Einstein Reading Guide

READING GUIDE

By Author Steven Gimbel

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CONTENTS

Timeline of Albert Einstein’s Life

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Discussion Questions

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Primary Sources

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Secondary Sources

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Extras

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About Jewish Lives

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TIMELINE 1879

Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, Germany on March 14.

1894

Einstein’s parents move from Germany to Italy, leaving Einstein behind to finish high school. In December, Einstein drops out of high school, leaves Germany and travels to Italy to finish his high school education on his own.

1895

Einstein does not pass his college entry exam and is sent to finish his high school education in Switzerland.

1896

Einstein begins his university studies in physics at the ETH in Zurich. He meets fellow student, Mileva Maric with whom he becomes romantically involved.

1900

Einstein graduates from the ETH, but is unable to secure a position as a scientist.

1902

Einstein begins working in Bern, Switzerland as a patent examiner. After a romantic weekend in Lake Como, Italy, Mileva becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter, Liserl. The pregnancy and the existence of the daughter is kept secret.

1903

Liserl dies. Einstein marries Mileva Maric.

1904

Einstein’s son Hans Albert is born.

1905

In Einstein’s miracle year, he publishes five papers that completely reshape every part of physics. The first is his doctoral dissertation on the statistics of mixing. The second is his paper on Brownian motion providing evidence for the reality of atoms. The third is his paper on the photoelectric effect providing evidence that light is a particle, contributing to the founding of quantum mechanics. The fourth is his first paper on the special theory of relativity and the fifth is his second paper on the special theory of relativity (which introduces the famous equation E=mc2 – although he uses slightly different terms). Einstein expects that this body of work would lead to immediate international acclaim and a university position. The response was lukewarm, at best, from most of the scientific community and the only immediate effect was a promotion and raise at work in the patent office for having his doctorate.

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TIMELINE 1909

Einstein takes his first academic post – an associate professorship at the university in Zurich, a post he had to fight for. Initially, he was disqualified for poor teaching, but after demanding another chance to present to students (for which he was better prepared than his first attempt), Einstein was named to the faculty.

1910

Einstein’s son Eduard is born.

1911

Einstein receives his first full professorship at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague.

1912

Einstein receives a full professorship at the ETH in Zurich.

1914

Einstein receives a full professorship at the university of Berlin. Einstein and Mileva divorce with Mileva taking the children back to Zurich. Many of Einstein’s colleagues sign the “Manifesto of the Ninety-Three” declaring German militarism an essential element of German culture, defending the acts of the German army in its unprovoked invasion of Belgium. Einstein and a smaller group respond with their own “Manifesto for a United Europe” which argues for an end to the armed conflict and to nationalism.

1916

Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity extending the special theory to include gravitation.

1919

British astronomer A.E. Eddington observes the eclipse of the sun and measuring the deflection of light from stars that appear without the sunlight provides empirical confirmation of the general theory of relativity. Word of this confirmation appears as headlines all over the world and Einstein becomes a scientific celebrity. Einstein marries his cousin Else Lowenthal Einstein.

1920

An anti-relativity theory, anti-Einstein rally at the Berlin opera house made hatred of Einstein and his work a popular political cause of German conservatives. In a newspaper editorial responding to the protestors, Einstein challenged opponents to a debate at a scientific conference in Bad Nauheim.

Einstein, Philipp Lenard, and Max Planck held the panel discussion which was overrun by antiEinstein protestors. As a result of this meeting, Lenard would become the leader of the Aryan physics movement which labeled the theory of relativity “Jewish science.”

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TIMELINE 1922

Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the previous year of 1921, the Swedish Academy making clear that it is in celebration of his work on quantum mechanics, not the theory of relativity.

Einstein does not attend the ceremony awarding him the prize, instead traveling to Japan on a speaking tour and en route home stops for his only visit in Palestine where he inaugurates the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

1931

Einstein and Sigmund Freud begin a correspondence initiated by the United Nations on the nature of humanity and violence which is published under the title Why War?

1933

Hitler comes to power in Germany. Einstein, spending the winter in Pasadena, California resigns from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and is exiled. Einstein takes up residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

1939

Leo Szilard visits Einstein at a vacation home on Long Island to explain his idea for creating nuclear fission reactions using uranium. Recognizing that this could be weaponized, Szilard and Einstein decide to write a letter warning President Franklin Roosevelt of the threat that would be posed should the Germans develop such a nuclear weapon. The letter helps launch the Manhattan project.

1952

David Ben Gurion and Abba Eban offer Einstein the presidency of Israel. Einstein refuses the offer.

1955

Albert Einstein dies in Princeton, New Jersey of internal bleeding from a ruptured aneurism.

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS CHAPTER 1 1. Einstein was a devout, practicing Jew when he was nine years old, but rejected this faith only a year later.

Is the religiosity of a child real religiosity? Does one have to have the perspective, experiences, or wisdom of age to be authentically religious?

