Identifiers refer to the 2005 reprint otherwise noted
Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein is a biography of Albert Einstein written by Abraham Pais. First published in 1982 by Oxford University Press, the book is one of the most acclaimed biographies of the scientist.[4] This was not the first popular biography of Einstein, but it was the first to focus on his scientific research as opposed to his life as a popular figure.[5] Pais, renowned for his work in theoretical particle physics, was a friend of Einstein's at the Institute for Advanced Study in his early career. Originally published in English in the United States and the United Kingdom, the book has translations in over a dozen languages.[6] Pais later released a sequel to the book in 1994 titled Einstein Lived Here and, after his death in 2000, the University Press released a posthumous reprint of the biography in 2005, with a new foreword by Roger Penrose. Considered very popular for a science book, the biography sold tens of thousands of copies of both paperback and hardcover versions in its first year.[7] The book has received many reviews[7] and, the year after its initial publication, it won both the 1983 National Book Award for Nonfiction, in Science (Hardcover),[1][2][4] and the 1983 Science Writing Award.[3]
Before becoming a science historian, Pais was a theoretical physicist and is said to be one of the founders of theoretical particle physics.[6] Pais knew Einstein and they developed a friendship over the last decade of Einstein's life, particularly while they were colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.[8][9][10] He drew from this experience when writing the book, which includes several vignettes of their interactions, including a story of his final visit to see Einstein, who was ill and would die a few months later.[10] The Quantum Theory portion of the book was previously published, in similar form, in a 1979 article Pais coauthored in Reviews of Modern Physics.[11][9]
The book draws its title from a quote by Einstein that translates to "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not". The quote is inscribed in stone at Princeton University, where Einstein made the statement during a 1921 visit to deliver the lectures that would later be published as The Meaning of Relativity.[10] When asked later in life to elaborate on the statement, Einstein said in 1930: "Nature hides its secret because of its essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse."[10]Isaac Asimov summarized this as meaning "the laws of nature were not easy to uncover, but once uncovered, they would not give uncertain result", comparing to another famous Einstein quote: "I cannot believe that God would play dice with the universe".[12]
Themes
The book serves as both a biography of Albert Einstein and a catalog of his works and scientific achievements.[9][13] Though there were several well-known biographies of Einstein prior to the book's publication, this was the first which focused on his scientific research, as opposed to his life as a popular figure.[14][5] Einstein himself, in 1946 at the age of 67, expressed a desire to be remembered for his work and not his doings, stating "the essential in the being of a man of my type lies precisely in what he thinks and how he thinks, not in what he does or suffers."[5] Beyond the biography, the book serves as the first full-scale exposition of Albert Einstein's scientific contributions;[9][15][16][11] one reviewer noted that, although literature on Einstein is not lacking, prior to this book, someone trying to research Einstein's scientific contributions "faced a choice between reading one or more popularizations of limited scope (and often even more limited depth) and trying to read and digest the almost 300 scientific papers he produced."[9]
Content
Pais explains in the book's introduction that an illustration of Einstein's biography would have his work in special relativity building toward general relativity and his work in statistical physics would build toward his work in quantum theory, and all of them would build toward his work in unified field theory; the book's organization represents his attempt to respect that outline.[8] The book has 31 chapters that are divided into eight major sections, with purely biographical chapters marked stylized with italics.[8][17] These italicized chapters present a non-technical overview of Einstein's life, while the bulk of the book explores Einstein's contributions in mathematical detail.[8][17] The first part of the book, titled Introductory, serves as a quick summary and outline of the book's contents.[9] The second section, on statistical physics, includes Einstein's contributions to the field between 1900 and 1910 as well as a discussion of the probabilistic interpretation of thermodynamics.[18] The third section, on special relativity, describes the history of special relativity and Einstein's contributions early to relativity theory as well as their relation to the work of Henri Poincare and Hendrik Lorentz.[18] The next section, on general relativity covers Einstein's developments of the theory from around 1908 to 1918 and the development of the universally covariant gravitation field equations.[18] The chapter also includes discussion on the development of general relativity by other scientists from 1915 to 1980. Section six includes a biography chapter on Einstein's later life and a discussion of his work in unified field theory.[18] The final section in the body of the work, section six on quantum theory, covers Einstein's work in the field extending over his entire career.[18]
