Philipp Frank - Einstein: His Life And Times

Copyright 1947, 1953 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages and reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

PUBLISHED IN CANADA BY M C CLELLAND & STEWART LIMITED

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 20, 1947

eISBN: 978-0-307-83136-1

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The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

THE PHOTOGRAPHS reproduced in this book were obtained with the friendly help of Miss Helen Dukas of Princeton, Professor Rudolph W. Ladenburg of Princeton University, Professor Harlow Shapley of Harvard University, and Dr. and Mrs. Gustav Bucky of New York. The diagrams were designed by Mr. Gerald Holton of Harvard University, and the Index compiled with the co-operation of Miss Martha Henderson of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I am writing this biography of Einstein not for physicists and mathematicians, not for philosophers and theologians, not for Zionists and pacifists, but for people who want to understand something of the contradictory and complicated twentieth-century world.

It has often been said that to understand precisely one hundredth of an inch of a blade of grass, one would have to understand the universe. But one who could achieve such understanding of a blade of grass would find nothing unclear about anything else in the universe. In a like spirit it can be said that anyone who comprehends even a little of Einsteins personality, his work, and its influence will have taken a long step toward an understanding of the world of the twentieth century.

Through a combination of fortunate circumstances I had the desire and opportunity to observe Einstein as a man and a scientist. Since my student days I had been captivated again and again by the way in which he was able to derive newly discovered, and often strange, natural phenomena from simple and elegant laws. The connection between physical and philosophic theories had also attracted me repeatedly. As time went on, one question became for me more and more an object of curiosity and often of amazement: why is it that scientific and philosophical theories that apparently have hardly anything to do with human life are so often employed to influence attitudes toward practical questions in politics and religion?

In 1912 I became Einsteins successor as professor of theoretical physics at the University of Prague; and in 1938, when I came to the United States, I again met Einstein, who had already been here for five years. I conceived the idea of taking advantage of this physical proximity to prepare an account of his life and work. When I told Einstein about this plan he said: How strange that you are following in my footsteps a second time!

Before we arrived in the United States my wife often told me that I had now written so many books and papers palatable only to a small number of specialists that for a change it would be good for me to write a book more people could enjoy. As a matter of fact, I have frequently regretted the wide gap yawning between the books written for specialists in science and those for the large community of educated men and women. I had been looking for an occasion to make a contribution toward bridging this gap. I longed to write a book that could help make understandable the work done by contemporary scientists and to do so by providing more insight into the psychological and cultural background of scientific research than regular scientific books, even of the popular brand, can offer.

All these circumstances encouraged me to write this book. Many specialists have tried to dissuade me, pointing out that I would have only a choice of two evils. Either I would write to be understood by the public at large and the book would become trivial and be criticized by the scientists; or I would write it to please the specialists, but then it would be incomprehensible to others.

Such arguments did not deter me, because I did not believe there was such a fundamental difference between layman and specialist. Every specialist becomes a layman as soon as he leaves his own very narrow field. This book deals with so many fields of human life and thought that no one can be a specialist in all of them. Consequently I believe that I may, with a clear conscience, write for the laity without appearing superficial to the specialist, because in reality the complete specialist does not exist.

By training and occupation I am a mathematician and physicist, not a writer. Through this occupation one develops an aversion to exaggerations of all kinds. One acquires enthusiasm only for what is directed toward the search for truth and its presentation in a comprehensible and polished form.

In so far as pure facts are concerned, I have made partial use of earlier biographies of Einstein. The portrayal of Einsteins personality and of his position in our time, however, derives from my study of the writings of Einsteins friends and enemies, and in large measure from personal conversations with Einstein himself.

The picture of Einstein as presented throughout this book is the one I have derived from my own impressions. It is in no way Einsteins autobiography. I describe Einstein just as a scientist would describe any other remarkable, rare, and mighty natural or historical phenomenon. Only thus can justice be done to a great man.

In a recent biography of one of the greatest physicists the statement occurs: After he printed his new principles, the students on the college campus said as he passed by: there goes the man who has written a book that neither he nor anyone else understands. This appears in a biography not of Einstein, but of Isaac Newton, who in our day has so often been contrasted as an example of lucidity with the incomprehensible Einstein.

A contemporary of Newton extolled him in a poem that culminated in the lines: