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NOTES
Einstein’s letters and writings through 1920 have been published in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein series, and they are identified by the dates used in those volumes. Unpublished material that is in the Albert Einstein Archives (AEA) is identified using the folder (reel)-document numbering format of the archives. For some of the m
aterial, especially that previously unpublished, I have used translations made for me by James Hoppes and Natasha Hoffmeyer.
EPIGRAPH
1. Einstein to Eduard Einstein, Feb. 5, 1930. Eduard was suffering from deepening mental illness at the time. The exact quote is: “Beim Menschen ist es wie beim Velo. Nur wenn er faehrt, kann er bequem die Balance halten.” A more literal translation is: “It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one’s balance.” Courtesy of Barbara Wolff, Einstein archives, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
CHAPTER ONE: THE LIGHT-BEAM RIDER
1. Einstein to Conrad Habicht, May 18 or 25, 1905.
2. These ideas are drawn from essays I wrote in Time, Dec. 31, 1999, and Discover, Sept. 2004.
3. Dudley Herschbach, “Einstein as a Student,” Mar. 2005, unpublished paper provided to the author. Herschbach says, “Efforts to improve science education and literacy face a root problem: science and mathematics are regarded not as part of the general culture, but rather as the province of priest-like experts. Einstein is seen as a towering icon, the exemplar par excellence of lonely genius. That fosters an utterly distorted view of science.”
4. Frank 1957, xiv; Bernstein 1996b, 18.
5. Vivienne Anderson to Einstein, Apr. 27, 1953, AEA 60-714; Einstein to Vivienne Anderson, May 12, 1953, AEA 60-716.
6. Viereck, 377. See also Thomas Friedman, “Learning to Keep Learning,”New York Times, Dec. 13, 2006.
7. Einstein to Mileva Mari, Dec. 12, 1901; Hoffmann and Dukas, 24. Hoff-mann was Einstein’s friend in the late 1930s in Princeton. He notes, “His early suspicion of authority, which never wholly left him, was to prove of decisive importance.”
8. Einstein message for Ben Scheman dinner, Mar. 1952, AEA 28-931.
CHAPTER TWO: CHILDHOOD
1. Einstein to Sybille Blinoff, May 21, 1954, AEA 59-261; Ernst Straus, “Reminiscences,” in Holton and Elkana, 419; Vallentin, 17; Maja Einstein, lviii.
2. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
3. Nobel laureate James Franck quoting Einstein in Seelig 1956b, 72.
4. Vallentin, 17; Einstein to psychologist Max Wertheimer, in Wertheimer, 214.
5. Einstein to Hans Muehsam, Mar. 4,1953, AEA 60-604. Also: “I think we can dispense with this question of heritage,” Einstein is quoted in Seelig 1956a, 11. See also Michelmore, 22.
6. Maja Einstein, xvi; Seelig 1956a, 10.
7. www.alemannia-judaica.de/synagoge_buchau.htm.
8. Einstein to Carl Seelig, Mar. 11, 1952, AEA 39-13; Highfield and Carter, 9.
9. Maja Einstein, xv; Highfield and Carter, 9; Pais 1982, 36.
10. Birth certificate, CPAE 1: 1; Fantova, Dec. 5, 1953.
11. Pais 1982, 36–37.
12. Maja Einstein, xviii. Maria was sometimes used as a stand-in for the name Miriam in Jewish families.
13. Frank 1947, 8.
14. Maja Einstein, xviii–xix; Fölsing, 12; Pais 1982, 37.
15. Some researchers view such a pattern as possibly being a mild manifestation of autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University, is among those who suggest that Einstein might have exhibited characteristics of autism. He writes that autism is associated with a “particularly intense drive to systemize and an unusually low drive to empathize.” He also notes that this pattern “explains the ‘islets of ability’ that people with autism display in subjects like math or music or drawing—all skills that benefit from systemizing.” See Simon Baron-Cohen, “The Male Condition,”New York Times , Aug. 8, 2005; Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference (New York: Perseus, 2003), 167; Norm Ledgin, Asperger’s and Self-Esteem: Insight and Hope through Famous Role Models (Arlington,TX: Future Horizons, 2002), chapter 7; Hazel Muir, “Einstein and Newton Showed Signs of Autism,”New Scientist , Apr. 30, 2003; Thomas Marlin, “Albert Einstein and LD,”Journal of Learning Disabilities , Mar. 1, 2000, 149. A Google search of Einstein + Asperger’s results in 146,000 pages. I do not find such a long-distance diagnosis to be convincing. Even as a teenager, Einstein made close friends, had passionate relationships, enjoyed collegial discussions, communicated well verbally, and could empathize with friends and humanity in general.
16. Einstein 1949b, 9; Seelig 1956a, 11; Hoffmann 1972, 9; Pais 1982, 37; Vallentin, 21; Reiser, 25; Holton 1973, 359; author’s interview with Shulamith Oppenheim, Apr. 22, 2005.
17. Overbye, 8; Shulamith Oppenheim, Rescuing Albert’s Compass (New York: Crocodile, 2003).
18. Holton 1973, 358.
19. Fölsing, 26; Einstein to Philipp Frank, draft, 1940, CPAE 1, p. lxiii.
20. Maja Einstein, xxi; Bucky, 156; Einstein to Hans Albert Einstein, Jan. 8, 1917.
21. Hans Albert Einstein interview in Whitrow, 21; Bucky, 148.
22. Einstein to Paul Plaut, Oct. 23, 1928, AEA 28-65; Dukas and Hoffmann, 78; Moszkowski, 222. Einstein originally wrote that music and science “complement each other in the release they offer,” but he later changed that to Befriedigung, or satisfaction, according to Barbara Wolff of Hebrew University.