2. Einstein’s experiences as a child in Catholic school left him with a complex picture of Christianity. He understood both the anti-Semitism that could come from Christians in power and the doctrine of peace and acceptance that is expressed in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (a passage Einstein said moved him throughout his life). How do we compare the benefits of raising a child within a unified community, say sending a Jewish child to Jewish day school, and the more cosmopolitan approach Einstein experienced by being schooled in a different tradition?

3. Einstein hated the drilled rote memorization that was the pedagogical approach of the German schools.

He argued that it killed the human mind, the spirit to engage and learn about the world. He much preferred the open approach of the Swiss schools he attended for just the final years of his secondary education.

Despite the larger share being in the German schools, Einstein went on to become someone who wrote about science, philosophy, history, and politics. Did he become such a thoughtful, learned person because of or in spite of his education? How much does formal education matter in terms of the minds that are eventually produced?

CHAPTER 2 4. One of Einstein’s papers in 1905 tries to give evidence for the existence of atoms. Another argues that light is a particle. We can’t see atoms or particles of light. If science is about describing the real world, the world we see around us, and these theoretical results are aspects that are not directly observable, then should we think of atoms and light packets as real or just metaphorical pictures that are helpful in understanding the mathematical relations we find between that which we can observe? If we can’t see atoms, why believe in them?

5. The theory of relativity asks us to change our understanding of time. The duration of an event is different from different perspectives. Einstein’s principle of relativity contends that all perspectives are equal, that none are privileged in terms of being more true than any other. If we are in motion relative to each other and we look at the same event, you might time it according to your watch as having taken 2 seconds, whereas I would have timed it by my watch as having taken 4 seconds. Einstein says that there is no fact of the matter, that there is only a fact relative to some observer. One religious objection is that God’s reference frame or the reference frame of the universe itself should be privileged. This would restore an absolute time, God’s Time. Does the theory of relativity’s notion of all frames being equal present a philosophical problem for believers?

6. The most famous result of the miracle year of 1905 is the iconic equation E=mc2 according to which mass is a form of energy. We know energy comes in lots of different forms: heat, light, motion, electricity,… But Einstein argues that mass is another form. It isn’t that things have energy, but that things are energy. Are you just energy? Does that dehumanize you?

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS CHAPTER 3 7. Einstein’s general theory of relativity makes use of a curved four-dimensional space-time. This is not something we, as beings in a world of three-dimensional objects can picture in our minds. If the goal of science is to understand the observable world around us, can a theory that can’t be pictured really be called a complete account of the world that can be observed?

8. If David Hilbert derived the field equations for the general theory of relativity before Einstein did, but published them later, who deserves the credit for the discovery? How could one prove when one had an idea? Isaac Newton, for example, fabricated the story of his seeing an apple fall from a tree and having the sudden realization for his law of gravitation in order to place his idea before that of another scientist. It was a lie to give him sole credit for the discovery. If we give credit for having an idea, but have no access to other people’s minds, how can we determine who gets credit?

9. To finish the general theory of relativity, Einstein needed his friend Marcel Grossmann to teach him new, advanced mathematical techniques. If mathematics is a construction of the human mind, why do we expect that it will describe the world perfectly? Why do we use mathematics as the language of physics?

1+1 has to be 2, it is a necessary truth. But space-time doesn’t have to curve, it just happens to. The universe could be imagined to be otherwise. Why then do we use mathematical relations to model physical relations?

CHAPTER 4 10. Einstein used his science to escape the “merely personal,” that is, the lived world of those he loved and who loved him. While he was a genius with the science, he was less able in his personal relations. Does his revolutionary success in the one forgive his failures in the other? Should we give those who make great advances in science, art, politics, sports, or any other valued human endeavor a pass when it comes to personal failures?

11. The German luminaries who signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three argued that nationalism and militarism were inseparable in the case of Germany. Einstein, the pacifist, was also an ardent internationalist. Does loyalty and personal identity connected to a particular country necessarily lead ultimately to violence of one country against another? To end war, do you have to eliminate the notion of nations?

12. When Eddington confirmed the general theory of relativity with his observations of an eclipse, Einstein calmly and famously replied that had the observations confirmed Newton and falsified relativity, “I would have had pity for the dear Lord. The theory is right.” The theory, he thought, was too beautiful, too elegant, too tightly constructed to be wrong. Does truth have to be simple, elegant, and beautiful? Is beauty, as the poets and physicists both claim, really a sign of truth?

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS CHAPTER 5 13. Einstein, when having to fill out the paperwork to be able to teach in Prague, held that there is a difference between being “Jewish” and being “Mosaic.” If we take “Jewish” to mean religiously observant and “Mosaic” to mean culturally Jewish or of Jewish descent, how much of a difference is there between these two categories? Are they, in fact, different? Are all Jews, Jews, just of different kinds or are there completely different categories that are entirely distinct?

14. After Eddington’s result confirmed general relativity, Einstein became not just a scientific celebrity, but a cultural icon. We associate Einstein’s face, hair, attitude with modernity, with progress, with intelligence, with rebellion, with a wide range of notions. What does Einstein, the icon represent for us today?