The book has received favorable mentions in reviews of other works and papers discussing the history of Einstein's contributions. Of the reviews of the 1994 sequel, Einstein Lived Here, Engelbert Schücking wrote that the original biography was "magisterial"[24] and Roger Highfield opened his review of the new volume with: "Among my collection of books on Einstein, there is a dog-eared copy of... Subtle is the Lord. Its poor condition pays tribute to the value of this brilliantly researched book".[25]Bruno Augenstein wrote in 1994 that the book was a "definitive" scientific biography of Einstein.[26] Schücking, in a 2007 review of the book Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, stated that "the wonderful book by Pais, which was republished by Oxford University Press in 2005, with a preface by Roger Penrose, is still the best introduction to Einstein’s physics."[27] Similarly, a 2005 article discussing "Einstein's quest for unification" by John Ellis opened by stating that the book is the "definitive scientific biography of Einstein" and that it "delivered an unequivocal verdict on Einstein's quest for a unified field theory".[28]
On the book's release in 1982, John Stachel wrote a positive review of the book that stated the book gives a detailed account of nearly all of Einstein's significant scientific contributions along with historical context from an "eminent physicist's perspective".[9] Stachel went on to say that the biography sections "constitutes the most accurate account of Einstein's life yet written"[9] and that the book is "both unique and indispensable for any serious Einstein scholar".[9] He closed the review by saying the book would "serve not only as a source of profound insight and pleasure to many readers but as a further spur to the current renaissance of Einstein studies".[9] In a second 1982 review, John Allen Paulos wrote that it "is a superb book.".[23]Banesh Hoffmann reviewed the book in 1983 calling it "outstanding" and that it is a "lively book" and a "major contribution to Einstein scholarship".[29]Isaac Asimov wrote that the book gives a "concise history of the physics involved" and that it is "engagingly written".[12]William Hunter McCrea wrote a critical review of the book in 1983, taking issue with several of Pais' statements, but wrote that overall, it was "a major work on Einstein" and that "[f]or those who know well what Einstein achieved, but who may have wondered how he did it, this book should tell them almost all they can ever hope to learn."[30] A third 1983 review stated that the book is a "superb biography of Einstein" and was likely to "become required reading for anyone interested in the history of 20th century physics".[8] The book was also reviewed in German that same year.[31]
Among newspaper coverage, the book was the lead article in The New York Times Book Review issue carrying its review.[7] The article, written by Timothy Ferris in 1982, stated that "anyone with an interest in Einstein should give this splendid book a try".[5] After reviewing the book, Ferris closed by saying that "[of] all the biographies of Einstein, this, I think, is the one he himself would have liked the best."[5] Another newspaper review, by Peter Mason stated that the book blending of a popular biography into a technical account of Einstein's scientific work was "so skillfully done that the flavor of the complicated arguments can generally be savored by those with little mathematical background."[22] A third newspaper review, written by John Naughton, argued that the book provides an "uncompromising chronological account of Einstein’s theoretical work, a technical story written by a physicist for physicists",[17] but that a non-technical biography is woven throughout, which he describes as a "book within a book".[17]
In a 1984 review of the book, Michael Redhead wrote that there had been "many biographies of Einstein but none of them can even begin to compete with the work of Pais."[11] He praised the book for its completeness, stating that it goes much further than previous works in discussing Einstein's contributions as a whole.[11] Redhead noted one "significant omission", relating to Erich Kretschmann's critique of universal covariance, but went on to close the review by writing "I wholeheartedly recommend anyone interested in the history of modern physics to read Pais's extraordinarily able book".[11] In a second 1984 review, Martin J. Klein wrote that the book is "rich and rewarding" and that it "is written in a lively and effective style".[15]Felix Gilbert, in a third 1984 review, wrote that the book is "both sensitive and thorough" and that he is "inclined to regard" it as Einstein's "definitive biography".[32] The book was also reviewed in French the same year by Jean Largeault.[33] Among other 1984 reviews,[34][35] one stated that it was a "monumental biography" and that it "does full justice to the title, the Science and the Life of Einstein" that was written with "tremendous erudition and sensibility".[36] A 1986 review of the book stated that the "book, despite its blindspots, shortcomings, and difficulties for the uninitiated reader, will remain an indispensable source for anyone interested" in Einstein's life.[37]
