How did Einstein's mind work? What made him a genius? On Monday, April 23, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a Director's Forum and book reception to discuss Walter Isaacson's new biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe.

Introducers: Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Woodrow Wilson Center; Alma L. Gildenhorn, Member, Board of Trustees, The Aspen Institute

Speaker: Walter Isaacson, Author, President and CEO, The Aspen Institute

Science has for too long been regarded as an intimidating field of study, said Walter Isaacson at an April 23 Director's Forum. For the non-scientists among us, it is viewed as boring and inaccessible, and it is too easily dismissed, especially by school-aged children. Why don't we teach science as a creative and imaginative endeavor, similar to the arts? We all appreciate Shakespeare even though it is difficult to comprehend—why not science?

According to Isaacson, we need to approach science in the imaginative and playful way that Albert Einstein did, by recognizing that it provides an opportunity to marvel at and decode the mysteries of the world around us. Einstein often thought in pictures, Isaacson explained. And in keeping with this idea of ‘visual' thinking, Isaacson chose to present a ‘biography in pictures' of the famed physicist, painting a portrait of a man who, in continuously questioning conventional wisdom, became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos and the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.

Isaacson wanted to portray Einstein not only as a genius, but as a human—flawed, complex, and dynamic. He pointed out that as a young child Einstein was slow to talk, so much so that the family maid referred to him as "the dopey one" and his parents sought professional advice. Einstein also had trouble at school, which is why today, Isaacson said, he could best be described as the "patron saint of distracted school kids."

What Einstein was doing, however, was engaging in some of his first thought experiments, curiously wondering about the underlying order of the universe and about space and time. By the age of sixteen, he had already begun to grapple with Maxwell's equations (which, among other things, claimed that the speed of light would always remain constant), and was starting to formulate his own ideas about the behavior of a traveling light beam.

Like many other creative and rebellious thinkers, Einstein decided to run away from home as a teenager, in his case leaving Munich and moving to Switzerland in order to attend the prestigious Zurich Polytechnic. Isaacson explained that this time was highly formative for young Einstein; however, he continued to have run-ins with authority, frustrating his professors and even blowing up one of the college laboratories, which landed him on academic probation. At the end of his tutelage, Einstein had failed to earn his doctorate and was completely unemployable—he applied for 17 high school teaching positions and was rejected by all of them.

Einstein remained unemployed for two years, at which point he was finally offered a job as a third-class examiner in the Swiss Patent Office. Far from being the unglamorous and somewhat embarrassing position it may have seemed given Einstein's intellect, Isaacson argued that this was in fact the perfect job, for it allowed Einstein free rein to work on his own series of thought experiments. Indeed it was during his time at the Swiss office that Einstein made some of his most famous discoveries.

At one point, Einstein drafted a letter to an old university friend (a letter he amusingly referred to as "inconsequential babble") and included four scientific papers he had been working on. The first one had to do with the properties of light, claiming that light was a particle, not a wave. The second paper determined the true size of an atom. The third focused on movement and relativity; and the fourth paper, which Einstein said was only a rough draft, was a modification of the theory of space and time. Almost as an afterthought, Einstein concluded his letter by saying that if the last paper was true, then it proved there was a relationship between energy and mass, and that this relationship had to do with the speed of light. In other words, e = mc2.

Isaacson underscored that along with the many theoretical advances Einstein was making at this time, the budding genius was also a struggling husband and father. He had fallen in love with and married fellow Polytechnic classmate Mileva Maric, and she was busy raising their two sons. The relationship had become tumultuous, however, and Einstein found himself in the midst of a messy situation. Isaacson explained how, in order to secure the necessary divorce paperwork, Einstein ended up bribing Mileva by offering her the money he would eventually win when he received the Nobel Prize. Being the scientific thinker that she was, she considered the odds, decided he probably would win a Nobel Prize in the near future, and agreed to give him the divorce. That same year (1919) Einstein remarried, to a divorced cousin of his, Elsa, with whom he had been having an affair for quite some time.

Einstein was also struggling against the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany, which, in terms of the scientific world, was beginning to create a false distinction between "Deutsch physics" and "Jewish physics." He faced attacks on the legitimacy of his theories, such that the prospects of attaining notoriety for his work, in Europe at least, became increasingly bleak. It was not until a Quaker by the name of Sir Arthur Eddington decided to prove Einstein's theories correct that the international community took notice of the physicist's groundbreaking accomplishments.

Convinced that "science transcends politics," Eddington conducted experiments on the coasts of Africa and Brazil in 1919, during a solar eclipse, in order to test Einstein's theory that light from distant stars will curve by a margin of 1.7 arc seconds when passing through the sun's gravitational field. The experiments were a success, and almost overnight, Isaacson explained, Einstein himself became a star. Winning the (much-anticipated) Nobel Prize in 1921, he soon embarked upon a tour throughout the United States.

As World War II began to explode in Europe and the Pacific, Einstein felt an obligation to get involved. He was nervous about Nazi Germany's capacity to develop a nuclear bomb, and in 1939 he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt explaining that German physicists had begun working on uranium fission. As we know, Einstein's letter led directly to the establishment of the Manhattan Project and to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. According to Isaacson, this had a profound and sobering effect on Einstein. In order to compensate for being the "father of the bomb," he became an ardent and outspoken pacifist, dedicating himself to the arms control movement for the remainder of his life.

In terms of his personal goals, Einstein was still trying to get closer to a single, unified field theory that would explain the underlying forces of the universe. He strove for elegance and coherence, Isaacson said, such that on his deathbed, he was still writing out equations—these were his final attempts to condense the world's complexity to a simple, all-encompassing set of universal guidelines.

Some things are destined to remain a mystery, it seems, for Einstein never achieved his unified theory. His monumental contributions to the field of physics and his influence and impact as a global citizen, however, have permanently shaped the world we live in today.


Q & A

Q: What insights did you gain from the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, and what aspects of these letters informed the writing of your book?

A: The letters were crucial in that they help change our impression of a cold, aloof professor to someone with very good friends, to someone who was passionate and tempestuous. If we look at Einstein's personality, his politics, and his science, we can see a unified thread of creative rebellion, passion, and intellectual rigor, and for me his personal letters really brought this out, and I wanted to make it a prominent theme in the book.

Q: If Einstein was, as you say, an unconventional person who thought outside of the box, why did he become so opposed to the new developments in quantum mechanics theory later on in his life?

A: Einstein was a visual thinker, and I think his reluctance to accept these developments was in large part due to his inability to ‘visualize' them. Also, Einstein's scientific faith was very much grounded in the idea of unifying laws—in determinism—and these new theories failed to fit that framework, so he dismissed them. You're right, however, that this conservatism seems out of character for Einstein. When asked about it at the time, Einstein famously remarked: "To punish me for my contempt of authority, fate made me an authority myself."

Q: Can you talk a little more about Einstein's thoughts on the state of Israel?

A: Einstein was in favor of Zionist sentiments but he did not support the establishment of a Jewish state. This was mainly because he was extremely critical of nationalism—he called it the "curse of mankind"—however, once the state of Israel was created, Einstein lent his support.