15. The Aryan physics movement labeled relativity theory “Jewish science” to diminish it. But could Einstein’s Jewish background have been a factor in why he saw things differently than other physicists at the time?

Scientists are people and have all sorts of influences that lead them to think in idiosyncratic ways that may be the key to their advances. Could it be meaningful to call relativity “Jewish science,” if we strip away the anti-Semitism?

CHAPTER 6 16. Einstein joked that he was running his own immigration agency because he wrote so many letters trying to help people who contacted him to get their relatives into the United States from Europe during the Second World War. He felt it a duty to use his fame and influence to help the vulnerable. Film and sports stars have bristled at the idea that their fame makes them role models or saddles them with any additional responsibilities. Does fame come with a cost in terms of using your social capital to help those in need or to right cultural wrongs?

17. Einstein sent the letter to President Roosevelt which started the Manhattan Project out of fear that the Germans would develop nuclear weapons. They, of course, did not, but the United States did and dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Einstein later considered it a horrible mistake to have written the letter.

Morally, was it a mistake?

18. David Ben Gurion offered Einstein the presidency of Israel, not because he thought Einstein best prepared but he thought there was no way he could not offer it to him. Einstein refused because he thought himself unprepared. He was a scientist, not a politician. Are politicians the only ones who should be politicians?

Does bringing in those who have succeeded in other endeavors – scientific, military, personal, artistic, financial, athletic – to become politicians help give new perspectives and talents, or does it lead to politically unprepared leaders?

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PRIMARY SOURCES All of the foundational scientific papers in the development of the theory of relativity, including Einstein’s, are collected in the volume The Theory of Relativity, published

by Dover. These are the original articles published in scientific journals and may be difficult for non-scientists to work through.

Einstein’s own explanation of his theory for non-scientists may be found in his book Relativity: The Special and General Theory, also published by Dover.

Einstein’s “Autobiographical Notes” may be found in P.A. Schilpp’s Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist which is a volume in Open Court’s “Library of Living Philosophers” series. All of the volumes in this series begin with an autobiographical sketch, followed by essays on elements of the thinker’s work by a variety of other famous thinkers, and concluding with responses from the subject of the book to the essays. The essayists who respond to Einstein and to whom Einstein responds in return include Neils Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Kurt Godel.

Einstein’s writings on a wide range of topics are collected in his books of essays The World As I See It and Out of My Later Years.

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SECONDARY SOURCES There are many good books on Einstein, his life, science and religion. Indeed, the number of books about Einstein can seem unlimited. Among the top biographies of Einstein are Einstein: His Life and Times by fellow physicist and personal friend Philipp Frank, another book with the same title by Ronald Clark, and more recently, Walter Isaacson’s Einstein, His Life and Universe. There is a wide range of biographies of Einstein out there for every level of reader.

There is also a wide range of very good books at different levels to explain Einstein’s scientific work. For those with a background in physics, Abraham Pais’ book Subtle is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein is very good. For readers with little or no scientific background, Jeffrey Bennett’s What is Relativity? is a nice introduction and Joseph Schwartz and Michael McGuiness do a delightful job presenting Einstein’s theory in comic book format. For those looking for something a little more advanced, try Mary and John Gribbins’ Annus Mirabilis: 1905, Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity or Peter Gsalloson’s delightful Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps. For the advanced reader, John Statchel’s Einstein: From B to Z is a wonderful work.

For discussions of Einstein’s religion, the best book out there is Einstein and Religion by Einstein’s friend and fellow physicist Max Jammer. Ze’ev Rosenkranz’s Einstein before Israel: Zionist Icon or Iconoclast is a detailed discussion of Einstein’s relationship to Zionism.

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EXTRAS Einstein requested that his home in Princeton at 112 Mercer Street not be made into a museum. Following his request, the home remains a private residence and is not open to the public, but one can photograph it from the sidewalk. There is a small museum in Princeton commemorating Einstein at Landau, a coat shop at 102 Nassau Street which houses a collection of donated artifacts from and about Einstein and his time in Princeton. It was in Landau, when two French tourists asked about a monument to Einstein in town – there was not one, that the idea was hatched to create one. Present at the time was Dr. Stanley Levy, a physician from Detroit who had met Einstein when he was a student at Princeton. Seeing the French tourists stunned expression that Einstein’s time in the town was not memorialized, he agreed that the lack needed to be addressed and contacted sculptor Robert Berks, who created the Albert Einstein Memorial in Washington D.C., in front of the National Academy of Sciences at 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W. It is a wonderful statue of Einstein in a sweater and sandals reclining holding a book containing his most famous formulae. Berks, in a gesture of exceptional generosity, donated the bust, which now can be seen at the intersection of Stockton and Bayard Streets. Two other casts of the full Einstein sculpture were made. One was on loan to the American Museum of Natural History and the third has been installed at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

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