Among criticisms of various aspects of the book, several reviews noted that understanding many parts of the book would require a background in physics.[9][30][29][16][15][12] Some reviewers also noted that Pais did not expound on Einstein's political and social views past a brief presentation.[9][18] The reference system used in the book was also criticized by some reviewers as "unnecessarily complicated".[5][15]Timothy Ferris noted several other problems in his New York Times review and pointed out that Pais has a tendency to be "overly reticent".[5] In his 1983 review, Banesh Hoffmann wrote that the book contained "some strange omissions" relating to some of Einstein's shortcomings and statements he made.[29]Peter Mason wrote: "One deficiency is the failure to relate Einstein’s development to the social conditions of the time."[22]
In his 1982 review, John Stachel wrote that, while the order of Einstein's contributions were sound for the first four chapters, the part on quantum mechanics backtracks to the beginning of Einstein's career once again and so overlaps with the other parts of the book.[9] He went on to praise the book's translations of quotes from Einstein and others.[9] In reference to the biography sections, he went on to state that "[t]he only issue on which I would seriously disagree is his effort to play down or even deny the rebellious element in Einstein's personality."[9] Stachel wrote that Statistical Physics and The Quantum Theory parts of the book were the "most successful", stating "[n]ot only does Pais give an excellent presentation of Einstein's contributions to the development of quantum theory, he explains why Einstein felt that it never became a fundamental theory in his sense, even after the development of quantum mechanics".[9] He also criticized the book's evaluation of the paper on the EPR paradox for neglecting certain counter-arguments.[9]
In a critical 1984 review, Paul Forman wrote that much of the information in the biography sections of the book was previously unpublished and that Pais gave a better account of Einstein's childhood than had previously been available, but that by "allotting so little space to so large a life, Pais perforce omits far more than he includes, and these few pages, dense with ill-considered detail, fail to convey any sense of the man and his situation".[18] He went on to note that the book does not include any details on Einstein's experimental and technological designs, outside of a single recount of a 1915 experiment with Wander Johannes de Haas.[18] Forman claimed that Pais rushed the book through development, writing that despite Pais' "mastery of the sources" and the book's scientific insights, "the account which he has hastily put together shows everywhere the marks of unpolished and unreflective work."[18] He went on to write that Pais' observations of Einstein's philosophy were "quite superficial, though not wholly unoriginal".[18] Forman closed the review by taking issue with Pais' statement that "the tour ends here" at the first chapter, which he felt was a "patronizing, self-congratulatory distinction between the soft, talky stuff and the real stuff" akin to saying "then the physics begins". Forman argued that the physics is "conflated" with "another creation of the physicists: a Parnassian world of apotheosized 'founders' and 'major figures'", which he states is "a fantasy world of no greater intrinsic importance than the ancestral myths of more primitive tribes and clans".[18]
As part of the relativity priority dispute, Pais dismissed E. T. Whittaker's views on the history of special relativity, as expressed in the 1953 book A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity: The Modern Theories. In that book, Whittaker claimed that Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz developed the theory of special relativity before Albert Einstein.[38] In a chapter titled "the edge of history", Pais stated that Whittaker's treatment shows "how well the author's lack of physical insight matches his ignorance of the literature".[39] One reviewer wrote, in agreement with the statement, that "Pais correctly dismisses" Whittaker's point of view in the "controversy concerning priority" with an "apt sentence".[36] Another reviewer, William Hunter McCrea in 1983, stated that the dismissal was put "in terms that can only be called scurrilous" and that "[t]o one who knew Whittaker and his regard for historical accuracy the opinion is lamentable."[30]
Outside of the priority dispute, several reviewers noted that, at the time of publication, there was no consensus among scientific scholars for some questions in the history of special and general relativity, and that Pais makes multiple assertions that are based on disputable evidence.[9][5][30] The contested assertions included Pais' claim that the Michelson–Morley experiment did not play a major role in Einstein's development of the special theory as evidence for the charge.[9][5] Noting the potential controversies, Timothy Ferris wrote that Pais "is less to be blamed for having reached arguable conclusions in matters of intense scholarly debate than praised for having had the grit to confront them."[5]