23. Einstein to Otto Juliusburger, Sept. 29, 1942, AEA 38-238.
24. Clark, 25; Einstein 1949b, 3; Reiser, 28. (Anton Reiser was the pseudonym of Rudoph Kayser, who married Ilse Einstein, the daughter of Einstein’s second wife, Elsa.)
25. Maja Einstein, xix, says he was 7; in fact he enrolled on Oct. 1, 1885, when he was 6.
26. According to the version later told by his stepson-in-law, the teacher then added that Jesus was nailed to the cross “by the Jews”; Reiser, 30. But Einstein’s friend and physics colleague Philipp Frank makes a point of specifically noting that the teacher did not raise the role of the Jews; Frank 1947, 9.
27. Fölsing, 16; Einstein to unknown recipient, Apr. 3, 1920, CPAE 1: lx.
28. Reiser, 28–29; Maja Einstein, xxi; Seelig 1956a, 15; Pais 1982, 38; Fölsing, 20. Maja again has him only 8 when he enters the gymnasium, which he actually did in Oct. 1888, at age 9 and a half.
29. Brian 1996, 281. A Google search of Einstein failed math, performed in 2006, turned up close to 648,000 references.
30. Pauline Einstein to Fanny Einstein, Aug. 1, 1886; Fölsing, 18–20, citing Einstein to Sybille Blinoff, May 21, 1954, and Dr. H. Wieleitner in Nueste Nachrichten, Munich, Mar. 14, 1929.
31. Einstein to Sybille Blinoff, May 21, 1954, AEA 59-261; Maja Einstein, xx.
32. Frank 1947, 14; Reiser, 35; Einstein 1949b, 11.
33. Maja Einstein, xx; Bernstein 1996a, 24–27; Einstein interview with Henry Russo, The Tower , Princeton, Apr. 13, 1935.
34. Talmey, 164; Pais 1982, 38.
35. The first edition appeared in twelve volumes between 1853 and 1857. New editions, under a new title that is referred to in Maja’s essay, appeared in the late 1860s. They were constantly updated. The version likely owned by Einstein had twenty-one volumes and was bound into four or five large books. The definitive study of this book’s influence on Einstein is Frederick Gregory, “The Mysteries and Wonders of Science: Aaron Bernstein’s Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher and the Adolescent Einstein,” in Howard and Stachel 2000, 23–42. Maja Einstein, xxi; Einstein 1949b, 15; Seelig 1956a, 12.
36. Aaron Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher , 1870 ed., vols. 1, 8, 16, 19; Howard and Stachel 2000, 27–39.
37. Einstein 1949b, 5.
38. Talmey, 163. (Talmud wrote his small memoir after he had changed his name to Talmey in America.)
39. Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” Herbert Spencer lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933, in Einstein 1954, 270.
40. Einstein 1949b, 9, 11; Talmey, 163; Fölsing, 23 (he speculates that the “sacred” book may have been another text); Einstein 1954, 270.
41. Aaron Bernstein, vol. 12, cited by Frederick Gregory in Howard and Stachel 2000, 37; Einstein 1949b, 5.
42. Frank 1947, 15; Jam
mer, 15–29. “The meaning of a life of brilliant scientific activity drew on the remnants of his fervent first feelings of youthful religiosity,” writes Gerald Holton in Holton 2003, 32.
43. Einstein 1949b, 5; Maja Einstein, xxi.
44. Einstein, “What I Believe,”Forum and Century (1930): 194, reprinted as “The World As I See It,” in Einstein 1954, 10. According to Philipp Frank, “He saw the parade as a movement of people compelled to be machines”; Frank 1947, 8.
45. Frank 1947, 11; Fölsing, 17; C. P. Snow, “Einstein,” in Variety of Men (New York: Scribner’s, 1966), 26.
46. Einstein to Jost Winteler, July 8, 1901.
47. Pais 1982, 17, 38; Hoffmann 1972, 24.
48. Maja Einstein, xx; Seelig 1956a, 15; Pais 1982, 38; Einstein draft to Philipp Frank, 1940, CPAE 1, p. lxiii.
49. Stefann Siemer, “The Electrical Factory of Jacob Einstein and Cie.,” in Renn 2005b, 128–131; Pyenson, 40.
50. Overbye, 9–10; Einstein draft to Philipp Frank, 1940, CPAE 1, p. lxiii; Hoff-mann, 1972, 25–26; Reiser, 40; Frank 1947, 16; Maja Einstein, xxi; Fölsing, 28–30.
51. Einstein to Marie Winteler, Apr. 21, 1896; Fölsing 34;The Jewish Spectator , Jan. 1969.
52. Frank 1947, 17; Maja Einstein, xxii; Hoffmann 1972, 27.
53. Einstein, “On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field,” summer 1895, CPAE 1: 5.
54. Einstein to Caesar Koch, summer 1895.
55. Albin Herzog to Gustave Maier, Sept. 25, 1895, CPAE 1 (English), p. 7; Fölsing, 37; Seelig 1956a, 9.
56. This process of envisaging is what Kantian philosophers call Anschauung. See Miller 1984, 241–246.
57. Seelig 1956b, 56; Fölsing, 38.
58. Miller 2001, 47; Maja Einstein, xxii; Seelig 1956b, 9; Fölsing, 38; Holton, “On Trying to Understand Scientific Genius,” in Holton 1973, 371.
59. Bucky, 26; Fölsing, 46. Einstein provides a fuller description in his “Autobiographical Notes,” in Schilpp, 53.
60. Gustav Maier to Jost Winteler, Oct. 26, 1895, CPAE 1: 9; Fölsing, 39; High-field and Carter, 22–24.
61. Vallentin, 12; Hans Byland, Neue Bündner Zeitung , Feb. 7, 1928, cited in Seelig 1956a, 14; Fölsing, 39.