How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson’s biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.
Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk—a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn’t get a teaching job or a doctorate—became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals.
These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.
Chapter 1: The Light-Beam Rider
Chapter 2: Childhood, 1879–1896
Chapter 3: The Zurich Polytechnic, 1896–1900
Chapter 4: The Lovers, 1900–1904
Chapter 5: The Miracle Year: Quanta and Molecules, 1905
Chapter 6: Special Relativity, 1905
Chapter 7: The Happiest Thought, 1906–1909
Chapter 8: The Wandering Professor, 1909–1914
Chapter 9: General Relativity, 1911–1915
Chapter 10: Divorce, 1916–1919
Chapter 11: Einstein’s Universe, 1916–1919
Chapter 13: The Wandering Zionist, 1920–1921
Chapter 14: Nobel Laureate, 1921–1927
Chapter 15: Unified Field Theories, 1923–1931
Chapter 16: Turning Fifty, 1929–1931
Chapter 18: The Refugee, 1932–1933
Chapter 19: America, 1933–1939
Chapter 20: Quantum Entanglement, 1935
Chapter 21: The Bomb, 1939–1945
Chapter 22: One-Worlder, 1945–1948
Chapter 23: Landmark, 1948–1953
Chapter 24: Red Scare, 1951–1954
EPILOGUE: Einstein’s Brain and Einstein’s Mind