In his 1982 review, John Stachel criticized the book for not discussing the Fizeau experiment and for using an archaic explanation of the twin paradox of special relativity.[9] Stachel also noted that Pais misattributed a quote to Einstein related to the paradox.[9] He went on to state his belief that Pais "missed the mark" in his presentation of the postulates of special relativity, writing that the book neglects evidence that Einstein had considered alternative formulations before adopting his second postulate.[9] Stachel also noted that Pais seemed to not have studied the notebooks Einstein wrote during the development of general relativity and stated that one of them makes Pais' version of the development of general relativity "untenable".[9]
Other reviewers brought up specific issues with the development as well, including William Hunter McCrea, who criticized the book for not including Sir Arthur Eddington's book The Mathematical Theory of Relativity in his list of books on the development of general relativity.[30] McCrea went on to state that Pais included details of a non-existent woman who fainted from excitement upon Einstein's arrival and that the woman was later randomly transformed into a man. McCrea claimed that "[s]uch indications make one uncertain about the judgements and historical details in the book".[30] In his 1983 review, Banesh Hoffmann noted that Pais fails to mention "Einstein's long-held erroneous belief that if one went from Minkowski coordinates to more general coordinates, one would no longer be dealing with the special theory of relativity",[29] but that he "makes ample amends" by including a quote from Einstein on the topic, stating that "[o]ne could hardly want a clearer indication of the extraordinary power of Einstein's intuition".[29]
The book was originally published in English in 1982 by Oxford University Press with ISBN0-19-853907-X. The initial publication of the book was very popular; over 30,000 hardcover copies and a similar number of paperback copies were sold worldwide during its first year.[7] The book performed particularly well in the United States, with 25,000 of the 30,000 copies of the hardcover edition sold there while another 2,500 were sold in Great Britain.[7] It was reprinted in 2005, also by Oxford University Press, with ISBN978-0-19-152402-8 with a new introduction by Roger Penrose. As of 2011, the book had been translated into fifteen languages.[6] Among others, it has translations in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian.
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the twentieth century. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked the greatest physicist of all time. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein broadly synonymous with genius.
The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated physics theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in the absence of gravity. General relativity explains the law of gravitation and its relation to the forces of nature. It applies to the cosmological and astrophysical realm, including astronomy.
Mileva Marić, sometimes called Mileva Marić-Einstein, was a Serbian physicist and mathematician and the first wife of Albert Einstein from 1903 to 1919. She was the only woman among Einstein's fellow students at Zürich Polytechnic and was the second woman to finish a full program of study at the Department of Mathematics and Physics. Marić and Einstein were collaborators and lovers and had a daughter Lieserl in 1902, who likely died of scarlet fever at one and a half years old. They later had two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard.
Abraham Pais was a Dutch-American physicist and science historian. Pais earned his Ph.D. from University of Utrecht just prior to a Nazi ban on Jewish participation in Dutch universities during World War II. When the Nazis began the forced relocation of Dutch Jews, he went into hiding, but was later arrested and saved only by the end of the war. He then served as an assistant to Niels Bohr in Denmark and was later a colleague of Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Pais wrote books documenting the lives of these two great physicists and the contributions they and others made to modern physics. He was a physics professor at Rockefeller University until his retirement.
Nathan Rosen was an American-Israeli physicist noted for his study on the structure of the hydrogen atom and his work with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on entangled wave functions and the EPR paradox. The Einstein–Rosen bridge, later named the wormhole, was a theory of Nathan Rosen.
Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathematics and was renowned for his research in mathematical physics and numerical analysis, including the theory of special functions, along with his contributions to astronomy, celestial mechanics, the history of physics, and digital signal processing.
Max Abraham was a German physicist known for his work on electromagnetism and his opposition to the theory of relativity.
