scope of which has been speculated upon extensively.
  • When Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962 at age 78, President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and former Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower attended her funeral.

Most of this is included in “Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery” by Russell Freedman, a book intended for younger readers. I really liked this book. I found it heart-warming and informative. One of the best features of Freedman’s book is its extensive collection of photographs. Sometimes pictures can say more than words.

There are many other books about Eleanor Roosevelt, including a multi-volume series by Blanche Wiese Cook, which I have not read but I understand goes into much greater detail about Eleanor’s personal life and relationships. There’s also the wonderful seven-part Ken Burns documentary, “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” available on Netflix, which is definitely worthwhile in my opinion.

Eleanor Roosevelt Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Eleanor Roosevelt holds the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948. This photo, dated November 1949, is from the FDR Presidential Library & Museum