Marcel Grossmann was a Swiss mathematician and a friend and classmate of Albert Einstein. Grossmann was a member of an old Swiss family from Zurich. His father managed a textile factory. He became a Professor of Mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, today the ETH Zurich, specializing in descriptive geometry.
The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others.
General relativity is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. According to general relativity, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of space and time by those masses.
In physics, aether theories propose the existence of a medium, a space-filling substance or field as a transmission medium for the propagation of electromagnetic or gravitational forces. "Since the development of special relativity, theories using a substantial aether fell out of use in modern physics, and are now replaced by more abstract models."
Evan Harris Walker, was an American physicist and parapsychologist.
Albert Einstein presented the theories of special relativity and general relativity in publications that either contained no formal references to previous literature, or referred only to a small number of his predecessors for fundamental results on which he based his theories, most notably to the work of Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz for special relativity, and to the work of David Hilbert, Carl F. Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, and Ernst Mach for general relativity. Subsequently, claims have been put forward about both theories, asserting that they were formulated, either wholly or in part, by others before Einstein. At issue is the extent to which Einstein and various other individuals should be credited for the formulation of these theories, based on priority considerations.
Walther Mayer was an Austrian mathematician, born in Graz, Austria-Hungary. With Leopold Vietoris he is the namesake of the Mayer–Vietoris sequence in topology. He served as an assistant to Albert Einstein, and was nicknamed "Einstein's calculator".
John Stachel is an American physicist and philosopher of science.
The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta is a science book for the lay reader. Written by the physicists Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, it traces the development of ideas in physics. It was originally published in 1938 by Cambridge University Press. It was a popular success, and was featured in a Time cover story.
John Daniel Norton is an Australian philosopher of physics and distinguished professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh.
A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity is any of three books written by British mathematician Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker FRS FRSE on the history of electromagnetic theory, covering the development of classical electromagnetism, optics, and aether theories. The book's first edition, subtitled from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1910 by Longmans, Green. The book covers the history of aether theories and the development of electromagnetic theory up to the 20th century. A second, extended and revised, edition consisting of two volumes was released in the early 1950s by Thomas Nelson, expanding the book's scope to include the first quarter of the 20th century. The first volume, subtitled The Classical Theories, was published in 1951 and served as a revised and updated edition to the first book. The second volume, subtitled The Modern Theories (1900–1926), was published two years later in 1953, extended this work covering the years 1900 to 1926. Notwithstanding a notorious controversy on Whittaker's views on the history of special relativity, covered in volume two of the second edition, the books are considered authoritative references on the history of electricity and magnetism as well as classics in the history of physics.
The Meaning of Relativity: Four Lectures Delivered at Princeton University, May 1921 is a book published by Princeton University Press in 1922 that compiled the 1921 Stafford Little Lectures at Princeton University, given by Albert Einstein. The lectures were translated into English by Edwin Plimpton Adams. The lectures and the subsequent book were Einstein's last attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of his theory of relativity and is his only book that provides an accessible overview of the physics and mathematics of general relativity. Einstein explained his goal in the preface of the book's German edition by stating he "wanted to summarize the principal thoughts and mathematical methods of relativity theory" and that his "principal aim was to let the fundamentals in the entire train of thought of the theory emerge clearly". Among other reviews, the lectures were the subject of the 2017 book The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein's Princeton Lectures by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn.
Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein is a collection of essays on themes in the history of physics by Gerald Holton. It was originally published in 1973 by Harvard University Press, who issued multiple reprints of the book leading up to the publication of a revised edition in 1988. The book has been translated into several languages and has received many reviews.
↑ Nair, K. P. R.; Cassidy, D. C.; Goenner, H.; Walther, H.; Rechenberg, H. (August 1983). "Landolt-Börnstein: Molekelkonstanten, Elektronenresonanz-Spektroskopie, Ergänzung der Bände II/4 und II/6/Pais: "Subtle is the Lord …"︁ The Science and Life of Albert Einstein/Schilpp: Albert Einstein als Philosoph und Naturforscher/Svelto: Principles of". Physik Journal (in German). 39 (8): 300–301. doi:10.1002/phbl.19830390811.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
